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Night FM

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Everything posted by Night FM

  1. I know the demographic I'm talking about, and it goes beyond simply suffering from "social ineptitude". Essentially, it's a demographic that thinks they're entitled to sex from women (e.x. because they're a "nice guy") and resents women due to not getting the sex they believe they're entitled to (e.x. "women like jerks; I can't get laid because I'm too nice"), possibly even going so far as believing that the government should force prostitutes to have sex with them because they can't get laid.
  2. No, your strawman aside, for centuries it's been a case of elites asserting the superiority of one race over the other. Whites over the case of blacks in the context of much of American history. Rather, when it comes to facts, idiots will observe some "difference" and use it to form an erroneous worldview based on the difference. People could just as easily observe physical differences between members of the same "race" or even the same immediate family, and many of the conclusions they could form based on these differences would be just as erroneous. "Elites" is just a term used and abused in the context of populist rhetoric, the users of which do not seem to hold the same opinion of their own "elites" who feed them said rhetoric. And it seems that the one attempting to create division along the lines of race here is you, by making a blanket statement that "differences exist" without substantiating what you believe the differences to be, or what they actually mean in the real world.
  3. No, it's pretty simple. If your argument is essentially that, prior to viability, a fetus is merely "part of a woman's body", then fair enough. However, if your argument ignores defining a human life altogether, and is essentially apathetic to whether or not a human life exists merely because it physically depends on the woman's body, then my analogy still applies. A born child will die if it isn't provided care, so it likewise depends on its parents, and naturally we have laws which require a minimum standard of parental care for born children. That's assuming that "differences" don't amount to stereotypes or hasty generalizations. If you're talking about physical differences, then this boils down to minor differences in anatomy and melanin levels, which are pretty insignificant to the human condition as a whole. If you're talking about something along the lines of differences in crime statistics between black and white people, then you'd be naive to think that some people don't take this and use it to form a denigrating worldview such as that "black people are more violent than white people", when in reality there would be more differences between socioeconomic levels, and we could easily change the paradigm from which we evaluate things altogether (e.x. if we compared the differences between "white skinheads" and "black Harvard graduates", we'd see higher rates of crime, drug use, and poverty among the former demographic than among the latter one).
  4. Well, it's debatable that a born infant can live separately from the mother, in the sense that it will die if the mother doesn't provide it with care. So the "viability" seems like an arbitrary definition, and that definitions grounded in the biology of the fetus itself would make for stronger arguments.
  5. No, the issue concerns defining a human life as separate from the woman.
  6. That argument is predicated on defining abortion as solely an issue concerned with women's bodies. If we ignore any motive to oppose abortion which is based on simply wanting to encourage procreation, and frame it in terms of an issue concerning existing life and at what point life begins, then obviously the issue isn't one which is solely concerned with women's bodies.
  7. Well, you would have to understand something. Obviously, the Bible itself came after any of the events recorded in it, and was written in a day and age where most people were illiterate, so specifically having to read the Bible to be a Christian isn't a required. (A heretical thing that many do is put the Bible before God and Christ, which is akin to a form of idolatry, and may have originated in Catholicism). But I'd argue that some attempt at understanding the concepts mentioned in the Bible would be required. Otherwise the term "Christian" is completely meaningless beyond an elective form of self-identification. My understanding is that Christ had strict requirements to be one of this 12 disciples, such as requiring them to leave their families and devote their lives to living and studying from him. To me, this seems to tie in with the practices of religious renunciates who devoted their lives to God and lived simple lives without many material possessions, which may have been what one had to do to be truly saved. In history, it seems that only a minority of the population at any given time lived this way, so I would seeing it as requiring more self-sacrifice than simply being an ordinary person who tries to apply Christian principles to daily life. However, these aspects of the life of Christ and his disciples have been dumbed down simply because the truth of what was required to be a disciple wouldn't sell to the masses and make money for those who pander to the market of mass consumption, and anyone can call themselves a "disciple" even if their lifestyle doesn't fit the bill. History seems to be rife with religion being dumbed down to make it sellable to the masses, such as in the days of the Catholic Church prior to the Reformation, which is why I'm skeptical of the utility of marketing religion to the masses at all. Christ said not to cast pearls at swine, after all.
