^ have you always been in the habit of making laughably fatuous, mawkish, tautologically nonsensical arguments, or is this a new hobby?

They are. These are taught in Christianity (and undoubtedly in other religions too) and are now so widely accepted that they're not credited to religion anymore. We think they're common sense, but they're not -- they're learned, and have become part of the fabric of our society.

If what you mean by "religious argument" is "something that is patently non-factual," then you've created a tautology for yourself: "I've never seen a non-factual argument proved true with evidence." Of course you haven't, because it's by definition impossible. But anything that you don't consider impossible, anything provable, is suddenly not religious, because you can prove it, or is observably true, even though it stemmed from a religion.

If not, what do you mean by "religious argument?"

>> ^Sniper007:
It's not unconstitutional to express your negative opinions concerning another religion. This points to the principal flaw with most American men and women, their presuppositions. They believe that their rights were created by the constitution, and the government it describes. This eventually results in the need for every facet of life to be spelled out and authorized by the legislature.
Whereas if you understood what the constitution itself clearly states, that rights are inherent, fundamental, and come from God Himself, you would not need a government to tell you how to live. You could, with your own conscience, seek out God, study His Laws and His Nature, and live accordingly.


The last bit sounds like the Divine command theory, which is flawed.

By that logic, one seems to make the attribution of 'goodness' to God redundant. When we say, 'god is good' we think, (at least I do) that we are ascribing a property to God but if 'good' simply means 'what god commands or wills' then no property is being attributed. The statement 'god is good' merely means 'god does whatever he wills to do' or 'god practices what he preaches' and the statement 'god commands us to what is good' merely meats the tautology 'god commands us to do what god commands us to do'

Sorry but I rather think of morality as not being arbitrary, even if at some point the omnipotence of God seems compromised.

"Is the Good good Because God Wills It? Or Does God Will It because It Is Good? "
Like I said, I agree more with the latter of that quote than with the former.

And I could also argue the following:

"...Principal flaw with most American men and women, their presuppositions. They believe that their rights were created by God, This eventually results in the need for every facet of life to be spelled out and authorized by the Bible.

Whereas if you could consider the possibility that morality does not come from God Himself, but that he would know what perfect virtue is because he is a perfect being, in the same way he follows logic, for if he dictated what was logic and what is not, you could have 1+1=6 and a triangle of 7 sides, his attribute of perfection would be invalid. If this is so, one can argue, that you do not need religion or God to tell you how to live. You could, with your own conscience, and reason and critical thinking, use logic and study Ethics, discover what is virtue and live accordingly."

"People who don't believe in government shouldn't ever ask people to put them in charge of it."

You read it as a tautology, and I disagree. If we elected the president of GM, and I ran on a platform of "I don't like cars, I think they're bad for everyone, so put me in charge of the largest maker of cars in the world", I'd get what, 1% of the vote?

Same sort of silliness comes from people like Reagan saying "Government isn't the solution to the problem, government is the problem"...so vote for me so I can run the government and prove myself right by making government a problem!

It's okay to say "I think government influence should be reduced", but this outright declaration that all government does is fuck things up should disqualify the person from government service, because it'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As to me having to justify the existence of the government programs, personally I think the burden of proof lies with you -- name a country without those types of institutions where private organizations successfully self-regulate themselves more effectively than what's being done in the U.S.

I have quite a few countries to back up my side of the argument...name one that can back up yours.

political tautology at its finest. and the american people simply eat it up. pathetic.

^MarineGunrock:
> That isn't a citation. That's you giving me a personal account. A citation is a study conducted over a widespread area over a period of time.

Okay let's turn it around, since you contend that giving armed thugs cart blanche in civilized society somehow increases civility how about you site some proof. It's pretty obvious that your request is absurd. What metrics are you going to use? Police Reports? Convictions? <sarcasm> that sounds unbiased </sarcasm>.

For all I know, you're a little punk that thinks he should be able to do whatever he wants without "the man" getting on your back and you yourself are incredibly disrespectful to them the instant they show up. You could aslo be a very upstanding citizen, but I just don't know.

If I don't "respect" cops and they act like thugs you seem to think that makes it my fault. If giving emotional twelve year olds guns and badges is your idea of maintaining order then that might make some sense, if they are supposed to be adults, it would make no difference how I feel about them.

say we should follow the rules since they're already there. How on Earth does that coincide with being an anarchist?

I did not say I was a reactionary, but an anarchist, I honor reasonably collective social agreements (laws) and disregard unreasonable ones. Most of the things people get ticketed for are reasonable.

