Is Christianity Better For Society Than Secular Atheism

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WinePusher

Is Christianity Better For Society Than Secular Atheism

Post #1

Post by WinePusher »

Abraxas and I have agreed to do a head to head debate on the topic of whether Christianity is better and more prudent philosophy for a society than Secular Atheism.

I will be affirming the positive in this discussion, and that secularism and atheism are ultimatly detrimental and harmful. Let me also add that this debate will primarily revolve around the context of American society and public policy.

WinePusher

Post #21

Post by WinePusher »

Abraxas wrote:As I mentioned earlier, technically speaking a sperm is life.
:blink: Wrong. A "life" is a being that has the genetical information of both parents and has its own DNA code. A sperm is not a life, once a sperm makes contact with an ovary it becomes a life.
WinePusher wrote:This may be possible, but it is unlikely. The fact is, people call themselves "christians" because they agree with the doctrines and teachings of their church and their bible

Abraxas wrote:More common than you think. How many minor sins can you name that most people think are okay because nobody really gets hurt but if you were to ask a priest they would tell you it is a sin?
Irrelavent and a misrepresentation. Just because the church says something is a sin does not mean it is a sin.
Abraxas wrote:People identify themselves as Christians because they believe Jesus Christ is their lord and savior and will take them to meet God when they die.
I do not disagree, but a Christian, namely a catholic, who attends weekly mass, generally agrees with what the church teaches. Theres no way around that.
Abraxas wrote:Inconsistency is wrong. The divine laws of Solomon very clearly and directly state killing a fetus is a grossly different offense from killing a person.
This is logically incorrect.

-Your conclusion is: The Bible does not teach that a fetus is a life
-Your evidence for this conclusion is: The penalities for hurting a fetus carry less weight then the penalties for hurting a grown human

It is simply an irrelevant conclusion.
WinePusher wrote:Well, I don't recall saying Christianity as a whole but if I did I overstated my opinion. Obviously christianity is a big tent, and has many followers and people who interpret the Bible and dogma differently. My statement should have been, the majority of traditional churches that interpret the bible unambiguiously uphold life frmo conception to natural death.

Abraxas wrote:Ah, but the topic of debate was just Christianity. If Christianity is so scattered, so open to interpretation, and so prone to having it's constituents reading into Christianity the things the churches you favor do not, how is it supposed to provide any kind of inherent stabilizing effect?
Christian is not "so scattered." You have two sects of the religion, liberal christianity and conservative christianity. Liberal Christianity is in the minority and liberal christians tend to pick and choose their favorite parts of the bible. Conservative Christianity is in the majority and this sect opposes abortion. There is a growing population of Islamic extremists who like to kill terrorize, so is Islam a religion that promotes terrorism?
Abraxas wrote:And yet for 20 years he attended Christian church, including all of his time as a state senator. You can deny he is and was a Christian all you like, but the fact of the matter is he is one.
Obama can claim to be a christian all he wants, but actions speak louder than words. He does not currently attend church, unlike his predeccesor, and when he did attend church he was not paying attention to his preacher's sermons, as he says he is unware of Jeremiah Wright's hate speech.
Abraxas wrote:The people who did the killing were more than Nazis. To pretend they were just Nazis is the short, simple and wrong version of history. The fact of the matter is the people doing the killing were people, with all the complexity thereof.
What!? The people who did the holocaust were the Nazi's and the S.S. The people who threw the Jews into the furnaces were S.S guards.
Abraxas wrote:The majority of them were Catholics.
And did they kill the Jews because their Catholicism said to, or because there crazy dictator ordered them to?
Abraxas wrote:Nazi propaganda used their religious views to increase the levels of antisemitism and increase levels of unity.
Allow me to edit this:

"The Nazi's used religion as a propoganda tool to increase levels of antisemitism and increase levels of unity."
Abraxas wrote:Yes, the Nazi leadership used and abused Christianity to promote it's own goals, but the fact remains, Christianity was the vessel which they used to spread hatred and death. They could not have done as much as they did were it not for the religion of the people being a convenient channel through which to do it.
Ok, we agree that Christianity was abused and was used as a vessel by humans to spread hatred and death. Medicine is inherently a good thing, but if you abuse it, it becomes harmful.
WinePusher wrote:Is Kayman's number drastically inaccurate? If not, theres no issue.

Abraxas wrote:Yes, they are dramatically different.
Not to sound facetious, but I don't think your an authority on this subject and I don't think your opinion weighs more than a Historian who wrote a multivolume study on the matter.
Abraxas wrote:The US hardly promotes a culture of life, certainly not when compared to post-WWII Europe.
According to this standard, no country promotes life. They're called world wars for a reason.
Abraxas wrote:We don't provide medical care to those who need it most as well.
This is a liberal lie. I'm sorry to say it, but this is another distortion from the left abuot this great country, America has always had universal care. If you were poor and couldn't afford care you would still get it. Its called an emergency room, the government does not need to be injected into the healthcare system to make it universal. Look at Medical and Medicare, two government run programs, and they're bankrupt.
Abraxas wrote:We have been engaged in military conflicts every year in the past 120 years excepting 1934-1940, 1977 and 1979.
Were we trying to conquer more territory and exploit the resources of other soverign nations? Or were we assisting countries in achieving liberty?
Abraxas wrote:Still allow the death penalty.
No, some states still allow the death penalty.
Abraxas wrote:If you want countries that promote a culture of life, the best examples are the Scandinavian states and Switzerland, followed by much of the rest of Europe.
The fact that Switzerland has never been involved in a World War is hardly due to their "peacful" nature. Just take a look at the terrain surrounding that country. Blitzkreg doesn't work when you have rugged terrain with high mountain ranges.
WinePusher wrote:1) Societies that are secular and lack any type of religion devalue life. Which I already demonstrated.

Abraxas wrote:No, actually, you showed societies completely unlike western democracies have a poor track record.
What do these societies have in common? I'll answer it, secularism.
WinePusher wrote:2) Societies that are inherently christian respect life and uphold individual rights. Such as America

Abraxas wrote:Except America doesn't and neither have countless other Christian nations and empires throughout history. See all of Feudal and Colonial Europe for reference.
America does promote a culture of life and respects the dignity of life. We have a functioning government that realizes its duty to defend our right to life, regardless of what the left says, we have universal healthcare and we take care of the poor. Just because our way of doing it differs from Europe doesn't mean its worse.
WinePusher wrote:3) Christianity does not hinder OR impede freethinking and learning, as you claim. The first universities that were created were in Christendom by the Church, advancements in mathematics, science and literature were made by practicing Christians as well.
Abraxas wrote:Galileo might have something to say about that. That Christianity is still trying to pretend evolution and the history of the universe older than 6-10 thousand years never happened, some still even try to claim we are at the center of the universe in clear disregard for scientific evidence in some circles.
Some aspects of Christianity pretend the earth is 6000 years old. The Catholic Church does not.
Abraxas wrote:Can you think of a single noteworthy source opposed to the proliferation of scientific knowledge outside of Christianity in the western world?
A false intial premise. Without the university and equipment being supported by the church science would be impossible.
Abraxas wrote:I challenge the idea that faith based organizations make the largest charity groups. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is not religious, certainly, to name one example already covered in this thread.
Take every single Catholic Church in america and compare their work the Bill Gates. Does Bill Gates give out food baskets at Thanksgiving, does Bill Gates collect toys for underprivaleged children during Christmas as the churches do? Doctors without borders is a great group, but is very small compared to faith based charities.
Abraxas wrote:I also find it interesting how when you attempt to make a point in favor of religion, you are willing to accept the general population as representative of the nation while claiming the leader is of a different faith, the US and Obama,
Point?
Abraxas wrote:but when it gets reversed you try to pretend the two have nothing to do with each other, like Germany and Hitler.
Dealt with this above. You concede Christinaity was an abused vessel used by Nazi Germany, I agreed. But you are simply wrong when it comes to Hitler's so called christianity. The myth that he was a christian has been debunked over and over and over and over again. I'm surprised your even making the argument.
WinePusher wrote:The fact is, Dostoyesvki is right when he said "without God, all things are permitted." This claim has been proven true every time a Godless communist leader rises to power.

Abraxas wrote:If we have degenerated into "argumentum ad quoting celebrities and historical figures", I have quite a number of quotes on Christianity I can bring into this, starting with Gandhi. Is this really a productive route for you to take?
Nice dodge. If you have quotes that you think will strengthen your case feel free to list them. However, simply listing a quote without any substantiation is futile. But to get back to my original point, can you dispute Fydor Dostoyesvki? If there is no moral accountability, if there is no "cosmic justice", if there is no "final judgement" whats stopping you from living in your id and being selfish without any concern for others wellbeing?
WinePusher wrote:Are you really suggesting that the word "opium" is interchangable with "medicine" in the context of that quote? The entire meaning would be misconstruted.

Abraxas wrote:More interchangeable with "painkiller" or "numbing agent" than medicine. He felt it caused the masses to ignore the hardship and injustice around them because they were promised paradise and justice when they died.
Yes, religion deludes the masses from his communist idea of a perfect society. Exactly.
WinePusher wrote:That is the legacy of fundamentalist atheism. But what you said above, that religion can be destroyed through education, is largely representational of what is happening now.

Abraxas wrote:Yes, it is. As education increases, religion decreases. Hopefully within my lifetime the religious will be a dying breed as reason takes over.
Education from biased "educators" decreases religion.
WinePusher wrote:Indoctrinating young, naiive students is a way to abolish religion and conservative America, and it is currently going on.

Abraxas wrote:Young and naive? These are adults we are talking about here. You want to talk indoctrination, why don't we discuss the practice of taking young children to church or sending them to Catholic schools? Christianity wouldn't exist today but for that practice.
The fact is most college acadmics are liberal, some marxist, others atheists. I had a philosophy of religion course taught by an atheist, political sciences courses are almost always taught by biased liberal marxist professors who inject their outdated ideas into the syllabus that these young, impressionable adults take as fact.

As for Catholic Schools and Church, if you don't want your kid there, don't take them. Its simple, the government doesn't force you to go to Catholic School. But one must wonder why the faith based catholic schools outperform the secular public schools. :-k Seems like secularism ruins everthing.
Abraxas wrote:Hitler was Catholic, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.
He claimed to be Catholic, yes. He was not a true believer though, as indicated by his personal feelings and sentiments.
Abraxas wrote:Firstly, you have attributed all the evils of Communist dictatorships to atheism as opposed to Communist dictatorships.
What? I believe this may be a repeat error........
Abraxas wrote:You have then claimed to have proven this demonstrates atheism devalues human life, while simultaneously arguing social democratic Europe is too secular, trying to act like Communism has anything to do with the European model when it clearly does not.
I claim that countries that lack any type of religion devalue life. You cannot dispute this established fact. And I never said Europe was trying to be communist, I'm saying the population is largely are secular. That is also a fact.
Abraxas wrote:So far all you have demonstrated, really, is that Communist dictatorships devalue human life. Nobody has argued otherwise.
Can you tell us why they devalue life? I can.
Abraxas wrote:Then, finally, you have simply been dismissive, either through quote dropping or whitewashing all the times Christianity was explicitly used as mechanism for, or even the dominant cultural feature of populations that devalued and destroyed human life.
The only thing I dispute is your narrative the Christianity was the inspiration and cause of the holocaust. I do not dispute the existence of feudalism, I dispute your misinformation that Hitler was inspired by christianity as were his nazi's.......
WinePusher wrote:Ok, your dodging. Please answer this question "For what reason do you think that the number of abortions should be reduced?"
WinePusher wrote:So because family strife is possible, minors should be able to have abortions and decieve their parents?

Abraxas wrote:Yes. Minors should have the option to seek any medical procedure they need and if in order to do so they must deceive their parents it should be permitted they do so. The alternative is to allow the parents to threaten and punish children into not receiving medical procedures which is the greater evil.
I don't understand what it is with the left that makes them think they have the right to usurp parental rights. This is all speculation, you are speculating over the worst cscenerio. The greater evil is when the state thinks they have the ability to allow minors to make choices for themselves. They have legal guardians and parents for a reason, and the state isn't their guardian.
WinePusher wrote:Indeed, this is very troubling and befuzzeling as he was the only one who voted aganist it. I've no clue of the man's rationale or decision making process, but according to this, he supports passive newborn killing.
Abraxas wrote:Perhaps it had something to do with the added obligations and burdens the bill placed on the mother in addition to the medical treatment for the infant.
I guess Obama was the only legisator who was more concerned with medical bills than the child's life. This only proves my point that he is the most radical pro abortion president ever.
Abraxas wrote:The people who attacked us on 9/11 were never in Iraq. If we are there to get the people who attacked us, I strongly urge that war making power be taken away from the republicans until they are sufficiently technologically savvy to operate a map.
I realize they weren't from Iraq. But you know who was in Iraq, Al-Qaeda and a mad man by the name of Saddam Hussein who NATO believed to have WMD.
WinePusher wrote:Not so, the Iraqi people held a recent election with minor interupptions and protests.
Abraxas wrote:If they are so functional, why do they require an occupying army?
As of now, they don't.
WinePusher wrote:Firstly, the multiple attempts on the US came under the Obama administration

Abraxas wrote:Not true. The underoos bomber was under Bush. The attempts to bomb transatlantic flights were under Bush. Assorted car and bus bomb attempts under Bush and Obama both. The Fort Dix attack plot. Etc. That they were stopped is a demonstration of how good police work can stop terrorism, it had nothing to do with who we were bombing at the time, except perhaps to encourage them to try.
Ok, let me adjust my statement. There have been no attacks on this country since 9/11, do you agree. Expect for domestic attacks.
WinePusher wrote:Hitler's Table Talk, coupled with his own confessions in Mine Kampf and the History of the Third Reich show that he would do anything to gian support and power. And Hitler's table Talk has not been debunked, it is accurate and was written by parts of Hitler's administration, not modern historians.....

Abraxas wrote:The translation of Table Talk used that portrayed a negative view of Christianity was rebuked by those people as being inaccurate. A later translation was made available, confirmed as being correct that did not contain the anti-christian rhetoric. Whether or not he would do anything to gain support and power is an independent question from what his religious leanings were.
Regardless of whether the translation captured every single quotation perfectly, the question is whether he made those statements or not. I find it interesting how, for my claims, I have texts and books that support them. Yet, your only argument aganist them is to discredit the source-----

1) "Who Really Care" Arthur Brooks: A book establishing the fact that christians give more than secularists
2) "Hitler's Table Talk" Rover: A book establishing the fact that Hitler's personal views were anti christian, and that he used the churches as a propoganda tool
3) "The Spanish inquisition" Henry Kamen: A book establishing the fact that the deaths of the spanish inquisition were miniscule
4) "From Darwain To Hitler" Richard Weikart: A book establishing the fact that Hitler's motivations are somewhat rooted in Darwainism.
Abraxas wrote:That does prove my point, that a culture almost wholly Christian permitted and supported Hitler's atrocities, contrary to your assertion that Christianity creates and maintains a culture of life.
This is getting off topic, but the fact that Christians "permitted" Hitler means nothing. Do you think that the churches had the power to confront a him and his armies? And it is deceitful for you to say they "supported" him. Some supported Hitler, some didn't.
Abraxas wrote:Antisemitism is rooted in secularism in the modern world. Martin Luther and other reformed theologians may have sparked antisemitism with replacement theology, but the history of antisemitism was evolutionary. The point of destroying the Jews was to purify the race and create one supreme, ultimate race. Hitler's inspiration came more from Darwain rather than Jesus, as documented in Richard Wiekart's book "From Darwain To Hitler."

Abraxas wrote:As for "From Darwin to Hitler", you may as well quote Hovind for all the credibility contained therein. I would be hardpressed to think of a book more universally rejected by scholars than that one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Darwi ... _reception
What is the idea of evolutionary darwinian theory and social darwainism. It is the idea that one must essentially compete to survive, read your internet source to find Darwain's own quote in "Descent of Man." Even The Atheist Bart Ehrman recognizes the evolutionary motivations behind the holocaust, the weaker species will die and the gene pool must be purified and all that darwinian dogma motivated Hitler.
WinePusher wrote:I will concede Spain to you. Please prove me wrong, but I don't think oppresion, genocide and murder are doctrines of christianity. However, they are inherent vallues to communis,

Abraxas wrote:You don't? Ask the Canaanites what they think about genocide, oppression, and murder not being Biblical values. Or how about the Benjamites?
No, I don't think the Bible teaches people to oppress your enemies and commit genocide. That may have been how the ancient Israelites thought and the Bible accuratly lists these historical events, but it is contrary to what the Bible actually teaches, which is love of enemy and forgiveness.
WinePusher wrote:Absolutly False. The most respectably poll in the country shows that America is a center right country.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/120857/conse ... group.aspx

40% of Americans identify themselves as conservative
35%-moderates
21% identify themselves as liberals

It is a fact that this country is center right.

Abraxas wrote:Yet they voted in Obama, the majority wanted a state payer healthcare system, support environmental reforms, etc.
No. Again, polls prove you wrong. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... are_reform

54%-60% of Americans did not want Obamacare. The fact that Obama read a good teleprompter during his campaign doesn't prove that this country is not center right.
Abraxas wrote:Yes, when asked where they fall, most people say center, followed by conservative. When asked where they fall on issues, however, the majority of their responses tend to be in line with leftist policies, often more extreme than that which is offered by the Democrats.
Your kidding right? Look at Missouri and their rejection of Obamacare, look at the huge support for the Arizona Law. If the public wanted leftist policies they'd be supporting Open Borders, but they're are supporting the opposite of that.
Abraxas wrote:I can think of no more important job for a state than to take care of its citizens. As for work skills, did you miss the entire part of the conversation were we established there are more workers than jobs? Work skills don't mean anything if nobody is hiring.
Well, this is a fundamental disagreement. I do not think the governments job is to take care of its citizens and provide for their every whim. The government should provide an enviroment where citizens can thrive, such as creating jobs.
WinePusher wrote:Redistributing wealth never works. Punishing success doesn't encourage people to want strive for high paying positions in life if they know that their check will be cut in half
Abraxas wrote:Yes, because when faced with having half of a million or keeping all of 20,000 from flipping burgers, that I am going to be taxed will keep me in McDonalds. Seriously?
A misrepresentational caricature. Why strive to achieve in life if the government is going to end up taking it from you?
WinePusher wrote:A reputation that America has lived up to. Do you believe in American Exceptionalism?

Abraxas wrote:Absolutely not.
:blink: :confused2: Care to explain why you don't think this is the greatest country in the world?
WinePusher wrote:I know of none, but that does not mean they exist, does it? Do you really think that a mexican immigrant that came here would be in worse shape?

Abraxas wrote:No, but that is because Mexico is in poor shape and people leaving Mexico tend to be in poor shape by Mexican standards. Someone leaving Norway, on the other hand, stands an exceptionally good chance of being worse off in the US.
Yes, because they will be leaving a country that takes care of them. Do you not believe in indepence, self reliance and hard work. The fact that the Standard of living may be better in Europe is because the people there get more vacation time and leisure. In America, hard work as been its legacy, you don't get everything handed to you on a silver plate, instead you have to work for it. I'd choose that over Europe any day of the week.
WinePusher wrote:Christianity does teach inherent dignity. But the fact that monarchs made pacts with knights for protection has nothing to do with christiainty. The European Experience of Christianity is very different from the American experience, Europe for a long period of time never had a wall between the church and the state, America did. That is why Christianity in America is much healthier htan Christianity in Europe.

