This place sure goes in "spurts"

[Florian Diesch]

Donn <donn.ingle at gmail.com> writes:

> On Tuesday, 21 July 2009 15:33:13 Florian Diesch wrote:
>> > Ding! Stock canard. Try again after doing some research.
>> I guess you already did some research. Why don't you tell us about your
>> results?
> No, you do the work. Google about atheism, it's not "teh evil" :D

Did it, didn't found anything convincing.


>> >> What we need is to recognize and respect the beliefs and practices of
>> >> others even if we don't understand them.
>> > Why? Not every belief & practice (BaP) is worth respect.
>> Why not? Who decides which BaPs are worth respect?
> Well, look at the BaP and then judge it. Let's see: mutilating a girl's 
> genitals - check. Honour killing - check. Denying reason and logic - check. Oh 
> it goes on and on. Just base the decision on one simple tenet: "Do not cause 
> or allow suffering." all else will follow.

I see. So science isn't worth respect either as they have a history of
supporting war.

Who's left to be respected?


>> > You are entitled to your own BaPs, but not your own facts.  We can't
>> > *all* be right. Therefore some of our BaPs must be wrong, some kind-
>> > of right and others right.
>> Maybe some are wrong. Maybe all are wrong. We just don't know, and maybe
>> we never will. So why not just try to get along with each other?
> We must absolutely try to get along. We must also have the sense of integrity 
> and love of truth to ask tough questions and 

By "truth" you mean "snorfgurdle", right?

> be prepared to change our minds. 

Are *you* prepared to change your mind?


> The minds of the religious simply do not change according to external input. 
> If you have two tribes and one refuses to compromise, then they are the 
> problem. How can you 'get along' with an inflexible neighbour?

Usually respecting their BaP and insisting that they respect my BaP
works quite well for me.


>> > How do we know unless we use, oh I dunno... reason and logic (which
>> > done correctly *is* science), in order to find out?
>> Maybe science is wrong. 
> Heh ;) You need to do some research again -- go look at what "science" 
> actually is. Here's a start:
> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/07/15/what-questions-
> can-science-answer/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology is a much better starting point.


>> Maybe the human brain can't get the truth.
> Here you define "truth" in your own special way. 

I didn't define it at all.


> It's a slippery word anyway.  If I replaced it with "snorfgurdle" then
> your sentence would read more sensibly: "Maybe the human brain can't
> get the snorfgurdle."

I don't share your idea of what's sensible.


   Florian
-- 
<http://www.florian-diesch.de/>