:100: :fire:I don't think UBI is intended to prevent a revolt of the masses, it's to keep them minimally contented. It's a nuisance to manage their discontent and unhappiness, not a major threat. Groups that are any sort of real threat to the establishment are not bought off with a basic income. They are confronted and attacked by the police.
In any volatile situation, where revolt could grow out of riot, the police shoot to kill. lumpen proles (like George Floyd) have been treated pretty harshly by the police when they get out of line. It's not an aberration, it's policy. — BC
How does faith deter anything let alone suicide?I believe that faith is a deterrent against suicide. — BitconnectCarlos
Amen. :smirk:Religious people are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are religious. — paraphrase of J.S. Mill (re: conservatives)
(i.e.) Millennia of slaughtering babies & other innocents in the "Promised Land" ("Holy Land"). Countless human blood sacrifices demanded by the insatiablely jealous "God of Abraham". :eyes:Humans don't fight over territory and food. They fight over imaginary stories in their minds. — Yuval Noah Harari, Israeli historian
:100: :fire:↪BitconnectCarlos pfff... Zionists don't take them seriously and obviously you don't either. Don't murder (Palestinian civilians). Don't steal (land). And unlimited administrative detention for Palestinians with no recourse to courts. That's 3 [Noahide] laws continously broken that you're perfectly fine with. — Benkei
Well okay, then why not also "eliminate" the ultra-Zionist leadership of Israel and murderous Israeli colonizer-settlers in the Occupied Territories?↪Benkei
We must eliminate those who are intent on the murder of innocents. — BitconnectCarlos
Yeah, that's just what the Waffen SS and its Einsatsgruppen told themselves too ... gfy, BitCunt. :shade:Killing them is not murder.
Only if the process is completely painless for both dogs and humans, then yes of course. I think in order to do good, at minimum, the means must sustain and not be inconsistent with (sabotage) the ends. 'The good' in this example, however, might be instrumental (e.g. scientific, technological, juridical-political), but it's not moral (i.e. not eudaimonistic)."Would you let animals like dogs die in order to create a vaccine that will save all of humanity?" — Arnie
Ancients called that "gnosis" or "nirvana" ... :victory: :cool:... all I saw was the Void looking back at me. — Vera Mont
Yes I agree insofar as. I've come to experientially understand (any) "good" as a reflective practice of negating – effectively preventing/reducing – disvalue.Do you agree with this, namely that the notion of good in inherent in the primacy of experience, and not something that can be learned by simply looking up a definition and analyzing it? — Shawn
Yes, ritualized reality-denial. Which is why I define "faith" as believing the unbelievable in order to defend the indefensible and to excuse the inexcusable.And what's truly dispiriting is the awful tap dance believers will do to justify the unjustifiable. This must be what they mean when they say religion is nihilism. — Tom Storm
:fire: Yes yes – a minimally moral (i.e. empathic-benevolent) person, who knows a child is on the verge of being raped and also has the power to prevent it, would do so whereas "Almighty God" does not prevent child-rapes (e.g. priests) – wholly unworthy of worship. Such a deity is either a sadist or a fiction.I can't worship anyone who fails to meet my standard of morality. — Vera Mont
:100: :up:I would say that I (and most members here, probably you too) are morally superior to the Old Testament god (at least the character as written) who endorses slavery and commits mass murder ... — Tom Storm
Theodicy is a top-down, otherworldly, inhuman/unnatural excuse – ex post facto rationalization – for 'divinely permitted' evil in this world. In other words, it's superstitious bullshit. :death:maybe the suffering is for a purpose — BitconnectCarlos
:clap: :flower: :hearts:Faith can find an excuse for any amount of cruelty; reason cannot. — Vera Mont
:fire: :up:By my thinking, UBI doesn’t solve the real problem, which is one of power: the decisions being in the hands of a self-perpetuating, small elite of private owners. — Mikie
Who marginal lefties (like myself) "aspires to socialism" in this postmodern-identitarian, neoliberal-corporatist, reactionary populist era?So, what would you conclude about, quite possibly, in making aspirations towards socialism moot through Universal Basic Income? — Shawn
Oh yes, but I think all those other "aspects of yourself" are derivatives from what you asked about in the OP: "purpose (in itself)" – and not just mere "instrumental" (i.e. utilitarian/aspirational) purposes.Given, to be sure. But isn't there some aspect of yourself not merely given, but chosen and self-legislated? — tim wood
Immediate fucking ceasefire! :scream:You haven't answeredwhat you want from Israel to end the oppression. — BitconnectCarlos
1619.When did you first wake up from the American dream? — an-salad
I think "purpose (in itself)" corresponds to Spinoza's conatus: everything necessarily persists in its being.The questions here are, then, what is purpose (in itself), where does it come from, what is its ground? — tim wood
Being (or life) is the (or an) end-in-itself like song dance music (i.e. rhythm/melody for rhythm's/melody's sake).Or, what exactly gives it all meaning, makes it all worthwhile?
