Bible Required Curriculum - Page 25

On August 19 2009 10:41 Jibba wrote:
You're challenging faith with logic, which defeats the purpose of faith and leaves you both without a satisfactory answer. There are better ways to come to equal terms. I mean, you're both aware of the logical deficiency when believing in a god, yet he embraces it and you shun it. I don't think you'll get anything out of arguing that specific point.

There are some historical events in the Bible but they've obviously been warped simply due to the fact that they're retold by humans, for any number of purposes. What annoys me is when people claim universality because some event like Noah's flood seems to appear in other cultures as well, when in reality, there have been many major floods in the history of civilization because early civilizations are always cultivated around bodies of water, namely rivers, and so everyone has experience with them.

So the initial action undertaken was very far from what Keynes and his followers would suggest to tackle the crises, i.e. mainly boost the demand for goods as Keynes believed it was the demand side of economy which is responsible for the economic recessions.

...and whilst a decline in the rate of interest may be expected, cet. par., to increase the volume of investment, this will not happen if the schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital is falling more rapidly than the rate of interest; and whilst an increase in the volume of investment may be expected, cet. par., to increase employment, this may not happen if the propensity to consume is falling off.

There is, however, a second, much more fundamental inference from our argument which has a bearing on the future of inequalities of wealth; namely, our theory of the rate of interest. The justification for a moderately high rate of interest has been found hitherto in the necessity of providing a sufficient inducement to save. But we have shown that the extent of effective saving is necessarily determined by the scale of investment and that the scale of investment is promoted by a low rate of interest, provided that we do not attempt to stimulate it in this way beyond the point which corresponds to full employment. Thus it is to our best advantage to reduce the rate of interest to that point relatively to the schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital at which there is full employment.

On August 19 2009 10:17 Jibba wrote:

Are you going to blame semantics again when you reread this and realize how laughable this statement is? You have serious fucking problems with understanding inductive reasoning.

On August 19 2009 10:47 Jibba wrote:
Louder, you said you're from Texas, right? What is the county like where this is being taught? I know Texas as a state leans right, but there are some very liberal parts of Texas so I wonder what the full context of this class/school district is.

On August 19 2009 10:46 NExUS1g wrote:


I am an agnostic atheist.

Let's say We have a time line that runs from 1,000 B.C.E. to 500 B.C.E. Now we have a purported kingdom that existed in country X from 900 B.C.E. to 700 B.C.E. Now, we don't see any information that there was the existence of this purported kingdom that existed in country X. Can we say that it doesn't exist and the one source of information is wrong? Isn't it more sound to say we can't prove its existence rather than completely denying its existence or even saying that it probably didn't exist?

On August 19 2009 10:03 Lebesgue wrote:


Unfortunately current gov't spending is more the result of huge lobby groups than any economic theory behind it...

The original idea to fight the crises was orientated on the money side of economy. Because of the turmoil in the financial markets the supply of broad money decreased substantially. In effect economy started shrinking. There was not enough money in circulation. Hence the idea to pump up the large quantities of money into the economy. For the same reason all the major banks received credit from FED. And for the same reason, it was suggested to buy all the bad loans from the banks which were currently holding it.

So the initial action undertaken was very far from what Keynes and his followers would suggest to tackle the crises, i.e. mainly boost the demand for goods as Keynes believed it was the demand side of economy which is responsible for the economic recessions.

The fact that government bails out now other companies and started lots of weird programs I would attribute to social pressure (car industry) and various lobby groups. Economists are largly against most of those programs as they perceive them (correctly) as a waste of tax-payers money. There is no evidence that those programs will make any difference.

Going back to current stand of economics, I would stand by the claim that Keynesian economics as followed in the post-war period doesn't exists. It was based on three fundamentals, IS-LM model, AS-AD curves and Phillips curve. It was widely believed that government could use fiscal policy to prevent business cycles. As such those theories were abandoned in 1970s with an emergence of new economic phenomena called stagflation. Keynesian economics had pretty simple solution for the economic problems, if there is inflation cut government spending to decrease money supply growth and if there is unemployment increase government spending to boost demand and so create the demand for labour. However, in 1970s major economies experienced simultaneous inflation and unemployment sth that their main theoretic models could not explain. As a result, Keynesian economics was abandoned and the attention was shifted to the supply side. Note that these days the main instrument to fight the recessions is through monetary policy (interest rate, expanding monetary base) and not through fiscal stimulus.

There is however a school of macroeconomic thought called New-Keynesian. They support Keynes views on the labour marker and pricing policies, do not however support his views on stabilization of economy. These economists believe that there are market failures in the economy and that they are responsible for the economic fluctuations, namely wage stickiness, menu costs and real rigidities (i.e. price stickiness).


