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On April 07 2013 02:08 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2013 18:44 McBengt wrote:On April 06 2013 18:36 koreasilver wrote:On April 06 2013 18:06 McBengt wrote:On April 06 2013 17:02 sc2superfan101 wrote:On April 06 2013 13:17 Leporello wrote:
It's a government building. It's a school. You don't need a picture of Jesus. It isn't tyrannical to ask you to keep your religion to yourself. It's common sense and mutual respect. In what way is it tyrannical to put up a picture of Jesus, or a cross, or the Ten Commandments? And in what way is it not tyrannical to decide, upon a whim, that all people must be silent about their faith because you yourself are uncomfortable with their possessing said faith? Yes, christians in the US are generally so timid and demure about their faith. It's illegal, pure and simple. It has nothing to do with tyranny, or propriety. It's about the very american notion that no religion takes precedence over any other, something that should be a no-brainer for any self-respecting conservative. Either you recognize all religions equally or none of them. America chose, wisely, to go with none. The idea that rights can only be certain and true if they come from god is abhorrent, it's reductionist and self-deprecating to the point of servility. What gave christianty the monopoly on human rights? Or any religion? Our humanism and our altriusm come from ourselves, to attribute it to some greater being without which we would be lost to barbarism is a horrible notion, it demeans and degrades us. A secular state is the only moral state, and the US being the first truly secular nation should be a point of pride. One must be very suspicious of this given the history of human thought. Our secularism, our notion of human rights, universal rights, equality, etc. are not naturally given. They are artificial and they operate under a form of myth. The West has grown up on this for centuries now and take it as given when it is still very precarious and fragile. The Enlightenment myth, not matter how valuable and how beautiful it may be, with all its intellectualism, scientific rigor, and above all its romance and ideals, is still fundamentally, a myth. Westerners are much too complacent on this, I think; too much is taken for granted. and the probably the most fundamentally misunderstood concept: secularism still is not truly atheistic. This is incorrect. Animals of all kinds instinctively help each other, even animals from other species. Humans cooperated and shared with each other long before any of today's major religions came about. Altriusm and compassion are genetically hardwired into our brains It's not a myth, it's evolutionary biology. Solidarity is desirable trait, and found over and over in numerous different species, ours included. This is pretty much exactly what I was talking about, this idea that all good things we do can be directly attributed to either a deity or a specific philosophy. It's horrid, and patently untrue. Edit: Secularism simply means you don't recognize religions, not that you dismiss them. It's more a MO than an opinion. Look, it's clear you become upset in the face of being told that anything to do with humanity is linked with religion, but that does not give you license to state scientific theory as fact, particularly in the face of all the divergent research on the subject. I realize that I'll be citing wikipedia here, but I think one will find that their sourcing rigor in regards to this subject is pretty thorough. To put it simply, evolutionary biology and sociobiology are still fledgling in their understandings of the source of altruism. You won't find a scientist who will simply tell you "morality is genetic" (that is, unless he has books to sell) because even though there is evidence to suggest that genetics and biological imperative play a role in formulation of morality and ethics, none of them would be stupid enough to claim that morality is essentially genetic; science literally cannot tell us that morality is essentially genetic, for that would require that it be able to go back in time, excise all notions of religiosity from mankind's history, and then perfectly recreate the world we live in today. Consider this notion. Show nested quote +Psychologist Matt J. Rossano muses that religion emerged after morality and built upon morality by expanding the social scrutiny of individual behavior to include supernatural agents. By including ever watchful ancestors, spirits and gods in the social realm, humans discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and building more cooperative groups.[13] The adaptive value of religion would have enhanced group survival. Or this. Show nested quote +There is general agreement among cognitive scientists that religion is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved early in human history. However, there is disagreement on the exact mechanisms that drove the evolution of the religious mind. The two main schools of thought hold that either religion evolved due to natural selection and has selective advantage, or that religion is an evolutionary byproduct of other mental adaptations.[18] Stephen Jay Gould, for example, believed that religion was an exaptation or a spandrel, in other words that religion evolved as byproduct of psychological mechanisms that evolved for other reasons.[19][20][21]
Such mechanisms may include the ability to infer the presence of organisms that might do harm (agent detection), the ability to come up with causal narratives for natural events (etiology), and the ability to recognize that other people have minds of their own with their own beliefs, desires and intentions (theory of mind). These three adaptations (among others) allow human beings to imagine purposeful agents behind many observations that could not readily be explained otherwise, e.g. thunder, lightning, movement of planets, complexity of life, etc.[22] The emergence of collective religious belief identified the agents as deities that standardized the explanation.
Some scholars have suggested that religion is genetically "hardwired" into the human condition. One controversial hypothesis, the God gene hypothesis, states that some variants of a specific gene, the VMAT2 gene, predispose to spirituality.[23] If you are truly interested in getting a better grasp on such things I highly recommend the wikipedia links I'll provide below. I'm not here to attribute the development of human morality to any one philosophy or belief system, only that the historical procession of morality as we know it worked in and around notions of religion and spirituality. There even exists a viable scientific theory that suggests that religion is an adaptive benefit to the evolving human! The moral of the story is that science, morality, and our understanding of evolution in history are not finished telling each other things yet, and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Evolutionary origin of religionsEvolution of moralityScience of morality
I will assume you know the difference between a scientific theory and a more mundane one. Maybe you meant hypothesis? I was not upset btw, I was disagreeing.
I see the evidence, incomplete and ambiguous as it is, to be solid enough to convince me that what we would call modern humanitarianism to be a product of natural selection. I am not disputing that religion may be too, I have read most of the stuff in those links already. Religion and superstition may well have been an effective tool to encourage/coerce behaviour benefiting the tribe rather than the individual. But this kind of behaviour is frequently observed in animals as well, who would have no concept of the supernatural or divine. So that would lead me to conclude it is likely a product of natural selection, a desirable trait independent of higher cognitive functions or even basic reasoning.
I'm not claiming that I know, or that the science on the topic is unequivocal enough for a definitive call. I have made an informed assumption, basically.
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On April 07 2013 15:22 ey215 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2013 15:13 Sermokala wrote:
They made a law that wasn't enforceable and they never intended it on being anything but a gesture.
And it lowers crime by 89%. Fucking south how does it work. I'm a criminal, I know a city in my area has a larger likelihood of the homeowners being armed. Do I go there to break into someone's house or do I go to the nearby town with a lower likelihood? Again, I wouldn't claim causation in the case of Kennesaw's crime rate but there are plenty of "symbolic" laws in place all over the country, not just in the South. This just happens to be on of the sexier ones since it has to do with guns.
Guns only deter stupid criminals. Smarter ones will case a place and break in when no one is home. A gun will not protect your home if no one is there to use it.
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On April 07 2013 22:38 Adila wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2013 15:22 ey215 wrote:On April 07 2013 15:13 Sermokala wrote:
They made a law that wasn't enforceable and they never intended it on being anything but a gesture.
And it lowers crime by 89%. Fucking south how does it work. I'm a criminal, I know a city in my area has a larger likelihood of the homeowners being armed. Do I go there to break into someone's house or do I go to the nearby town with a lower likelihood? Again, I wouldn't claim causation in the case of Kennesaw's crime rate but there are plenty of "symbolic" laws in place all over the country, not just in the South. This just happens to be on of the sexier ones since it has to do with guns. Guns only deter stupid criminals. Smarter ones will case a place and break in when no one is home. A gun will not protect your home if no one is there to use it.
I have nothing to back this up...but I'd guess that most criminals would fall under the category of "stupid criminal", and even if 90% of the criminals are "smart" criminals, I'd still like to be able to deter that 10%.
