Yes, quite as predicted, the question of "is Bannon an anti-Semite" is being answered by telling me Israel sucks.

Has anyone ever seen Banno and Bannon in the same room? Might be the same person. Just saying.

An op-ed from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.753694.

It looks like there's little evidence Bannon hates Jews. The problem with the left yelling racist is that they're now the boy who cried wolf.

What I'd need to jump on the hang Bannon bandwagon is some real evidence that Bannon has real plans to push forth anti-Jewish policy. In truth, the liberal agenda is far less kind to Israel, and I see that as a real threat to Jews, far more than the evangelicals who fully support Israel but who believe I'm going to straight to hell. All this trying to decipher what goes on in the hearts of politicians isn't real interesting to me. I'm well aware they care only for themselves anyway. My concern is pragmatic. I trust they're all scoundrels regardless of stripe. You don't need to prove that to me.

So, I'll answer the OP, which was directed to me, yet took the expected turn of becoming a debate about whether Israel should exist. The question is whether I oppose Trump's decision to appoint Bannon because he MIGHT be anti Semitic.

My general view is that few are pure of thought and that racism, xenophobia, and even sexism fill everyone's lovely hearts. I find the desperate search for the disqualification of human beings from various roles disgusting and hypocritical. That is not to say that I'd fully accept an open Jew hater, but it is to say I'm not willing to engage in a witch hunt largely designed to prove the given narrative that Trump is actually a Klansman who interacts with neo Nazis.

Prove to me Bannon hates me and I'll hate him back, but suggest to me he hates Jews and I won't care. The truth is that at some level we all hate each other, but I'm content accepting what appears at and just below the surface and not in distilling out every difference we have so that we can justify hating one another.

And the subtext here might give you an understanding of why Trump supporters are able to support him and why the media so failed in garnering the hate for him they so wanted to drum up.

The history of British trade you provide is helpful and brief, but I wonder about other issues not discussed. Britain has always had an independent streak, never considering itself European entirely. It never fully invested in the EU and always resented having its policy matters decided by others.

My estimation is that neither the US nor the UK cares about globalization per se but simply desires self promotion. As long as globalization leads to greater prosperity, then it will be in vogue. Otherwise, why allow it if it only makes others rich?

Clinton did not mention the Constitution and did not indicate that constitutional interpretation was the role of Court. Trump did. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/19/the-final-trump-clinton-debate-transcript-annotated/?0p19G=c.

Clinton's only reference to the Constitution was in her complaint that the Senate had failed to vote on Obama's appointment.

I voted for Trump because in the debate when asked what he was looking for in a Supreme Court Justice, he, unlike Clinton, mentioned the word "Constitution." Yes, their job is Constitutional interpretation, not contemporary morality enforcement.

Where "value" is defined as a hat and "being" is defined as bald men, then no, not every being has value, but there are many bald men who would benefit from having a hat who don't have one.

And so your opinion would have been the same had Clinton won, considering the polarization would have been the same and we'd still be on the same 200+ year collision course set in motion when the Constitution set out the foolish election system it did?

So now the Republicans control both houses, presidency, governerships, State legislatures, and Supreme Court, and the narrative was the party was in shambles. The narrators are the only thing the Republicans don't control.

Oh please, you're not sad that things will be destroyed that people worked hard to achieve. You're sad that achievements you agreed with are being destroyed. If the preservation of legacy is important to you, take comfort in the fact that Scalia's legacy will be preserved with a solid conservative replacement.

^ Despite Republican control of everything, the narrative remains that the Republicans are in shambles.

It took a multi billionaire to buck the establishment. I don't think his victory proves the system is open to outsiders.

The House, Senate, and presidency is Republican, which means if it is polarized on some level, it's not for the moment when it comes to our government. There will be no gridlock and legislation will be passed (bye bye Obamacare and Iran deal). The Republicans also have a majority of Governors and state houses. Can someone open their eyes and just accept that the US is a very conservative country, opposed to European style social care, and stop being surprised when it doesn't do as left minded folks think it should?

For the record, I predicted this, all the way down to the Pennsylvania win (rust belt state that lost manufacturing jobs), and I won a free lunch from it.

I'd also say the media has been atrocious, acting as a PR machine for Clinton, not taking a candidate seriously, and abandoning its duty to just report the news. In truth, that rallied Trump supporters, a defiant group to begin with. The worst thing you can do is tell those folks what they have to do.

This really is a devastating blow to the Obama legacy, where his every accomplishment will be dismantled.

My favorite haiku:

After weeks of watching the roof leak
I fixed it tonight
by moving a single board

That harm that comes from your dog whining that she wants to be let outside while you sleep but you ignore her so she stops for just a little while so you're able to go back to sleep but she persists every few minutes and you know eventually you'll have to let her out and you just wish you had done it sooner so as to not have her keep waking you back up sort of like an alarm clock that goes on and off periodically and you just wish you'd have yanked it out of the wall instead of just wishing it would go away.