I asked you what you mean by Keynesian economics simply because different people have different definitions. For me Keynesian economics is the one that suggest using fiscal policy as a main tool to fight recession. Modern macroeconomists would suggest using monetary policy to fight recession with very modest fiscal stimulus from government at most. Also Keynesian economists suggested negative relationship between inflation and unemployment (this is not due to Keynes himself but it was developed and fully used by post-war Keynesian economists). Currently it is recognized that such relation may hold, if at all, only in a short run. There are modifications to the original Phillips curve, so-called New Keynesian Phillips curve but it focuses on the relation between inflation, expected inflation and output.

So yes, Keynes ideas are still alive, Keynesian economics not so much.

On August 19 2009 10:51 Jibba wrote:

I raped your mother last night.

Now, you might call your mother up and ask her "Did Jibba give you unbelievable pleasure against your will last night?" and you might gain a piece of evidence that can prove or disprove my claim, but until that happens, are you seriously going to remain agnostic to the claim that I raped the shit out of your hot mommy?

+ Show Spoiler +

On August 19 2009 10:46 NExUS1g wrote:


I am an agnostic atheist.

Let's say We have a time line that runs from 1,000 B.C.E. to 500 B.C.E. Now we have a purported kingdom that existed in country X from 900 B.C.E. to 700 B.C.E. Now, we don't see any information that there was the existence of this purported kingdom that existed in country X. Can we say that it doesn't exist and the one source of information is wrong? Isn't it more sound to say we can't prove its existence rather than completely denying its existence or even saying that it probably didn't exist?

Regarding inductive reasoning:
It's a fancy term for saying, "I don't know," for people who are too proud to say "I don't know."

On August 19 2009 10:55 Mindcrime wrote:


It's not my position that the united monarchy did not exist. Have you been reading my posts? My position is that, given the lack of evidence for its existence, much less its grandeur as described in the Bible, it is probable that the kingdom was not as great or powerful as the Bible says.

On August 19 2009 10:55 NExUS1g wrote:


From a scientific standpoint, I would have to say I don't know.

From a personal standpoint, I'd tell you that you're a retard for attempting to win an argument using pathetic attempts at sly insults.

On August 19 2009 10:44 Louder wrote:


You make a valid point about faith, to be sure. Of course, I believe faith to be a mental illness, based on current clinical definitions.

On August 19 2009 11:04 Jibba wrote:
They're not sly insults. If you weren't stubbornly sticking to a stupid point, you would make inferences that because of the nature of my claim, over the internet, by an unknown forum poster, etc. that they are spurious and that my claim is false. THAT IS HOW INDUCTION WORKS. Even if you called your mother, her reply would would still not serve as a definitive data point to prove I didn't bang her so hard she can't walk for a week.

The same principle applies to your mythical civilization. They tend to leave behind remains and if they're advanced (which this one supposedly was), then they've made contact with other groups of people and their existence would be documented. This is what anthropologists do. Do you think they've deductively proven Pompeii was destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius? No one can do that.

What is your idea of definitive proof anyways? Please, indulge us and definitely prove that you aren't dreaming right now.

What's even weaker about your argument is that you're attempting to use logic to validate a religion, when even religious people acknowledge that it can't be done.

On August 19 2009 11:10 NExUS1g wrote:


I'm not validating a religion, I'm saying the Bible has not been proven wrong and it is cohesive.

Like I said, though, probability used in a circumstance like this equates to, "I don't know."

On August 19 2009 11:11 Jibba wrote:

No, it equates to "very likely not."

If this is an "I don't know" decision for you, then how do you get through life? I can think of a dozen decisions right now that are more difficult than believing the historical accuracy of the Bible.

On August 19 2009 11:08 MoltkeWarding wrote:


If we want to be broad-minded, we can see this in extra-religious terms:

Faith is the degree to which you assent to a certain truth.

Logic is the means by which certain truths are inferred.

Not all truths are or can be inferred. Inference requires assumption or presumption to form premises.

Some of the truths, including the most basic ones in the intellectual repetoire are intuitive (hence truisms or self-evident truths.) They are also manifested through declarative speech.

Logic requires truisms to function.

Where truisms refer to the "objective" world, the degree to which we accept them is faith.

Thus I take objection with your definition of atheist. It is not that your atheist requires faith. It is simply that a truly faithless atheist cannot even think. He has no foundation on which logic may be exercised.

On August 19 2009 11:22 MoltkeWarding wrote:
On the application of probability and historicity to Christianity, there is an interesting debate on youtube between Bart Ehrman and William Lane Craig which is worth watching.

url:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjOSNj97_gk (1st of 12 videos in total)

It's all the more interesting in that I was taught Biblical criticism pretty much in conformity with the Ehrman school, and I accept him as an unquestionable authority on the history of early Christian texts. Nonetheless I'm not convinced by his ultimate line of reasoning in this series, even though my own historical agnosticism is more or less in line with his.

On August 19 2009 11:30 Louder wrote:
What? I have never heard of ANY evidence that even verifies the existence of Jesus.

You don't understand faith OR logic. I'm not going to bother explaining.

What? I have never heard of ANY evidence that even verifies the existence of Jesus.