Abraxas wrote:So let me get this straight, India has a caste system because it isn't Christian. Then when I point out the hundreds of years Christianity had a caste system, suddenly that doesn't reflect on Christianity at all? Double standard much?
I didn't realize that was your point because feudalism is not a caste system in the sense of India. Feudalism was a political system used for the protection of a society, the caste system in India is much different and its trivial for you to compare the two together.
Abraxas wrote:As for separation of Church and state, that is a secular idea. Are we in favor of secularism now?
Actually, the Bible speaks of it in the infamous quote "Render Unto Caesar What Is Caesar's, render unto God what is God's."
WinePusher wrote:I will admit that the American Education system is suffering, because of the inability of choice and competition amoung schools, and the regime of teacher's unions.

Abraxas wrote:You do realize Europe has teacher's unions and public schools too, right? And that the ones there are even more powerful than the ones in the US?
Are they? The only problem the unions are creating is an inability to choose. Do you think if parents were given vouchers and school choice that education would become betteR?
WinePusher wrote:ID is a theory supported by the complexity we see in the universe, and is not entirely falsifible.

Abraxas wrote:That it is not falsifiable is the problem. No set of conditions could possibly exist that could not have been put there by a designed, thus rendering the entire idea meaningless. As for complexity, we see all kinds of complexity emerge sans design. Just look at fractals.
When a reasonable person sees complexity, they assume design.
WinePusher wrote:Nietzche certainly believes they do. But the fact is Christianity had contributed much to society, will you concede that? To strip Christianity from the world would also mean to strip the values that Christianity brought into the world, from the word as well. Nietzche's philosophy entirely supports this, if God is killed than all meaning and purpose is also killed, thus you get nihilism.

Abraxas wrote:Christians have certainly brought much into the world, and I will grant as far as art and architecture go, Christianity may well have been a net positive for the species. However, going forward, it does not appear Christianity is or will make further advances to either of those fields.
Will you also concede that western civilization was built on Christianity? Let me make a contreversial point. Some of the greatest music we have is religious music. Music since the age of secularism is uncomparable, it is filled with cusing and sexual references and so on. This is what has happened to music when you take Christinaity out of the equation, you get a fringe version of rap.
WinePusher wrote:I will make this point again, even thought you will object, but christianity does inherently support life. Infanticide was gleefully practiced by the Greeks before the Christianity came into the world, and the ancient thinkers of Greece paid barely no attention to this topic. What made infanticide contreversial was the fact that christianity teaches the value of life.

Abraxas wrote:It was practiced by some Greeks, yes. However, a great many societies do not practice and have never practiced infanticide, even though they were not or are not Christian.
This brings us back to Peter Singer. Why not practice infanticide if there is no God. Why donate blood, why risk your own life to save the drowning baby. Why is altruism such a pervasive characteristic in humans if not for an objective source. Evolution cannot account for it.
WinePusher wrote:You can say what you want about the bible and slavery, but in the abolition movement in the United States was a Christian movement. What gave MLK the authority to say all men are created equal, the fact that he believed in a loving Creator.

Abraxas wrote:Yes, Christians were largely (though not solely) involved in those movements. On the flipside, who led the opposition but the protestant Christian KKK?
Yes, that is a fair point.
WinePusher wrote:Why did Jefferson, a deist, claim that are natural rights are endowed by a creator, because he too realized the absurdity of life without a God.

Abraxas wrote:Again on the reverse, Louis XIV used God to justify inequality, that some are chosen by God to rule over the rest. That God can be used to justify whatever you are doing anyway is not a strong argument in your favor.
Ok, but that is not the point. Beginning with the premise that humans have inalienable rights, there must exist a divine source of those rights. Any earthly source would mean that those rights are not unalienable.

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Abraxas
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Post #22

Post by Abraxas »

WinePusher wrote:
:blink: Wrong. A "life" is a being that has the genetical information of both parents and has its own DNA code. A sperm is not a life, once a sperm makes contact with an ovary it becomes a life.
Incorrect. Under that definition of life single celled organisms would not be considered life. They are.
WinePusher wrote: Irrelavent and a misrepresentation. Just because the church says something is a sin does not mean it is a sin.
Your removing two sins explicitly laid out in the bible from your quote to avoid the point is noted.
WinePusher wrote: I do not disagree, but a Christian, namely a catholic, who attends weekly mass, generally agrees with what the church teaches. Theres no way around that.
Of course there is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholicis ... r_abortion
Abraxas wrote:Inconsistency is wrong. The divine laws of Solomon very clearly and directly state killing a fetus is a grossly different offense from killing a person.
This is logically incorrect.

-Your conclusion is: The Bible does not teach that a fetus is a life
-Your evidence for this conclusion is: The penalities for hurting a fetus carry less weight then the penalties for hurting a grown human

It is simply an irrelevant conclusion.
Clearly logic is not your strong point.

Per the Bible, if kill person then death penalty.
Per the Bible, if kill fetus not death penalty.
Therefore, per the Bible, fetus does not equal person.

Logically, put:

K > D
A > ~D
A=/=K

It is completely relevant and accurate and all your dismissals and evasion will not change it. Per the law of Solomon the life of a fetus is NOT equal to the life of a person.
WinePusher wrote: Christian is not "so scattered." You have two sects of the religion, liberal christianity and conservative christianity. Liberal Christianity is in the minority and liberal christians tend to pick and choose their favorite parts of the bible. Conservative Christianity is in the majority and this sect opposes abortion. There is a growing population of Islamic extremists who like to kill terrorize, so is Islam a religion that promotes terrorism?
Only two sects in Christianity? I daresay I can name a good deal more. As for liberal Christianity being in the minority, you are quite mistaken. Most of the original teachings of the Bible have been discarded by society, I daresay more will follow. Also, again, per the poll I linked to, the majority does not oppose abortion. Contrary to what you may have heard, repeating the same falsehood over and over again does not make it true.

Certain sects of Islam do, certain sects do not. I fail to see what relevance Islam has to the topic however.
Abraxas wrote:Obama can claim to be a christian all he wants, but actions speak louder than words. He does not currently attend church, unlike his predeccesor, and when he did attend church he was not paying attention to his preacher's sermons, as he says he is unware of Jeremiah Wright's hate speech.
Actually, while he doesn't attend church regularly presently, he still does attend sometimes. Further, I am unaware of any hatespeech on the part of Jeremiah Wright. Could you elaborate?
Abraxas wrote:The people who did the killing were more than Nazis. To pretend they were just Nazis is the short, simple and wrong version of history. The fact of the matter is the people doing the killing were people, with all the complexity thereof.
What!? The people who did the holocaust were the Nazi's and the S.S. The people who threw the Jews into the furnaces were S.S guards.
I have highlighted a word in the sentence. Please reread what I wrote and try again.
Abraxas wrote:The majority of them were Catholics.
And did they kill the Jews because their Catholicism said to, or because there crazy dictator ordered them to?
Does it matter? Why should a Catholic allow such a dictator to order them to commit genocide? Why should a Christian society allow such a dictator to rule them to begin with?
Abraxas wrote:Nazi propaganda used their religious views to increase the levels of antisemitism and increase levels of unity.
Allow me to edit this:

"The Nazi's used religion as a propoganda tool to increase levels of antisemitism and increase levels of unity."
The edit changes little. It still used their religion to increase their antisemitism to murderous levels and could not have done so were the religion not present.
Abraxas wrote:Yes, the Nazi leadership used and abused Christianity to promote it's own goals, but the fact remains, Christianity was the vessel which they used to spread hatred and death. They could not have done as much as they did were it not for the religion of the people being a convenient channel through which to do it.
Ok, we agree that Christianity was abused and was used as a vessel by humans to spread hatred and death. Medicine is inherently a good thing, but if you abuse it, it becomes harmful.
Medicine is a poor analogy. By the time you have medicine the raw material has already been molded. A better analogy would be chemicals, which are neither good nor bad but have the capacity to be either depending on use.
WinePusher wrote:Is Kayman's number drastically inaccurate? If not, theres no issue.

Abraxas wrote:Yes, they are dramatically different.
Not to sound facetious, but I don't think your an authority on this subject and I don't think your opinion weighs more than a Historian who wrote a multivolume study on the matter.
True, but countless other historians have arrived at different estimates. Kayman was very thorough in exploring the scope of his research, I grant you. However, his scope was much narrower than the full range of behavior of the Spanish Inquisition, let alone the wide range of other Inquisitions that existed over the centuries.
Abraxas wrote:The US hardly promotes a culture of life, certainly not when compared to post-WWII Europe.
According to this standard, no country promotes life. They're called world wars for a reason.
I have highlighted a word in the sentence. Please reread what I wrote and try again.
Abraxas wrote:We don't provide medical care to those who need it most as well.
This is a liberal lie. I'm sorry to say it, but this is another distortion from the left abuot this great country, America has always had universal care. If you were poor and couldn't afford care you would still get it. Its called an emergency room, the government does not need to be injected into the healthcare system to make it universal. Look at Medical and Medicare, two government run programs, and they're bankrupt.
Emergency room care is substandard and expensive, often resulting in massive hardship on those who are forced to seek it where superior, preventative care is much cheaper, much better for the patient, and widely unavailable due to cost in America. Most of the rest of the developed world does not have this flaw.
Abraxas wrote:We have been engaged in military conflicts every year in the past 120 years excepting 1934-1940, 1977 and 1979.
Were we trying to conquer more territory and exploit the resources of other soverign nations? Or were we assisting countries in achieving liberty?
Two Words: Manifest Destiny.

Also, a quote from an American General:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class thug for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

The idea we are great liberators is really remarkably silly in the face of history.
Abraxas wrote:Still allow the death penalty.
No, some states still allow the death penalty.
Which means the country allows it. If the country did not allow it, no states would have it.
Abraxas wrote:If you want countries that promote a culture of life, the best examples are the Scandinavian states and Switzerland, followed by much of the rest of Europe.
The fact that Switzerland has never been involved in a World War is hardly due to their "peacful" nature. Just take a look at the terrain surrounding that country. Blitzkreg doesn't work when you have rugged terrain with high mountain ranges.
Again, I was speaking of post-WII Europe.
WinePusher wrote:1) Societies that are secular and lack any type of religion devalue life. Which I already demonstrated.

Abraxas wrote:No, actually, you showed societies completely unlike western democracies have a poor track record.
What do these societies have in common? I'll answer it, secularism.
/facepalm
The Middle East is secular? The Feudal Monarchies were secular? Franco's Spain and Taylor's Liberia and Hitler's Germany and Hirohito's Japan were secular? The colonial powers were secular?

I challenge you, here and now, with a straight face to tell me the above are secular.
WinePusher wrote:2) Societies that are inherently christian respect life and uphold individual rights. Such as America

Abraxas wrote:Except America doesn't and neither have countless other Christian nations and empires throughout history. See all of Feudal and Colonial Europe for reference.
America does promote a culture of life and respects the dignity of life. We have a functioning government that realizes its duty to defend our right to life, regardless of what the left says, we have universal healthcare and we take care of the poor. Just because our way of doing it differs from Europe doesn't mean its worse.
No, that it is much, much worse in all objective measures of healthcare and quality of living, coupled with repeated rights abuses and wars of aggression mean it is worse.
WinePusher wrote:3) Christianity does not hinder OR impede freethinking and learning, as you claim. The first universities that were created were in Christendom by the Church, advancements in mathematics, science and literature were made by practicing Christians as well.
Abraxas wrote:Galileo might have something to say about that. That Christianity is still trying to pretend evolution and the history of the universe older than 6-10 thousand years never happened, some still even try to claim we are at the center of the universe in clear disregard for scientific evidence in some circles.
Some aspects of Christianity pretend the earth is 6000 years old. The Catholic Church does not.
Exactly. Some aspects of Christianity actively seek to undermine scientific knowledge.
Abraxas wrote:Can you think of a single noteworthy source opposed to the proliferation of scientific knowledge outside of Christianity in the western world?
A false intial premise. Without the university and equipment being supported by the church science would be impossible.
Poor dodge. Few universities today are supported by the church and those that are are not the ones on the leading edge of scientific endeavors. I ask again can, you think of a single noteworthy source opposed to the proliferation of scientific knowledge outside of Christianity in the western world?
Abraxas wrote:I challenge the idea that faith based organizations make the largest charity groups. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is not religious, certainly, to name one example already covered in this thread.
Take every single Catholic Church in america and compare their work the Bill Gates. Does Bill Gates give out food baskets at Thanksgiving, does Bill Gates collect toys for underprivaleged children during Christmas as the churches do? Doctors without borders is a great group, but is very small compared to faith based charities.
Yes, being a medical doctor as a requisite to join does rather limit one's roster. I agree, those are wonderful acts of kindness, but they do not quite measure up to billions of dollars of donations to research cures for the diseases and providing vaccines that slaughter the world's population in regions where the Catholic church is actively repressing knowledge that might help to control the epidemic because of their dogma against contraception.
Abraxas wrote:I also find it interesting how when you attempt to make a point in favor of religion, you are willing to accept the general population as representative of the nation while claiming the leader is of a different faith, the US and Obama,
Point?
Abraxas wrote:but when it gets reversed you try to pretend the two have nothing to do with each other, like Germany and Hitler.
Dealt with this above. You concede Christinaity was an abused vessel used by Nazi Germany, I agreed. But you are simply wrong when it comes to Hitler's so called christianity. The myth that he was a christian has been debunked over and over and over and over again. I'm surprised your even making the argument.
Please try reading what I said.

You say America is a Christian nation with a secular leader for the purpose of extolling the virtues of Christianity.

You claim Germany was not a Christian nation because of it's secular leader when trying to run away from the evils with which Christianity has been involved even though the vast majority of the population were Christian.

This is a double standard and it is dishonest.
WinePusher wrote:The fact is, Dostoyesvki is right when he said "without God, all things are permitted." This claim has been proven true every time a Godless communist leader rises to power.

Abraxas wrote:If we have degenerated into "argumentum ad quoting celebrities and historical figures", I have quite a number of quotes on Christianity I can bring into this, starting with Gandhi. Is this really a productive route for you to take?
Nice dodge.
I do not dodge slow pitch Nerf balls. Quoting a random writer does nothing to contribute to the debate, it is an irrelevancy, a red herring, pointless.
If you have quotes that you think will strengthen your case feel free to list them. However, simply listing a quote without any substantiation is futile. But to get back to my original point, can you dispute Fydor Dostoyesvki? If there is no moral accountability, if there is no "cosmic justice", if there is no "final judgement" whats stopping you from living in your id and being selfish without any concern for others wellbeing?
Society. A source of good independent from God. Law enforcement. More interestingly, with God all things are permitted, especially the Christian God who will forgive you anything if you confess to a priest or pray really hard, or, at one point, simply purchase admission to heaven.
WinePusher wrote:Are you really suggesting that the word "opium" is interchangable with "medicine" in the context of that quote? The entire meaning would be misconstruted.

Abraxas wrote:More interchangeable with "painkiller" or "numbing agent" than medicine. He felt it caused the masses to ignore the hardship and injustice around them because they were promised paradise and justice when they died.
Yes, religion deludes the masses from his communist idea of a perfect society. Exactly.
No, actually, in that passage Marx wasn't talking about communism, he was talking about how religion served the role in capitalism. Good try though.
WinePusher wrote:That is the legacy of fundamentalist atheism. But what you said above, that religion can be destroyed through education, is largely representational of what is happening now.

Abraxas wrote:Yes, it is. As education increases, religion decreases. Hopefully within my lifetime the religious will be a dying breed as reason takes over.
Education from biased "educators" decreases religion.
Yes, educators biased toward fact decrease religion.
WinePusher wrote:Indoctrinating young, naiive students is a way to abolish religion and conservative America, and it is currently going on.

Abraxas wrote:Young and naive? These are adults we are talking about here. You want to talk indoctrination, why don't we discuss the practice of taking young children to church or sending them to Catholic schools? Christianity wouldn't exist today but for that practice.
The fact is most college acadmics are liberal, some marxist, others atheists. I had a philosophy of religion course taught by an atheist, political sciences courses are almost always taught by biased liberal marxist professors who inject their outdated ideas into the syllabus that these young, impressionable adults take as fact.

As for Catholic Schools and Church, if you don't want your kid there, don't take them. Its simple, the government doesn't force you to go to Catholic School.
Again with the dodge. Do you deny Christianity indoctrinates small children through church and church schools and that Christianity would not exist if children were not indoctrinated?
But one must wonder why the faith based catholic schools outperform the secular public schools. :-k Seems like secularism ruins everthing.
Please back up that claim.
Abraxas wrote:Hitler was Catholic, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.
He claimed to be Catholic, yes. He was not a true believer though, as indicated by his personal feelings and sentiments.
I believe this discussion has run its course. Readers can decide what Hitler was and whether it is even really relevant in the grand scheme of things.
Abraxas wrote:Firstly, you have attributed all the evils of Communist dictatorships to atheism as opposed to Communist dictatorships.
What? I believe this may be a repeat error........
Abraxas wrote:You have then claimed to have proven this demonstrates atheism devalues human life, while simultaneously arguing social democratic Europe is too secular, trying to act like Communism has anything to do with the European model when it clearly does not.
I claim that countries that lack any type of religion devalue life. You cannot dispute this established fact. And I never said Europe was trying to be communist, I'm saying the population is largely are secular. That is also a fact.
The implication you were making is that Europe devalues human life and I can and am disputing that unsupported assertion. Your attempts to show secularism devalues human life have been fruitless so far, I suppose you can try again though.
Abraxas wrote:So far all you have demonstrated, really, is that Communist dictatorships devalue human life. Nobody has argued otherwise.
Can you tell us why they devalue life? I can.
Because they are run by dictators who are interested in advancing their own power more than the wellbeing of their subjects, just like many Christian dictators.
Abraxas wrote:Then, finally, you have simply been dismissive, either through quote dropping or whitewashing all the times Christianity was explicitly used as mechanism for, or even the dominant cultural feature of populations that devalued and destroyed human life.
The only thing I dispute is your narrative the Christianity was the inspiration and cause of the holocaust. I do not dispute the existence of feudalism, I dispute your misinformation that Hitler was inspired by christianity as were his nazi's.......
I never claimed he was inspired by Christianity, nor did I claim his Nazis were (other than the fact that Christianity was used to increase antisemitism). What I claimed was the Christianity of Nazi Germany completely failed to create a culture of life as it has in the majority of places and time period Christian culture has emerged. If Christianity has historically been used to devalue and destroy human life, as you now say you do not dispute, how can you claim it creates a culture of life?
WinePusher wrote:Ok, your dodging. Please answer this question "For what reason do you think that the number of abortions should be reduced?"
WinePusher wrote:So because family strife is possible, minors should be able to have abortions and decieve their parents?

