Galadon, this is disappointing, but, well, perhaps it should have been expected.
I and several others here have answered your questions. You just didn't like the answers because there was nothing to attack, nothing to deride. Sorry, to disappoint you guy, but no one here appearantly is silly assed enough to fall for your rhetorical ploys.
Where do we get our natural light?
This one I didn't bother to answer because it already had been answered. And the answer was not, the scientificly correct one atleast: the sun. Your got the short correctish answer: Energy released by atoms fusing.
But then this nonsense about...well, not knowing the educational level of everybody here.
Yeah, boy, talk down to your audience. Assume their all sixth grade drop outs, though I doubt that any a sixth grade drop out would have been intellectually satisfied with the answer: the sun.
You asked about where faith comes from. You got more than one answer, one of which was from me. To quote my initimable self: "One determines faith in the same way one determines which breakfast cereal one likes. It comes from a personal realization of what suits the individual best for him or her."
Again, the answers simply weren't deridable, so YOU ignored them.
Who's double talking?
*chuckle*
To quote the wonders of me again: "You seem like a bright guy, just a bit under informed in some of the areas that you are adressing. "
Sorry, maybe I shouldn't have called you bright?
Ahhh, such as? I'd be more than willing to discuss specifics. I know that specifics might frighten you, since you like to stick to generalities so broad that anything you say :
"This is because western man is incapable of abstract thought. "
Errr, what I mean is , err, yeah.
"western people have trouble with abstract thought "
can be backtracked to mean anything. Well, when you accuse someone else of double talk it would be well to make sure that yours doesn't get thrown back at you.
Actually, people do this all the time. They may not call it metaphysics, they may call it philosophy, but that is what metaphysics is guy.
Or, didn't you know that?
See, that is one of the great things about experience as oppossed to being 19 and knowing it all. The experience age brings teaches you one thing that you almost have to try to ignore to miss.
The more you learn about any subject, the more you discover how much you just don't know about anything.
I doubt that this will make much sense to you now, but in time it probably will become clear... if you let it. That wouldn't be a bad thing either, if you are determined to make a god of science, as you seem to be triyng to do, because it is another of those pesky, philosophic sounding scientific maxims that the scientific mindset is built upon.
Sort of off at your prognostication there bub. Unless your both standing on two different sides of the international date line at relative midnight, shared data makes that unuseful.
But your aren't discussing something as mundane as arithmatic formulae, but rather a field of philosophical thought.
You do know what the definitions of philosophy and religion are don't you? If so then you know that relgion is a branch of philosophy. Are you really so uninformed that you believe that there is a single correct philosophy?
Galadon, you are brighter than
this.
What is the purpose of such a discussion forum as this? Is it all simply to agree with Galadon, or might it be to air various ideas and view points?
I may be (Hell, I am) pompous; but you are so egotistical it's terrifying; even for a bright kid, which, of course, most of us were who chat in here. That's why this kind of place attracts us.
Leave your superiority complex at the door G. Assume that everyone in here is atleast as smart as you, at least as well educated as you, and at least as opinionated as you and you'll get much further with your discussions.
This next one is grand.
This implies that I run my life from the Bible. Do you actually read any of the repsonses given you? I'm about as agnostic as you get. The closest I come to any religious idealism is my tendency to think well of the ideas of scientific determinism. Since that might be unfamiliar to you as well, I'll explain it.
It is a philosophy that tends to use Evolution to explain our physical, if not theo-spiritual origns and the scientific method as it's guide to how to understand the universe on a physical level. It does not deny the existence of a God figure, as the existence of a God figure can NOT be disproven, it merely states that whether there is one or not is irrelevant to our physicality.
You were discussing absurdities earlier. This quote of yours might well qualify as an absurdity.
There are as many reasons for the fighting of a war as there have been wars. Certainly these are two of the most common reasons, but if you know ANYTHING about history you know what BS this one was. As a single for instance, more than one war has been started over the damaged egos of one statesman or another. Man has shown, historicly, that he will fight wars for the most inconsequential of reasons.
As to the second part of that quote, hey, you are entitled to your opinion, certainly, but there is simply no way in which to gauge it's accuracy whatever. For a person with faith in a particular religion or ideal, it can be a wonderful anesthetic. Very often a far more effective one than psychology can provide.
Too, has religion caused the wars, or have men used religion as the scape goat for the wars? The Crusades are a perfect example. Historicly, they might have been better called: "the Merchant Wars", as it's a moderately well known fact that more than one of them were instigated by the Neopolitan and Venetian Merchant Princes who made themselves disgustingly rich by providing a great deal of the transport, by selling into slavery in the northern African ports many of the younger or unfamilied folk that swarmed into Venice and Naples and by selling food to the crusaders at such exhorbitant prices that many starved while the food was rotting in the holds of the ships.
Certainly, that was the best known of the "religious war" examples, but was relgion directly to blame... or was greed to blame?
It's easy to take shots at religion. Hey, you're just being fashionable by doing it. You're just being another on the already massive bandwagon. But even among people who find the old religions to be less than useful in today's society, someone who takes cowardly and biggotted shots at an entire group and class of people who aren't even there to defend themselves, are often found to be both: cowardly and repugnant.
Draxy