Posted on 07/15/2014 9:37:28 AM PDT by EternalVigilance
Not at all, there’s nothing about a soul, of mystical rewards in what I said. It’s simple understandable science. Barring birth defects and genetic oddities people come out with a range of highly predictable physical and mental attributes. AKA “equal”. Among those attributes are the ability (need actually, because physically we’re a pretty pathetic species and our survival relies heavily and clustering) to organize ourselves. And part of that ability to organize is the ability to see that the current organization sucks, time to try again. Don’t need any kind of God for that, every social animal on the planet has some form of ability to change how they’re organized.
Nope. Stands up fine. Because it’s built on self evident truths, and they remain self evident without mysticism. We can see that humans (and other animals) seek happiness and security. We can see that they form governments. We can see that they overthrow those governments when the government fails them. All self evident without any concept of God.
Oh, what a happy accident.
The writers of the Declaration were not talking about equality of physical and mental attributes. They were asserting as self-evident truth equality of God-given, and therefore unalienable, rights.
Don’t you just love it when others tell you they know what you believe better than you do?
If the only counter argument you have is an insult you don’t actually have a counter argument. You really just admitted you’re wrong, that the facts and logic don’t support you.
Does this offend your sense of justice?
Why do you care?
Where did you acquire that sense?
From the article:
"...atheists tend to exhibit the same sociological, psychological dependence on the intangible as religious folk do, even if the former reject the existence of anything supernatural."
Your argument has no basis except self reference.
I’m surprised that someone who inherently claims intellectual superiority can’t see the baselessness of a self-referencing argument.
That’s pretty much the one thing they do that bugs me. Don’t really care if people have religion, just don’t try to tell me what I think. I don’t say “well you’re Christian therefore...”, it would be rude even though I spent some time on that side of the fence and have a pretty good grip on it.
Not at all. I’ve pointed the fact that we can CHANGE how the brain works. That’s not self referential, that’s proof of concept. If I say “well if things work the way I think when I do X and Y then Z will happen” and I do X and Y and sure enough there goes Z that’s proof.
I never claimed intellectual superiority. So far all your arguments against me are based in serious misreads and misunderstanding of basic logic and language. Now we know why you went for the insult.
They were religious, so their writing was bent that way. But the concept holds just fine without religion. As I pointed out, there is self evident SCIENCE of our basic equality, and our basic actions and reactions.
Science can describe similarities of physical qualities between human beings. But it cannot explain the existence of human beings, or any moral basis for equality of rights between those human beings.
We can explain the existence of humans just fine. And we don’t need a moral basis for equality of rights, we have a practical basis. Equal rights maximizes your society’s output, because you have more people in a position to contribute to the full extent of their ability. The more of your society that gets deliberately held back the less of your society that is producing and inventing and just generally supporting it. There was a great article about a decade ago talking about how Islamic treatment of women holds their society back, by telling over half their society no when it comes to pretty much everything they’ve turned half their society into deadweight, they have specifically outlawed Madame Curie and Lady Ada.
Equal rights is just plain good business.
We all worship something. For many it is the god in their belly.
So, you don’t really care about the rights of others, as any sort of moral imperative, but only because you believe it will serve your own utilitarian self-interest.
I mean, why else would you care about “society”?
How about the rights of those who aren’t “in a position to contribute to the full extent of their ability”?
How about the rights of those who cannot contribute anything at all?
Are they disposable?
Why not?
For most, I think.
“In the last days men will be lovers of themselves...”
What if it becomes "bad business," ie, like Malthus, you think we have too many people, which is therefore a detriment to what you call "society"?
This is very interesting and if I may say is something I’ve been saying for a while. Every man is hard wired for God because he is created by God to love and serve him.
In this way it can be said that the human heart is an objective reality that is either suppressed or reduced into some form or degree of atheism or is acknowledged and embraced in its true unfettered nature. Thus it’s not the heart that is subjective but rather our approach and response to its needs.
Even atheists can now apparently see this. At least some of them. Maybe there’s hope yet.
Maybe but that is not biblical.
Luke 12
From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.
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