No one ever said a well trained police force needs to be violent, and I am not making an appeal of fear.

Telling my that, if bad things happen, I will change my tune, is an appeal to fear. Bad things have happened, and it has only increased my certainly of my position. Your argument is as fallacious as the "no atheists in foxholes" argument, their are and have been, and pretending it can't happen is ignorant.

A police force without the right to arbitrarily threaten people with violence is not something I have a problem with, but that is not what we have, or what we are talking about.

I think maybe your perspectives would radically shift were you to ever live in a society not governed by anyone and policed by none.

We can keep going with you throwing out supposed tautological situations for believing in violent imposition of peace and order. I can keep showing you how these things have already happened to me and others, and your narrow "you have to believe" sentiment is absurd.

Your argument is a fallacy. Their are no situations which, by definition, will create adherence to a particular ideological position in everyone. I am not likely to change my tune unless you can provide a compelling argument. I certainly don't expect to change your position. I only want to make it clear that someone can say "fuck the police" without being a moron.

TAUTOLOGY!!!

What's so contradictory about understanding what Empirical Data means, as well as believing in something that goes beyond it?

If we assume that the theory of evolution is true, which it is, a "designer", ie ANY kind of designer is just about out of the question, its just too damn unlikely to be true. The fact that this man is also in a particular christian sect, is a remarkable example of the doublethink that goes into preserving religion.

The human species, depending a little bit on how you define homo sapiens (there is no clear "moment" when we went from "ape" to "human", because evolution is a gradual process) Has been on this planet for roughly 200 thousand years. So, for 194 thousand years, we humans stumped around in the dirt, most infants dead at birth, life expectency for the surviving minority probably less than 25 years, tribal wars, misery, starvation, sickness and natural disasters killing of people by the thousands, and then, only then, does his roman catholic God decide its time to intervene.. Obviously, this fairy-tale cooked up by people in complete ignorance, is not anywhere near true.

When it comes to deism, the view that "Something is up there", this is also laughable in light of evolution, the whole point of natural selection is that it is NATURAL, its automatic, its a self-guided process, if someone ever intervened it simply would not work the way it works, it works precisely BECAUSE there is NO "guide" to it, thats the whole beauty of it, its wasteful, mean, unsympathetic and ruthless because its tautological, Whatever happens, happens, and if some god poked his finger in there to "help it along", those fingers would either 1. Work as sticks in wheels, or 2.leave a trace, none of which is true

I taught logic for a couple of years at a university. His idea of rhetorical tautology should be called "circular reasoning" to distinguish it from the useful concept of a tautology in formal logic. Any boolean identity is a tautology. Those are very useful and not fallacious. Those include modus ponens, hypothetical syllogism, DeMorgan's laws, distributive laws, and much more. Every semester some students didn't have enough life experience to reinvent DeMorgan's, and they wrote blatantly wrong things like not(A or B) = (not A) or (not B).

See:
http://www.d.umn.edu/~snorr/ece1315f2/BOOLLAWP.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology

I have the opinion that logic should be drilled into all children in elementary school, because without some understanding of it they can't be relied on to form valid opinions about anything else. They should be rescued with logic before they enter a rut. Boolean algebra and quantifiers should be taught before high school, alongside formal geometry.

Evolution is still a theory, not proven fact.

This is a misconception. You fail to understand the word "theory" in scientific terms. The earth orbiting the sun is also a theory in scientific terms. The fact that they call evolution a theory isnt because its just a guess. You need to read up on genetics and evolution to understand this, I recommend reading "The Selfish Gene" To see just how tautological evolution is.

Evolution is a fact. This isnt "fanatical belief" anymore than stating that the planet is a sphere.

You've already made up your mind and still have nothing solid to prove that there is no existence of God.

Imagine just for a second that I'm right and that there is no God, What kind of evidence do you suppose I would come up with in a godless world? The burden of proof lies on those who have a claim something exist. Just like with the non-existing pink elephant sitting in my living room, I can only point to the distinct LACK of evidence of its existence. And as I said theres plenty of that.

God plays by the rules he sets, the fact that there is an order and structure to things shows that there is more then just a random collection of matter. This is evidence of a higher intelligence, or creator

Again, Please read "The Selfish Gene", (Torrent)It explains how replicators become rocket scientists through natural, blind gene selection. It shows specifically WHY and HOW there is an "order and structure of things" and why it appears to be designed by the best designer imaginable.. No designer is needed to explain the vast diversity of life. Contrary to what some creationist wrongly claim, evolution is not "random" or "by chance" its tautological, That witch survives, survives.