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On April 07 2013 19:28 McBengt wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2013 02:08 farvacola wrote:On April 06 2013 18:44 McBengt wrote:On April 06 2013 18:36 koreasilver wrote:On April 06 2013 18:06 McBengt wrote:On April 06 2013 17:02 sc2superfan101 wrote:On April 06 2013 13:17 Leporello wrote:
It's a government building. It's a school. You don't need a picture of Jesus. It isn't tyrannical to ask you to keep your religion to yourself. It's common sense and mutual respect. In what way is it tyrannical to put up a picture of Jesus, or a cross, or the Ten Commandments? And in what way is it not tyrannical to decide, upon a whim, that all people must be silent about their faith because you yourself are uncomfortable with their possessing said faith? Yes, christians in the US are generally so timid and demure about their faith. It's illegal, pure and simple. It has nothing to do with tyranny, or propriety. It's about the very american notion that no religion takes precedence over any other, something that should be a no-brainer for any self-respecting conservative. Either you recognize all religions equally or none of them. America chose, wisely, to go with none. The idea that rights can only be certain and true if they come from god is abhorrent, it's reductionist and self-deprecating to the point of servility. What gave christianty the monopoly on human rights? Or any religion? Our humanism and our altriusm come from ourselves, to attribute it to some greater being without which we would be lost to barbarism is a horrible notion, it demeans and degrades us. A secular state is the only moral state, and the US being the first truly secular nation should be a point of pride. One must be very suspicious of this given the history of human thought. Our secularism, our notion of human rights, universal rights, equality, etc. are not naturally given. They are artificial and they operate under a form of myth. The West has grown up on this for centuries now and take it as given when it is still very precarious and fragile. The Enlightenment myth, not matter how valuable and how beautiful it may be, with all its intellectualism, scientific rigor, and above all its romance and ideals, is still fundamentally, a myth. Westerners are much too complacent on this, I think; too much is taken for granted. and the probably the most fundamentally misunderstood concept: secularism still is not truly atheistic. This is incorrect. Animals of all kinds instinctively help each other, even animals from other species. Humans cooperated and shared with each other long before any of today's major religions came about. Altriusm and compassion are genetically hardwired into our brains It's not a myth, it's evolutionary biology. Solidarity is desirable trait, and found over and over in numerous different species, ours included. This is pretty much exactly what I was talking about, this idea that all good things we do can be directly attributed to either a deity or a specific philosophy. It's horrid, and patently untrue. Edit: Secularism simply means you don't recognize religions, not that you dismiss them. It's more a MO than an opinion. Look, it's clear you become upset in the face of being told that anything to do with humanity is linked with religion, but that does not give you license to state scientific theory as fact, particularly in the face of all the divergent research on the subject. I realize that I'll be citing wikipedia here, but I think one will find that their sourcing rigor in regards to this subject is pretty thorough. To put it simply, evolutionary biology and sociobiology are still fledgling in their understandings of the source of altruism. You won't find a scientist who will simply tell you "morality is genetic" (that is, unless he has books to sell) because even though there is evidence to suggest that genetics and biological imperative play a role in formulation of morality and ethics, none of them would be stupid enough to claim that morality is essentially genetic; science literally cannot tell us that morality is essentially genetic, for that would require that it be able to go back in time, excise all notions of religiosity from mankind's history, and then perfectly recreate the world we live in today. Consider this notion. Psychologist Matt J. Rossano muses that religion emerged after morality and built upon morality by expanding the social scrutiny of individual behavior to include supernatural agents. By including ever watchful ancestors, spirits and gods in the social realm, humans discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and building more cooperative groups.[13] The adaptive value of religion would have enhanced group survival. Or this. There is general agreement among cognitive scientists that religion is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved early in human history. However, there is disagreement on the exact mechanisms that drove the evolution of the religious mind. The two main schools of thought hold that either religion evolved due to natural selection and has selective advantage, or that religion is an evolutionary byproduct of other mental adaptations.[18] Stephen Jay Gould, for example, believed that religion was an exaptation or a spandrel, in other words that religion evolved as byproduct of psychological mechanisms that evolved for other reasons.[19][20][21]
Such mechanisms may include the ability to infer the presence of organisms that might do harm (agent detection), the ability to come up with causal narratives for natural events (etiology), and the ability to recognize that other people have minds of their own with their own beliefs, desires and intentions (theory of mind). These three adaptations (among others) allow human beings to imagine purposeful agents behind many observations that could not readily be explained otherwise, e.g. thunder, lightning, movement of planets, complexity of life, etc.[22] The emergence of collective religious belief identified the agents as deities that standardized the explanation.
Some scholars have suggested that religion is genetically "hardwired" into the human condition. One controversial hypothesis, the God gene hypothesis, states that some variants of a specific gene, the VMAT2 gene, predispose to spirituality.[23] If you are truly interested in getting a better grasp on such things I highly recommend the wikipedia links I'll provide below. I'm not here to attribute the development of human morality to any one philosophy or belief system, only that the historical procession of morality as we know it worked in and around notions of religion and spirituality. There even exists a viable scientific theory that suggests that religion is an adaptive benefit to the evolving human! The moral of the story is that science, morality, and our understanding of evolution in history are not finished telling each other things yet, and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Evolutionary origin of religionsEvolution of moralityScience of morality I will assume you know the difference between a scientific theory and a more mundane one. Maybe you meant hypothesis? I was not upset btw, I was disagreeing. I see the evidence, incomplete and ambiguous as it is, to be solid enough to convince me that what we would call modern humanitarianism to be a product of natural selection. I am not disputing that religion may be too, I have read most of the stuff in those links already. Religion and superstition may well have been an effective tool to encourage/coerce behaviour benefiting the tribe rather than the individual. But this kind of behaviour is frequently observed in animals as well, who would have no concept of the supernatural or divine. So that would lead me to conclude it is likely a product of natural selection, a desirable trait independent of higher cognitive functions or even basic reasoning. I'm not claiming that I know, or that the science on the topic is unequivocal enough for a definitive call. I have made an informed assumption, basically.
Well I take no issue with that, for at least you are willing to admit that it is you as opposed to "the science" that is making this judgement. It leaves room for disagreement, for alternative theories, and is generally the only thing I take issue with when people point too assuredly at evidence that doesn't quite say what they want it to.
For a change of pace, Pastor Rick Warren, the author of "The Purpose Driven Life", has lost a son to suicide. While perhaps not the most tasteful means of discussing the Christian monetary hope machine, it certainly says something interesting about books like "The Purpose Driven Life" and the people who write them.
Pastor Rick Warren, the best-known name in American evangelism after Rev. Billy Graham, lost his 27-year-old son, Matthew, to suicide this week.
Uncounted strangers have joined the 20,000 congregants who worship at the megachurch network "Pastor Rick" built in Southern California, Warren's nearly 1 million Twitter followers and hundreds of thousands of Facebook followers in flooding social media with consolation and prayer.
But a shocking number are taking this moment of media attention to lash out at Warren on the digital tom-toms. The attacks are aimed at him personally and at his Christian message
Some unbelievers want to assure Rick and Kay Warren, his wife and Matthew's bereaved mother, that there's no heaven where they'll meet their son again.
You can find, among hundreds of comments on USA TODAY's news story on Matthew's death, comments such as the Cincinnati poster who says, "Either there is no God, or God doesn't listen to Rick Warren, despite all the money Rick has made off of selling false hope to desperate people." In another comment, the same poster counsels Warren to "abandon primitive superstitions and accept the universe for what it is — a place that is utterly indifferent to us."