Abraxas wrote:Yes. Minors should have the option to seek any medical procedure they need and if in order to do so they must deceive their parents it should be permitted they do so. The alternative is to allow the parents to threaten and punish children into not receiving medical procedures which is the greater evil.
I don't understand what it is with the left that makes them think they have the right to usurp parental rights. This is all speculation, you are speculating over the worst cscenerio. The greater evil is when the state thinks they have the ability to allow minors to make choices for themselves. They have legal guardians and parents for a reason, and the state isn't their guardian.
I don't think parents have the right to force a child or coerce a child to not seek medical care. Suppose the parents are of a religion that does not allow medical care in the traditional sense, instead relying on faith healing. Should a minor who does not share their views and instead wants lifesaving surgery be forced to die for his parent's faith? As a note, those people do actually exist.
Abraxas wrote:The people who attacked us on 9/11 were never in Iraq. If we are there to get the people who attacked us, I strongly urge that war making power be taken away from the republicans until they are sufficiently technologically savvy to operate a map.
I realize they weren't from Iraq. But you know who was in Iraq, Al-Qaeda
No, they weren't and we knew they weren't. Every intelligence agency on the planet determined they weren't, in fact the two didn't even like each other.
and a mad man by the name of Saddam Hussein who NATO believed to have WMD.
Even if true, which I dispute, so? Most of the powers in that region have chemical weapons.
WinePusher wrote:Not so, the Iraqi people held a recent election with minor interupptions and protests.
Abraxas wrote:If they are so functional, why do they require an occupying army?
As of now, they don't.
Really? Then why do we still have troops there?
WinePusher wrote:Firstly, the multiple attempts on the US came under the Obama administration

Abraxas wrote:Not true. The underoos bomber was under Bush. The attempts to bomb transatlantic flights were under Bush. Assorted car and bus bomb attempts under Bush and Obama both. The Fort Dix attack plot. Etc. That they were stopped is a demonstration of how good police work can stop terrorism, it had nothing to do with who we were bombing at the time, except perhaps to encourage them to try.
Ok, let me adjust my statement. There have been no attacks on this country since 9/11, do you agree. Expect for domestic attacks.
I don't dispute that. I just dispute it has anything to do with who we are bombing.
WinePusher wrote:Hitler's Table Talk, coupled with his own confessions in Mine Kampf and the History of the Third Reich show that he would do anything to gian support and power. And Hitler's table Talk has not been debunked, it is accurate and was written by parts of Hitler's administration, not modern historians.....

Abraxas wrote:The translation of Table Talk used that portrayed a negative view of Christianity was rebuked by those people as being inaccurate. A later translation was made available, confirmed as being correct that did not contain the anti-christian rhetoric. Whether or not he would do anything to gain support and power is an independent question from what his religious leanings were.
Regardless of whether the translation captured every single quotation perfectly, the question is whether he made those statements or not. I find it interesting how, for my claims, I have texts and books that support them. Yet, your only argument aganist them is to discredit the source-----
Your source is a bad translation, a repudiated translation by the parties involved, and it is the only record of the statements being made. What more do I need to do than show the source you are using has incorrect information?

You have provided no actual arguments. None. The entire thrust you are making is the equivalent of "go read this book" which doesn't cut it. If you aren't going to provide any actual argument from the source, but only the source itself, all I am going to respond to is the source. Further, your sources, with the exception of Kamen, have been extremely poor. If you are going to persist in using flawed, debunked, discredited, and disreputable sources to make your arguments, I will continue to call you on it. I am under no obligation to do your work for you, to read your sources, extract the arguments from your sources, and then refute those arguments. If you think they have useful material, you provide it here and I will address it directly. "Go read a book" is not now and never has been an acceptable form of debate.
1) "Who Really Care" Arthur Brooks: A book establishing the fact that christians give more than secularists
I shot that one down on the last page. His methodology was so flawed as to be useless.

"I've read it, the problem is it assumes a lot that it doesn't account for. For example, it includes things like tithes and volunteer work done for the church as "charity" and makes no effort to account for the average socioeconomic status of each class. Further, the standards it uses to determine who is and who is not religious are unrealistic, requiring a minimum level of church attendance to get into the religious category. When taking the data and filtering it correctly, moving declared Christians who do not attend church as regularly back to the Christianity side, things level out. Why this is important is that church is a poor measure of faith, people who have to work multiple jobs, for example, may be as devout but unable to attend church, and further less likely to donate because of low income.

Flawed methodology produced a flawed result. "
2) "Hitler's Table Talk" Rover: A book establishing the fact that Hitler's personal views were anti christian, and that he used the churches as a propoganda tool
Again, that too has been discredited as the only record of those quotes is what is universally agreed to be a bad translation. In the correct translation, those quotes are removed or directed only at a specific sect of Christianity, not Christianity as a whole.
3) "The Spanish inquisition" Henry Kamen: A book establishing the fact that the deaths of the spanish inquisition were miniscule
Discussed above.
4) "From Darwain To Hitler" Richard Weikart: A book establishing the fact that Hitler's motivations are somewhat rooted in Darwainism.
Did you read my post? Again, from the post you quoted.

"As for "From Darwin to Hitler", you may as well quote Hovind for all the credibility contained therein. I would be hardpressed to think of a book more universally rejected by scholars than that one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Darwi ... _reception

"Larry Arnhart, a professor of Political Science at Northern Illinois University wrote "Weikart doesn't actually show any direct connection between Darwin and Hitler. In fact, Weikart has responded to my criticisms by admitting that the title of his book is misleading, since he cannot show any direct link between Darwin's ideas and Hitler's Nazism."""

Read it carefully. The author even admitted he failed to prove and could not prove even the smallest connection between the ideas of Darwin and the ideas of Hitler.
Abraxas wrote:That does prove my point, that a culture almost wholly Christian permitted and supported Hitler's atrocities, contrary to your assertion that Christianity creates and maintains a culture of life.
This is getting off topic, but the fact that Christians "permitted" Hitler means nothing. Do you think that the churches had the power to confront a him and his armies? And it is deceitful for you to say they "supported" him. Some supported Hitler, some didn't.
I think if the Christian population of Hitler, namely his army, rose up against him, they had ten thousand times what would have been sufficient to confront him. You forget his armies were Christian too.
Winepusher wrote:Antisemitism is rooted in secularism in the modern world. Martin Luther and other reformed theologians may have sparked antisemitism with replacement theology, but the history of antisemitism was evolutionary. The point of destroying the Jews was to purify the race and create one supreme, ultimate race. Hitler's inspiration came more from Darwain rather than Jesus, as documented in Richard Wiekart's book "From Darwain To Hitler."

Abraxas wrote:As for "From Darwin to Hitler", you may as well quote Hovind for all the credibility contained therein. I would be hardpressed to think of a book more universally rejected by scholars than that one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Darwi ... _reception
What is the idea of evolutionary darwinian theory and social darwainism. It is the idea that one must essentially compete to survive, read your internet source to find Darwain's own quote in "Descent of Man." Even The Atheist Bart Ehrman recognizes the evolutionary motivations behind the holocaust, the weaker species will die and the gene pool must be purified and all that darwinian dogma motivated Hitler.
The idea of Eugenics is much, much, much older than Darwin.
WinePusher wrote:I will concede Spain to you. Please prove me wrong, but I don't think oppresion, genocide and murder are doctrines of christianity. However, they are inherent vallues to communis,

Abraxas wrote:You don't? Ask the Canaanites what they think about genocide, oppression, and murder not being Biblical values. Or how about the Benjamites?
No, I don't think the Bible teaches people to oppress your enemies and commit genocide. That may have been how the ancient Israelites thought and the Bible accuratly lists these historical events, but it is contrary to what the Bible actually teaches, which is love of enemy and forgiveness.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se ... ersion=NIV

1 When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you- 2 and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. [a] Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. 3 Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. 5 This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. 6 For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.
WinePusher wrote:Absolutly False. The most respectably poll in the country shows that America is a center right country.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/120857/conse ... group.aspx

40% of Americans identify themselves as conservative
35%-moderates
21% identify themselves as liberals

It is a fact that this country is center right.

Abraxas wrote:Yet they voted in Obama, the majority wanted a state payer healthcare system, support environmental reforms, etc.


No. Again, polls prove you wrong. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... are_reform

54%-60% of Americans did not want Obamacare. The fact that Obama read a good teleprompter during his campaign doesn't prove that this country is not center right.
Strawman and red herring. I didn't say "Obamacare", I said a state payer health care system, which is to the left of Obama by a wide margin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-pay ... ted_States


Abraxas wrote:Yes, when asked where they fall, most people say center, followed by conservative. When asked where they fall on issues, however, the majority of their responses tend to be in line with leftist policies, often more extreme than that which is offered by the Democrats.


Your kidding right? Look at Missouri and their rejection of Obamacare, look at the huge support for the Arizona Law. If the public wanted leftist policies they'd be supporting Open Borders, but they're are supporting the opposite of that.
False dichotomy (must support Obamacare or be right wing), hasty generalization (Missouri and Arizona speaking for the whole of the US), straw man (nobody said every state, just the nation as a whole). You'll have to try harder to work every logical fallacy into one statement.
Abraxas wrote:I can think of no more important job for a state than to take care of its citizens. As for work skills, did you miss the entire part of the conversation were we established there are more workers than jobs? Work skills don't mean anything if nobody is hiring.


Well, this is a fundamental disagreement. I do not think the governments job is to take care of its citizens and provide for their every whim. The government should provide an enviroment where citizens can thrive, such as creating jobs.
Create jobs how? Nobody said anything about providing for their every whim, that is a strawman. And yes, we disagree. Though I will say taking care of people who need it seems to be much more culture of life than your alternative.
WinePusher wrote:Redistributing wealth never works. Punishing success doesn't encourage people to want strive for high paying positions in life if they know that their check will be cut in half

Abraxas wrote:Yes, because when faced with having half of a million or keeping all of 20,000 from flipping burgers, that I am going to be taxed will keep me in McDonalds. Seriously?


A misrepresentational caricature. Why strive to achieve in life if the government is going to end up taking it from you?
I do enjoy how you accuse me of "a misrepresentational caricature" and then reply with that. Grade A1 irony right there.

Because even if the government takes 50% or 70% of your billion, you still have hundreds of millions. That it still thousands of times more than a burger flipper gets and orders of magnitudes more than is required to live well for the rest of your life and ensure your heirs do the same.
WinePusher wrote:A reputation that America has lived up to. Do you believe in American Exceptionalism?

Abraxas wrote:Absolutely not.


:blink: :confused2: Care to explain why you don't think this is the greatest country in the world?
Let me compare us to Europe, notably the Scandinavian states. We are weaker in education, we treat our citizens more poorly on all counts, including rights violations, welfare, health care, and labor laws, we engage in unjustified wars of aggression, we have the highest rate of imprisonment on the planet, we are the biggest polluter on the planet, the biggest consumer of resources on the planet, we allow greed and corruption to run unchecked over the backs of our people, as a culture we value what is easy and quick over what is right and what is best, we cast more votes for American Idol than we do for our own leaders who continually sell us out and distract us from the real major problems with hollow, worthless distractions, we have a bloated, runaway military budget for a war that has been over for two decades while we can't even afford to maintain our roads and bridges; need I go on?
WinePusher wrote:I know of none, but that does not mean they exist, does it? Do you really think that a mexican immigrant that came here would be in worse shape?

Abraxas wrote:No, but that is because Mexico is in poor shape and people leaving Mexico tend to be in poor shape by Mexican standards. Someone leaving Norway, on the other hand, stands an exceptionally good chance of being worse off in the US.


Yes, because they will be leaving a country that takes care of them. Do you not believe in indepence, self reliance and hard work.
I do, but I believe that if a society adopts a model that means for every McDonalds CEO you must have 50,000 burger flippers to support him, we as a society have an obligation to make sure those burger flippers will receive at the very least a minimal level of care.
The fact that the Standard of living may be better in Europe is because the people there get more vacation time and leisure. In America, hard work as been its legacy,
Sadly, that hard work has been for less and less gain.
you don't get everything handed to you on a silver plate, instead you have to work for it. I'd choose that over Europe any day of the week.
I wouldn't. I recognize the inherent superiority of a system where you get more for less over a system where you get less for more.
WinePusher wrote:Christianity does teach inherent dignity. But the fact that monarchs made pacts with knights for protection has nothing to do with christiainty. The European Experience of Christianity is very different from the American experience, Europe for a long period of time never had a wall between the church and the state, America did. That is why Christianity in America is much healthier htan Christianity in Europe.

Abraxas wrote:So let me get this straight, India has a caste system because it isn't Christian. Then when I point out the hundreds of years Christianity had a caste system, suddenly that doesn't reflect on Christianity at all? Double standard much?


I didn't realize that was your point because feudalism is not a caste system in the sense of India. Feudalism was a political system used for the protection of a society, the caste system in India is much different and its trivial for you to compare the two together.
No, it really isn't. The point you were trying to make was Christianity recognizes human dignity and so you are not locked into any one position in society. My point was under the Christian Feudalism, you too were locked into your station of birth, thus rendering your point wrong.
Abraxas wrote:As for separation of Church and state, that is a secular idea. Are we in favor of secularism now?


Actually, the Bible speaks of it in the infamous quote "Render Unto Caesar What Is Caesar's, render unto God what is God's."
And yet by definition it is a secular thought.
WinePusher wrote:I will admit that the American Education system is suffering, because of the inability of choice and competition amoung schools, and the regime of teacher's unions.

Abraxas wrote:You do realize Europe has teacher's unions and public schools too, right? And that the ones there are even more powerful than the ones in the US?


Are they? The only problem the unions are creating is an inability to choose. Do you think if parents were given vouchers and school choice that education would become betteR?
Absolutely not. Either you would end up flooding private schools to the point they were as overcrowded as public schools or you would end up with the private schools dumping off the poor and the worst performers on the now even more poorly funded public schools,damaging overall performance. Voucher systems never stood a chance of making things any better. Further, in countries that have implemented them, they have seen student performance drop, not increase.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_voucher#Opponents
WinePusher wrote:ID is a theory supported by the complexity we see in the universe, and is not entirely falsifible.

Abraxas wrote:That it is not falsifiable is the problem. No set of conditions could possibly exist that could not have been put there by a designed, thus rendering the entire idea meaningless. As for complexity, we see all kinds of complexity emerge sans design. Just look at fractals.


When a reasonable person sees complexity, they assume design.
Impossible. If they assume without investigation and consideration, they are not reasonable. But seriously, look at fractals. Incredibly complex, incredibly intricate, completely undesigned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal
WinePusher wrote:Nietzche certainly believes they do. But the fact is Christianity had contributed much to society, will you concede that? To strip Christianity from the world would also mean to strip the values that Christianity brought into the world, from the word as well. Nietzche's philosophy entirely supports this, if God is killed than all meaning and purpose is also killed, thus you get nihilism.

Abraxas wrote:Christians have certainly brought much into the world, and I will grant as far as art and architecture go, Christianity may well have been a net positive for the species. However, going forward, it does not appear Christianity is or will make further advances to either of those fields.


Will you also concede that western civilization was built on Christianity?
Not solely. During the dark ages most knowledge was maintained by Islam. In more recent years it has largely been secularism that has brought about advances. I do freely admit, however, that for long periods of time the leading centers of innovation in the world were Christian. I will not, however, concede that them being Christian is what caused it.
Let me make a contreversial point. Some of the greatest music we have is religious music. Music since the age of secularism is uncomparable, it is filled with cusing and sexual references and so on. This is what has happened to music when you take Christinaity out of the equation, you get a fringe version of rap.
An overstatement on your part. In addition to Rap we also got the Beatles, for example. I would be fascinated to see a debate on the relative merits between the Beatles and Mozart and other classical composers, but honestly, that is too far beyond my area of knowledge to participate in meaningfully.
WinePusher wrote:I will make this point again, even thought you will object, but christianity does inherently support life. Infanticide was gleefully practiced by the Greeks before the Christianity came into the world, and the ancient thinkers of Greece paid barely no attention to this topic. What made infanticide contreversial was the fact that christianity teaches the value of life.

Abraxas wrote:It was practiced by some Greeks, yes. However, a great many societies do not practice and have never practiced infanticide, even though they were not or are not Christian.


This brings us back to Peter Singer. Why not practice infanticide if there is no God. Why donate blood, why risk your own life to save the drowning baby. Why is altruism such a pervasive characteristic in humans if not for an objective source. Evolution cannot account for it.
Because such behaviors damage society and as a society we wish to continue functioning. Evolution can account for it, altruistic societies, species outlive selfish ones. We see it in a multitude of species, like meerkats.
WinePusher wrote:You can say what you want about the bible and slavery, but in the abolition movement in the United States was a Christian movement. What gave MLK the authority to say all men are created equal, the fact that he believed in a loving Creator.

Abraxas wrote:Yes, Christians were largely (though not solely) involved in those movements. On the flipside, who led the opposition but the protestant Christian KKK?


Yes, that is a fair point.

WinePusher wrote:Why did Jefferson, a deist, claim that are natural rights are endowed by a creator, because he too realized the absurdity of life without a God.

Abraxas wrote:Again on the reverse, Louis XIV used God to justify inequality, that some are chosen by God to rule over the rest. That God can be used to justify whatever you are doing anyway is not a strong argument in your favor.


Ok, but that is not the point. Beginning with the premise that humans have inalienable rights, there must exist a divine source of those rights. Any earthly source would mean that those rights are not unalienable.


That depends on the definition of unalienable and the definition of those right, does it not? If they are purely a fact of what it means to be human, God or not, they exist. Further, whether God exists or not, the right has no inherent teeth unless humans choose to respect it. Humans, of their own accord, chose to respect those rights, codify those rights, not because God told them to but because we value them already. How does Christianity or a lack thereof in any way change that?

WinePusher

Post #23

Post by WinePusher »

WinePusher wrote::blink: Wrong. A "life" is a being that has the genetical information of both parents and has its own DNA code. A sperm is not a life, once a sperm makes contact with an ovary it becomes a life.

Abraxas wrote:Incorrect. Under that definition of life single celled organisms would not be considered life. They are.
I think your the only person ever, to suggest that a sperm is a life. A sperm does not have any genetic material to duplicate and as no DNA manuscript.
WinePusher wrote:I do not disagree, but a Christian, namely a catholic, who attends weekly mass, generally agrees with what the church teaches. Theres no way around that.

Your source is misleading. It only cites one organization that breaks from the traditional Catholic ranks, the fact remains that the majority of Catholics agree with the churches policy.
WinePusher wrote:This is logically incorrect.

-Your conclusion is: The Bible does not teach that a fetus is a life
-Your evidence for this conclusion is: The penalities for hurting a fetus carry less weight then the penalties for hurting a grown human

It is simply an irrelevant conclusion.
Abraxas wrote:Clearly logic is not your strong point.

Per the Bible, if kill person then death penalty.
Per the Bible, if kill fetus not death penalty.
Therefore, per the Bible, fetus does not equal person.
A prime example of a hasty generalization. This perfectly meets the requirements of a hasty generalization, arguing from a special case to a general rule.
Abraxas wrote:Logically, put:

K > D
A > ~D
A=/=K
I am going to request you cite the verses that say killing a person brings about the death penalty. But your logic is wrong because your plugging the conclusion with a personal opinion, this is called an ad hominem. It is my opinion, from the given premises, that this is simply an inconsistency and is negated with the other overwhelming bible verses that teach that the fetus is a life. Your opinionated conclusion holds no more or no less truth than mine.

