Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Lalalandsman,  I don't respond to your braying, on principle.   The fact that you are pathologically incapable of empathising with anyone other than your own narrow 'approved' group basically rules you out of this thread.

Just because you have the jaw-bone of an ass doesn't make you Samson.

Hmmmm, so faith is just taking it for granted that, although this whatever ACTIVELY watches, judges and controlls everything, he won't upset your own wee plans.... 

I particularly like the format of argument that postulates a non-existent then when it is questioned postulates another non-existent 'virtue' to affirm the first....  and next we'll have a third non-existent to support the second, I guess.  Let's see, how about calling it 'free will'.   

 Wow.  Isn't that tempting the lord?  Demeaning him by expecting him not to exercise his own unfathomable power?  I'd go careful if I were you..... a miracle can be pretty damaging if it comes at the wrong time for you.

(btw, potato doesn't have an 'e' on the end - didn't some yankee politician screw that up some years ago?  Yea, yea and I accept my typing cuold eb beter)

Well, I respect Locke for kicking off the British Empirical movement, and for some of his ideas on personal identity.  But I can't say I go for his views on politics in general.  Leads to abhorrent (to me) expressions of extreme individualism and libertarianism such as Nozicks Anarchy State and Utopia.    Any credo that puts projections of the self in material objects (i.e property) above ones obligations to the rest of ones community (for me, humanity in general; for others, their family, lodge, town, state, nation....) -  such a credo is essentially egoism and doomed to contradiction and ultimate self-destruction.

I think you had a good point on question-begging, A. And tadpol re finite resources is good. I doff my cap to both!    But to be fair, the thief scenario is covered by Locke's insistence on "from the common state nature placed it in".  Thieves (rarely) nick raw materials in their original state of nature.   And even if they do, one can argue that by publishing property rights over a resource, one HAS removed it from the state nature etc.

Just goes to show the incoherence of the property meme... but good memes never let reason impede them.....    And like other primitive memes it is almost universal  (non-property experiments usually end with the evil of property exercising destructive influence from within or without - the American Constitution - as interpreted by th 'supreme' court - will destroy the Amish, for example)

Yes they have had to edit carefully to stop incursions by creationists and other loonies.  Still, as a fully fledged shaman, Patton, you should be able to expound theories of witchcraft.   Given all we (humanity, not individuals) know of the workings of the universe, just run it past us again....  'Let there be light'  and all the explanation of that that so adequately supports all we have observed..... 

I concede that religions have a role in expressing easily the underlying biological and cultural imperatives that support our moral codes.   Be nice to people and respect law....  Its an easy way teaching how to behave (and we can all see what happens when the feeble minded try to think things out for themselves - GWB for example).   But trying to hang in on the physical world - do us a favour!   Not even YOU pray to your god every time you administer anaesthetic -  'please lord make the rules of physics apply in this case'.

OK  so the consensus to date is that if the average american were in the position of the average palestinian, he would simply say 'fair dos, boss, I'll just go live somewhere else, you can have anything you want'.  No protest, no fighting, no complaints.

Damn, wouldn't the world be soooooo easy if everybody else was lily-livered, with no attachment to their own land  - like the average american as displayed here.

(BTW  from the OP  "I'm sure that some who want to avoid using their imagination (and minds) will refuse to address the question. Will attack the thought experiment...  but the question remains: in this situation, what would YOU do?"   Well, well, well)

O yea, ok.... well every scenario might need a tweak or two.... Two additional point:  the new Floridans (the 'incomers'  have some ancient text - like the Book of Mormon - that says they have a divine right to the land; and, due to their treating the non-native american inhabitants of the state as sub-human, they can't move because they've not even got as much money as, errr, the native americans.

Bingo!

However, the palestinian analogy isnt what I REALLY wanted to express here.  The mark of a democracy is how it treats its minorities:  there aren't many pure democracies, but its fairly certain that China aint even an impure one!

Yet you are happy to answer hypotheticals on behalf of Israel....

The hypothetical asks you to examine how you think you - and by projection, others - would react to various situations.   You refusal to examine your own mindset speaks volumes.

