Are taxes justified to support a war? YB says no.

[dldelancey]

Nietzche once wrote: Every blow that does not break my back or kill me, makes me stronger.

I never knew that originated with Nietzche! I actually hate that saying. It's so often quoted that it hardly has any meaning, and it has become a fallback for people to fill awkward moments when they're avoiding the elephant in the room. That is, they don't want to face the ugly truth - this [fill in horrible negative experience here] blows chunks, and it sucks. When you are the person who has just barely survived getting dead, you don't want to hear someone tell you that you apparently needed a kick in the face to make you a stronger person.

The baby learns to walk by falling down, again and again. Learning to walk is a celebration. Falling down is not what is being celebrated. 14 years later as a teenager he loses his legs in an automobile accident and learns to walk again with artificial limbs. Again, a celebration! The accident is not celebrated. A philosophy that celebrates falling down and accidents is either silly, garbage or the consequence of incomplete thinking.

--Brant

Agreed. On the other hand, a philosphy that does not examine the reasons falling down occurs or that dismisses accidents as having no root cause but the irresponsibility of the victim, is equally mistaken. Toddlers learn to walk because they make adjustments based on what they learned from their falls. If a baby is falling because someone is maliciously pushing him down, the baby will learn nothing if he decides it's his own fault he can't learn to walk. He will believe that it's both okay to push and okay to get pushed. What he needs to learn is that getting pushed down sucks and is wrong, but that he can do something about it that allows him to proceed with his goal of learning to walk.

What I'm arguing is that naming the bad thing that happened and identifying the appropriate responsible party or parties is a necessary step in achieving the goal you were sidetracked from before the bad thing reared its ugly head. Moralist's view that a person should accept all responsiblity for every bad thing is not conducive to learning from those bad things.

[caroljane]

I too have always despised this bromide. What does not kill you can still cripple you forever.

[caroljane]

Also hate "Everything happens for a reason." Duh, ultimate cause, proximate cause, solipsism anyone?

[caroljane]

I too have always despised this bromide. What does not kill you can still cripple you forever.

That being said, the lasting joys of my life were built on the bones of early failures and heartbreaks. Brant and Deanna are both profoundly correct.

[moralist]

Nietzche once wrote: Every blow that does not break my back or kill me, makes me stronger.

I never knew that originated with Nietzche! I actually hate that saying. It's so often quoted that it hardly has any meaning, and it has become a fallback for people to fill awkward moments when they're avoiding the elephant in the room. That is, they don't want to face the ugly truth - this [fill in horrible negative experience here] blows chunks, and it sucks. When you are the person who has just barely survived getting dead, you don't want to hear someone tell you that you apparently needed a kick in the face to make you a stronger person.

The baby learns to walk by falling down, again and again. Learning to walk is a celebration. Falling down is not what is being celebrated. 14 years later as a teenager he loses his legs in an automobile accident and learns to walk again with artificial limbs. Again, a celebration! The accident is not celebrated. A philosophy that celebrates falling down and accidents is either silly, garbage or the consequence of incomplete thinking.

--Brant

Agreed. On the other hand, a philosphy that does not examine the reasons falling down occurs or that dismisses accidents as having no root cause but the irresponsibility of the victim, is equally mistaken. Toddlers learn to walk because they make adjustments based on what they learned from their falls. If a baby is falling because someone is maliciously pushing him down, the baby will learn nothing if he decides it's his own fault he can't learn to walk. He will believe that it's both okay to push and okay to get pushed. What he needs to learn is that getting pushed down sucks and is wrong, but that he can do something about it that allows him to proceed with his goal of learning to walk.

It's obvious that in addressing personal responsibility I was referring to adults and not babies. Parents are responsible for their own children until they are the age of accountability and make moral decisions for themselves.

What I'm arguing is that naming the bad thing that happened and identifying the appropriate responsible party or parties is a necessary step in achieving the goal you were sidetracked from before the bad thing reared its ugly head.

I totally agree with identifying the responsible party:

It's us.

Almost all of our suffering is self inflicted, and almost none is external.

Moralist's view that a person should accept all responsiblity for every bad thing is not conducive to learning from those bad things.

In my view it is exactly the opposite. The most lucid experiences are when I've realized the totality of my personal responsibility for my own life... and the worst ones are when I've been emotionally blinded by angrily blaming others.