Some rush to add pain to the Warrens' world because, in their view, he did not show sufficient compassion for the unremitting pain suffered by gay youths rejected by parents and peers. They were outraged when Warren took a political stand for Prop 8, which overturned legal same-sex marriage in California in 2008 and is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Others have appointed themselves 140-character theologians in a debate over whether someone once saved can lose his or her salvation if suicide is against God's law. These posters, rather than waiting for Judgment Day, have ruled for hell.
But Bruce Kwiatkowski of the University of Toledo posted on Facebook: "I appreciate what Pastor Ronald Cole said about the subject of Christian suicide. He said the Lord will say, 'We weren't expecting you yet...' "
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On April 07 2013 15:41 screamingpalm wrote:
Well, I am actually neutral on gun control, I am more afraid of the effects a symbolic law of state religion would have. If the example in GA is any indication, and seen as a success, I think pre-emptive symbolic state religion laws are coming- is basically my point.
I'm with you on that, it's just when people post random article they've seen on HuffPo or Reddit and go "here goes the south again" when there's at least some logical basis for the move that I have an issue with.
I have no doubt even a law stating that a state can declare a state religion would be struck down so it's just some small time idiotic state Republican members that just seem determined to marginalize the GOP even more. I do take solace in the fact that the Democrats have a fair number of nut jobs on their lunatic fringe it just happens that this is the cycle where all of the Republicans have to deal with it.
I remember the 80's. 
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On April 07 2013 15:32 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2013 15:14 ey215 wrote:On April 07 2013 14:17 Sermokala wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Are you seriously proposing that Obama just "walk away" from a fight thats been the defining subject of his conflicts with republicans while hes been in office? If he walks away from this he will never come close to winning anything with congress ever again. This failure would consume his presidency and he would be able to do nothing but resign for the next 3 years. He can't just pivot to gay rights when he only jumped on the bandwagon after the numbers came out that there was more then 50% support for it. Immigration and drug enforcement is literally all about being a legislative issue, if he concedes utter and complete defeat to the republicans he will get laughed out of any proposal that he gives. I can't even tell you 1 solid international subject that hes shown strength in or can point to as a success in his presidency. You want him to intercede on syria and piss off china and Russia? You want him to go into mexico and end their civil war in a month? Open relations with cuba again? Obamas second term has gotten off to an extremely rocky start and I don't see anywhere how it can get better. Hes going to lose more liberal votes with his budget proposal then gain republican votes.
I mean its politics for fucks sake. You think the republicans think that the budget deals they've gotten is something they should be happy with? They're calling for a new speaker and legitimately think that hes selling out to obama.
fuck it we need to ban cigarettes in america and replace it with pot. It would literally solve our health care problem and save millions and millions of people over the next couple years. With people not spending 6 bucks a day on a carton of cigarettes they would be able to put that into different industries that are far better for our country to be in and for our workers to work in. It sickens me that people piss and moan about guns in this country when at the very most they might hit 14 thousand a year then ignore completely something that kills about half a million and cost god knows how much in health care every year. Right, replace one black market with another that will be even larger. That's a great plan! You really think if cigarettes were banned that they'd just disappear? I've never used it but I'm all for legalizing pot but just saying to replace tobacco with pot is plain dumb. It will just be smuggled in cigs from other countries. then they won't get sprayed with so much chemicals and it will end up being healthier for people. Its a win-win situation by any logical way you look at it.
Except for the billions spent to enforce the "War on Tobacco", the millions put in jail, oh and the loss of tax revenues generated by vice taxes. Yep, totally Win-Win. Stop encouraging the criminalizing of the choices people make. How someone could argue for the legalization of a drug and at the same time for banning another is completely beyond me.
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On April 08 2013 01:50 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2013 19:28 McBengt wrote:On April 07 2013 02:08 farvacola wrote:On April 06 2013 18:44 McBengt wrote:On April 06 2013 18:36 koreasilver wrote:On April 06 2013 18:06 McBengt wrote:On April 06 2013 17:02 sc2superfan101 wrote:On April 06 2013 13:17 Leporello wrote:
It's a government building. It's a school. You don't need a picture of Jesus. It isn't tyrannical to ask you to keep your religion to yourself. It's common sense and mutual respect. In what way is it tyrannical to put up a picture of Jesus, or a cross, or the Ten Commandments? And in what way is it not tyrannical to decide, upon a whim, that all people must be silent about their faith because you yourself are uncomfortable with their possessing said faith? Yes, christians in the US are generally so timid and demure about their faith. It's illegal, pure and simple. It has nothing to do with tyranny, or propriety. It's about the very american notion that no religion takes precedence over any other, something that should be a no-brainer for any self-respecting conservative. Either you recognize all religions equally or none of them. America chose, wisely, to go with none. The idea that rights can only be certain and true if they come from god is abhorrent, it's reductionist and self-deprecating to the point of servility. What gave christianty the monopoly on human rights? Or any religion? Our humanism and our altriusm come from ourselves, to attribute it to some greater being without which we would be lost to barbarism is a horrible notion, it demeans and degrades us. A secular state is the only moral state, and the US being the first truly secular nation should be a point of pride. One must be very suspicious of this given the history of human thought. Our secularism, our notion of human rights, universal rights, equality, etc. are not naturally given. They are artificial and they operate under a form of myth. The West has grown up on this for centuries now and take it as given when it is still very precarious and fragile. The Enlightenment myth, not matter how valuable and how beautiful it may be, with all its intellectualism, scientific rigor, and above all its romance and ideals, is still fundamentally, a myth. Westerners are much too complacent on this, I think; too much is taken for granted. and the probably the most fundamentally misunderstood concept: secularism still is not truly atheistic. This is incorrect. Animals of all kinds instinctively help each other, even animals from other species. Humans cooperated and shared with each other long before any of today's major religions came about. Altriusm and compassion are genetically hardwired into our brains It's not a myth, it's evolutionary biology. Solidarity is desirable trait, and found over and over in numerous different species, ours included. This is pretty much exactly what I was talking about, this idea that all good things we do can be directly attributed to either a deity or a specific philosophy. It's horrid, and patently untrue. Edit: Secularism simply means you don't recognize religions, not that you dismiss them. It's more a MO than an opinion. Look, it's clear you become upset in the face of being told that anything to do with humanity is linked with religion, but that does not give you license to state scientific theory as fact, particularly in the face of all the divergent research on the subject. I realize that I'll be citing wikipedia here, but I think one will find that their sourcing rigor in regards to this subject is pretty thorough. To put it simply, evolutionary biology and sociobiology are still fledgling in their understandings of the source of altruism. You won't find a scientist who will simply tell you "morality is genetic" (that is, unless he has books to sell) because even though there is evidence to suggest that genetics and biological imperative play a role in formulation of morality and ethics, none of them would be stupid enough to claim that morality is essentially genetic; science literally cannot tell us that morality is essentially genetic, for that would require that it be able to go back in time, excise all notions of religiosity from mankind's history, and then perfectly recreate the world we live in today. Consider this notion. Psychologist Matt J. Rossano muses that religion emerged after morality and built upon morality by expanding the social scrutiny of individual behavior to include supernatural agents. By including ever watchful ancestors, spirits and gods in the social realm, humans discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and building more cooperative groups.[13] The adaptive value of religion would have enhanced group survival. Or this. There is general agreement among cognitive scientists that religion is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved early in human history. However, there is disagreement on the exact mechanisms that drove the evolution of the religious mind. The two main schools of thought hold that either religion evolved due to natural selection and has selective advantage, or that religion is an evolutionary byproduct of other mental adaptations.[18] Stephen Jay Gould, for example, believed that religion was an exaptation or a spandrel, in other words that religion evolved as byproduct of psychological mechanisms that evolved for other reasons.[19][20][21]
Such mechanisms may include the ability to infer the presence of organisms that might do harm (agent detection), the ability to come up with causal narratives for natural events (etiology), and the ability to recognize that other people have minds of their own with their own beliefs, desires and intentions (theory of mind). These three adaptations (among others) allow human beings to imagine purposeful agents behind many observations that could not readily be explained otherwise, e.g. thunder, lightning, movement of planets, complexity of life, etc.[22] The emergence of collective religious belief identified the agents as deities that standardized the explanation.