No.  You are simply suppoting here the Israeli startegy (initiated I believe by Sharon himself) of 'facts on the ground'.  i.e. you never stop encroaching, stealing, 'annexing' on the grounds that someone - like you - will say 'thats past, we can't change it'.

There are 'peace' talks (I agree with the cynical use of quotemarks) underway and there are new settlements and new enclosures going on as we speak...  but they will be 'in the past' too.

No I don't misunderstand.  I disagree.  The point is that the scientific method NEVER claims rightness ... yet.   Right and wrong do not enter into it.   There is only a greater approximation to the truth (i.e. the fit of what is described and what there is).  Possibly one day the fit will be perfect, possibly never.

'the false assumptions of previous generations' is actually a very limited and wrong way of putting it.  There are 'scientific revolutions' where the 'assumptions of the prv...etc' are totally repudiated and swept away.  As with any field of human endeavour, we proceed by imitation, repetition, amplification and revolution.  All stages are necessary in the development of the field.....



The material assumptions of religion are very flawed (I am ignorant of any religion that agrees in any way with the current accepted physical model of the world, as I said).   The metaphysical claims are not unscathed from this.  They are based NOT on pure rationalism, but on a rationalisation of what the originators of the metaphysical claims knew of the physical world.  This is possibly one of the reasons why religions resist so staunchly the incursions of naturalism into what they consider 'their' areas of expertise - mind, psychology, behaviour....

Terry
If Israel returns all its 'conquests' and withdrew its $10 billion army (the total GDP of the palestinians is a quarter of that)......  Nothing more.  No retribution for 40 years of theft and oppression.  Just get out of lands you do not have any right to...  then don't you think Israel would be left in peace?  There is no reason to trust Israel, given its history: why should Hamas make the first move when Israel continues to push its 'settlers' into palestinian land?   

I show 'favouritism', in that I see the root cause of the conflict.  I call it a judgement: as it happens I know and am friends with probably ten times as many Israelis (and countless more Jews) than I know Palestinians - I have no bias of acquaintanceship.  I repeat, Israel has every right to live in peace,security and without molestation.  Now you, as a totally one-sided pro-Israeli, try to tell the Palestinians that they too have those rights..... 

Its hard to get top dog nations to think themselves nto the position of third worlders.  For example, the energy sapping existence in sub-Saharan lands, the poor soil, the lack of modern support like electricity, water, sewage….  We in the west cannot relly appreciate how impossible ‘normal’ life is under these conditions.

Here’s another exercise in imagination I found on another board…..

Lets imagine its 2100 and that for some reason (whatever, global warming, energy deficit….) the US starts to break up.   The UN decides against the wishes of all  Americans that half of Florida should be given over to the Cuban/Latino population.  Not just any half.  The best half.  And they drive the American population out into the swamps and scrublands.  Except for the people who get a minimal share of  budget support, but are ‘needed’ as cheap labour – people who become ‘trash’ in the land of the Floridans.    Stop there for a second.  So what do YOU think you would do?  What do you think your neighbours would do?  Roll over and say, ‘but of course I’ll give up my home, of course they deserve to take my land’?

I know what I’d do.  And if the Floridans react by attempting to smash my will?  If they make my wife, children, grandparents suffer by collapsing the economy through preventing free movement, closing borders?  If they send their ‘settlers’ to take what little good land there is?  What then would I do?  What sort of things would I say in anger?  What would YOU do?       Then they start to pull down your houses, grub up your farms, cut off your water, close roads and stop fishing boats from working because people have started resisting?  What would YOU do? 


I'm sure that some who want to avoid using their imagination (and minds) will refuse to address the question. Will attack the thought experiment...  but the question remains: in this situation, what would YOU do?

Ahhhh  yes.  Sorry I didn't get the connection... but the "wants the land, has invaded, is slowly strangling the native population, is 'importing' millions to takeover, and shoots demonstrators" bit seems a bit out of place, don't you think?  Try and think of a more up to date analogy, hein?  Start in 1948 (mm of course.  One has violent resistance, the other non-violent.  Both of course are farting in the face of thunder)