  8. True. I'm just armchair imagining what I would do if I was a dictator, but realistically it will never happen and overall society would fare worse under a dictator. I also like taking ideas about fascism and turning them against people who identify as fascists (e.x. classifying the racists as the undesirables rather than whichever race they happen to dislike). Though I'm still pondering the idea that "human rights" shouldn't be automatically assumed simply on the basis of being "homo sapien". If an incel or a racist hates women or black people, for example, then IMO they lack redeeming human qualities, since there is more than enough knowledge that women and people of all races are equal in terms of their humanity. So for a person who is legally an "adult" to be able to maintain such as view would require a serious depravity in humanity, and would lead me to view them as less than human despite their biology.
  9. While I don't consider this a serious proposal, these are my thoughts on how totalitarianism could have beneficial social effects in the right situations. It's purely a devil's advocate argument. Everyone is treated as equal and human under the law, but obviously people aren't equal in terms of other qualities. As an example, the type of people who identify as "incels" are obviously defective in most if not all redeeming human traits. Whether this is a product of bad genetics, bad environment, bad character, or a combination of multiple factors, I'm not sure, and it is probably multifaceted. But, regardless, I don't see any redeeming value in allowing such individuals to exist in society even if they haven't actually committed a crime, and I feel like the merciful thing to do would be to simply disallow them to exist as they currently do. If I had the authority, I would be tempted to simply have them executed, or at least have all of their human rights removed and them reduced to the status of second-class citizens, possibly allowing for them to perform forced labor. This would all be done legally and on the books, no one would be committing any vigilante violence against incels, white supremacists, and the like. They would simply de-classified as human altogether, and legally it wouldn't be any different than putting rabid animals to sleep. So while totalitarianism ultimately would do social harm than good, I can see it having social utility in a scenario like this. The subhuman state of existence that some individuals reside in simply isn't something a better human would consider worth living, so if society was slightly less liberal in their application of the definition of "human rights", it might make the world a cleaner place, provided that it was able to only be applied in scenarios like this (e.x. exterminating incels, white supremacists, and other undesirables), rather than in the whole context of society.
  10. Right, but you could say that about anything. Most people don't believe in science because they've discovered any scientific theories on their own, they believe it because they were taught that such things are true in the culture they were born into, and probably would have believed whatever they were taught was true or scientific if they had been born into any other culture or era.
  11. No, I specifically mentioned Lawrence Krauss as one example.
  12. Right, so in other words you have people using nonscientific terms like "chaos" to describe the origin of the universe. Proving my point. I'm not sure why someone will change their belief that rape is wrong when presented with better evidence. (But maybe it's better that they don't).
  13. But I haven't said anything about the science, merely things other people say about it that misunderstand it. As an example which can be sourced, Lawrence Kraus says that he likes to think that the world is "chaotic", but as mentioned in the OP, this has nothing to do with Chaos theory, and if anything is closer to the ancient Greek myth of "Chaos" being the originator of the universe rather than anything "scientific". So when you even have scientists themselves bastardizing it, let alone people on social media, it lends one to be skeptical.
  14. My understanding is perfectly fine and often better.
  15. Right, so the position they're coming from often isn't one of understanding. And I'm not talking about professionals in a field, but merely the "casual atheist" on social media who may have no understanding of the topic beyond what they learned in primary school or read in a Twitter post. I think most biologists who've used the theory of evolution would believe it even if they hadn't been indoctrinated into it, but that a good chunk of atheists would just as easily believe what the Medieval Church told them was true if they had been born during that era.