Some scholars have suggested that religion is genetically "hardwired" into the human condition. One controversial hypothesis, the God gene hypothesis, states that some variants of a specific gene, the VMAT2 gene, predispose to spirituality.[23] If you are truly interested in getting a better grasp on such things I highly recommend the wikipedia links I'll provide below. I'm not here to attribute the development of human morality to any one philosophy or belief system, only that the historical procession of morality as we know it worked in and around notions of religion and spirituality. There even exists a viable scientific theory that suggests that religion is an adaptive benefit to the evolving human! The moral of the story is that science, morality, and our understanding of evolution in history are not finished telling each other things yet, and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Evolutionary origin of religionsEvolution of moralityScience of morality I will assume you know the difference between a scientific theory and a more mundane one. Maybe you meant hypothesis? I was not upset btw, I was disagreeing. I see the evidence, incomplete and ambiguous as it is, to be solid enough to convince me that what we would call modern humanitarianism to be a product of natural selection. I am not disputing that religion may be too, I have read most of the stuff in those links already. Religion and superstition may well have been an effective tool to encourage/coerce behaviour benefiting the tribe rather than the individual. But this kind of behaviour is frequently observed in animals as well, who would have no concept of the supernatural or divine. So that would lead me to conclude it is likely a product of natural selection, a desirable trait independent of higher cognitive functions or even basic reasoning. I'm not claiming that I know, or that the science on the topic is unequivocal enough for a definitive call. I have made an informed assumption, basically. Well I take no issue with that, for at least you are willing to admit that it is you as opposed to "the science" that is making this judgement. It leaves room for disagreement, for alternative theories, and is generally the only thing I take issue with when people point too assuredly at evidence that doesn't quite say what they want it to. For a change of pace, Pastor Rick Warren, the author of "The Purpose Driven Life", has lost a son to suicide. While perhaps not the most tasteful means of discussing the Christian monetary hope machine, it certainly says something interesting about books like "The Purpose Driven Life" and the people who write them. Show nested quote +Pastor Rick Warren, the best-known name in American evangelism after Rev. Billy Graham, lost his 27-year-old son, Matthew, to suicide this week.
Uncounted strangers have joined the 20,000 congregants who worship at the megachurch network "Pastor Rick" built in Southern California, Warren's nearly 1 million Twitter followers and hundreds of thousands of Facebook followers in flooding social media with consolation and prayer.
But a shocking number are taking this moment of media attention to lash out at Warren on the digital tom-toms. The attacks are aimed at him personally and at his Christian message
Some unbelievers want to assure Rick and Kay Warren, his wife and Matthew's bereaved mother, that there's no heaven where they'll meet their son again.
You can find, among hundreds of comments on USA TODAY's news story on Matthew's death, comments such as the Cincinnati poster who says, "Either there is no God, or God doesn't listen to Rick Warren, despite all the money Rick has made off of selling false hope to desperate people." In another comment, the same poster counsels Warren to "abandon primitive superstitions and accept the universe for what it is — a place that is utterly indifferent to us."
Some rush to add pain to the Warrens' world because, in their view, he did not show sufficient compassion for the unremitting pain suffered by gay youths rejected by parents and peers. They were outraged when Warren took a political stand for Prop 8, which overturned legal same-sex marriage in California in 2008 and is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Others have appointed themselves 140-character theologians in a debate over whether someone once saved can lose his or her salvation if suicide is against God's law. These posters, rather than waiting for Judgment Day, have ruled for hell.
But Bruce Kwiatkowski of the University of Toledo posted on Facebook: "I appreciate what Pastor Ronald Cole said about the subject of Christian suicide. He said the Lord will say, 'We weren't expecting you yet...' "
Well then, that seems settled well enough. I will say though that any claim or any science that doesn't leave room for alternative theories or disagreement is usually rather suspect.
I'm not too familiar with Rick Warren, was he a genuine believer or just another slimy televangelist huckster? If the latter, I can understand the reactions to an extent.
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On April 07 2013 22:38 Adila wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2013 15:22 ey215 wrote:On April 07 2013 15:13 Sermokala wrote:
They made a law that wasn't enforceable and they never intended it on being anything but a gesture.
And it lowers crime by 89%. Fucking south how does it work. I'm a criminal, I know a city in my area has a larger likelihood of the homeowners being armed. Do I go there to break into someone's house or do I go to the nearby town with a lower likelihood? Again, I wouldn't claim causation in the case of Kennesaw's crime rate but there are plenty of "symbolic" laws in place all over the country, not just in the South. This just happens to be on of the sexier ones since it has to do with guns. Guns only deter stupid criminals. Smarter ones will case a place and break in when no one is home. A gun will not protect your home if no one is there to use it.
Guns are not intended to protect your home. It actually illegal to use guns to do so unless a state has a castle law. The main purpose of a gun is to protect you and your family. Since only the "dumb" criminals will break in to your house while you are there and possibly be a threat to you, they are the only ones guns are meant to deter.