I call this the stress of procrastinating the inevitable and wishing you'd have dealt with it sooner.

For those old enough to have watched the Superman episodes on TV, during the opening credits, they would announce that Superman was fighting for "Truth, justice, and the American way," with an American flag waving in the background.

The reason Americans like superheros is that they stand for what America is supposed to stand for. I appreciate the comments of the detractors in saying it doesn't actually stand for that, but that is beside the point. The point is that America really does hold itself as an enforcer of justice and of higher ideals. This makes it distinct from all other countries. Whether it has failed or not is irrelevant to the question posed by the OP. I say this pre-emptively because I'm used to those responses.

The Shpleeple are a Scottish tribe that are the love children of Scottish shepherds and the sheep they fucked. And by fuck (cuz sometimes this word ain't clear bruh) I mean they put their ruddy Scottish penises in the sheep's gaping vagina, they leaned forth, pounded away while thinking of Ellen DeGeneris (like this makes it weird?) and dribbled enough ejaculate to impregnate the sheep.

Yes Benkei, your thread has been officially hijacked.

HanoverBananover was the best until Porat bought it and turned it into a laundromat.

meh

The Eastern systems offer nothing by way of authority, meaning reference to them is unhelpful. If you wish to prove there are 6 realms of being (as indicated in the post), then start there.

A couple of things:

The OP's question is reasonable only if one accepts that there is some integral part of the personality that exists outside of the corruptable brain. That is, if there was some magic moment when a soul dropped into your body prior to birth, why can't that same magic soul drop into a new body after it becomes disembodied after my death and I can live again? The trick for the OP is to explain how the body and mind are not intrinsically connected so that the permanent destruction of one does not necessitate the permanent destruction of the other. It would seem you'd need to resurrect my body if you wished to resurrect my mind and that would be the only way to recreate me.

Second, a real pet peeve of mine is the reference to Eastern theology in response to philosophical questions. We're all pretty attuned to the inappropriateness of references to Western theology (i.e. biblical cites), but every now and again we have to hear about Eastern systems like they matter here.

I'm willing to wager that college students will continue to evaluate women's sexuality regardless of the rules forbidding it. I suppose to some it's evidence of progress if these evaluations remain stored in the recesses of the mind instead of on paper.

One day I hope to look at my desk at work and to my life generally and find that the most significant question facing me is whether some college kids are numerically rating women's asses.

Unless they determined the rankings and comments were inaccurate, they should have withheld any sanctions. That is, only if an 8 (for example) were ranked a 6, I fully understand why there would be serious repercussions. However, if the rankings were accurate and those assessed manly were in fact manly, then truth should have served as a defense for those fine footballers.

Thanks for that Brother Wosret. You do have your moments.

I can tell people what they're going to say before they say it, and then tell them that I can read minds. It really mind fucks them. — Wosret

The magical rabbit from Hades again emerged from my breath and choked out the remnants of yesterday's hangover.

Don't even try to pretend that you predicted I'd say that. I mean, if you did, wow, and maybe you did, I don't know, but I doubt it bruh.

There would be no one to do any of the grunt work if everyone was adept in critical thinking. Wouldn't it be best if philosophy was left to the people who seek it instead of being forced on the general public? — MonfortS26

Sure, and we shouldn't teach literature because everyone would just waste away reading books and we'd have no engineers to build our bridges. And we shouldn't teach math because everyone would just calculate all day and we wouldn't have any artists. And we should teach art because everyone would just paint their day away and we'd have no one to cook our dinner.

Either that, or we could continue teaching things of value and allow people to choose their course in life, with some becoming cooks, others engineers, and even other philosophers. It's not as if philosophy is some drug that, should we release it on our youth, they will become so enthralled with it that we'll no longer have anyone to change the oil in our car when it comes due.

Yes, but it's obscene when you get use that failure to avoid paying taxes for 20 years. — aequilibrium

I agree with what Tiff said above. It's never to a business' advantage to gather losses, as if the tax write off associated with a $1 loss is more than $1. That is, if a business could choose a $1 profit and have to pay 40% of it in taxes, it would choose that instead of having a $1 loss and not having to pay taxes on it. Sure, under scenario 1, they'd pay $ 0.40 in taxes, and under scenario 2, they'd pay $0, but the net profit under #1 is $0.60, preferable to the $0 profit under #2.

It stands to reason that if your net income is negative, you'd owe no taxes. It also stands to reason that businesses don't start and stop every year on the tax due date, which means that if my losses in Year 1 are $1m, then I should be able to carry over the loss to Year 2. That means in Year 2, if I earn $500k, I'm still at a $500k loss over Years 1 and 2. I can keep carrying over the loss until it's gone. That's how it works. So, if Trump (for example) took massive losses in Year 1 and he's now very profitable in Year 10, it would make sense that he would have had a very low to no tax burden in Years 1-9.