Your argument:

A) If one verse in the bible suggests a fetus is not a life, than the bible does not teach that the fetus is a life
Q) Exodus 21:22 says that the penalties for killing a fetus carry less weight than killing a human
P) Therefore, the bible does not teach that the fetus is a life

A>(Q & P)
A
>(Q & P)

Conversly, you get:

~A>(Q & P)
~A
>(Q & P) Modus Tollens

A) If one verse in the bible suggests a fetus is a life, than the bible does teach that the fetus is a life
Q) Gen 25:21, Ruth 1:11, Jer 1:4 suggests that a fetus is a life
P) Therefore, the bible does teach that the fetus is a life

The only difference between my argument and yours is that I don't engage in a hasty generalization fallacy.
Abraxas wrote:Only two sects in Christianity? I daresay I can name a good deal more. As for liberal Christianity being in the minority, you are quite mistaken.
Yes, only two sects. The conservative christians and the liberal christians, with moderates in the middle. The dominant christianity today are the conservative Catholic Church, the conservative baptist churches, the conservative luthern/mormon churchs, and the conservative calvary chapels. Liberal christianity is in the minority.
Abraxas wrote:Most of the original teachings of the Bible have been discarded by society, I daresay more will follow. Also, again, per the poll I linked to, the majority does not oppose abortion. Contrary to what you may have heard, repeating the same falsehood over and over again does not make it true.
No, actually a very little amount of bible teachings of been discarded, pretty much its only been animal sacrifice. BTW, I also have a poll I linked to showing that most americans are opposed to abortion. But you just attacked the source, as the did with all my book references.
Abraxas wrote:Certain sects of Islam do, certain sects do not. I fail to see what relevance Islam has to the topic however.
Because you are applying a double standard.

-You're trying to argue that because some christians support abortion, christinaity does not value life.

-Yet, there are muslims who blow buldings up, will yo agree that Islam does not value life?
WinePusher wrote:Actually, while he doesn't attend church regularly presently, he still does attend sometimes. Further, I am unaware of any hatespeech on the part of Jeremiah Wright. Could you elaborate?
Let me ask you, do you believe someone because they simply profess to be it? If someone claims to be christian, will you not investigate their actions and associations to see if their christianity is genuine?




I am hopeful you do not agree and will not argue in favor of his hate speech.
Abraxas wrote:The people who did the killing were more than Nazis. To pretend they were just Nazis is the short, simple and wrong version of history. The fact of the matter is the people doing the killing were people, with all the complexity thereof.
WinePusher wrote:What!? The people who did the holocaust were the Nazi's and the S.S. The people who threw the Jews into the furnaces were S.S guards.

Abraxas wrote:I have highlighted a word in the sentence. Please reread what I wrote and try again.
Alright then. No objections.
WinePusher wrote:Not to sound facetious, but I don't think your an authority on this subject and I don't think your opinion weighs more than a Historian who wrote a multivolume study on the matter.

Abraxas wrote:True, but countless other historians have arrived at different estimates. Kayman was very thorough in exploring the scope of his research, I grant you. However, his scope was much narrower than the full range of behavior of the Spanish Inquisition, let alone the wide range of other Inquisitions that existed over the centuries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanis ... eath_tolls

Wiki's numbers do not differ drastically from Kamen's.
Abraxas wrote:Emergency room care is substandard and expensive, often resulting in massive hardship on those who are forced to seek it where superior, preventative care is much cheaper, much better for the patient, and widely unavailable due to cost in America. Most of the rest of the developed world does not have this flaw.
Ahh, but you statement is now debunked. "We don't provide medical care to those who need it most as well." Regardless of your personal sentiments towards emergency rooms, we do provide healthcare for all.

While the rest of the world doesn't a an emergency room problem, they have a quality of care problem. According th David Frum, more catscan machines exist in Metropolitan Washington than all of Canada, we have world leaders coming to America to recieve healthcare and canadians fleeing canada to come get care here. Whiel France and Britain can laud themselves for having more quantity, this country has better quality.
WinePusher wrote:Were we trying to conquer more territory and exploit the resources of other soverign nations? Or were we assisting countries in achieving liberty?

Abraxas wrote:Two Words: Manifest Destiny.

Also, a quote from an American General:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

The idea we are great liberators is really remarkably silly in the face of history.
Manifest destiny did not occur during the time periods you listed. And, FYI, American expansion is was less than the conquests of European nations. iting one instance of manifest destiny does not prove the claim that America is an imperialist nation. Do you not think America should promote liberty around the world, should we just standa by and observe countries ravaged by ruthless dictators? As I said before, the liberators of Auswitchz were not peace activists, bu the United States army.
Abraxas wrote:No, actually, you showed societies completely unlike western democracies have a poor track record.
WinePusher wrote:What do these societies have in common? I'll answer it, secularism.

Abraxas wrote:/facepalm
The Middle East is secular? The Feudal Monarchies were secular? Franco's Spain and Taylor's Liberia and Hitler's Germany and Hirohito's Japan were secular? The colonial powers were secular?
Tu quoquo. These events you cite are incomparable to Secular communist atrocities, the middle east is NOT driven by religion. It is driven by conflicts of Kashmir, land, and anti west sentiments. The colonies burned a total 18-20 people, and feudal monarchies are irrelevant.
Abraxas wrote:I challenge you, here and now, with a straight face to tell me the above are secular.
They aren't cept for the middle east.
WinePusher wrote:America does promote a culture of life and respects the dignity of life. We have a functioning government that realizes its duty to defend our right to life, regardless of what the left says, we have universal healthcare and we take care of the poor. Just because our way of doing it differs from Europe doesn't mean its worse.

Abraxas wrote:No, that it is much, much worse in all objective measures of healthcare and quality of living, coupled with repeated rights abuses and wars of aggression mean it is worse.
Rights abuses! You joking, America violates human rights....... When, where in the modern area have we done so. Wars of aggression, more like wars of protection.
WinePusher wrote:Some aspects of Christianity pretend the earth is 6000 years old. The Catholic Church does not.

Abraxas wrote:Exactly. Some aspects of Christianity actively seek to undermine scientific knowledge.
Yes, some aspects of liberalism undermine scientific knowledge, some aspects of atheism undermine scientific knowledge. This is a sad argument, atheists are the ones abusing science to make it a weapon to be used aganist christianity and God.
Abraxas wrote:I ask again can, you think of a single noteworthy source opposed to the proliferation of scientific knowledge outside of Christianity in the western world?
I refuse to answer because the question is loaded and your assuming the unproven premise that Christianity is opposed to science (begging the question). I concede some aspects of christianity oppose science just as some aspects of atheism oppose alternative medicine and intelligent design.
Abraxas wrote:Please try reading what I said.

You say America is a Christian nation with a secular leader for the purpose of extolling the virtues of Christianity.

You claim Germany was not a Christian nation because of it's secular leader when trying to run away from the evils with which Christianity has been involved even though the vast majority of the population were Christian.

This is a double standard and it is dishonest.
No, I claim that the holocaust was not inspired by chrisitanity and that their leader was secular. I never claim that Germany was not a christian nation. And I agree that christianity was used as a propoganda tool by the nazi's, but as for america, what I sya is simply fact (cept for the secular leader). America is christian, their leader, imo, is not a practicing christian.
WinePusher wrote:Nice dodge.

Abraxas wrote:I do not dodge slow pitch Nerf balls. Quoting a random writer does nothing to contribute to the debate, it is an irrelevancy, a red herring, pointless.
Apparently you did when you failed to respond to my point about Dostoyevski. "Random writer" indeed, a philosopher and moral theologian has relevance to this debate, but it is understandable that you would divert from his argument if you can't refute it.
WinePusher wrote:If there is no moral accountability, if there is no "cosmic justice", if there is no "final judgement" whats stopping you from living in your id and being selfish without any concern for others wellbeing?

Abraxas wrote:Society. A source of good independent from God. Law enforcement.
Really!? Society wants you to be good and generous? What about Sharia law, what about when society promotes genocide and wrong doing.
Abraxas wrote:More interestingly, with God all things are permitted, especially the Christian God who will forgive you anything if you confess to a priest or pray really hard, or, at one point, simply purchase admission to heaven.
Yes, with God all things are permitted, but some are forbidden. With no God, all things are permitted and nothing is forbidden.
WinePusher wrote:Yes, religion deludes the masses from his communist idea of a perfect society. Exactly.

Abraxas wrote:No, actually, in that passage Marx wasn't talking about communism, he was talking about how religion served the role in capitalism. Good try though.
Another diversion, it matters not whether in that specific passage he was talking about capitalism, his philosophy and theory focuses on communism and the annhilation of capitalism.
WinePusher wrote:Education from biased "educators" decreases religion.

Abraxas wrote:Yes, educators biased toward fact decrease religion.
Edit: "Educators biased towards liberal secularism." Can you dispute the fac that most academics are liberals and the the university is a secular liberal institution?
WinePusher wrote:As for Catholic Schools and Church, if you don't want your kid there, don't take them. Its simple, the government doesn't force you to go to Catholic School.

Abraxas wrote:Again with the dodge. Do you deny Christianity indoctrinates small children through church and church schools and that Christianity would not exist if children were not indoctrinated?
What dodge, I think forcing children to go to church and sunday school is a form of indoctrination, if you don't want it, don't send your kid to catholic school. Quite simple, also having kids sing praises to Obama is indoctrination, having kids fill out books about how they can help Obama is indoctrination, having kids learn biased history from liberal textbooks about how McCarthy was a mad man/that all the framers were deist/that Gorbachev was responsible for the end of the cold war/that the rosenburgs were wrongly killed/that muslim terrorists are uneducated/the scopes trial is also indoctrination. It would be foolish to suggest indoctrination only exists in Christianity.
WinePusher wrote:But one must wonder why the faith based catholic schools outperform the secular public schools. :-k Seems like secularism ruins everthing.
Abraxas wrote: Please back up that claim.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 17,00.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008 ... 134118.htm
WinePusher wrote:I claim that countries that lack any type of religion devalue life. You cannot dispute this established fact. And I never said Europe was trying to be communist, I'm saying the population is largely are secular. That is also a fact.

Abraxas wrote:The implication you were making is that Europe devalues human life and I can and am disputing that unsupported assertion.
No I wasn't, Europe doesn't devalue life. Countries in Europe have laws prohibiting abortions and so on, far from devaluing life........
WiniePusher wrote:The only thing I dispute is your narrative the Christianity was the inspiration and cause of the holocaust. I do not dispute the existence of feudalism, I dispute your misinformation that Hitler was inspired by christianity as were his nazi's.......

Abraxas wrote:What I claimed was the Christianity of Nazi Germany completely failed to create a culture of life as it has in the majority of places and time period Christian culture has emerged.
Because of a man named Hitler and his ambitions to kill all jews......This is a argument :-s Do you think that Christianity and Christians who supported the Jews and helped them could confront a dictator? The tenants of the christian faith is that life is sacred and all life has dignity, one who professes to be a christian should follow this doctrine. Many christian germans did.
Abraxas wrote:If Christianity has historically been used to devalue and destroy human life, as you now say you do not dispute, how can you claim it creates a culture of life?
Because a good thing can be abused to become a bad thing.
WinePusher wrote:I don't understand what it is with the left that makes them think they have the right to usurp parental rights. This is all speculation, you are speculating over the worst cscenerio. The greater evil is when the state thinks they have the ability to allow minors to make choices for themselves. They have legal guardians and parents for a reason, and the state isn't their guardian.

Abraxas wrote:I don't think parents have the right to force a child or coerce a child to not seek medical care.
They don't, they have a right to know what is going on in their child's life.
Abraxas wrote:Suppose the parents are of a religion that does not allow medical care in the traditional sense, instead relying on faith healing.
Then bring in the state and child services.
WinePusher wrote:I realize they weren't from Iraq. But you know who was in Iraq, Al-Qaeda

Abraxas wrote:No, they weren't and we knew they weren't. Every intelligence agency on the planet determined they weren't, in fact the two didn't even like each other.


No, Al Qaeda exists in practically every middle eastern country (besides Israel). Hussein was gladly harboring and supporting them
Abraxas wrote:If they are so functional, why do they require an occupying army?
WinePusher wrote:As of now, they don't.


[qutoe="Abraxas"]Really? Then why do we still have troops there?[/quote]

No clue, we should withdraw from Iraq and focus on Afganistan, Pakistan and the soon the be nuclear Iran.
Abraxas wrote:You have provided no actual arguments. None. The entire thrust you are making is the equivalent of "go read this book" which doesn't cut it.
It's called citing sources to substantiate claims instead of making blanketed statements.
Abraxas wrote:If you are going to persist in using flawed, debunked, discredited, and disreputable sources to make your arguments, I will continue to call you on it.
It is your opinion that the sources of flawed, it is my opinion they aren't.
Abraxas wrote:I am under no obligation to do your work for you, to read your sources, extract the arguments from your sources, and then refute those arguments. If you think they have useful material, you provide it here and I will address it directly. "Go read a book" is not now and never has been an acceptable form of debate.
My arguments have been quite clear actually.

-Christians do more and give more charity than secularists
-The Inquisition is not an event with casualties in the tens of thousands
-Hitler's Influence Came Primarily From Darwain
-Hitler used christianity as a propoganda vessel and was not really a christian

Rather than give my own personal opinions and commentary on these matters, I choose to reference books and use those books as my starting point. Citing sources to confirm claims has always been acceptable in debate.
WinePusher wrote:What is the idea of evolutionary darwinian theory and social darwainism. It is the idea that one must essentially compete to survive, read your internet source to find Darwain's own quote in "Descent of Man." Even The Atheist Bart Ehrman recognizes the evolutionary motivations behind the holocaust, the weaker species will die and the gene pool must be purified and all that darwinian dogma motivated Hitler.

Abraxas wrote:The idea of Eugenics is much, much, much older than Darwin.
I realize that, but it gained more speed when Darwain began publishing his ideas.
Abraxas wrote:http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se ... ersion=NIV

1 When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you- 2 and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. [a] Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. 3 Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. 5 This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. 6 For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.


Thanks for proving my point, the israelites interpreted their God's message as genocide, the christian testament does not. The bible doesn't teach genocide as morality, but it teaches forgiveness and love/

WinePusher wrote:No. Again, polls prove you wrong. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... are_reform

54%-60% of Americans did not want Obamacare. The fact that Obama read a good teleprompter during his campaign doesn't prove that this country is not center right.

Abraxas wrote:Strawman and red herring. I didn't say "Obamacare", I said a state payer health care system, which is to the left of Obama by a wide margin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-pay ... ted_States


State payer health system is even further to the lef tof Obamacare, if the American people rejected the liberal policy of Obamacare, what makes you think they would embrace the even more liberal policy of a state payer system.

Abraxas wrote:Yes, when asked where they fall, most people say center, followed by conservative. When asked where they fall on issues, however, the majority of their responses tend to be in line with leftist policies, often more extreme than that which is offered by the Democrats.

WinePusher wrote:Your kidding right? Look at Missouri and their rejection of Obamacare, look at the huge support for the Arizona Law. If the public wanted leftist policies they'd be supporting Open Borders, but they're are supporting the opposite of that.

Abraxas wrote:False dichotomy (must support Obamacare or be right wing),


Never claimed this, I claimed that those who reject Obamacare are not leftists.

Abraxas wrote:hasty generalization (Missouri and Arizona speaking for the whole of the US),


:-k the entire nation was polled on Arizona, and the majority of the ENTIRE nation supported it. Missouri confirms already existing polls on Obamacare.

Abraxas wrote:straw man (nobody said every state, just the nation as a whole). You'll have to try harder to work every logical fallacy into one statement.


Tsk Tsk, you're going to have to try harder if you want to dishonestly accuse of me every single logical fallacy in one statement. The entire nation was polled on issues regarding Missouri and Arizona, not just the citizens of those states. Good effort though.

Abraxas wrote:Create jobs how?


Create jobs by getting the government out of the free market. Government intervention in economics doesn't work, communism has always failed, lassiez faire capitalism hasn't because it hasn't been successfully inplemented.

Abraxas wrote:Yes, because when faced with having half of a million or keeping all of 20,000 from flipping burgers, that I am going to be taxed will keep me in McDonalds. Seriously?

WinePusher wrote:A misrepresentational caricature. Why strive to achieve in life if the government is going to end up taking it from you?

Abraxas wrote:I do enjoy how you accuse me of "a misrepresentational caricature" and then reply with that. Grade A1 irony right there.


I'm just happy you admit you threw out the first misrepresentational caricature. What comes around goes around ;)

Abraxas wrote:Because even if the government takes 50% or 70% of your billion, you still have hundreds of millions.


That matters not, if I make a 100 billion dollars, I have the right to keep it and do what I wish with it. I worked for it, and if I want to do charity with it that is my decision, that the decision of a few elitists in Washington. What you are suggesting is class warfare.

WinePusher wrote::blink: :confused2: Care to explain why you don't think this is the greatest country in the world?

Abraxas wrote:Let me compare us to Europe, notably the Scandinavian states. We are weaker in education, we treat our citizens more poorly on all counts, including rights violations, welfare, health care, and labor laws, we engage in unjustified wars of aggression, we have the highest rate of imprisonment on the planet, we are the biggest polluter on the planet, the biggest consumer of resources on the planet, we allow greed and corruption to run unchecked over the backs of our people, as a culture we value what is easy and quick over what is right and what is best, we cast more votes for American Idol than we do for our own leaders who continually sell us out and distract us from the real major problems with hollow, worthless distractions, we have a bloated, runaway military budget for a war that has been over for two decades while we can't even afford to maintain our roads and bridges; need I go on?


Ahh, your standard of judgement is based solely upon our economic and social standing amoung foreign nations. China has a far better economy than we do, are they greater than us? We are the greatest because we allow the maximum freedom and liberty, we allow people to shape their own destinies, something China does not. We are morally superior to every other country, we are undoubtably the most generous nation in the world, and we allow the greatest thing that shapes a society. Unhindered free speech, something canada doesn't.

Abraxas wrote:I do, but I believe that if a society adopts a model that means for every McDonalds CEO you must have 50,000 burger flippers to support him, we as a society have an obligation to make sure those burger flippers will receive at the very least a minimal level of care.


You know what, the McDonald's CEO generally starts out as a burger flipper and works his way up. That is the american legacy, and sometimes he fails. Failure is a good thing, giving trophies to children who lose soccer games doesn't make them better, failure does. If the burger flipper chooses to flip burgers all his life, then that is his choice, the rest of society should not be burdened because of it.

WinePusher wrote:I didn't realize that was your point because feudalism is not a caste system in the sense of India. Feudalism was a political system used for the protection of a society, the caste system in India is much different and its trivial for you to compare the two together.

Abraxas wrote:No, it really isn't. The point you were trying to make was Christianity recognizes human dignity and so you are not locked into any one position in society. My point was under the Christian Feudalism, you too were locked into your station of birth, thus rendering your point wrong.


No, you don't understand feudalism if your going to put it on par with the indian caste system. Feudalism is similar to the chain of command we have in the United States, not like India. And I don't think you are born and locked into a class in feudalism......

WinePusher wrote:Are they? The only problem the unions are creating is an inability to choose. Do you think if parents were given vouchers and school choice that education would become betteR?

Abraxas wrote:Absolutely not. Either you would end up flooding private schools to the point they were as overcrowded as public schools or you would end up with the private schools dumping off the poor and the worst performers on the now even more poorly funded public schools,damaging overall performance. Voucher systems never stood a chance of making things any better. Further, in countries that have implemented them, they have seen student performance drop, not increase.


