Unseen

Unseen wrote:

Humans are primates. An animal. Religion pretends that we are a special animal, endowed by our creator as a soul and the gift or curse of knowing good and evil and having to male the right choices. However, animals don’t judge each other creatures as good or evil as species OR individuals. Are we somehow qualitatively different f…

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Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

What would you call or label the absence of evil?

Heaven? Which further defines “evil” as a human invention and not a “thing.”

Strega wrote:

The proper antonym of ‘good’ is ‘bad’. The term ‘evil’ is a giving up of the possibility to make the ‘bad’ become less so, or even good. It’s populism can most probably be linked to religion or group thinking. There is no real antonym to ‘evil’ I don’t believe in ‘evil’, I think it’s a perjurative term.

You need t…[Read more]

Davis wrote:

As for the identity of the consciousness (is it yours? are you still you?)

No. Is another person physically just like me…me?

I think that ultimately there can be no answer to this question. It’s logically unanalyzable.

If I blink out of existence and another “me” wakes up elsewhere thinking it’s me, it may think it’s me but…[Read more]

I’m afraid of any animal that can kill me and is avoidable (it’s hard to avoid mosquitos, which can kill me). Don’t put me in a room with a jaguar or grizzly bear or in a tank with a tiger shark.

Simon Paynton wrote:

Wasn’t there such a thing as an Eve? I’ve heard somewhere that all of humans are descended from 7 individuals, or something similar. It’s a common idea that there was at least one population “bottleneck” somewhere in ancient Homo sapiens history, which is not at all surprising, considering how every other species of human has…

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Bellen wrote:

@unseen

Most people who want guns will cite self-protection as a reason for wanting firearms. Howeverl I think even gun proponents would agree that the most useful firearm for self protection, in most circumstances, is not a rifle, shotgun, or assault-style weapon (like the AR-15), but rather a simple handgun.

It really depends on…

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HOW IS THE 2ND AMENDMENT *NOT* A MAJOR PART OF AMERICA’S GUN PROBLEM? LET’S ASK THE FOUNDING FATHERS.

Of course, we have a President and a major party (you know which one) who won’t even ADMIT there’s a gun problem. They won’t even say the words “We have a gun problem here in the United States.” Instead it’s crazy people problem. That from a…[Read more]

Bellen wrote:

As a forensic psychologist in training, my own clinical perspective is that this boy was a WALKING red flag. And the FBI fucked up by NOT doing their job when they were informed about him.

There is really nothing effective that “their job” would have let them do to prevent the shooting. Until he killed 17 people, he had the same…[Read more]

Strega wrote:

I don’t know, Unseen. I seriously could not tell you whether giving food would work better than delivering bombs. I do think the attitude would be flavored differently though, for both the donors and the recipients.

“Let them eat cake!”

PopeBeanie wrote:

Fortunately, reason outweighs religious prescription in most state legislation wrt end of life rights. I think it’s reasonable to discount religious claims in all legislation, and it’s reasonable to use some of the end of life definitions to beginning of life law, per state… especially wrt measurable brain activity.

A good defin…[Read more]

Matt wrote:

@unseen WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING IN ALL OF YOUR RECENT POST’S TITLES?

When does a life begin?

Interesting question, consider this: There is an unbroken chain of living beings from our earliest common ancestor to us. To reproduce, a living sperm and a living egg come from living parents and produce a living child. So, when does a life b…

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Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

In am listing to the argument in Ireland for over 30 years now!! Did anyone hear anything about this definition of “personhood” that was slipped into the Tax Bill? (from last Sunday School).

Like I said, Reg, it’s a matter of opinion and values and from opinions and values definitions are crafted.

There exists no…[Read more]

But there are anti-abortion protests in the UK.

Strega wrote:

I wonder how many food and medicine packages we could drop instead of bombs, for the price.

Wouldn’t that simply underline the idea that those of us in the Christian West are the haves vs. the have-nots we are deigning to bless with our charitable donation of food and medicine?

We’ll have to see how it plays out. It may be that if Palestinian leaders see possible defeat on the horizon, they may come back to the table and make concessions that bring an end to the impasse. The opposite may happen, too.

A couple things are for sure: 1) Americans abroad, whether working in embassies and consulates, or simply touring, will…[Read more]