What you describe as atheism, I see as agnosticism. Your epistemological standard seems relaxed here, and it's really more of a pragmatism. It's not that you have a firm justification for your belief. It's that given option A versus option B, A seems the least problematic, so A it is. I think I can agree with you that A is less problematic but still insist I don't know that A is correct, so I just concede agnosticism, as opposed to you who believe that that the results of your weighing test of two bad options offers you a justification for a clear conclusion.

I don't find atheism entirely plausible, meaning I find the notion that the universe, and all of its composition, all of its laws, all of its evolutionary principles, consciousness, beauty, etc. all just appeared from nowhere.

Sure, there is egalitarian porn, but much is not, but objectifies women and presents them in subservient roles.

Why use a PG13 example, but instead just ask if graphic porn depicting women in subservient and even degrading roles should be limited to the public?

IF the complexity of the universe entails a designer,as the theist asserts, then the designer's understanding, intentions, and abilities to actually implement his design surely are more complex than the level of complexity apprehended by the theist who asserts that such complexity entails a designer. — Brainglitch

I think the theist can persuasively argue that a complex system entails a complex designer, but I don't see how it follows that a designer cannot create a system more complex than himself. That is, I don't see why it's theoretically impossible that one day scientists could create a superhuman, superior in every conceivable way to current humans.

My understanding of quantum mechanics (which admittedly is about as deep as a puddle) is that there are genuinely stochastic, indeterminate events in nature, i.e. uncaused causes. — Arkady

The apparent randomness of certain quantum events gets a lot of play in philosophical circles. While I can accept that these events are entirely unpredictable from our standpoint, I cannot comprehend how they could be truly random, to the extent that term is defined as events arising from nothing. It seems quite impossible to me that one could expect different results assuming 100% reproduction of the pre-existent events.

So it is not that every complex entity has a complex designer, but rather every complex entity has a prior simplicity. — darthbarracuda

Yet that's just not empirically true. My computer, a complex entity, was created by many thousands of people, each extremely more complex than the computer. Paley's argument is embraced because it seems to comport with experience. One would not conclude that a piece of driftwood found on the beach had a designer, but one would conclude that a watch would.

Your comment above is really just a restatement of the scientific/evolutionary position that the theist challenges. I would think a more sophisticated theistic position would accept the evolutionary argument you present, but would then ask the meta question of who or what put in place this extremely sophisticated evolutionary system that turns simple substances into complex organisms.

Thus, a complex design such as that of the universe entails an even more complex designer. So either this leads to an infinite regress, or complexity does NOT entail a designer. — Brainglitch

And contrariwise, the complex design such as that of the universe entails prior causes (as opposed to designers) leading to its existence. So either this leads to an infinite regress, or complexity does NOT entail a cause at all. That the current universe can rest its existence upon an uncaused cause refutes the basic scientific principle that every event has a cause. What else is God than an uncaused cause?

Again, what is "coincidental" about that? — Arkady

So offer me your definition of "coincidental" since you're putting it in quotes like it's a special sort of term.

Ok, religious people are stupid in your experience.
Non-sequitur. — Arkady

No, it's really not. My point was to point out that it was entirely irrelevant to our conversation how deficient theists were.

I didn't say it did. My response was geared towards your comment about some people "bowing down in humility." — Arkady

I know. You were annoyed that a theist might be characterized in a positive light (to the extent humility is positive), so you wanted to be sure to point out that atheists were no less virtuous. That is, you personalized a discussion that was never intended that way because you seem to want to defend the goodness of atheists. My point remains that neither is better or worse per se, but both are equally lacking in support for their definitive statements.

Dawkins unanswerable objection against the intelligent designer is precisely the unanswerable argument made by theists against atheists, just phrased teleologically instead of causatively.

That is, asking where matter came from to begin this long chain of causative events is no more answerable than asking who designed this infinitely complex designer. If every event has a cause, it's impossible to have had a first cause just by definition. If every complex entity had a more complex designer, then it's impossible for there to have been a first designer by definition.

A "coincidence" of what? — Arkady

Everything coming together by happenstance, resulting in everything from rocks to consciousness.

(In my experience, the people most ardently claiming for humility in the face of the universe are those with the least amount of epistemic humility: it is religious believers, not scientists, who claim to have all of the answers.)

Ok, religious people are stupid in your experience. How does this impact my conclusion that neither the atheists nor the theists have any inkling of the answer?

If Colin saw God like I have seen my hand, then his laughing off atheists is understandable. If Colin did see God in this way, I'd ask he show me.

As a a devout non-atheist, I find the whole certainty thing about God's non- existence as troubling as the certainty espoused by the theists. It's obvious that there is a universe and its obvious we don't know how or why it got here. Some bow down in humility to this fact and some boast that they know our existence is all just meaningless coincidence. I'd say both need to just admit they have no inkling of the answer.

And whose fault is that? — Bitter Crank

Your mama's.