I'm glad that each of us is free to clarify their own view and to describe exactly how it differs from the other. Because no matter what we choose... we harvest what we plant.

[BaalChatzaf]

Has anything bad happened to you that was NOT your fault. Have you ever been the victim of unforseeable ill fortune?

[Brant Gaede]

Nietzche once wrote: Every blow that does not break my back or kill me, makes me stronger.

I never knew that originated with Nietzche! I actually hate that saying. It's so often quoted that it hardly has any meaning, and it has become a fallback for people to fill awkward moments when they're avoiding the elephant in the room. That is, they don't want to face the ugly truth - this [fill in horrible negative experience here] blows chunks, and it sucks. When you are the person who has just barely survived getting dead, you don't want to hear someone tell you that you apparently needed a kick in the face to make you a stronger person.

The baby learns to walk by falling down, again and again. Learning to walk is a celebration. Falling down is not what is being celebrated. 14 years later as a teenager he loses his legs in an automobile accident and learns to walk again with artificial limbs. Again, a celebration! The accident is not celebrated. A philosophy that celebrates falling down and accidents is either silly, garbage or the consequence of incomplete thinking.

--Brant

Agreed. On the other hand, a philosphy that does not examine the reasons falling down occurs or that dismisses accidents as having no root cause but the irresponsibility of the victim, is equally mistaken. Toddlers learn to walk because they make adjustments based on what they learned from their falls. If a baby is falling because someone is maliciously pushing him down, the baby will learn nothing if he decides it's his own fault he can't learn to walk. He will believe that it's both okay to push and okay to get pushed. What he needs to learn is that getting pushed down sucks and is wrong, but that he can do something about it that allows him to proceed with his goal of learning to walk.

It's obvious that in addressing personal responsibility I was referring to adults and not babies. Parents are responsible for their own children until they are the age of accountability and make moral decisions for themselves.

What I'm arguing is that naming the bad thing that happened and identifying the appropriate responsible party or parties is a necessary step in achieving the goal you were sidetracked from before the bad thing reared its ugly head.

I totally agree with identifying the responsible party:

It's us.

Almost all of our suffering is self inflicted, and almost none is external.

Moralist's view that a person should accept all responsiblity for every bad thing is not conducive to learning from those bad things.

In my view it is exactly the opposite. The most lucid experiences are when I've realized the totality of my personal responsibility for my own life... and the worst ones are when I've been emotionally blinded by angrily blaming others.

I'm glad that each of us is free to clarify their own view and to describe exactly how it differs from the other. Because no matter what we choose... we harvest what we plant.

All you seem to be doing is refusing to be a victim. That's both right and great but don't you get too elaborate with this idea? Once Nathaniel Branden said to my therapy group he was soon going to be doing something else--his "Intensives"--and it was going to be hard to tell where it was all going to go and what he was selling at any time was, for us, "Get it while you can." To which I replied, "That's my philosophy!", putting the whole group into hysterics. Refusing to be a victim and getting it while you can appears to be the whole of what you have been saying here. Philosophically callow but very good as far as it goes.

--Brant

[moralist]

All you seem to be doing is refusing to be a victim. That's both right and great but don't you get too elaborate with this idea? Once Nathaniel Branden said to my therapy group he was soon going to be doing something else--his "Intensives"--and it was going to be hard to tell where it was all going to go and what he was selling at any time was, for us, "Get it while you can." To which I replied, "That's my philosophy!", putting the whole group into hysterics. Refusing to be a victim and getting it while you can appears to be the whole of what you have been saying here.

You're right, Brant. But there are two conditions to your description:

"Get it while you can... but never at the loss of others."

"Refuse to be a victim... but never victimize others."

Both of those moral conditions will keep you safe outside the zero sum system. Outside the zero sum system is where the good people are living happy prosperous lives.

Philosophically callow but very good as far as it goes.

Spot on.

I'm not a thinker, I'm a doer. The closest thing to intellectual study I ever get is learning how to do things. This old Bill Cosby joke may have been used before but it's a fitting descriptor:

"Why is there air?"

"There's air to blow up basketballs and volleyballs."

I tend not to be nearly as interested in the intellectual study of the ultimate theoretical or philosophical nature of things, as I am in learning how they work in the real world. What things do is a far higher priority for me than what they are. This also explains why I'm much more of a behaviorist than a dogmatist.