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On April 08 2013 03:27 McBengt wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2013 01:50 farvacola wrote:On April 07 2013 19:28 McBengt wrote:On April 07 2013 02:08 farvacola wrote:On April 06 2013 18:44 McBengt wrote:On April 06 2013 18:36 koreasilver wrote:On April 06 2013 18:06 McBengt wrote:On April 06 2013 17:02 sc2superfan101 wrote:On April 06 2013 13:17 Leporello wrote:
It's a government building. It's a school. You don't need a picture of Jesus. It isn't tyrannical to ask you to keep your religion to yourself. It's common sense and mutual respect. In what way is it tyrannical to put up a picture of Jesus, or a cross, or the Ten Commandments? And in what way is it not tyrannical to decide, upon a whim, that all people must be silent about their faith because you yourself are uncomfortable with their possessing said faith? Yes, christians in the US are generally so timid and demure about their faith. It's illegal, pure and simple. It has nothing to do with tyranny, or propriety. It's about the very american notion that no religion takes precedence over any other, something that should be a no-brainer for any self-respecting conservative. Either you recognize all religions equally or none of them. America chose, wisely, to go with none. The idea that rights can only be certain and true if they come from god is abhorrent, it's reductionist and self-deprecating to the point of servility. What gave christianty the monopoly on human rights? Or any religion? Our humanism and our altriusm come from ourselves, to attribute it to some greater being without which we would be lost to barbarism is a horrible notion, it demeans and degrades us. A secular state is the only moral state, and the US being the first truly secular nation should be a point of pride. One must be very suspicious of this given the history of human thought. Our secularism, our notion of human rights, universal rights, equality, etc. are not naturally given. They are artificial and they operate under a form of myth. The West has grown up on this for centuries now and take it as given when it is still very precarious and fragile. The Enlightenment myth, not matter how valuable and how beautiful it may be, with all its intellectualism, scientific rigor, and above all its romance and ideals, is still fundamentally, a myth. Westerners are much too complacent on this, I think; too much is taken for granted. and the probably the most fundamentally misunderstood concept: secularism still is not truly atheistic. This is incorrect. Animals of all kinds instinctively help each other, even animals from other species. Humans cooperated and shared with each other long before any of today's major religions came about. Altriusm and compassion are genetically hardwired into our brains It's not a myth, it's evolutionary biology. Solidarity is desirable trait, and found over and over in numerous different species, ours included. This is pretty much exactly what I was talking about, this idea that all good things we do can be directly attributed to either a deity or a specific philosophy. It's horrid, and patently untrue. Edit: Secularism simply means you don't recognize religions, not that you dismiss them. It's more a MO than an opinion. Look, it's clear you become upset in the face of being told that anything to do with humanity is linked with religion, but that does not give you license to state scientific theory as fact, particularly in the face of all the divergent research on the subject. I realize that I'll be citing wikipedia here, but I think one will find that their sourcing rigor in regards to this subject is pretty thorough. To put it simply, evolutionary biology and sociobiology are still fledgling in their understandings of the source of altruism. You won't find a scientist who will simply tell you "morality is genetic" (that is, unless he has books to sell) because even though there is evidence to suggest that genetics and biological imperative play a role in formulation of morality and ethics, none of them would be stupid enough to claim that morality is essentially genetic; science literally cannot tell us that morality is essentially genetic, for that would require that it be able to go back in time, excise all notions of religiosity from mankind's history, and then perfectly recreate the world we live in today. Consider this notion. Psychologist Matt J. Rossano muses that religion emerged after morality and built upon morality by expanding the social scrutiny of individual behavior to include supernatural agents. By including ever watchful ancestors, spirits and gods in the social realm, humans discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and building more cooperative groups.[13] The adaptive value of religion would have enhanced group survival. Or this. There is general agreement among cognitive scientists that religion is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved early in human history. However, there is disagreement on the exact mechanisms that drove the evolution of the religious mind. The two main schools of thought hold that either religion evolved due to natural selection and has selective advantage, or that religion is an evolutionary byproduct of other mental adaptations.[18] Stephen Jay Gould, for example, believed that religion was an exaptation or a spandrel, in other words that religion evolved as byproduct of psychological mechanisms that evolved for other reasons.[19][20][21]
Such mechanisms may include the ability to infer the presence of organisms that might do harm (agent detection), the ability to come up with causal narratives for natural events (etiology), and the ability to recognize that other people have minds of their own with their own beliefs, desires and intentions (theory of mind). These three adaptations (among others) allow human beings to imagine purposeful agents behind many observations that could not readily be explained otherwise, e.g. thunder, lightning, movement of planets, complexity of life, etc.[22] The emergence of collective religious belief identified the agents as deities that standardized the explanation.
Some scholars have suggested that religion is genetically "hardwired" into the human condition. One controversial hypothesis, the God gene hypothesis, states that some variants of a specific gene, the VMAT2 gene, predispose to spirituality.[23] If you are truly interested in getting a better grasp on such things I highly recommend the wikipedia links I'll provide below. I'm not here to attribute the development of human morality to any one philosophy or belief system, only that the historical procession of morality as we know it worked in and around notions of religion and spirituality. There even exists a viable scientific theory that suggests that religion is an adaptive benefit to the evolving human! The moral of the story is that science, morality, and our understanding of evolution in history are not finished telling each other things yet, and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Evolutionary origin of religionsEvolution of moralityScience of morality I will assume you know the difference between a scientific theory and a more mundane one. Maybe you meant hypothesis? I was not upset btw, I was disagreeing. I see the evidence, incomplete and ambiguous as it is, to be solid enough to convince me that what we would call modern humanitarianism to be a product of natural selection. I am not disputing that religion may be too, I have read most of the stuff in those links already. Religion and superstition may well have been an effective tool to encourage/coerce behaviour benefiting the tribe rather than the individual. But this kind of behaviour is frequently observed in animals as well, who would have no concept of the supernatural or divine. So that would lead me to conclude it is likely a product of natural selection, a desirable trait independent of higher cognitive functions or even basic reasoning. I'm not claiming that I know, or that the science on the topic is unequivocal enough for a definitive call. I have made an informed assumption, basically. Well I take no issue with that, for at least you are willing to admit that it is you as opposed to "the science" that is making this judgement. It leaves room for disagreement, for alternative theories, and is generally the only thing I take issue with when people point too assuredly at evidence that doesn't quite say what they want it to. For a change of pace, Pastor Rick Warren, the author of "The Purpose Driven Life", has lost a son to suicide. While perhaps not the most tasteful means of discussing the Christian monetary hope machine, it certainly says something interesting about books like "The Purpose Driven Life" and the people who write them. Pastor Rick Warren, the best-known name in American evangelism after Rev. Billy Graham, lost his 27-year-old son, Matthew, to suicide this week.
Uncounted strangers have joined the 20,000 congregants who worship at the megachurch network "Pastor Rick" built in Southern California, Warren's nearly 1 million Twitter followers and hundreds of thousands of Facebook followers in flooding social media with consolation and prayer.
But a shocking number are taking this moment of media attention to lash out at Warren on the digital tom-toms. The attacks are aimed at him personally and at his Christian message
Some unbelievers want to assure Rick and Kay Warren, his wife and Matthew's bereaved mother, that there's no heaven where they'll meet their son again.
You can find, among hundreds of comments on USA TODAY's news story on Matthew's death, comments such as the Cincinnati poster who says, "Either there is no God, or God doesn't listen to Rick Warren, despite all the money Rick has made off of selling false hope to desperate people." In another comment, the same poster counsels Warren to "abandon primitive superstitions and accept the universe for what it is — a place that is utterly indifferent to us."
Some rush to add pain to the Warrens' world because, in their view, he did not show sufficient compassion for the unremitting pain suffered by gay youths rejected by parents and peers. They were outraged when Warren took a political stand for Prop 8, which overturned legal same-sex marriage in California in 2008 and is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Others have appointed themselves 140-character theologians in a debate over whether someone once saved can lose his or her salvation if suicide is against God's law. These posters, rather than waiting for Judgment Day, have ruled for hell.
But Bruce Kwiatkowski of the University of Toledo posted on Facebook: "I appreciate what Pastor Ronald Cole said about the subject of Christian suicide. He said the Lord will say, 'We weren't expecting you yet...' " Well then, that seems settled well enough. I will say though that any claim or any science that doesn't leave room for alternative theories or disagreement is usually rather suspect. I'm not too familiar with Rick Warren, was he a genuine believer or just another slimy televangelist huckster? If the latter, I can understand the reactions to an extent.
Hmm, this is a difficult question, given how little we can know about Warren personally. I will say, however, that one can usually get a pretty good idea of a religious leader/movement's "authenticity" based on how they commercialize their ministry. The presence of massive exterior investment (i.e. charming Christian millionaires into donating) is immediately a red flag as it pertains to Warren's ministry, the Saddleback Church, which is the seventh-largest church in the United States. If one looks at their literature, their website, and their general public appearance, it becomes clear that things like outreach are minimized in favor of the shiny veneer of a church and pastor who will save your life, which is an important distinction that tends to define evangelical Christianity (there are exceptions of course). When a church overtly says "Through me and God you shall be saved" instead of "Through God you shall be saved", something isn't quite right in my eyes.