The fact is choice and competition improves institutions. Small class sizes is only one benefit of private schools, the greatest benefit is that private schools must perform well or else they will get no businees. It's simple economics, If you have a dirty, rat filled hot dog stand and you build a better hot dog stand next to it, the better one is going to get the businees and the worser one will either go out of businees or be forced to improve.

WinePusher wrote:This brings us back to Peter Singer. Why not practice infanticide if there is no God. Why donate blood, why risk your own life to save the drowning baby. Why is altruism such a pervasive characteristic in humans if not for an objective source. Evolution cannot account for it.

Abraxas wrote:Because such behaviors damage society and as a society we wish to continue functioning. Evolution can account for it, altruistic societies, species outlive selfish ones. We see it in a multitude of species, like meerkats.


I'm sorry, but this goes directly aganist the evolutionary principle of the survival of the fittest. Most animals do not have a sense of morality and act on instinct, and those who are the fittest survive, those that are weak die off. Humans are an exception to this. Look at evil, animals are not capable of committing the amount of evil humans can. No animals that I know of has ever wished that another species be wiped off the face of the earth due to their racial prejudices, evolution can't explain goodness nor evil.

WinePusher wrote:Ok, but that is not the point. Beginning with the premise that humans have inalienable rights, there must exist a divine source of those rights. Any earthly source would mean that those rights are not unalienable.

Abraxas wrote:That depends on the definition of unalienable and the definition of those right, does it not?


People can be stripped of their rights, look at prisoners. Because of their actions, they don't have all their rights, expect the three mentioned by Locke.

Abraxas wrote:If they are purely a fact of what it means to be human, God or not, they exist. Further, whether God exists or not, the right has no inherent teeth unless humans choose to respect it. Humans, of their own accord, chose to respect those rights, codify those rights, not because God told them to but because we value them already. How does Christianity or a lack thereof in any way change that?


My point is that the great thinkers (Nietzche, Jefferson, Locke) knew that our rights come form a creator. If you abolish the creator, those rights fade away. In countries without God, there is no life or liberty or the ability to pursue happiness. Can you dispute that?

WinePusher

Post #24

Post by WinePusher »

WinePusher wrote::blink: Wrong. A "life" is a being that has the genetical information of both parents and has its own DNA code. A sperm is not a life, once a sperm makes contact with an ovary it becomes a life.

Abraxas wrote:Incorrect. Under that definition of life single celled organisms would not be considered life. They are.
I think your the only person ever, to suggest that a sperm is a life. A sperm does not have any genetic material to duplicate and as no DNA manuscript.
WinePusher wrote:I do not disagree, but a Christian, namely a catholic, who attends weekly mass, generally agrees with what the church teaches. Theres no way around that.

Your source is misleading. It only cites one organization that breaks from the traditional Catholic ranks, the fact remains that the majority of Catholics agree with the churches policy.
WinePusher wrote:This is logically incorrect.

-Your conclusion is: The Bible does not teach that a fetus is a life
-Your evidence for this conclusion is: The penalities for hurting a fetus carry less weight then the penalties for hurting a grown human

It is simply an irrelevant conclusion.
Abraxas wrote:Clearly logic is not your strong point.

Per the Bible, if kill person then death penalty.
Per the Bible, if kill fetus not death penalty.
Therefore, per the Bible, fetus does not equal person.
A prime example of a hasty generalization. This perfectly meets the requirements of a hasty generalization, arguing from a special case to a general rule.
Abraxas wrote:Logically, put:

K > D
A > ~D
A=/=K
I am going to request you cite the verses that say killing a person brings about the death penalty. But your logic is wrong because your plugging the conclusion with a personal opinion, this is called an ad hominem. It is my opinion, from the given premises, that this is simply an inconsistency and is negated with the other overwhelming bible verses that teach that the fetus is a life. Your opinionated conclusion holds no more or no less truth than mine.

Your argument:

A) If one verse in the bible suggests a fetus is not a life, than the bible does not teach that the fetus is a life
Q) Exodus 21:22 says that the penalties for killing a fetus carry less weight than killing a human
P) Therefore, the bible does not teach that the fetus is a life

A>(Q & P)
A
>(Q & P)

My argument, which is simply the converse of yours:

~A>(Q & P)
~A
>(Q & P) Modus Tollens

A) If one verse in the bible suggests a fetus is a life, than the bible does teach that the fetus is a life
Q) Gen 25:21, Ruth 1:11, Jer 1:4 suggests that a fetus is a life
P) Therefore, the bible does teach that the fetus is a life

The only difference between my argument and yours is that I don't engage in a hasty generalization fallacy.
Abraxas wrote:Only two sects in Christianity? I daresay I can name a good deal more. As for liberal Christianity being in the minority, you are quite mistaken.
Yes, only two sects. The conservative christians and the liberal christians, with moderates in the middle. The dominant christianity today are the conservative Catholic Church, the conservative baptist churches, the conservative luthern/mormon churchs, and the conservative calvary chapels. Liberal christianity is in the minority.
Abraxas wrote:Most of the original teachings of the Bible have been discarded by society, I daresay more will follow. Also, again, per the poll I linked to, the majority does not oppose abortion. Contrary to what you may have heard, repeating the same falsehood over and over again does not make it true.
No, actually a very little amount of bible teachings of been discarded, pretty much its only been animal sacrifice. BTW, I also have a poll I linked to showing that most americans are opposed to abortion. But you just attacked the source, as the did with all my book references.
Abraxas wrote:Certain sects of Islam do, certain sects do not. I fail to see what relevance Islam has to the topic however.
Because you are applying a double standard.

-You're trying to argue that because some christians support abortion, christinaity does not value life.

-Yet, there are muslims who blow buldings up, will yo agree that Islam does not value life?
WinePusher wrote:Actually, while he doesn't attend church regularly presently, he still does attend sometimes. Further, I am unaware of any hatespeech on the part of Jeremiah Wright. Could you elaborate?
Let me ask you, do you believe someone because they simply profess to be it? If someone claims to be christian, will you not investigate their actions and associations to see if their christianity is genuine?




I am hopeful you do not agree and will not argue in favor of his hate speech.
Abraxas wrote:The people who did the killing were more than Nazis. To pretend they were just Nazis is the short, simple and wrong version of history. The fact of the matter is the people doing the killing were people, with all the complexity thereof.
WinePusher wrote:What!? The people who did the holocaust were the Nazi's and the S.S. The people who threw the Jews into the furnaces were S.S guards.

Abraxas wrote:I have highlighted a word in the sentence. Please reread what I wrote and try again.
Alright then. No objections.
WinePusher wrote:Not to sound facetious, but I don't think your an authority on this subject and I don't think your opinion weighs more than a Historian who wrote a multivolume study on the matter.

Abraxas wrote:True, but countless other historians have arrived at different estimates. Kayman was very thorough in exploring the scope of his research, I grant you. However, his scope was much narrower than the full range of behavior of the Spanish Inquisition, let alone the wide range of other Inquisitions that existed over the centuries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanis ... eath_tolls

Wiki's numbers do not differ drastically from Kamen's.
Abraxas wrote:Emergency room care is substandard and expensive, often resulting in massive hardship on those who are forced to seek it where superior, preventative care is much cheaper, much better for the patient, and widely unavailable due to cost in America. Most of the rest of the developed world does not have this flaw.
Ahh, but you statement is now debunked. "We don't provide medical care to those who need it most as well." Regardless of your personal sentiments towards emergency rooms, we do provide healthcare for all.

While the rest of the world doesn't a an emergency room problem, they have a quality of care problem. According th David Frum, more catscan machines exist in Metropolitan Washington than all of Canada, we have world leaders coming to America to recieve healthcare and canadians fleeing canada to come get care here. Whiel France and Britain can laud themselves for having more quantity, this country has better quality.
WinePusher wrote:Were we trying to conquer more territory and exploit the resources of other soverign nations? Or were we assisting countries in achieving liberty?

Abraxas wrote:Two Words: Manifest Destiny.

Also, a quote from an American General:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

The idea we are great liberators is really remarkably silly in the face of history.
Manifest destiny did not occur during the time periods you listed. And, FYI, American expansion is was less than the conquests of European nations. iting one instance of manifest destiny does not prove the claim that America is an imperialist nation. Do you not think America should promote liberty around the world, should we just standa by and observe countries ravaged by ruthless dictators? As I said before, the liberators of Auswitchz were not peace activists, bu the United States army.
Abraxas wrote:No, actually, you showed societies completely unlike western democracies have a poor track record.
WinePusher wrote:What do these societies have in common? I'll answer it, secularism.

Abraxas wrote:/facepalm
The Middle East is secular? The Feudal Monarchies were secular? Franco's Spain and Taylor's Liberia and Hitler's Germany and Hirohito's Japan were secular? The colonial powers were secular?
Tu quoquo. These events you cite are incomparable to Secular communist atrocities, the middle east is NOT driven by religion. It is driven by conflicts of Kashmir, land, and anti west sentiments. The colonies burned a total 18-20 people, and feudal monarchies are irrelevant.
Abraxas wrote:I challenge you, here and now, with a straight face to tell me the above are secular.
They aren't cept for the middle east.
WinePusher wrote:America does promote a culture of life and respects the dignity of life. We have a functioning government that realizes its duty to defend our right to life, regardless of what the left says, we have universal healthcare and we take care of the poor. Just because our way of doing it differs from Europe doesn't mean its worse.

Abraxas wrote:No, that it is much, much worse in all objective measures of healthcare and quality of living, coupled with repeated rights abuses and wars of aggression mean it is worse.
Rights abuses! You joking, America violates human rights....... When, where in the modern area have we done so. Wars of aggression, more like wars of protection.
WinePusher wrote:Some aspects of Christianity pretend the earth is 6000 years old. The Catholic Church does not.

Abraxas wrote:Exactly. Some aspects of Christianity actively seek to undermine scientific knowledge.
Yes, some aspects of liberalism undermine scientific knowledge, some aspects of atheism undermine scientific knowledge. This is a sad argument, atheists are the ones abusing science to make it a weapon to be used aganist christianity and God.
Abraxas wrote:I ask again can, you think of a single noteworthy source opposed to the proliferation of scientific knowledge outside of Christianity in the western world?
I refuse to answer because the question is loaded and your assuming the unproven premise that Christianity is opposed to science (begging the question). I concede some aspects of christianity oppose science just as some aspects of atheism oppose alternative medicine and intelligent design.
Abraxas wrote:Please try reading what I said.

You say America is a Christian nation with a secular leader for the purpose of extolling the virtues of Christianity.

You claim Germany was not a Christian nation because of it's secular leader when trying to run away from the evils with which Christianity has been involved even though the vast majority of the population were Christian.

This is a double standard and it is dishonest.
No, I claim that the holocaust was not inspired by chrisitanity and that their leader was secular. I never claim that Germany was not a christian nation. And I agree that christianity was used as a propoganda tool by the nazi's, but as for america, what I sya is simply fact (cept for the secular leader). America is christian, their leader, imo, is not a practicing christian.
WinePusher wrote:Nice dodge.

Abraxas wrote:I do not dodge slow pitch Nerf balls. Quoting a random writer does nothing to contribute to the debate, it is an irrelevancy, a red herring, pointless.
Apparently you did when you failed to respond to my point about Dostoyevski. "Random writer" indeed, a philosopher and moral theologian has relevance to this debate, but it is understandable that you would divert from his argument if you can't refute it.
WinePusher wrote:If there is no moral accountability, if there is no "cosmic justice", if there is no "final judgement" whats stopping you from living in your id and being selfish without any concern for others wellbeing?

Abraxas wrote:Society. A source of good independent from God. Law enforcement.
Really!? Society wants you to be good and generous? What about Sharia law, what about when society promotes genocide and wrong doing.
Abraxas wrote:More interestingly, with God all things are permitted, especially the Christian God who will forgive you anything if you confess to a priest or pray really hard, or, at one point, simply purchase admission to heaven.
Yes, with God all things are permitted, but some are forbidden. With no God, all things are permitted and nothing is forbidden.
WinePusher wrote:Yes, religion deludes the masses from his communist idea of a perfect society. Exactly.

Abraxas wrote:No, actually, in that passage Marx wasn't talking about communism, he was talking about how religion served the role in capitalism. Good try though.
Another diversion, it matters not whether in that specific passage he was talking about capitalism, his philosophy and theory focuses on communism and the annhilation of capitalism.
WinePusher wrote:Education from biased "educators" decreases religion.

Abraxas wrote:Yes, educators biased toward fact decrease religion.
Edit: "Educators biased towards liberal secularism." Can you dispute the fac that most academics are liberals and the the university is a secular liberal institution?
WinePusher wrote:As for Catholic Schools and Church, if you don't want your kid there, don't take them. Its simple, the government doesn't force you to go to Catholic School.

Abraxas wrote:Again with the dodge. Do you deny Christianity indoctrinates small children through church and church schools and that Christianity would not exist if children were not indoctrinated?
What dodge, I think forcing children to go to church and sunday school is a form of indoctrination, if you don't want it, don't send your kid to catholic school. Quite simple, also having kids sing praises to Obama is indoctrination, having kids fill out books about how they can help Obama is indoctrination, having kids learn biased history from liberal textbooks about how McCarthy was a mad man/that all the framers were deist/that Gorbachev was responsible for the end of the cold war/that the rosenburgs were wrongly killed/that muslim terrorists are uneducated/the scopes trial is also indoctrination. It would be foolish to suggest indoctrination only exists in Christianity.
WinePusher wrote:But one must wonder why the faith based catholic schools outperform the secular public schools. :-k Seems like secularism ruins everthing.
Abraxas wrote: Please back up that claim.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 17,00.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008 ... 134118.htm
WinePusher wrote:I claim that countries that lack any type of religion devalue life. You cannot dispute this established fact. And I never said Europe was trying to be communist, I'm saying the population is largely are secular. That is also a fact.

Abraxas wrote:The implication you were making is that Europe devalues human life and I can and am disputing that unsupported assertion.
No I wasn't, Europe doesn't devalue life. Countries in Europe have laws prohibiting abortions and so on, far from devaluing life........
WiniePusher wrote:The only thing I dispute is your narrative the Christianity was the inspiration and cause of the holocaust. I do not dispute the existence of feudalism, I dispute your misinformation that Hitler was inspired by christianity as were his nazi's.......

Abraxas wrote:What I claimed was the Christianity of Nazi Germany completely failed to create a culture of life as it has in the majority of places and time period Christian culture has emerged.
Because of a man named Hitler and his ambitions to kill all jews......This is a argument :-s Do you think that Christianity and Christians who supported the Jews and helped them could confront a dictator? The tenants of the christian faith is that life is sacred and all life has dignity, one who professes to be a christian should follow this doctrine. Many christian germans did.
Abraxas wrote:If Christianity has historically been used to devalue and destroy human life, as you now say you do not dispute, how can you claim it creates a culture of life?
Because a good thing can be abused to become a bad thing.
WinePusher wrote:I don't understand what it is with the left that makes them think they have the right to usurp parental rights. This is all speculation, you are speculating over the worst cscenerio. The greater evil is when the state thinks they have the ability to allow minors to make choices for themselves. They have legal guardians and parents for a reason, and the state isn't their guardian.

Abraxas wrote:I don't think parents have the right to force a child or coerce a child to not seek medical care.
They don't, they have a right to know what is going on in their child's life.
Abraxas wrote:Suppose the parents are of a religion that does not allow medical care in the traditional sense, instead relying on faith healing.
Then bring in the state and child services.
WinePusher wrote:I realize they weren't from Iraq. But you know who was in Iraq, Al-Qaeda

Abraxas wrote:No, they weren't and we knew they weren't. Every intelligence agency on the planet determined they weren't, in fact the two didn't even like each other.


No, Al Qaeda exists in practically every middle eastern country (besides Israel). Hussein was gladly harboring and supporting them
Abraxas wrote:If they are so functional, why do they require an occupying army?
WinePusher wrote:As of now, they don't.

Abraxas wrote:Really? Then why do we still have troops there?
No clue, we should withdraw from Iraq and focus on Afganistan, Pakistan and the soon the be nuclear Iran.
Abraxas wrote:You have provided no actual arguments. None. The entire thrust you are making is the equivalent of "go read this book" which doesn't cut it.
It's called citing sources to substantiate claims instead of making blanketed statements.
Abraxas wrote:If you are going to persist in using flawed, debunked, discredited, and disreputable sources to make your arguments, I will continue to call you on it.
It is your opinion that the sources of flawed, it is my opinion they aren't.
Abraxas wrote:I am under no obligation to do your work for you, to read your sources, extract the arguments from your sources, and then refute those arguments. If you think they have useful material, you provide it here and I will address it directly. "Go read a book" is not now and never has been an acceptable form of debate.
My arguments have been quite clear actually.

-Christians do more and give more charity than secularists
-The Inquisition is not an event with casualties in the tens of thousands
-Hitler's Influence Came Primarily From Darwain
-Hitler used christianity as a propoganda vessel and was not really a christian

Rather than give my own personal opinions and commentary on these matters, I choose to reference books and use those books as my starting point. Citing sources to confirm claims has always been acceptable in debate.
WinePusher wrote:What is the idea of evolutionary darwinian theory and social darwainism. It is the idea that one must essentially compete to survive, read your internet source to find Darwain's own quote in "Descent of Man." Even The Atheist Bart Ehrman recognizes the evolutionary motivations behind the holocaust, the weaker species will die and the gene pool must be purified and all that darwinian dogma motivated Hitler.

Abraxas wrote:The idea of Eugenics is much, much, much older than Darwin.
I realize that, but it gained more speed when Darwain began publishing his ideas.
Abraxas wrote:http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se ... ersion=NIV

1 When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you- 2 and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. [a] Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. 3 Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. 5 This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. 6 For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.


Thanks for proving my point, the israelites interpreted their God's message as genocide, the christian testament does not. The bible doesn't teach genocide as morality, but it teaches forgiveness and love/

WinePusher wrote:No. Again, polls prove you wrong. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... are_reform

54%-60% of Americans did not want Obamacare. The fact that Obama read a good teleprompter during his campaign doesn't prove that this country is not center right.

Abraxas wrote:Strawman and red herring. I didn't say "Obamacare", I said a state payer health care system, which is to the left of Obama by a wide margin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-pay ... ted_States


State payer health system is even further to the lef tof Obamacare, if the American people rejected the liberal policy of Obamacare, what makes you think they would embrace the even more liberal policy of a state payer system.

Abraxas wrote:Yes, when asked where they fall, most people say center, followed by conservative. When asked where they fall on issues, however, the majority of their responses tend to be in line with leftist policies, often more extreme than that which is offered by the Democrats.

WinePusher wrote:Your kidding right? Look at Missouri and their rejection of Obamacare, look at the huge support for the Arizona Law. If the public wanted leftist policies they'd be supporting Open Borders, but they're are supporting the opposite of that.

Abraxas wrote:False dichotomy (must support Obamacare or be right wing),


Never claimed this, I claimed that those who reject Obamacare are not leftists.

Abraxas wrote:hasty generalization (Missouri and Arizona speaking for the whole of the US),


:-k the entire nation was polled on Arizona, and the majority of the ENTIRE nation supported it. Missouri confirms already existing polls on Obamacare.

Abraxas wrote:straw man (nobody said every state, just the nation as a whole). You'll have to try harder to work every logical fallacy into one statement.


