"Here's concrete proof that strong religious faith leads to child abuse".

Sorry to be a wet blanket, but all it shows is that some people mistreat their children.  It does not show any 'proof' of any general effect of strong religious belief :  at best it shows that when some people mistreat their children they rationalise by citing religious principles.

Terry
Akh and others of your mates chose to make this personal - 'guys like me' usually stick to facts (real ones, not opinions shouted loud).    I got pulled into brawl about 'guys like me' and 'guys like you' before, and withdrew when it was pointed out I had sunk to the abysmal level of my provocateur.  Sadly, such restrictions on behaviour do not apply to the exalted few who feel they are permitted to apply them. 

You may chose to judge and denigrate all you wish - it is what passes for argument I notice in your coterie.  However, your assumptions about me are wrong; your own 'sense of superiority' is even more unfounded.  How dare you admonish me.

I'll offer you a chance to raise this section to something approaching real discussion. You can address the question that (as usual) you and 'guys like you' consistently ignore, hedge, avoid, skirt, temporise....  See if you can answer without getting the Liar to post an interminable "justification" of everything your 'side' ever does.  See if you can give a simple, straight answer....

I believe that both sides in the Israel/Palestine conflict have commited acts of barbarism and evil: both are guilty of lying and dishonesty.   Do you agree?  Yes or no.

Fascinating!  I point out that the problem is not one-sided, and your immediate response is not to attempt a defense of Israeli actions, but to start squawking about palestinbian propganda.  LMAO  step one in growing up - both sides drench the dispute in lies and propaganda.   I would wager you have NEVER read an independent report from the Holy Land, and certainly never an uncommented, 'debunked' report out of palestinian lands.  Rather like your mate, for you Israel has never performed a wrong action, not told a lie.....    Just note Akh - I am not denying that the palestinians propagandise and falsify.... nor am I accepting the similar output of the Israeli propaganda machine.

Of course no use talking to 'guys like me'.  Close your mind, close your eyes.   There is phenomenal wrong on both sides, and you and 'guys like you' (of which we have a good represenation right here - hope you enjoy the company you've chosen) do nothing to work towards any form of enduring peace by your constant refusal to admit that 'your' side is anything other than spotless.  I've news for you - they ain't.... but you and your pack are incapable of seeing that.

I expect ranting windbags to equate dispassionate views with support for the 'other' side.  I thought better of you - mea culpa.    Just one small thing:  you reckon that "To guys like you "underdog" = "morally righteous"" - well apart from (a) confirming my point and (b) making a generalisation about as irresponsibly and ludicrously as you can get,  if some people are "underdogs", what them makes them so?  What native american land are you living on?  What profits of slavery have produced your lifestyle?  To borrow a stupid phrase (its seems the only way to argue with you) - "for guys like you", the fist is better than the brain... you are as bad as Hamas.

Mainly, yes.  The Israeli propaganda machine churns continually that 'we want pewace', 'final borders are amatter for negotiation', 'Hamas commit random acts of violence'... as if all the problem is one-sided.   

However, consider... 
Israel has fired approximately 1,000 times the amount of ordnance ibto Gaza that Hamas have fired out (ironically, many Qassam rockets carry charges of unexploded Isaeli shells);
the 'kill ratio' of civilians is approximately 4 to 1 and has remained that way for 7 years (and another small coincidence, the number of palestinian children killed has virtually consistently equalled Israeli civilian deaths throughout those years); 
despite hand-on-heart vows about road-maps, accords, etc Israel has never once stopped building new settlements and annexing viable land (the much publicised 'withdrawal' from Gaza was nothing more than giving back stolen land which was too hard to work and defend for 'settlers' in a hostile land);
thanks to 40 years of Israeli stewardship, Gaza is now one of the poorest places on earth, where now thanks to Isareli blockade 80% of the population are dependent on food aid, which again thanks to Israeli policy is being held back.  Israel is openly flouting its obligations under the Geneva Conventions - and ghouls on this board applaud it.

Once Israel shows some sincerity and honesty then perhaps negotiations can start.   



BTW For those who actually believe that the problems are all one-sided (your press and the posters here can give that impression), you may like to do some independent research - organisations like B'Tselem and Machsom Watch are good starting places - BOTH are Israeli orgs.  Rather than let partisans digest reality for you, please read and make your own minds up.

I think the 'problem' here is that some people find it hard to think in terms of 'the form' of an argument - they just want to grapple witrh the argument itself.

What is being said is that there were things which were 'the standard' way of thinking about a subject - and these have changed.  In moral terms, there was the idea of 'manifest destiny' which saw the ethnic cleansing of vast tracts of land - the majority accepted it then, the majority don't now.  In medical terms, standard view was that the body was a balance of four humours and one's temperament was determined by which humour was dominant - so I could be sanguine (jolly) because of excess blood, someone else could be choleric, etc - the majority believed it then, the majority don't now, in current particle physics we actually have a Standard View (so named with not a little knowingness - it will almost certainly change).

Whenever we are 'on the cusp' of a change of view, there are always angry voices for and agin the old/new.  Some are so wedded (or even welded) to 'standard' views that the very thought of examining invokes apoplexy.   This is irritating and frustrating for those who wish to see change, but is a fairly essentially human situation:  changing fundamental views is costly in terms of mental energy, and often is for little gain to the individual.  We are 'designed' (by evolution...) to be conservative, but also to be capable of change where it is obviously to 'our' advantage...   Understanding that the 'our' here refers to the whole of humanity rather than just self is another tricky area....