Now I know you may be saying to yourself, "Don't all churches inflate their own importance?". The answer is most certainly yes. One cannot ignore the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds, which are bits of prayer common to most Christian denominations that make explicit reference to the importance of "the church". However, the important part here, imo, is the shape of the evangelical message and how it contrasts with the "sales pitch" of more traditional forms of Christianity. Traditional Episcopalian, Lutheran, or Catholic churches among others will only go so far when it comes gussying up their message; if you don't like somber, quiet mass and a very traditional outlook on society, than the Catholics are pretty much gonna say too bad. The Episcopalians might let women preach and gays be bishops, but their dogma and outward message has remained relatively constant for many years. Though this is a controversial thing to say, I genuinely think that the relatively steadfast, anti-progressive impulse of the non-evangelical Christian church is its most important and influential aspect (but that's a whole different ball of yarn).
Alternatively, the evangelical message, though marked with rhetoric of "fundamentalism", changes in a manner quite like broadcast television. Those in power look out into the population, see what "gets people going", and then shape their proselytization to more effectively reel these people in, all while surreptitiously making shit tons of money. Books like "The Purpose Driven Life" are a perfect example. Hilariously enough, Warren even fails to consistently cite the same version of the Bible throughout the book, completely ignoring the issues in jumping from the King James to the RSV to the ASV. Issues of doctrine be damned, this man wants to sell a book, and that is ultimately my biggest worry when it comes to these sorts of ministries. It ends up being similar to why healthcare works best in the hands of the collective rather than the private. The motive for profit ends up diverging too severely from the original intention (making people healthy or feel better about their lives), and it ends up distorting, cheapening, and handicapping the end result. This is why there are "islands" throughout the United States, populations of anywhere from 200-40,000 people, who have effectively bought into the message of an evangelical megachurch whose message, at the end of day, is one of making money.
Sorry for all that lol, sometimes I can't control myself 
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On April 08 2013 03:06 ey215 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2013 15:32 Sermokala wrote:On April 07 2013 15:14 ey215 wrote:On April 07 2013 14:17 Sermokala wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Are you seriously proposing that Obama just "walk away" from a fight thats been the defining subject of his conflicts with republicans while hes been in office? If he walks away from this he will never come close to winning anything with congress ever again. This failure would consume his presidency and he would be able to do nothing but resign for the next 3 years. He can't just pivot to gay rights when he only jumped on the bandwagon after the numbers came out that there was more then 50% support for it. Immigration and drug enforcement is literally all about being a legislative issue, if he concedes utter and complete defeat to the republicans he will get laughed out of any proposal that he gives. I can't even tell you 1 solid international subject that hes shown strength in or can point to as a success in his presidency. You want him to intercede on syria and piss off china and Russia? You want him to go into mexico and end their civil war in a month? Open relations with cuba again? Obamas second term has gotten off to an extremely rocky start and I don't see anywhere how it can get better. Hes going to lose more liberal votes with his budget proposal then gain republican votes.
I mean its politics for fucks sake. You think the republicans think that the budget deals they've gotten is something they should be happy with? They're calling for a new speaker and legitimately think that hes selling out to obama.
fuck it we need to ban cigarettes in america and replace it with pot. It would literally solve our health care problem and save millions and millions of people over the next couple years. With people not spending 6 bucks a day on a carton of cigarettes they would be able to put that into different industries that are far better for our country to be in and for our workers to work in. It sickens me that people piss and moan about guns in this country when at the very most they might hit 14 thousand a year then ignore completely something that kills about half a million and cost god knows how much in health care every year. Right, replace one black market with another that will be even larger. That's a great plan! You really think if cigarettes were banned that they'd just disappear? I've never used it but I'm all for legalizing pot but just saying to replace tobacco with pot is plain dumb. It will just be smuggled in cigs from other countries. then they won't get sprayed with so much chemicals and it will end up being healthier for people. Its a win-win situation by any logical way you look at it. Except for the billions spent to enforce the "War on Tobacco", the millions put in jail, oh and the loss of tax revenues generated by vice taxes. Yep, totally Win-Win. Stop encouraging the criminalizing of the choices people make. How someone could argue for the legalization of a drug and at the same time for banning another is completely beyond me.
Billlions spent on "war on tobacco" when all surrounding nations in the world make them normally anyway and people can just ilegaly ship some over instead of going though all the hassle of trying to grow it themselves? The loss of tax revenue will be returned in droves by much lower health care costs.
people shouldn't be allowed to make choices that hurt our economy and kill half a million people every year. thats a nationwide health risk that the government should be protecting us from. People argue all the time that we need to ban guns or control them more in anyway when almost no one dies from anything other then cheap pistols used in gang violence. Should we be protecting their choices of being criminals and allow them to kill each other all they want? Should we be protecting peoples choice of working at a factory where the air is poison but they get paid a lot more? Should we protect corporations that pollute the environment because people make the choice to live in the polluted zones because its really cheap?
Just look at it for half a second without coming to the table with your prejudices on and consider it. There really isn't a downside to it.
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That was...ambitious, my gratitude. I will review that, I'll be back in a few hours.
Edit: Warren seems like an opportunistic profiteer with little regard for integrity or honesty. I am sorry his son is dead and take no pleasure in his loss, but the man himself seems cut from the same cloth as Haggard, Falwell and other charlatans.
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On April 08 2013 03:35 Cababel wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2013 22:38 Adila wrote:On April 07 2013 15:22 ey215 wrote:On April 07 2013 15:13 Sermokala wrote:
They made a law that wasn't enforceable and they never intended it on being anything but a gesture.
And it lowers crime by 89%. Fucking south how does it work. I'm a criminal, I know a city in my area has a larger likelihood of the homeowners being armed. Do I go there to break into someone's house or do I go to the nearby town with a lower likelihood? Again, I wouldn't claim causation in the case of Kennesaw's crime rate but there are plenty of "symbolic" laws in place all over the country, not just in the South. This just happens to be on of the sexier ones since it has to do with guns. Guns only deter stupid criminals. Smarter ones will case a place and break in when no one is home. A gun will not protect your home if no one is there to use it. Guns are not intended to protect your home. It actually illegal to use guns to do so unless a state has a castle law. The main purpose of a gun is to protect you and your family. Since only the "dumb" criminals will break in to your house while you are there and possibly be a threat to you, they are the only ones guns are meant to deter.
...and they don't.
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United States42747 Posts
The healthcare costs of tobacco are massively overstated unless you assume that people who didn't smoke won't ever die. Calculations that go "number of smokers * odds of getting cancer * cost of getting cancer" ignore the fact that everyone eventually dies of something and end of life care is always expensive. If the lung cancer didn't get them aged 60 then the bowel cancer they'd have gotten aged 80 would have, or any of hundreds of other options. The correct calculation for the healthcare cost of smoking has to deduct the costs that would have otherwise been incurred through the expected non smoking life. Smoking typically kills someone around the time their useful working life is ending and therefore does not significantly impact the productivity of the nation. In fact the reduced lifespan avoids crippling pension costs, hospice costs and forcing retirees to rejoin the workforce in order to fund their longer lives. People retiring and then quickly dying enables employment and assets to be smoothly passed from generation to generation rather than remaining tied up.
The ideal situation, paradoxically enough, is to slowly poison everyone else with a poison that will not impact their productivity but will rapidly and cheaply kill them at retirement age while at the same time not personally consuming that poison and promoting public retirement benefits that could not possibly be afforded if a significant section of the population were ever eligible for them.