Tsk Tsk, you're going to have to try harder if you want to dishonestly accuse of me every single logical fallacy in one statement. The entire nation was polled on the issues regardingMissouri and Arizona, not just the citizens of those states. Good effort though.

Abraxas wrote:Create jobs how?


Create jobs by getting the government out of the free market. Government intervention in economics doesn't work, communism has always failed, lassiez faire capitalism hasn't because it hasn't been successfully inplemented.

Abraxas wrote:Yes, because when faced with having half of a million or keeping all of 20,000 from flipping burgers, that I am going to be taxed will keep me in McDonalds. Seriously?

WinePusher wrote:A misrepresentational caricature. Why strive to achieve in life if the government is going to end up taking it from you?

Abraxas wrote:I do enjoy how you accuse me of "a misrepresentational caricature" and then reply with that. Grade A1 irony right there.


I'm just happy you admit you threw out the first misrepresentational caricature. What comes around goes around ;)

Abraxas wrote:Because even if the government takes 50% or 70% of your billion, you still have hundreds of millions.


That matters not, if I make a 100 billion dollars, I have the right to keep it and do what I wish with it. I worked for it, and if I want to do charity with it that is my decision, that the decision of a few elitists in Washington. What you are suggesting is class warfare.

WinePusher wrote::blink: :confused2: Care to explain why you don't think this is the greatest country in the world?

Abraxas wrote:Let me compare us to Europe, notably the Scandinavian states. We are weaker in education, we treat our citizens more poorly on all counts, including rights violations, welfare, health care, and labor laws, we engage in unjustified wars of aggression, we have the highest rate of imprisonment on the planet, we are the biggest polluter on the planet, the biggest consumer of resources on the planet, we allow greed and corruption to run unchecked over the backs of our people, as a culture we value what is easy and quick over what is right and what is best, we cast more votes for American Idol than we do for our own leaders who continually sell us out and distract us from the real major problems with hollow, worthless distractions, we have a bloated, runaway military budget for a war that has been over for two decades while we can't even afford to maintain our roads and bridges; need I go on?


Ahh, your standard of judgement is based solely upon our economic and social standing amoung foreign nations. China has a far better economy than we do, are they greater than us? We are the greatest because we allow the maximum freedom and liberty, we allow people to shape their own destinies, something China does not. We are morally superior to every other country, we are undoubtably the most generous nation in the world, and we allow the greatest thing that shapes a society. Unhindered free speech, something canada doesn't.

Abraxas wrote:I do, but I believe that if a society adopts a model that means for every McDonalds CEO you must have 50,000 burger flippers to support him, we as a society have an obligation to make sure those burger flippers will receive at the very least a minimal level of care.


You know what, the McDonald's CEO generally starts out as a burger flipper and works his way up. That is the american legacy, and sometimes he fails. Failure is a good thing, giving trophies to children who lose soccer games doesn't make them better, failure does. If the burger flipper chooses to flip burgers all his life, then that is his choice, the rest of society should not be burdened because of it.

WinePusher wrote:I didn't realize that was your point because feudalism is not a caste system in the sense of India. Feudalism was a political system used for the protection of a society, the caste system in India is much different and its trivial for you to compare the two together.

Abraxas wrote:No, it really isn't. The point you were trying to make was Christianity recognizes human dignity and so you are not locked into any one position in society. My point was under the Christian Feudalism, you too were locked into your station of birth, thus rendering your point wrong.


No, you don't understand feudalism if your going to put it on par with the indian caste system. Feudalism is similar to the chain of command we have in the United States, not like India. And I don't think you are born and locked into a class in feudalism......

WinePusher wrote:Are they? The only problem the unions are creating is an inability to choose. Do you think if parents were given vouchers and school choice that education would become betteR?

Abraxas wrote:Absolutely not. Either you would end up flooding private schools to the point they were as overcrowded as public schools or you would end up with the private schools dumping off the poor and the worst performers on the now even more poorly funded public schools,damaging overall performance. Voucher systems never stood a chance of making things any better. Further, in countries that have implemented them, they have seen student performance drop, not increase.


The fact is choice and competition improves institutions. Small class sizes is only one benefit of private schools, the greatest benefit is that private schools must perform well or else they will get no businees. It's simple economics, If you have a dirty, rat filled hot dog stand and you build a better hot dog stand next to it, the better one is going to get the businees and the worser one will either go out of businees or be forced to improve.

WinePusher wrote:This brings us back to Peter Singer. Why not practice infanticide if there is no God. Why donate blood, why risk your own life to save the drowning baby. Why is altruism such a pervasive characteristic in humans if not for an objective source. Evolution cannot account for it.

Abraxas wrote:Because such behaviors damage society and as a society we wish to continue functioning. Evolution can account for it, altruistic societies, species outlive selfish ones. We see it in a multitude of species, like meerkats.


I'm sorry, but this goes directly aganist the evolutionary principle of the survival of the fittest. Most animals do not have a sense of morality and act on instinct, and those who are the fittest survive, those that are weak die off. Humans are an exception to this. Look at evil, animals are not capable of committing the amount of evil humans can. No animals that I know of has ever wished that another species be wiped off the face of the earth due to their racial prejudices, evolution can't explain goodness nor evil.

WinePusher wrote:Ok, but that is not the point. Beginning with the premise that humans have inalienable rights, there must exist a divine source of those rights. Any earthly source would mean that those rights are not unalienable.

Abraxas wrote:That depends on the definition of unalienable and the definition of those right, does it not?


People can be stripped of their rights, look at prisoners. Because of their actions, they don't have all their rights, expect the three mentioned by Locke.

Abraxas wrote:If they are purely a fact of what it means to be human, God or not, they exist. Further, whether God exists or not, the right has no inherent teeth unless humans choose to respect it. Humans, of their own accord, chose to respect those rights, codify those rights, not because God told them to but because we value them already. How does Christianity or a lack thereof in any way change that?


My point is that the great thinkers (Nietzche, Jefferson, Locke) knew that our rights come form a creator. If you abolish the creator, those rights fade away. In countries without God, there is no life or liberty or the ability to pursue happiness. Can you dispute that?

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Post #25

Post by Abraxas »

Double Post.
Last edited by Abraxas on Fri Aug 13, 2010 5:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post #26

Post by Abraxas »

WinePusher wrote:
WinePusher wrote::blink: Wrong. A "life" is a being that has the genetical information of both parents and has its own DNA code. A sperm is not a life, once a sperm makes contact with an ovary it becomes a life.

Abraxas wrote:Incorrect. Under that definition of life single celled organisms would not be considered life. They are.
I think your the only person ever, to suggest that a sperm is a life. A sperm does not have any genetic material to duplicate and as no DNA manuscript.
People suggest they are all the time. That is why they talk about living sperm and dead sperm. As for not having genetic material, that they have genetic material is precisely why they exist in the first place.

WinePusher wrote:I do not disagree, but a Christian, namely a catholic, who attends weekly mass, generally agrees with what the church teaches. Theres no way around that.

Your source is misleading. It only cites one organization that breaks from the traditional Catholic ranks, the fact remains that the majority of Catholics agree with the churches policy.
Actually, it lists two. None the less, the point is people who consider themselves part of a religion, who do participate actively, can and do have differing and dissenting opinion on church doctrine, often in great numbers.
WinePusher wrote:This is logically incorrect.

-Your conclusion is: The Bible does not teach that a fetus is a life
-Your evidence for this conclusion is: The penalities for hurting a fetus carry less weight then the penalties for hurting a grown human

It is simply an irrelevant conclusion.
Abraxas wrote:Clearly logic is not your strong point.

Per the Bible, if kill person then death penalty.
Per the Bible, if kill fetus not death penalty.
Therefore, per the Bible, fetus does not equal person.
A prime example of a hasty generalization. This perfectly meets the requirements of a hasty generalization, arguing from a special case to a general rule.
There is nothing special about it. It is one of only a handful of cases where the fetus is mentioned, the rest are vague or irrelevant.

You cite Genesis 25:21 which says nothing about when a fetus becomes a person, only that by the time they are born they are. Ruth 1:11 says nothing on personhood. We covered Jer 1:4 already and it appears to refer to something other than the fetus because it references knowing someone before they are in the womb. The one and only place in the Bible it makes any reference to how what is in the womb is valued, how killing what is in the womb would be punished, is Exodus 21:22. From that we can conclude a fetus, per the Bible, is not a life.
Abraxas wrote:Logically, put:

K > D
A > ~D
A=/=K
I am going to request you cite the verses that say killing a person brings about the death penalty.


http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se ... ersion=NIV

Exodus 21:12

12 "Anyone who strikes a man and kills him shall surely be put to death. 13 However, if he does not do it intentionally, but God lets it happen, he is to flee to a place I will designate. 14 But if a man schemes and kills another man deliberately, take him away from my altar and put him to death.

21:22 "If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely [e] but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. 23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

e Exodus 21:22 Or she has a miscarriage

But your logic is wrong because your plugging the conclusion with a personal opinion, this is called an ad hominem.
Firstly, not what an ad hom is. It would be an ad hom if I said, "the bible makes the claim, therefore the claim must be wrong". Secondly, I am not putting in any personal opinion. The passage explicitly says the penalty for taking a life is death but the penalty for killing a fetus is a fine. That means a fetus is not treated as a person. No opinion, no conjecture, simply the plain reading of what is written.
It is my opinion, from the given premises, that this is simply an inconsistency and is negated with the other overwhelming bible verses that teach that the fetus is a life. Your opinionated conclusion holds no more or no less truth than mine.
It does because I can resolve the situation without a contradiction, you can't. My reading of it allows all four passages to exist, yours require we start throwing out parts of the Bible. On the flipside, if you want to state here and now we can ignore parts of the Bible and that the book is flawed, inconsistent, self contradictory, etc. we can go that route too, but that is only going to make it harder to claim it should be our bedrock when the cracks become obvious.
Your argument:

A) If one verse in the bible suggests a fetus is not a life, than the bible does not teach that the fetus is a life
Q) Exodus 21:22 says that the penalties for killing a fetus carry less weight than killing a human
P) Therefore, the bible does not teach that the fetus is a life

A>(Q & P)
A
>(Q & P)
Not really. My argument is more:

K>D
A>~D
~(D&~D)
(K&A)>(D&~D)
~(K&A)
My argument, which is simply the converse of yours:

~A>(Q & P)
~A
>(Q & P) Modus Tollens

A) If one verse in the bible suggests a fetus is a life, than the bible does teach that the fetus is a life
Q) Gen 25:21, Ruth 1:11, Jer 1:4 suggests that a fetus is a life
P) Therefore, the bible does teach that the fetus is a life

The only difference between my argument and yours is that I don't engage in a hasty generalization fallacy.
No, you just read in what isn't there. This was covered above.
Abraxas wrote:Only two sects in Christianity? I daresay I can name a good deal more. As for liberal Christianity being in the minority, you are quite mistaken.
Yes, only two sects. The conservative christians and the liberal christians, with moderates in the middle. The dominant christianity today are the conservative Catholic Church, the conservative baptist churches, the conservative luthern/mormon churchs, and the conservative calvary chapels. Liberal christianity is in the minority.
Yes, you can list churches as long as you like (which nicely serves to contradict your statement about two sects) but the fact remains what people do better displays their Christianity than what church they attend. What they do is demonstrably different from where they go.
Abraxas wrote:Most of the original teachings of the Bible have been discarded by society, I daresay more will follow. Also, again, per the poll I linked to, the majority does not oppose abortion. Contrary to what you may have heard, repeating the same falsehood over and over again does not make it true.
No, actually a very little amount of bible teachings of been discarded, pretty much its only been animal sacrifice. BTW, I also have a poll I linked to showing that most americans are opposed to abortion. But you just attacked the source, as the did with all my book references.
The source was a web poll on a Christian website when we had much better numbers from people who do polls for a living. More than animal sacrifice has been changed. I already listed mixed fabrics and shellfish (which you quickly dropped), but more such as the prohibition on pork, the laws against divorce, planting mixed crops, shave, etc.

Just read Leviticus 19 and look at all the stuff ordered by the Lord now ignored by the Christian masses.
Abraxas wrote:Certain sects of Islam do, certain sects do not. I fail to see what relevance Islam has to the topic however.
Because you are applying a double standard.

-You're trying to argue that because some christians support abortion, christinaity does not value life.
No, I am saying Christianity does not consistently oppose abortion so you cannot use it as an example of Christianity being inherently superior in valuing life. I leave Christianity not valuing life to incidents like exterminating the population of two continents.
-Yet, there are muslims who blow buldings up, will yo agree that Islam does not value life?
I will agree Islam does not inherently value life any more than Christianity does. Both have long and bloody histories.
WinePusher wrote:Actually, while he doesn't attend church regularly presently, he still does attend sometimes. Further, I am unaware of any hatespeech on the part of Jeremiah Wright. Could you elaborate?
Let me ask you, do you believe someone because they simply profess to be it?
No.
If someone claims to be christian, will you not investigate their actions and associations to see if their christianity is genuine?
Certainly, but attending church for 20 years and only stopping because you moved halfway across the country and took up a job being leader of the free world and even then still making time to go on occasion strikes me as him being a rather busy Christian.



I am hopeful you do not agree and will not argue in favor of his hate speech.
Sadly I an not presently able to view youtube links, and so I read this article instead:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_W ... ontroversy

From reviewing that, it appears some of what is labeled as hate speech makes sense, when placed in context. The violence begets violence and that we have created an enemy willing to die for their cause and take thousands with them. So of the content, especially his later remarks (which I had long since stopped following the story by the time they were made) about Jewish conspiracy and so forth were not justifiable.

WinePusher wrote:Not to sound facetious, but I don't think your an authority on this subject and I don't think your opinion weighs more than a Historian who wrote a multivolume study on the matter.

Abraxas wrote:True, but countless other historians have arrived at different estimates. Kayman was very thorough in exploring the scope of his research, I grant you. However, his scope was much narrower than the full range of behavior of the Spanish Inquisition, let alone the wide range of other Inquisitions that existed over the centuries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanis ... eath_tolls

Wiki's numbers do not differ drastically from Kamen's.
More than double in some cases. Even failing an actual death toll, what does it say with the much larger number who were tortured?
Abraxas wrote:Emergency room care is substandard and expensive, often resulting in massive hardship on those who are forced to seek it where superior, preventative care is much cheaper, much better for the patient, and widely unavailable due to cost in America. Most of the rest of the developed world does not have this flaw.
Ahh, but you statement is now debunked. "We don't provide medical care to those who need it most as well." Regardless of your personal sentiments towards emergency rooms, we do provide healthcare for all.
No, we only provide health care for those with money and those having emergencies, the latter at excessive prices for inferior care.
While the rest of the world doesn't a an emergency room problem, they have a quality of care problem. According th David Frum, more catscan machines exist in Metropolitan Washington than all of Canada, we have world leaders coming to America to recieve healthcare and canadians fleeing canada to come get care here. Whiel France and Britain can laud themselves for having more quantity, this country has better quality.
Only for the very rich. Average people with average or no insurance have much worse care. As for Canadians fleeing Canada, I can point to a great many Americans who go to Canada for health care. Did you know there is a black market in Canadian IDs to get into their hospitals?
WinePusher wrote:Were we trying to conquer more territory and exploit the resources of other soverign nations? Or were we assisting countries in achieving liberty?

Abraxas wrote:Two Words: Manifest Destiny.

Also, a quote from an American General:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

The idea we are great liberators is really remarkably silly in the face of history.
Manifest destiny did not occur during the time periods you listed. And, FYI, American expansion is was less than the conquests of European nations. iting one instance of manifest destiny does not prove the claim that America is an imperialist nation. Do you not think America should promote liberty around the world, should we just standa by and observe countries ravaged by ruthless dictators? As I said before, the liberators of Auswitchz were not peace activists, bu the United States army.
In WWII, the Axis powers aggressed us. That is a vastly different situation from the number of democratically elected leaders we deposed and had killed, the number of revolutions supported, the number of despots propped up in order to "protect our interests" at the expense of the freedom and sovereignty of people around the world.
Abraxas wrote:No, actually, you showed societies completely unlike western democracies have a poor track record.
WinePusher wrote:What do these societies have in common? I'll answer it, secularism.

Abraxas wrote:/facepalm
The Middle East is secular? The Feudal Monarchies were secular? Franco's Spain and Taylor's Liberia and Hitler's Germany and Hirohito's Japan were secular? The colonial powers were secular?
Tu quoquo. These events you cite are incomparable to Secular communist atrocities, the middle east is NOT driven by religion. It is driven by conflicts of Kashmir, land, and anti west sentiments.
Ah, so contrary to your earlier assertion Islam had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks then. That clears that up.
The colonies burned a total 18-20 people,
You might want to check with the Native Americans, Aztecs, Mayans, and Incans about your figure of 18-20.
and feudal monarchies are irrelevant.
They certainly are not. They being the good Christians they were waged unceasing war on one another resulting in the death of millions. Never before nor since has Christianity been so concentrated, so powerful, and so entrenched in the governance of man and we refer to that time as the Dark Ages or the Medeival period.
Abraxas wrote:I challenge you, here and now, with a straight face to tell me the above are secular.
They aren't cept for the middle east.
So the societies responsible for atrocities are not, as you asserted, all secular. Thank you.
WinePusher wrote:America does promote a culture of life and respects the dignity of life. We have a functioning government that realizes its duty to defend our right to life, regardless of what the left says, we have universal healthcare and we take care of the poor. Just because our way of doing it differs from Europe doesn't mean its worse.

Abraxas wrote:No, that it is much, much worse in all objective measures of healthcare and quality of living, coupled with repeated rights abuses and wars of aggression mean it is worse.
Rights abuses! You joking, America violates human rights.......
Yes. We support torture, kill democratically elected leaders, install dictators, fund terrorists, imprison huge sections of our population, etc.
When, where in the modern area have we done so. Wars of aggression, more like wars of protection.
Libya. Panama. The war on drugs in South America. Grenada. Brazil. Ghana. Iraq (when we put Hussein in). Bolivia. Chile. Argentina. I could continue but the point is obvious, we have a long and bloody history of invasion and murder to expand our power.
WinePusher wrote:Some aspects of Christianity pretend the earth is 6000 years old. The Catholic Church does not.

Abraxas wrote:Exactly. Some aspects of Christianity actively seek to undermine scientific knowledge.
Yes, some aspects of liberalism undermine scientific knowledge,
Who?
some aspects of atheism undermine scientific knowledge.
Who?
This is a sad argument, atheists are the ones abusing science to make it a weapon to be used aganist christianity and God.
Abraxas wrote:I ask again can, you think of a single noteworthy source opposed to the proliferation of scientific knowledge outside of Christianity in the western world?
I refuse to answer because the question is loaded and your assuming the unproven premise that Christianity is opposed to science (begging the question). I concede some aspects of christianity oppose science just as some aspects of atheism oppose alternative medicine and intelligent design.
Intelligent design is not science. Alternative medicine, depending on how alternate, is opposed or not based on merit. Thank you for conceding the only meaningful opposition to science comes from Christianity in the US, however.
Abraxas wrote:Please try reading what I said.

You say America is a Christian nation with a secular leader for the purpose of extolling the virtues of Christianity.

You claim Germany was not a Christian nation because of it's secular leader when trying to run away from the evils with which Christianity has been involved even though the vast majority of the population were Christian.