I agree. To say anything determinate either way about an indeterminate, or generic, "God" is illogical (i.e. nonsense).the illogic of someone claiming that necessarily God cannot exist. — Fire Ologist
Ah yeah, now isn't that just a return of the fuckin' "nazi" repressed in (some) Ashkenazim? – "Sieg Heil! Zion-über-alles!" Fuck you, Bibi & the IDF. :scream:Closing in on the Hamas [Gaza] vermin. — Moses
You took the words right out of my mouth.I fail to see exactly what it is you are failing to see. — Pantagruel
Non serviam – I refuse to "follow" any superstitious "commandments" (re: Plato's Euthyphro, etc) seeing as "following" them did not prevent the Nakba and subsequent Israeli colonizer-settler occupation-oppression of the last several decades. Your zionist "Noahide Commandments", BC, seem as compatible as the nazis were with slaughtering elders women & children and ethnically cleansing, so wtf bother with such tribal "blood and soil" superstitions? :mask:I don't really mind as long as you follow the the 7 noahide commandments. — BitconnectCarlos
which for me culminates in aretaic negative consequentialism (i.e. flourishing by actions and/or inactions which effectively prevent or reduce harms and injustices) that, therefore, categorically obligates me to practice solidarity with oppressed communities (e.g. secular Palestinians) struggling to resist their occupiers-oppressors (e.g. Israeli Zionists). Tikkun olam. :fire:Whatever we know harms humans and nature, I do not voluntarily do to any humans or nature
I'd respond "Okay". Stories and fables exist, but not "YHWH (except as one of the main characters).How do you respond to those who might argue that the Bible is allegorical and that it contains a 'broader truth' about Yahweh, who does not always conform to the stories, except through fable? — Tom Storm
All that comes to mind at the moment is Paul Tillich's notion that to say either "God exists" or "God doesn't exist" is idolatrous / blasphemous / meaningless (I can't remember which) or Quentin Meillassoux's "inexistent God" that is yet to come to be (or something like that) à la waiting for godot... :smirk:Out of interest are there any other frames you know of a believer might use to preserve belief in Yahweh without literalist scripture?
Here's a "rational" example of "how to prove a negative" from a 2020 thread Belief in Nothing ...I don’t think it’s rational to conclude as fact that something does not exist. Don’t know how you prove a negative. — Fire Ologist
I think this proves we can prove a negative.[P]redicates of X entail search parameters for locating X (i.e. whether or not X exists where & when).
E.g. (A) Elephant sitting on your lap ... (B) YHWH created the world in six days ... (C) In 2024 George Bush lives in the White House ... (D) UFOs take-off & land at JFK Airport ... etc
So: absence of evidence entailed by (A/B/C/D) is evidence - entails - absence of (A/B/C/D): search (A) your lap, (B) the geophysics of the earth, (C) who is currently POTUS, and (D) control tower logs, arrival / departure gates & runways at JFK Airport ... — 180 Proof
We can know only that particular deities do not exist but not that 'every conceivable deity' does not exist. To wit:I guess I meant people who “know” there is no god. — Fire Ologist
If that is so, then Deus, sive natura – Spinoza's God¹ (and not "the God of Abraham" or any other Bronze Age tribal / sectarian cult-superstition) – which I contemplate without worshipping-fetishizing (i.e. idolatry) like Albert Einstein et al. As a philosophical naturalist (i.e. Epicurean-Spinozist + absurdist²), I have a speculative, 'irreligious' affinity for pandeism³ which makes me an ecstatic⁴ ... rather than spiritual or religious.You just believe in a different sort of God. — BitconnectCarlos
The latter follows from the former. Like the principle of explosion: any nonsense follows from contradictions. :pray:Because they believe in God? Or is it the talking snakes? — BitconnectCarlos
"Zion" re: Joshua (Jericho) to Netanyahu (Gaza) ...Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. — Voltaire
... it's the unholy "parties of god" on both sides committing atrocities that "explicitly" sabotages any prospective (secular) resolution to Israeli-Palestinian hatreds. — 180 Proof
Yeah, we're the ones who do what's right for exigent reasons to do right for its own sake; we're not craven like most of "the explicitly religious" who superstitiously obey "commandments" for the sake of reward or to avoid punishment in some imaginary "afterlife". After all, it's the unholy "parties of god" on both sides committing atrocities that "explicitly" sabotages any prospective (secular) resolution to Israeli-Palestinian hatreds.the explicitly irreligious — BitconnectCarlos