I'm not sure which 'system' your are referring to...  But there is a view that a 'right' is something that is defined by statute and nothing else: thsi certainly accords with your idea of 'system'.  So people lose their lands because either the 'system' is 'inefficient' , or badly worded, or of cousre where two systems are in conflict.  In these cases the common parlance equivalence of 'right' and 'morally correct' is lost, and as Patton implies in warfare no one has any rights except the victor.   An opposing view is that a 'right' is an essential condition of being human.  The Declaration of (American) Independence hints at this, although we are all left to consider just how broad a remit the 'unalienable' rights have  (they certainly did not cover native americans, slaves, and most modern day non-americans, for example).   

Tagging might = right as 'erroneous'  is not very explanatory.  It ceratinly isn't erroneous as a description of some current conflicts for example (if we trade on the equivocation of right as 'morally acceptable' and/or practical-efficient).   In what sense do you mean erroneous, then?    IF we take the second view of 'rights' above (unalienable conditions), then we still have the problem of the relationship to  power.....

We are here getting to some interesting musings on what are 'rights'....  There are plenty of people who would accept openly, even even more who act as if, might makes right and thats that.    Its hard to divorce power from 'rights' - they do after all need some enforcement mechanism when transgressors violate them. 

a) 'Start with' I believe was my phrase in a previous excahnge on this topic.  You sadly feel that is where we can stop - that presumably is because its 'official '.


Yes?   I presume that your opinions are strong too - otherwise why would you spend as much time as me posting here...

In terms of 'the Israeli gambit', this is a prima facie case of course that it ISN'T reliable.  Why, I wonder, do you feel a need to assert - with no reasoning or justification - the source's reliablity when no-one has questioned it?   

(Here's a bit of anticipation from me, by the way.... I am purely commenting on YOUR post - quoted above.  This post is nothing more than an observation on your behaviour, not on the contents of a large cut and paste from a partisan website).

Sure Terry.  I ask a question, the Liar comes up with a load of ieewlwvancies and I'm the one who evades and weaves.  OK.  Hows life in the playground?  Running out of kids for your gang to pick on?

I think that you don't read.... I said 'we are playing'.   Secondly, I am sure that you are aware of my opinions on the laziness and inappropriateness of using dictionary definitions when it comes to examining controversial or vaguely understood ideas.   To simply cite current usage (of which there are considerably more than the limited DDs you have cut) is no examination.  As an analogy, if we simply accepted Newtonian ideas of gravity, Fresnels view of optics, even Maxwellian models of atoms, there would be no quantum science....    Indeeed it is the over-reliance on 'authority' and testimony that informs my activities here in arguing against the opinions that a primitive 3,000 year old worldview tries to impose.   I have little to complain about the principles (not the metaphysics) behind most of christian moral codes: but the flat-earth thinking of those who find dualism an explanation of anything just appalls me.

Sincerely, that is why I present my opinions here.   Thanks for your sincere answer.

The question should read 'why don't you...'  and the answer is  - because, as I clearly explained, they were irrelevant to the question I was examining.  Why didn't you answer the question posed?  etc, etc, etc. 

Maybe I was wrong.... he's not Eichmann, he's you when you're having 'une crise nerveuse'.   

It has been pointed out to me that being provoked into a war of insults (with a ranting flamer) is hardly my style.  I agree and hereby withdraw from contact with said.... except, to be on equal terms, I make the following points:

1.  Realityman has advocated use of systematic rape as a justifiable weapon of war by Israel
2.  Despite his apparent nick, he is if fact a reincarnation of Adolf Eichmann, pretending to be who he is not.
3.  I have precisely the same evidence to back these points up as he has for his personal slurs on me.

Soon, in due course, I will initiate a thread where those who seriously wish for peace in Israel/Palestine can discuss the issue.  A bientot.

In that case there wouldn't be a loss of property rights.


Me,  Patton is old.  You are young.  I'm pretty certain you are both right and wrong in equal measures 

I think we are playing fast and loose with the idea of prediction here.  Predictions are based on 'rules' or 'laws' that extrapolate from a source of knowledge. Any generalisation - an inductive move from cases known to ALL such cases, or a deductive move from the logic of a theory - involves predictions: that there will be no exception to the law in the given circumstances.  Thus "if any sinner does not repent, he will spend eternity in hell" is as much a prediction as "Callum Stephenson will spend eternity in hell".  Its just that the first is more wide ranging than the second.   

Predictive rules/laws do not need to be practicable.  Laplace's dictum was a statement of principle not of epistemological practicality:  it seems that you agree - IF we" knew the relationship (cumulative data) one sinner has with God versus the next" then we could predict.

Making a prediction like this would be futile.


Perhaps then a little less pithiness, or at least some attempt to explain what is being analogised, and how it may help.  Of course, analogies always run the risk of being attacked in the detail of their similarities, rather than the spirit of the point being made.


WADR this doesn't coincide with my understanding of the proselytising religions.  The meme wants to replicate.  Or in your parlance possibly, 'become fishers of men', 'go out and save souls'....   your belief must therefore triumph over others.   If you are not trying to achieve something, why then do you argue/discuss in this forum?  (Sincere question)