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On April 08 2013 05:08 KwarK wrote:
The healthcare costs of tobacco are massively overstated unless you assume that people who didn't smoke won't ever die. Calculations that go "number of smokers * odds of getting cancer * cost of getting cancer" ignore the fact that everyone eventually dies of something and end of life care is always expensive. If the lung cancer didn't get them aged 60 then the bowel cancer they'd have gotten aged 80 would have, or any of hundreds of other options. The correct calculation for the healthcare cost of smoking has to deduct the costs that would have otherwise been incurred through the expected non smoking life. Smoking typically kills someone around the time their useful working life is ending and therefore does not significantly impact the productivity of the nation. In fact the reduced lifespan avoids crippling pension costs, hospice costs and forcing retirees to rejoin the workforce in order to fund their longer lives. People retiring and then quickly dying enables employment and assets to be smoothly passed from generation to generation rather than remaining tied up.
The id ideal situation, paradoxically enough, is to slowly poison everyone else with a poison that will not impact their productivity but will rapidly and cheaply kill them at retirement age whiat the same time not personally consuming that poison and promoting public retirement benefits that could not possibly be afforded if a significant section of the population were ever eligible for them.
I think you just figured out China's endgame o.O
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On April 08 2013 05:08 KwarK wrote:
The healthcare costs of tobacco are massively overstated unless you assume that people who didn't smoke won't ever die. Calculations that go "number of smokers * odds of getting cancer * cost of getting cancer" ignore the fact that everyone eventually dies of something and end of life care is always expensive. If the lung cancer didn't get them aged 60 then the bowel cancer they'd have gotten aged 80 would have, or any of hundreds of other options. The correct calculation for the healthcare cost of smoking has to deduct the costs that would have otherwise been incurred through the expected non smoking life. Smoking typically kills someone around the time their useful working life is ending and therefore does not significantly impact the productivity of the nation. In fact the reduced lifespan avoids crippling pension costs, hospice costs and forcing retirees to rejoin the workforce in order to fund their longer lives. People retiring and then quickly dying enables employment and assets to be smoothly passed from generation to generation rather than remaining tied up.
The ideal situation, paradoxically enough, is to slowly poison everyone else with a poison that will not impact their productivity but will rapidly and cheaply kill them at retirement age while at the same time not personally consuming that poison and promoting public retirement benefits that could not possibly be afforded if a significant section of the population were ever eligible for them.
Cancer is not as much of a problem as COPD. Since COPD is killing slowly the medical costs of reducing its symptoms are very high.
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On April 08 2013 04:56 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2013 03:06 ey215 wrote:On April 07 2013 15:32 Sermokala wrote:On April 07 2013 15:14 ey215 wrote:On April 07 2013 14:17 Sermokala wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Are you seriously proposing that Obama just "walk away" from a fight thats been the defining subject of his conflicts with republicans while hes been in office? If he walks away from this he will never come close to winning anything with congress ever again. This failure would consume his presidency and he would be able to do nothing but resign for the next 3 years. He can't just pivot to gay rights when he only jumped on the bandwagon after the numbers came out that there was more then 50% support for it. Immigration and drug enforcement is literally all about being a legislative issue, if he concedes utter and complete defeat to the republicans he will get laughed out of any proposal that he gives. I can't even tell you 1 solid international subject that hes shown strength in or can point to as a success in his presidency. You want him to intercede on syria and piss off china and Russia? You want him to go into mexico and end their civil war in a month? Open relations with cuba again? Obamas second term has gotten off to an extremely rocky start and I don't see anywhere how it can get better. Hes going to lose more liberal votes with his budget proposal then gain republican votes.
I mean its politics for fucks sake. You think the republicans think that the budget deals they've gotten is something they should be happy with? They're calling for a new speaker and legitimately think that hes selling out to obama.
fuck it we need to ban cigarettes in america and replace it with pot. It would literally solve our health care problem and save millions and millions of people over the next couple years. With people not spending 6 bucks a day on a carton of cigarettes they would be able to put that into different industries that are far better for our country to be in and for our workers to work in. It sickens me that people piss and moan about guns in this country when at the very most they might hit 14 thousand a year then ignore completely something that kills about half a million and cost god knows how much in health care every year. Right, replace one black market with another that will be even larger. That's a great plan! You really think if cigarettes were banned that they'd just disappear? I've never used it but I'm all for legalizing pot but just saying to replace tobacco with pot is plain dumb. It will just be smuggled in cigs from other countries. then they won't get sprayed with so much chemicals and it will end up being healthier for people. Its a win-win situation by any logical way you look at it. Except for the billions spent to enforce the "War on Tobacco", the millions put in jail, oh and the loss of tax revenues generated by vice taxes. Yep, totally Win-Win. Stop encouraging the criminalizing of the choices people make. How someone could argue for the legalization of a drug and at the same time for banning another is completely beyond me. Billlions spent on "war on tobacco" when all surrounding nations in the world make them normally anyway and people can just ilegaly ship some over instead of going though all the hassle of trying to grow it themselves? The loss of tax revenue will be returned in droves by much lower health care costs. people shouldn't be allowed to make choices that hurt our economy and kill half a million people every year. thats a nationwide health risk that the government should be protecting us from. People argue all the time that we need to ban guns or control them more in anyway when almost no one dies from anything other then cheap pistols used in gang violence. Should we be protecting their choices of being criminals and allow them to kill each other all they want? Should we be protecting peoples choice of working at a factory where the air is poison but they get paid a lot more? Should we protect corporations that pollute the environment because people make the choice to live in the polluted zones because its really cheap? Just look at it for half a second without coming to the table with your prejudices on and consider it. There really isn't a downside to it.
With this reasoning you must think that the War on Drugs has been a resounding success. Prohibition does not work, black markets get formed and then if you've banned an item you have to enforce the ban. Basically, it would be right now with drugs but much much worse.
How someone can argue for legalizing drugs that are illegal now and then making cigarettes illegal I just don't get. At least be consistent, if you're for banning things that cause medical risks get on the Bloomberg train and go after everything else including alcohol and soda and many other things.
Cigarettes are bad, yes. However banning them isn't going to solve the problem, but hey if you want people breaking into houses for a carton of Marlboros more power to you.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
if the ban is effective at lowering the population's desire for tobacco, rather than just shifting the supply and creating black markets etc, then it could work. it just depends on whether the ban would reduce this desire effectively.
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On April 08 2013 08:14 ey215 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2013 04:56 Sermokala wrote:On April 08 2013 03:06 ey215 wrote:On April 07 2013 15:32 Sermokala wrote:On April 07 2013 15:14 ey215 wrote:On April 07 2013 14:17 Sermokala wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Are you seriously proposing that Obama just "walk away" from a fight thats been the defining subject of his conflicts with republicans while hes been in office? If he walks away from this he will never come close to winning anything with congress ever again. This failure would consume his presidency and he would be able to do nothing but resign for the next 3 years. He can't just pivot to gay rights when he only jumped on the bandwagon after the numbers came out that there was more then 50% support for it. Immigration and drug enforcement is literally all about being a legislative issue, if he concedes utter and complete defeat to the republicans he will get laughed out of any proposal that he gives. I can't even tell you 1 solid international subject that hes shown strength in or can point to as a success in his presidency. You want him to intercede on syria and piss off china and Russia? You want him to go into mexico and end their civil war in a month? Open relations with cuba again? Obamas second term has gotten off to an extremely rocky start and I don't see anywhere how it can get better. Hes going to lose more liberal votes with his budget proposal then gain republican votes.