This is a double standard and it is dishonest.
No, I claim that the holocaust was not inspired by chrisitanity
Nobody said it was. In fact I have now denied it was several times. Your bringing this up over and over again is a strawman and a red herring.
and that their leader was secular. I never claim that Germany was not a christian nation.
Finally, you admit Germany was a Christian nation and responsible for the holocaust. Thank you.
And I agree that christianity was used as a propoganda tool by the nazi's, but as for america, what I sya is simply fact (cept for the secular leader). America is christian, their leader, imo, is not a practicing christian.
Fine, we can work with that. So, Germany, being a Christian country, was responsible for monstrous crimes against humanity and life.
WinePusher wrote:Nice dodge.

Abraxas wrote:I do not dodge slow pitch Nerf balls. Quoting a random writer does nothing to contribute to the debate, it is an irrelevancy, a red herring, pointless.
Apparently you did when you failed to respond to my point about Dostoyevski. "Random writer" indeed, a philosopher and moral theologian has relevance to this debate, but it is understandable that you would divert from his argument if you can't refute it.
It is a quote, not an argument, the two are not the same and should not be confused.


WinePusher wrote:If there is no moral accountability, if there is no "cosmic justice", if there is no "final judgement" whats stopping you from living in your id and being selfish without any concern for others wellbeing?

Abraxas wrote:Society. A source of good independent from God. Law enforcement.
Really!? Society wants you to be good and generous? What about Sharia law, what about when society promotes genocide and wrong doing.
Yes, society wants you to be good and generous. It helps keep the society in good working order. Societies that are abusive, restrictive, and aggressive tend not to last in the modern world.
Abraxas wrote:More interestingly, with God all things are permitted, especially the Christian God who will forgive you anything if you confess to a priest or pray really hard, or, at one point, simply purchase admission to heaven.
Yes, with God all things are permitted, but some are forbidden. With no God, all things are permitted and nothing is forbidden.
And yet, somehow, I don't think that will work on the judge.
WinePusher wrote:Yes, religion deludes the masses from his communist idea of a perfect society. Exactly.

Abraxas wrote:No, actually, in that passage Marx wasn't talking about communism, he was talking about how religion served the role in capitalism. Good try though.
Another diversion, it matters not whether in that specific passage he was talking about capitalism, his philosophy and theory focuses on communism and the annhilation of capitalism.
It wasn't a dodge, it was a clarification. The fact of the matter is the passage you quoted was Marx explaining the role of religion in capitalism. Regardless, Marx is not the end all be all of communism to begin with, and there are many branches that are either religious or that oppose religion nonviolently.
WinePusher wrote:Education from biased "educators" decreases religion.

Abraxas wrote:Yes, educators biased toward fact decrease religion.
Edit: "Educators biased towards liberal secularism." Can you dispute the fac that most academics are liberals and the the university is a secular liberal institution?
I certainly dispute the last part, though I will agree that the more knowledge and education one has, the more they tend to part company with conservatives and religion.
WinePusher wrote:As for Catholic Schools and Church, if you don't want your kid there, don't take them. Its simple, the government doesn't force you to go to Catholic School.

Abraxas wrote:Again with the dodge. Do you deny Christianity indoctrinates small children through church and church schools and that Christianity would not exist if children were not indoctrinated?
What dodge, I think forcing children to go to church and sunday school is a form of indoctrination, if you don't want it, don't send your kid to catholic school.
Not the point. The point is you were complaining about Universities indoctrinating adults but have no problem with churches and other religious institutions indoctrinating children who lack the capacity to question the ideas they are being immersed in. Seems like another double standard.
Quite simple, also having kids sing praises to Obama is indoctrination, having kids fill out books about how they can help Obama is indoctrination, having kids learn biased history from liberal textbooks about how McCarthy was a mad man/
McCarthy was a madman. That is simple reality. Though, during my entire k-12 career I don't recall him coming up.
that all the framers were deist/
Many were. Would you rather we lie to children?
that Gorbachev was responsible for the end of the cold war/
True, but what you want taught, that Reagan and Thatcher ended it, would be even more dishonest. The reality was the social and political landscape of the Soviet Union became too unstable and so Gorbachev pulled the plug.
that the rosenburgs were wrongly killed/
Ethel certainly was, but again, didn't come up.
that muslim terrorists are uneducated/
Huh?
the scopes trial is also indoctrination.
What?
It would be foolish to suggest indoctrination only exists in Christianity.
Nobody suggested that but there is a distinction you don't seem to be making between imparting facts and creating a framework in how to interpret those facts.
WinePusher wrote:But one must wonder why the faith based catholic schools outperform the secular public schools. :-k Seems like secularism ruins everthing.
Abraxas wrote: Please back up that claim.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 17,00.html
The article explicitly notes that it isn't an apples to apples comparison because Catholic schools get to pick their students.
Interesting example, but that again appears to simply be a function of private schooling being able to be selective. I did not see, for instance, a comparison there of secular private schools vs. Catholic schools.
WinePusher wrote:I claim that countries that lack any type of religion devalue life. You cannot dispute this established fact. And I never said Europe was trying to be communist, I'm saying the population is largely are secular. That is also a fact.

Abraxas wrote:The implication you were making is that Europe devalues human life and I can and am disputing that unsupported assertion.
No I wasn't, Europe doesn't devalue life. Countries in Europe have laws prohibiting abortions and so on, far from devaluing life........
So then if Europe is secular and does not devalue life, does that not imply secular countries do not, in fact, inherently devalue life, the claim you have been trying to make for this entire thread?
WiniePusher wrote:The only thing I dispute is your narrative the Christianity was the inspiration and cause of the holocaust. I do not dispute the existence of feudalism, I dispute your misinformation that Hitler was inspired by christianity as were his nazi's.......

Abraxas wrote:What I claimed was the Christianity of Nazi Germany completely failed to create a culture of life as it has in the majority of places and time period Christian culture has emerged.
Because of a man named Hitler and his ambitions to kill all jews......This is a argument :-s
Thing is Hitler didn't kill them, he had his soldiers do it, the vast majority of whom were Christian.
Do you think that Christianity and Christians who supported the Jews and helped them could confront a dictator?
The ones who supported the Jews, maybe, couldn't say. Hitler's vast, Christian army? Certainly could have.
The tenants of the christian faith is that life is sacred and all life has dignity, one who professes to be a christian should follow this doctrine. Many christian germans did.
A few did. A great many more were in Hitler's army doing the actual killing.
Abraxas wrote:If Christianity has historically been used to devalue and destroy human life, as you now say you do not dispute, how can you claim it creates a culture of life?
Because a good thing can be abused to become a bad thing.
Seems like then it is neither good nor bad but can be either depending on how it is used.
WinePusher wrote:I don't understand what it is with the left that makes them think they have the right to usurp parental rights. This is all speculation, you are speculating over the worst cscenerio. The greater evil is when the state thinks they have the ability to allow minors to make choices for themselves. They have legal guardians and parents for a reason, and the state isn't their guardian.

Abraxas wrote:I don't think parents have the right to force a child or coerce a child to not seek medical care.
They don't, they have a right to know what is going on in their child's life.
How does one separate the two?
Abraxas wrote:Suppose the parents are of a religion that does not allow medical care in the traditional sense, instead relying on faith healing.
Then bring in the state and child services.
Dangerous precedent, taking children away because their faith is different from yours.
WinePusher wrote:I realize they weren't from Iraq. But you know who was in Iraq, Al-Qaeda

Abraxas wrote:No, they weren't and we knew they weren't. Every intelligence agency on the planet determined they weren't, in fact the two didn't even like each other.


No, Al Qaeda exists in practically every middle eastern country (besides Israel). Hussein was gladly harboring and supporting them


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... Jun16.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/13/alqaeda.saddam/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hus ... llegations

No.
Abraxas wrote:You have provided no actual arguments. None. The entire thrust you are making is the equivalent of "go read this book" which doesn't cut it.
It's called citing sources to substantiate claims instead of making blanketed statements.
No, citing sources would involve providing a specific argument or line of reasoning, then listing the sources used to validate a line of reasoning. What you are doing is stating the conclusion with no supporting evidence, and then listing the source as where the evidence can be found.
Abraxas wrote:If you are going to persist in using flawed, debunked, discredited, and disreputable sources to make your arguments, I will continue to call you on it.
It is your opinion that the sources of flawed, it is my opinion they aren't.
It isn't just my opinion. In one case even the author of the book you cited explicitly said the book did not and could not show what you claim it did because no evidence exists to that effect. Scholarly opinion is the sources you were using were deeply flawed, making arguments that rely on them and them alone unconvincing and ill supported.
Abraxas wrote:I am under no obligation to do your work for you, to read your sources, extract the arguments from your sources, and then refute those arguments. If you think they have useful material, you provide it here and I will address it directly. "Go read a book" is not now and never has been an acceptable form of debate.
My arguments have been quite clear actually.

-Christians do more and give more charity than secularists
Refuted.
-The Inquisition is not an event with casualties in the tens of thousands
There was no "The Inquisition". There were several Inquisitions.
-Hitler's Influence Came Primarily From Darwain
This one is borderline dishonest at this point.
-Hitler used christianity as a propoganda vessel and was not really a christian
Hitler's Christianity is well established, however, it is not really pertinent to the question at hand which is directly related to societal organization. Germany was undeniably Christian
Rather than give my own personal opinions and commentary on these matters, I choose to reference books and use those books as my starting point. Citing sources to confirm claims has always been acceptable in debate.
Not when the sources you use are without merit, which, with the exception of Kamen, they all were. You used a bad translation of a book where the good translation sinks your argument, you used a study using severely flawed methodology, and you used a book whose own author stated he didn't show and couldn't show what you claim he did because there is no evidence to that effect. Those are bad sources, pure and simple.
WinePusher wrote:What is the idea of evolutionary darwinian theory and social darwainism. It is the idea that one must essentially compete to survive, read your internet source to find Darwain's own quote in "Descent of Man." Even The Atheist Bart Ehrman recognizes the evolutionary motivations behind the holocaust, the weaker species will die and the gene pool must be purified and all that darwinian dogma motivated Hitler.

Abraxas wrote:The idea of Eugenics is much, much, much older than Darwin.
I realize that, but it gained more speed when Darwain began publishing his ideas.
The fact of the matter is once the scientific age was entered and the way the world worked was better understood and coming more and more under human control, that talk of controlling humanity's future was essentially inevitable. It had very little to do with Darwin and everything to do with a greater understanding of the functions that control the development of life.
Abraxas wrote:http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se ... ersion=NIV

1 When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you- 2 and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. [a] Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. 3 Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. 5 This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. 6 For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.


Thanks for proving my point, the israelites interpreted their God's message as genocide, the christian testament does not. The bible doesn't teach genocide as morality, but it teaches forgiveness and love/
That passage is not listed as an interpretation. It doesn't say the Israelites heard a message and took that from it, the Bible presents that as a message. For someone who complained earlier about removing parts of the Bible and reading in things that aren't there, you seem perfectly willing to do both yourself.
WinePusher wrote:No. Again, polls prove you wrong. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... are_reform

54%-60% of Americans did not want Obamacare. The fact that Obama read a good teleprompter during his campaign doesn't prove that this country is not center right.

Abraxas wrote:Strawman and red herring. I didn't say "Obamacare", I said a state payer health care system, which is to the left of Obama by a wide margin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-pay ... ted_States


State payer health system is even further to the lef tof Obamacare, if the American people rejected the liberal policy of Obamacare, what makes you think they would embrace the even more liberal policy of a state payer system.
That polls taken during the time said they would, as my link shows.
Abraxas wrote:Yes, when asked where they fall, most people say center, followed by conservative. When asked where they fall on issues, however, the majority of their responses tend to be in line with leftist policies, often more extreme than that which is offered by the Democrats.

WinePusher wrote:Your kidding right? Look at Missouri and their rejection of Obamacare, look at the huge support for the Arizona Law. If the public wanted leftist policies they'd be supporting Open Borders, but they're are supporting the opposite of that.

Abraxas wrote:False dichotomy (must support Obamacare or be right wing),


Never claimed this, I claimed that those who reject Obamacare are not leftists.
Same thing. Point is you are wrong, I rejected Obamacare because it was a handout to insurance companies at the expense of taxpayers. I support a single payer system however.
Abraxas wrote:hasty generalization (Missouri and Arizona speaking for the whole of the US),


:-k the entire nation was polled on Arizona, and the majority of the ENTIRE nation supported it. Missouri confirms already existing polls on Obamacare.
Even if you were correct it would still be a hasty generalization by assuming the left right divide can be boiled down to two pieces of legislation with a multitude of both left and right reasons not to or to support them.
Abraxas wrote:straw man (nobody said every state, just the nation as a whole). You'll have to try harder to work every logical fallacy into one statement.


Tsk Tsk, you're going to have to try harder if you want to dishonestly accuse of me every single logical fallacy in one statement. The entire nation was polled on the issues regardingMissouri and Arizona, not just the citizens of those states. Good effort though.
I'm glad you worked a red herring in there.
Abraxas wrote:Create jobs how?


Create jobs by getting the government out of the free market. Government intervention in economics doesn't work, communism has always failed, lassiez faire capitalism hasn't because it hasn't been successfully inplemented.
Actually capitalism has repeatedly failed and communism has never really been tried (well, not on a national level or similar). However, the claim that government intervention in the market is bad simply displays a lack of understanding of economics. Regulation, work standards, and so on are necessary to keeping an economy from collapsing. A lack of government intervention leads to situations like the one we are in now.

Still have no idea what this has to do with Christianity vs. Secularism.
Abraxas wrote:Yes, because when faced with having half of a million or keeping all of 20,000 from flipping burgers, that I am going to be taxed will keep me in McDonalds. Seriously?

WinePusher wrote:A misrepresentational caricature. Why strive to achieve in life if the government is going to end up taking it from you?

Abraxas wrote:I do enjoy how you accuse me of "a misrepresentational caricature" and then reply with that. Grade A1 irony right there.


I'm just happy you admit you threw out the first misrepresentational caricature. What comes around goes around ;)

Abraxas wrote:Because even if the government takes 50% or 70% of your billion, you still have hundreds of millions.


That matters not, if I make a 100 billion dollars, I have the right to keep it and do what I wish with it. I worked for it, and if I want to do charity with it that is my decision, that the decision of a few elitists in Washington. What you are suggesting is class warfare.
Not at all. The fact of the matter is the wealthy get more use out of the system than the poor do. All those roads you use to distribute and have workers come in, all the police that protect your work places and intellectual property, that has to inspect your workplaces for compliance with laws, that educates a workforce necessary for you to have skilled labor to hire from, that supports the other necessary infrastructure for your business to function and maintains a basic standard of living for the society to function so your business can function within it. You use more, you demand more, you pay more. Class warfare is real whether you acknowledge it or not, it already exists. I'm not suggesting it, just recognizing it for what it is.

However, I fail to see what any of this has to do with Secularism vs. Christianity.
WinePusher wrote::blink: :confused2: Care to explain why you don't think this is the greatest country in the world?

Abraxas wrote:Let me compare us to Europe, notably the Scandinavian states. We are weaker in education, we treat our citizens more poorly on all counts, including rights violations, welfare, health care, and labor laws, we engage in unjustified wars of aggression, we have the highest rate of imprisonment on the planet, we are the biggest polluter on the planet, the biggest consumer of resources on the planet, we allow greed and corruption to run unchecked over the backs of our people, as a culture we value what is easy and quick over what is right and what is best, we cast more votes for American Idol than we do for our own leaders who continually sell us out and distract us from the real major problems with hollow, worthless distractions, we have a bloated, runaway military budget for a war that has been over for two decades while we can't even afford to maintain our roads and bridges; need I go on?


Ahh, your standard of judgement is based solely upon our economic and social standing amoung foreign nations.
Not solely but largely.
China has a far better economy than we do, are they greater than us?
Economically.
We are the greatest because we allow the maximum freedom and liberty,
Then why do we have the largest imprisoned population?
we allow people to shape their own destinies, something China does not.
As does everyone else in the Western world.
We are morally superior to every other country,
Certainly not.
we are undoubtably the most generous nation in the world,
As shown by the mobs whining about "entitlement" as it relates to basic welfare.
and we allow the greatest thing that shapes a society. Unhindered free speech, something canada doesn't.
There are hindrances on our free speech. Even if our free speech is more liberal, or even the most liberal, it would certainly be fairly close and it doesn't make up for everything else.
Abraxas wrote:I do, but I believe that if a society adopts a model that means for every McDonalds CEO you must have 50,000 burger flippers to support him, we as a society have an obligation to make sure those burger flippers will receive at the very least a minimal level of care.


You know what, the McDonald's CEO generally starts out as a burger flipper and works his way up. That is the american legacy, and sometimes he fails. Failure is a good thing, giving trophies to children who lose soccer games doesn't make them better, failure does. If the burger flipper chooses to flip burgers all his life, then that is his choice, the rest of society should not be burdened because of it.
Irrelevant. The fact is our system is such that a certain percentage of our population, no matter how bright, talented, ambitious, skilled, etc. will end up as burger flippers or entry level workers. This is unavoidable. Not everyone can be CEOs at the same time, can't be done. Thus if some are guaranteed to fail based on the system we have adopted as a society, it falls on us as a society to provide basic standards for those who do fail.
WinePusher wrote:I didn't realize that was your point because feudalism is not a caste system in the sense of India. Feudalism was a political system used for the protection of a society, the caste system in India is much different and its trivial for you to compare the two together.

Abraxas wrote:No, it really isn't. The point you were trying to make was Christianity recognizes human dignity and so you are not locked into any one position in society. My point was under the Christian Feudalism, you too were locked into your station of birth, thus rendering your point wrong.


No, you don't understand feudalism if your going to put it on par with the indian caste system. Feudalism is similar to the chain of command we have in the United States, not like India. And I don't think you are born and locked into a class in feudalism......


Two points, in European monarchies, you were born into a station and almost certainly died in that station. If you were born a slave, you couldn't change profession. If your father was the local smith, you are going to be the local smith. If you were extremely lucky, you might be able to get an apprenticeship if you had a certain level of standing and the person had no heir. The aristocracy were born noble and unless they offended the king or someone close to him they would die that way.

Secondly, the Indian caste system was created by the British, a Christian power, when India was under British rule, once again undermining your argument.
WinePusher wrote:Are they? The only problem the unions are creating is an inability to choose. Do you think if parents were given vouchers and school choice that education would become betteR?

Abraxas wrote:Absolutely not. Either you would end up flooding private schools to the point they were as overcrowded as public schools or you would end up with the private schools dumping off the poor and the worst performers on the now even more poorly funded public schools,damaging overall performance. Voucher systems never stood a chance of making things any better. Further, in countries that have implemented them, they have seen student performance drop, not increase.


The fact is choice and competition improves institutions. Small class sizes is only one benefit of private schools, the greatest benefit is that private schools must perform well or else they will get no businees. It's simple economics, If you have a dirty, rat filled hot dog stand and you build a better hot dog stand next to it, the better one is going to get the businees and the worser one will either go out of businees or be forced to improve.
And yet, the fact of the matter is, when we see voucher systems implemented, the majority of the benefit goes to kids already enrolled in private schools, the quality of the private school and the education system at large go down. You can repeat free market rhetoric and theoretical arguments, however, this has been done and we have seen the effects, they aren't good.
WinePusher wrote:This brings us back to Peter Singer. Why not practice infanticide if there is no God. Why donate blood, why risk your own life to save the drowning baby. Why is altruism such a pervasive characteristic in humans if not for an objective source. Evolution cannot account for it.