  16. I'd argue the issue is what it controls and prevents people from doing, not that "it does". Given that laws do the same thing, and most sane people wouldn't say people should be able to do "everything" they might want to do to begin with (e.x. most wouldn't say a rapist should be allowed to rape simply because "he likes doing it"). It's a fairly popular criticism, so I don't think I need to attribute it to a specific source.
  17. That's just gender-baiting and doesn't attempt to subjectively define terms like "misogyny" or how they could be "over". If misogyny is a view that some people hold, then while people can discourage behavior and change laws that align with misogyny, I'm not sure how one could prevent individuals determined to hold such a view from doing so. Especially given that the views may originate in the individuals themselves rather than some element of wider society which can be effectively addressed, such as by legislation. If anything, education is probably the best remedy to misogynistic views. This also doesn't address the reasons or the necessity for marketing subject matter such as fitness specifically to men or to women, when the subject matter is a broad enough category that it should generally be applicable to both men and women.
  18. The biology is irrelevant, since classifications aren't mutually exclusive, and this doesn't bother to address arguments whether or not explaining life as originating from nature alone is sufficient. (Another example which comes to mind is atheists stating that abiogenesis originated life, when in actuality it didn't. The science only shows that it originated certain components of life). You could, for example, classify a Honda and a Ferrari the same on the basis of having "4 wheels", or differently on the basis of differences in horsepower. If one is insisting on one classification over the other (e.x. the "4 wheels" classification), then that begs the question as to why.
  19. As an example, we could categories living things based on their needs as per Maslow's hierarchy. Presumably, most animals needs would fall into those lower on the hierarchy (e.x. material needs) while humans would be distinct from other animals due to having needs higher on the hierarchy. The statement "humans are animals" isn't "true" beyond how people choose to arbitrarily classify them. It doesn't matter that "similarities between humans and animals exist". This doesn't beget a need to classify humans on the basis of those similarities, when they could just as easily be classified an infinite number of ways based on an infinite number of similarities or differences.
  20. As mentioned already, "animals" is simply a classification invented by humans based on shared similarities, and we could just as easily classify humans as something different altogether. So the statement that "humans are animals" is only as true as people decide it is. (If we decided on a completely different system of zoological classification, we could decide that humans are something else altogether).
  21. This is what I arrived at by taking part of the Epicurean paradox and reversing it. (In some quotes, I've heard it argued that God is malevolent if he is able and not willing to prevent evil, though according to Wikipedia, it argues that God is "not completely benevolent"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurean_paradox Therefore, if God is able to prevent good, but not willing to do so. God is not completely malevolent. Or that if God is both able and willing to prevent good, then where does good come from? I think this would make a good counter to arguments that "God is evil" merely because of the existence of evil or on the basis of God "having created evil". To be consistent, one would have to argue that God is not "completely evil" even if they would still argue that God is not completely benevolent. Or likewise, if God was "completely evil", then he presumably would be able and willing to prevent any good from occurring (which would raise the question as to where good comes from)?
  22. My understanding is that this is a more modern definition, and "evil" in Biblical senses of the word could refer to any form of adversity or hardship experienced by man, not just intentionally cruel behavior by humans. Therefore, the "problem of evil" isn't limited solely to evil acts committed by humans, but to any hardship or adversity which humans suffer, such as natural disasters. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/evil causing harm : pernicious
  23. The similarities are irrelevant to what I'm arguing. So they are not being "dismissed" in the sense of being said to be "not there", but are merely being deemphasized in favor of the differences. For example, a Honda Civic and a Ferrari both have "4 wheels", but if I were to emphasize the difference in horsepower, this wouldn't be claiming that they don't share the same number of wheels.
  24. It would be hard to, because these are mostly anecdotal examples from social media. If we use history as an example, it has been argued that Hitler used evolution to argue in favor of Nazi ideology: https://www.csustan.edu/history/was-hitler-influenced-darwinism
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