I mean its politics for fucks sake. You think the republicans think that the budget deals they've gotten is something they should be happy with? They're calling for a new speaker and legitimately think that hes selling out to obama.
fuck it we need to ban cigarettes in america and replace it with pot. It would literally solve our health care problem and save millions and millions of people over the next couple years. With people not spending 6 bucks a day on a carton of cigarettes they would be able to put that into different industries that are far better for our country to be in and for our workers to work in. It sickens me that people piss and moan about guns in this country when at the very most they might hit 14 thousand a year then ignore completely something that kills about half a million and cost god knows how much in health care every year. Right, replace one black market with another that will be even larger. That's a great plan! You really think if cigarettes were banned that they'd just disappear? I've never used it but I'm all for legalizing pot but just saying to replace tobacco with pot is plain dumb. It will just be smuggled in cigs from other countries. then they won't get sprayed with so much chemicals and it will end up being healthier for people. Its a win-win situation by any logical way you look at it. Except for the billions spent to enforce the "War on Tobacco", the millions put in jail, oh and the loss of tax revenues generated by vice taxes. Yep, totally Win-Win. Stop encouraging the criminalizing of the choices people make. How someone could argue for the legalization of a drug and at the same time for banning another is completely beyond me. Billlions spent on "war on tobacco" when all surrounding nations in the world make them normally anyway and people can just ilegaly ship some over instead of going though all the hassle of trying to grow it themselves? The loss of tax revenue will be returned in droves by much lower health care costs. people shouldn't be allowed to make choices that hurt our economy and kill half a million people every year. thats a nationwide health risk that the government should be protecting us from. People argue all the time that we need to ban guns or control them more in anyway when almost no one dies from anything other then cheap pistols used in gang violence. Should we be protecting their choices of being criminals and allow them to kill each other all they want? Should we be protecting peoples choice of working at a factory where the air is poison but they get paid a lot more? Should we protect corporations that pollute the environment because people make the choice to live in the polluted zones because its really cheap? Just look at it for half a second without coming to the table with your prejudices on and consider it. There really isn't a downside to it. With this reasoning you must think that the War on Drugs has been a resounding success. Prohibition does not work, black markets get formed and then if you've banned an item you have to enforce the ban. Basically, it would be right now with drugs but much much worse. How someone can argue for legalizing drugs that are illegal now and then making cigarettes illegal I just don't get. At least be consistent, if you're for banning things that cause medical risks get on the Bloomberg train and go after everything else including alcohol and soda and many other things. Cigarettes are bad, yes. However banning them isn't going to solve the problem, but hey if you want people breaking into houses for a carton of Marlboros more power to you.
The war on drugs was a success. The cartels were driven out of south america and now are teetering on the brink in central america.
You refuse to look at issues in any way other then what your told. You refuse to do anything but regurgitate propaganda that you've been told over and over again and consider it actual debate. You constantly say something is bad but you never say why because you have no idea why its bad. banning something will lower its use and will force the black markets to get the product from out of the country. It will massively help the problem
I can argue for legalizing one thing and banning another because one is much worse for you then the other. Its literally one of the founding platforms of the legalization crowd and yet you want to completely ignore it now that the shoes on the other foot.
Also kwark scares the shit out of me sometimes.
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On April 08 2013 09:37 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2013 08:14 ey215 wrote:On April 08 2013 04:56 Sermokala wrote:On April 08 2013 03:06 ey215 wrote:On April 07 2013 15:32 Sermokala wrote:On April 07 2013 15:14 ey215 wrote:On April 07 2013 14:17 Sermokala wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Are you seriously proposing that Obama just "walk away" from a fight thats been the defining subject of his conflicts with republicans while hes been in office? If he walks away from this he will never come close to winning anything with congress ever again. This failure would consume his presidency and he would be able to do nothing but resign for the next 3 years. He can't just pivot to gay rights when he only jumped on the bandwagon after the numbers came out that there was more then 50% support for it. Immigration and drug enforcement is literally all about being a legislative issue, if he concedes utter and complete defeat to the republicans he will get laughed out of any proposal that he gives. I can't even tell you 1 solid international subject that hes shown strength in or can point to as a success in his presidency. You want him to intercede on syria and piss off china and Russia? You want him to go into mexico and end their civil war in a month? Open relations with cuba again? Obamas second term has gotten off to an extremely rocky start and I don't see anywhere how it can get better. Hes going to lose more liberal votes with his budget proposal then gain republican votes.
I mean its politics for fucks sake. You think the republicans think that the budget deals they've gotten is something they should be happy with? They're calling for a new speaker and legitimately think that hes selling out to obama.
fuck it we need to ban cigarettes in america and replace it with pot. It would literally solve our health care problem and save millions and millions of people over the next couple years. With people not spending 6 bucks a day on a carton of cigarettes they would be able to put that into different industries that are far better for our country to be in and for our workers to work in. It sickens me that people piss and moan about guns in this country when at the very most they might hit 14 thousand a year then ignore completely something that kills about half a million and cost god knows how much in health care every year. Right, replace one black market with another that will be even larger. That's a great plan! You really think if cigarettes were banned that they'd just disappear? I've never used it but I'm all for legalizing pot but just saying to replace tobacco with pot is plain dumb. It will just be smuggled in cigs from other countries. then they won't get sprayed with so much chemicals and it will end up being healthier for people. Its a win-win situation by any logical way you look at it. Except for the billions spent to enforce the "War on Tobacco", the millions put in jail, oh and the loss of tax revenues generated by vice taxes. Yep, totally Win-Win. Stop encouraging the criminalizing of the choices people make. How someone could argue for the legalization of a drug and at the same time for banning another is completely beyond me. Billlions spent on "war on tobacco" when all surrounding nations in the world make them normally anyway and people can just ilegaly ship some over instead of going though all the hassle of trying to grow it themselves? The loss of tax revenue will be returned in droves by much lower health care costs. people shouldn't be allowed to make choices that hurt our economy and kill half a million people every year. thats a nationwide health risk that the government should be protecting us from. People argue all the time that we need to ban guns or control them more in anyway when almost no one dies from anything other then cheap pistols used in gang violence. Should we be protecting their choices of being criminals and allow them to kill each other all they want? Should we be protecting peoples choice of working at a factory where the air is poison but they get paid a lot more? Should we protect corporations that pollute the environment because people make the choice to live in the polluted zones because its really cheap? Just look at it for half a second without coming to the table with your prejudices on and consider it. There really isn't a downside to it. With this reasoning you must think that the War on Drugs has been a resounding success. Prohibition does not work, black markets get formed and then if you've banned an item you have to enforce the ban. Basically, it would be right now with drugs but much much worse. How someone can argue for legalizing drugs that are illegal now and then making cigarettes illegal I just don't get. At least be consistent, if you're for banning things that cause medical risks get on the Bloomberg train and go after everything else including alcohol and soda and many other things. Cigarettes are bad, yes. However banning them isn't going to solve the problem, but hey if you want people breaking into houses for a carton of Marlboros more power to you. The war on drugs was a success. The cartels were driven out of south america and now are teetering on the brink in central america. You refuse to look at issues in any way other then what your told. You refuse to do anything but regurgitate propaganda that you've been told over and over again and consider it actual debate. You constantly say something is bad but you never say why because you have no idea why its bad. banning something will lower its use and will force the black markets to get the product from out of the country. It will massively help the problem I can argue for legalizing one thing and banning another because one is much worse for you then the other. Its literally one of the founding platforms of the legalization crowd and yet you want to completely ignore it now that the shoes on the other foot. Also kwark scares the shit out of me sometimes. Uhh...banning something may force the black market to get it from outside the country. In actual fact any drug Americans use can and are produced domestically, just not at the quantity and quality of other countries. But thats just specialization of labour, theres no inherent reason to think its because the D.E.A has criminals running scared. 1/10 of Americans are in jail, any assertion that the drug war has been anything but a massive sinkhole economically and a cancer on liberty and justice is absurd.
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black market fills in the artificially created gap between supply and demand
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EPT