Abraxas wrote:Because such behaviors damage society and as a society we wish to continue functioning. Evolution can account for it, altruistic societies, species outlive selfish ones. We see it in a multitude of species, like meerkats.


I'm sorry, but this goes directly aganist the evolutionary principle of the survival of the fittest. Most animals do not have a sense of morality and act on instinct, and those who are the fittest survive, those that are weak die off. Humans are an exception to this. Look at evil, animals are not capable of committing the amount of evil humans can. No animals that I know of has ever wished that another species be wiped off the face of the earth due to their racial prejudices, evolution can't explain goodness nor evil.
Evolution applies to populations more than individuals. Fit populations are the ones that have within them the characteristics to perpetuate their species. Sometimes that involves an individual from the population risking themselves to defend the whole, be it the warrior insects defending the hive with stingers, that, if used will kill them, or a mother protecting her cubs from a predator. Good and evil are values placed by humans on things that are bad for society and things that are good for a society and humans enforce these guidelines. I think it not unreasonable to see good and evil as the extension of our evolution as a social species, one that survived by functioning together.
WinePusher wrote:Ok, but that is not the point. Beginning with the premise that humans have inalienable rights, there must exist a divine source of those rights. Any earthly source would mean that those rights are not unalienable.

Abraxas wrote:That depends on the definition of unalienable and the definition of those right, does it not?


People can be stripped of their rights, look at prisoners. Because of their actions, they don't have all their rights, expect the three mentioned by Locke.
If they can be stripped of their rights they are not unalienable, but in fact, alienable by the state under certain circumstances.
Abraxas wrote:If they are purely a fact of what it means to be human, God or not, they exist. Further, whether God exists or not, the right has no inherent teeth unless humans choose to respect it. Humans, of their own accord, chose to respect those rights, codify those rights, not because God told them to but because we value them already. How does Christianity or a lack thereof in any way change that?


My point is that the great thinkers (Nietzche, Jefferson, Locke) knew that our rights come form a creator. If you abolish the creator, those rights fade away. In countries without God, there is no life or liberty or the ability to pursue happiness. Can you dispute that?
Yes, and I have, repeatedly. Europe is becoming increasingly secular and still manages to recognize rights, often far better than the US does. The fact is, those rights were not given to us by a creator, they were enshrined by men who valued them anyway regardless of the existence of a creator. Had Jefferson not been a deist, would he have been any less inclined to appeal to the existence of rights, unalienable or otherwise? No, these were things he believed in, things he cherished, and so things he wrote into law.

WinePusher

Post #27

Post by WinePusher »

I was planning to end the rebuttals, but Abraxas raised a few contreversial points I'd like to respond to. I won't be responding to his entire post, just a few quotes to tone down the rebuttals and allow time for closing statements and possibly cross examination.
WinePusher wrote:The colonies burned a total 18-20 people
Abraxas wrote:You might want to check with the Native Americans, Aztecs, Mayans, and Incans about your figure of 18-20.
Actually, you're confusing two different things. I'm speaking in reference to the witch trials in which we burned 18-20 alleged witches. Our bad treatment of Native Americans had nothing to do with religion, it had everything to do with territory disputes and european disease.
WinePusher wrote:Rights abuses! You joking, America violates human rights.......
Abraxas wrote:Yes. We support torture, kill democratically elected leaders, install dictators, fund terrorists, imprison huge sections of our population, etc.
No, we create a sensational feeling of drowning when American lives are at risk; come on, we're not even drowning them. We do not torture citizens who protest or belong to the opposite minority party. And I am unaware of the dictators we have installed and the democratically elected leaders we killed, I believe Saddam Hussein was executed by the Iraqi offcials. I am completley unaware of the terrorists we supposedly fund. And we don't imprison huge sections of our population, huge sections of our population choose to be imprisoned due to their own choice to break the law. Do you think American laws are to harsh!
Abraxas wrote:McCarthy was a madman. That is simple reality. Though, during my entire k-12 career I don't recall him coming up.
My point exactly. He is a madman because the marxists in academia portray him to be that way. Woodrow Wilson, who hurt this country beyond imagination, is praised and lauded. McCarthy, who singlehandely prevented communism from infiltrating the state department and America is portrayed to be a "mad man." There is nothing mad about refusing communism....
WinePusher wrote:that all the framers were deist
Abraxas wrote:Many were. Would you rather we lie to children?
No, to be precise three of the framers were deists. Jefferson, Franklin and Paine. Many were theists and devout christians.

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Post #28

Post by Abraxas »

WinePusher wrote:
Abraxas wrote:The colonial powers were secular?
WinePusher wrote:The colonies burned a total 18-20 people
Abraxas wrote:You might want to check with the Native Americans, Aztecs, Mayans, and Incans about your figure of 18-20.
Actually, you're confusing two different things. I'm speaking in reference to the witch trials in which we burned 18-20 alleged witches. Our bad treatment of Native Americans had nothing to do with religion, it had everything to do with territory disputes and european disease.
No, you are confusing two different things. You were responding to me, I was talking about the colonial powers (not explicitly the colonies themselves) and their attempt to conquer North and South America, not to mention their sponsorship of the equally morally offensive slave trade.

The point, once again, is not that the Natives were wiped out for being of the wrong faith, the point is they were deliberately wiped out by people of your right faith, the people you claim, as Christians, should have a culture of life. Instead, we have the Conquistadors waging war against the Incans, the Mayans, and the Aztecs, the French and British claiming land (forcefully) out from under the North American Tribes, which then passed on to the US which resulted in things like the Trail of Tears. There are even accounts of small pox being deliberately spread to the native population to clear them out.
WinePusher wrote:Rights abuses! You joking, America violates human rights.......
Abraxas wrote:Yes. We support torture, kill democratically elected leaders, install dictators, fund terrorists, imprison huge sections of our population, etc.
No, we create a sensational feeling of drowning when American lives are at risk; come on, we're not even drowning them.
We do it more often than when lives are at risk. Further, it is still torture. We tried the Japanese for war crimes for using this following WWII. If we were actually drowning them, I would have mentioned something about murder by drowning.

Further, all evidence shows it doesn't even work as a mechanism for getting information making it not just torture but gratuitous torture.
We do not torture citizens who protest or belong to the opposite minority party. And I am unaware of the dictators we have installed and the democratically elected leaders we killed, I believe Saddam Hussein was executed by the Iraqi offcials.
Nicaragua would be a good example, where we aided more US friendly rebels in a coup of the democratically elected Sandinista between 1981 and 1990. The all time classic example, however, is the overthrow of democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and replacing him with the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. However, the list of these incidents is a good deal longer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_Uni ... ge_actions
I am completley unaware of the terrorists we supposedly fund.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_Affair

And we don't imprison huge sections of our population, huge sections of our population choose to be imprisoned due to their own choice to break the law. Do you think American laws are to harsh!
Yes. We have over a million people in jail for non-violent offenses. 400,000 people in jail for drug possession (not dealing). How is the freest country in the world has the greatest incarceration rate per capita? Are Americans just that bad of a people in your worldview?
Abraxas wrote:McCarthy was a madman. That is simple reality. Though, during my entire k-12 career I don't recall him coming up.
My point exactly. He is a madman because the marxists in academia portray him to be that way. Woodrow Wilson, who hurt this country beyond imagination, is praised and lauded. McCarthy, who singlehandely prevented communism from infiltrating the state department and America is portrayed to be a "mad man." There is nothing mad about refusing communism....
There is no evidence, none, that McCarthy had any success in doing anything about actual Communists. He did, however, ruin a lot of lives of American citizens through his rampant witch hunting stemming from paranoia. Anyone who got his attention, including decorated American war heroes like General Zwicker, were targets of accusations of communism and denounced. The methods he used were everything America was supposed to stand against, Star Chamber trials and the denial of civil rights. It is beyond me how people who claim to favor small government, civil liberties, the protection of the rights of the people, can hail mad dogs like McCarthy and the HCUA as heroic defenders of the American way when they are two of the greatest affronts to the the ideals of freedom and liberty the nation has ever endured.
WinePusher wrote:that all the framers were deist
Abraxas wrote:Many were. Would you rather we lie to children?
No, to be precise three of the framers were deists. Jefferson, Franklin and Paine. Many were theists and devout christians.
Incorrect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism#Deis ... ted_States

American Founding Fathers, or Framers of the Constitution, who were especially noted for being influenced by such philosophy include Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Cornelius Harnett, Gouverneur Morris, and Hugh Williamson. Their political speeches show distinct deistic influence. Other notable Founding Fathers may have been more directly deist. These include James Madison, John Adams, possibly Alexander Hamilton, Ethan Allen [38] and Thomas Paine (who published The Age of Reason, a treatise that helped to popularize deism throughout America and Europe). Elihu Palmer (1764–1806) wrote the "Bible" of American deism in his Principles of Nature (1801) and attempted to organize deism by forming the "Deistical Society of New York."

Certainly many were theists, many were Christians, but it would be inaccurate to dismiss deism as existing in only three of them.

WinePusher

Post #29

Post by WinePusher »

One last rebuttal, and then my closing statement.
Abraxas wrote:The point, once again, is not that the Natives were wiped out for being of the wrong faith, the point is they were deliberately wiped out by people of your right faith, the people you claim, as Christians, should have a culture of life.
Lets look at the people who actually maltreated the native americans, they were of course the conquistadors. To be very clear, their motives had nothing to do with their christianity, but their intent to gain territory, riches and so forth. You assume that if someone is a christian, they can't do anything bad or harm life. Well, thats obviously false.
Abraxas wrote:We do it more often than when lives are at risk.
Do we?
Abraxas wrote:Further, it is still torture.
It is torture, but you nor any other liberal can put it on par with actual torture. Nobody volunteers themselves to be tortured unless they realize the pain is sustainable, such as Christopher Hitchens.
Abraxas wrote:Yes. We have over a million people in jail for non-violent offenses.
Because they committed non violent crimes. Do you think that non violent crime should not be prosecuted?
Abraxas wrote:400,000 people in jail for drug possession (not dealing).

Hm...because it is illegal to possess drugs. So, if you do something that is illegal you get punished. If you don't think that drug possession is a crime, then take it up with your congressman.
Abraxas wrote:How is the freest country in the world has the greatest incarceration rate per capita? Are Americans just that bad of a people in your worldview?
Hey, you could put a bunch of restrictions on your child and they would never get into trouble. Or you could give your child the freedom to do anything, and they'll be more likely to get into trouble. Which would you rather have for this country, more restrictions on freedom and less incarcerations rates?
Abraxas wrote:There is no evidence, none, that McCarthy had any success in doing anything about actual Communists.
His so called paranoia has been vindicated by the Venona Papers.
Abraxas wrote:Certainly many were theists, many were Christians, but it would be inaccurate to dismiss deism as existing in only three of them.
I stand by what I said, we know of only three deist framers. I use the word "know" with certainty. The others you mention are pure speculation. And by the way, I think its safe to say that none were atheists, all believed in a Creator and the divine providence of this country.

WinePusher's Closing Argument:

I thank Abraxas for accepting this H2H challenge. Abraxas has shown himself to be a very capable and intelligent debater and he gave me a run for my money, but I believe he is wrong on a few key points.

The christianity of Hitler was a big factor in this debate, and I argued that his faith was disingenuious and a propoganda tool to gain support from the churches. My evidence are his private statements made to his circle of generals and officials in which he seemed to scorn christianity and his statement in Mine Kampf in which he says he will do anything to gain power. However, Abraxas seems to think that because he claimed to be christian, and WWII Germany was a christian nation, that christianity does not promote a culture of life. But, he failed to show a direct causal relationship between the state and church, and he failed to show that the death tolls of the holocaust are a burden of Christianity. The fact is, Hitler's motivation to exterminate the Jews would more likely be inspired by Secular Eugenics and Darwinism.

On the topic of abortion, the majority of the people who support this practice seem to be people of no faith. Prominent secularists would be John Holdreen and Peter Singer. Today, the Catholic Church, and conservative christian churches ranging from the Baptists, Lutherans and Evangelicals generally oppose abortion while liberal churches such as the Reformed Episcopals and Anglicans support abortion. The bible speaks to abortion many times, but Araxas thinks that the bible does not teach that a fetus is a life because one verse says that killing a fetus is not as severe as killing a life. This is a hasty generalization, and my claim that the bible does teach that a fetus is a life is supported by multiple verses listed throughout this thread.

As For America and communism. The fact remains that this country was founded on God, no framer rejected the notion that God exists. Modern American society is still predominatly christians, and most of our leaders are also christians. The fact that Christianity is a huge part of our culture is the reason why this country has not gone the way of a communist USSR or China. China, Indochina, Cuba, North Korea, Soviet Russia and Venezuela are all nations that violate humans rights, civil liberties, kill and promote death. What do they all have in common? Secularism (the lack of religion), a core principle for communists. From all these secular experiments, we can conclude that life is not valued nor cherished to be sacred.

Dealing with charity and philanthropy. A book authored by a scholar at AEI documents that christians give more charity than secularists. This is probably because a key christian doctrine is charity. It is an unfortunate state of the human condition is that people generally do not act good for goodness sake. Thus, the reason why churches organize food drives and run soup kitchens is because the motivation comes from their faith. What motivation does atheism offer a person to do good. In fact, on the atheists worldview, we are merely evolved animals with no objective purpose or reason, showing it to be a dim worldview without a glimspe of hope.

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Post #30

Post by Abraxas »

I also would like to thank Winepusher for inviting me to participate in this head to head debate. I would also like to thank the readers who have been following this since it began; it has been fun taking part and I hope it has been an enjoyable read and I am going to miss it now that it is over. All good things...

This debate started with a simple question, which is better for society, Christianity or secularism? Though our positions differed and the topic ranged broadly (too broadly in my opinion in some places) our approach was roughly equivalent. We each ended up working to promote a single advantage our choice has while neutralizing any advantage the other claimed. For his part, he stated Christianity promotes a culture of life and respect, mine was that secularism maximizes knowledge and societal advancement. Now, in my closing remarks, I would like to analyze how I felt each of us did.

What I find most interesting on the culture of life debate is neither one of us really spent very much time talking about promoting life, but rather, comparing atrocities. Winepusher spent a great deal of time discussing the evils perpetrated by the Communist dictators and Hitler (despite no evidence emerging showing any connection between Hitler and secularism, nor Darwin as Winepusher asserted), while, for my part, I zeroed in on the Feudal Monarchs and their Holy Wars, the Holocaust carried out by a Christian population, the systematic murder of the population of two continents by colonial Christian powers, the Inquisitions, the Salem Witch Trials, the slave trade, and so on. In the end, in a debate about life we spent the majority of our time on death.

Besides comparative body counts, we discussed topics of morality, for which Winepusher asserted Christianity, and then later conservative Christianity, formed the best bedrock. Again, on this, I attempted to maintain the offense, poking holes in the idea Christianity was any better than secularism, or even internally consistent. On abortion, I pointed out the Catholic Church has a long history of waffling on the topic, changing views to blend with the political landscape, and that the Bible indicates a fetus is not considered a person to begin with. Beyond even that, however, the majority of American Christians are, or until very recently were, pro-choice.

After initially using euthanasia as an example of anti-life values, he conceded he, a Christian, too supports it in it's most common form. We then went several rounds about playing God, that humans controlling who lives and who dies per their own standards is bad or not, with the vast majority of cases falling into the category of things we do every day due to a human bias to protect life.

Additionally, Winepusher attempted to claim secularism devalues human life. If anything, this debate has shown the opposite is true. He pointed to the evils of Communism in a hasty generalization fallacy to attempt to paint all secular societies. However, as demonstrated by the secular trends in modern Europe we explored, we know this isn't true. By his own admission Winepusher stated Europe does not devalue life. We further established European nations have more measures in place to protect the lives and well being of their worst off citizens than nations like the US do.

Does Christianity promote a culture of life? I don't think we can say it does. Nothing we have seen of Christianity indicates it changes the behavior for the positive, nothing we have seen indicates Christian societies are less prone to violence, or oppression, or human rights abuses. Unfortunately, this seemed to be the whole of his argument, and, so, on it alone I feel no advantage has been established.

On the other side of things, I had two arguments going. The minor argument was in regards to promotion of human happiness. Those who do not share the faith, those who deviate from it are the victims of persecution. We see this today in homosexuality, where Christianity has made and continues to make a concerted effort to deny equal rights, deny equal ability to practice their faith, deny them the capacity to marry someone they love that is taken for granted by the majority of society. The only defense offered against this is the traditional definition of marriage, something that never existed. Polygamy, interracial marriage, divorce, whether the woman was considered property, whether the man had to recompense the woman's family, etc. have all changed, up into the 60s and 70s. As such, I think appealing to tradition an inadequate shield to cover up the innate homophobia and actual motivation by religious dogma and hope you will agree.

The major argument I put forward was that Christianity is the dominant force in promoting ignorance right now in the US and western world. Because of ancient dogma, certain religious beliefs have been promoted as factual that logic and evidence can no longer (and never could) sustain. We know from science the universe and Earth are many billions of years old. We know evolution took place to create the biodiversity we see on our planet. We know we are not the center of the universe. However, what we know, what we can prove, is what many in the Christian community want to see hidden or destroyed because it contradicts their superstitions.

Further, many wish to obscure and stop medical knowledge. The Catholic Church has a sea of blood on its hands for fighting the attempts to educate people in Africa about safe sex and contraception as mechanisms to fight AIDS and further attempts to fight the development of new treatments from things like stem cells that could save lives and heal grievous, life altering injuries. Christianity was largely responsible for the spread of the Black Death because they believed cats were the familiars of witches and the plague was a punishment from God, and so the cats were killed, not knowing the cats were the only thing standing between them and the real culprits, rats carrying diseased ticks.

Historically, many times forbidden knowledge or speech has been censured by the church, harsh penalties imposed upon those who would speak it as per Galileo. Secularism has no such restrictions. By divorcing ourselves from the dogmas and the superstition, we, as a species, are open to seeking the truth, wherever it may lead us. We can freely admit we do not have the answers to the big questions, we do not need to restrain ourselves from treading on God's toes. We can model our society in the fashion that best serves the people, not one that best serves scripture. We can examine what works best for society and incorporate it through reason, not reject it in service of faith.

Magical thinking will not build tomorrow. We will not bring in a brighter future by praying for it. Disease will not cease, knowledge not reveal itself, the hungry not be fed by faith, but by action, by reason, by objectively analyzing the problem and taking thoughtful, reasonable, rational steps towards a solution. I asked Winepusher if Christianity would exist today were children unable to think for themselves not indoctrinated with it, a question he would not answer. I think it evident that the path of reason takes us far from the lands of faith and that in a world where critical thinking is the lesson we pass to our children Christianity will not exist.

Finally, I want to call attention to a relatively minor exchange from earlier in the thread where Winepusher endorsed the separation of church and state. If Christianity is correct, if the morals and lessons are just, why must we divorce it from our governance? Why desire a secular government over a Christian theocracy? I believe I have shown why. For the society that best promotes the cause of freedom, the cause of knowledge, the cause of justice, the cause of its people, when left with the choice of turning over control of the nation to superstition and magical thinking or to govern with reason and logic, and if our nation, why not our lives, the clear choice is secularism.

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