Our thoughts and emotions do not make this world what it is... only what we DO about what we think and feel matters. People may do the same good for an infinite variety of reasons, but those reasons are irrelevant. Only the good we actually do matters to the world. Whereas unrealized intentions mean nothing to the world.

This same approach is also reflected in my business. Daily I work closely and intimately with electricity. The theoretical intellectual knowledge of what it is, is totally irrelevant... while the practical awareness of precisely what it does is the highest absolute immediate critical necessity, or I'm dead.

Electricity is like objective truth. Absolute. Universal. Impersonal. Always the same. Never changes. It doesn't give a crap about what I "think" or "feel" about it. So only what I actually DO about it matters.

[Brant Gaede]

That's basically libertarianism sans Ayn Rand's Objectivism--which is not sans Ayn Rand.

--Brant

[moralist]

Has anything bad happened to you that was NOT your fault.

Before I answer your question, a clarification of the term "bad" is necessary.

Whether anything happening to me is "bad" or "good" is totally dependent upon what I DO about it. That can easily be determined after the fact by evaluating both my response to what happens to me, as well as the consequences which naturally unfold as the result of my response. "Bad" of "good" can also be determined after the fact by the kind of person I become as the result of what happened to me and how I responded to it.

So as far as the naturally unfolding consequences of my own previous actions positioning me in time and space... the answer is NO.

Have you ever been the victim of unforeseeable ill fortune?

Next, your use of the term "fortune". It indicates your belief in random chance. I don't share your faith in chaos, because from empirical observation of the exquisitely ordered patterns of physical design in this world, I know that God exists.

So rephrasing your question minus the belief in random chance:

Have you ever been the victim of unforeseeable bad thing happening to you?

Unforeseeable... NO.

Foreseeable... YES.

Every event has a seed from which it grows. This is our challenge in life... to exercise our awareness to see the portents.

"To know the seeds, that is divine."

--Confucius

[BaalChatzaf]

Has anything bad happened to you that was NOT your fault.

Before I answer your question, a clarification of the term "bad" is necessary.

Whether anything happening to me is "bad" or "good" is totally dependent upon what I DO about it. That can easily be determined after the fact by evaluating both my response to what happens to me, as well as the consequences which naturally unfold as the result of my response. "Bad" of "good" can also be determined after the fact by the kind of person I become as the result of what happened to me and how I responded to it.

So as far as the naturally unfolding consequences of my own previous actions positioning me in time and space... the answer is NO.

Have you ever been the victim of unforeseeable ill fortune?

Next, your use of the term "fortune". It indicates your belief in random chance. I don't share your faith in chaos, because from empirical observation of the exquisitely ordered patterns of physical design in this world, I know that God exists.

So rephrasing your question minus the belief in random chance:

Have you ever been the victim of unforeseeable bad thing happening to you?

Unforeseeable... NO.

Foreseeable... YES.

Every event has a seed from which it grows. This is our challenge in life... to exercise our awareness to see the portents.

"To know the seeds, that is divine."

--Confucius

You claim to be able to foresee every possible outcome. I think you deceive yourself. You are not half as smart as you think you are. One day you might learn a little reality based humility.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[moralist]

Has anything bad happened to you that was NOT your fault.

Before I answer your question, a clarification of the term "bad" is necessary.

Whether anything happening to me is "bad" or "good" is totally dependent upon what I DO about it. That can easily be determined after the fact by evaluating both my response to what happens to me, as well as the consequences which naturally unfold as the result of my response. "Bad" of "good" can also be determined after the fact by the kind of person I become as the result of what happened to me and how I responded to it.

So as far as the naturally unfolding consequences of my own previous actions positioning me in time and space... the answer is NO.

Have you ever been the victim of unforeseeable ill fortune?

Next, your use of the term "fortune". It indicates your belief in random chance. I don't share your faith in chaos, because from empirical observation of the exquisitely ordered patterns of physical design in this world, I know that God exists.

So rephrasing your question minus the belief in random chance:

Have you ever been the victim of unforeseeable bad thing happening to you?

Unforeseeable... NO.

Foreseeable... YES.

Every event has a seed from which it grows. This is our challenge in life... to exercise our awareness to see the portents.

"To know the seeds, that is divine."

--Confucius

You claim to be able to foresee every possible outcome.

No.

I always have the opportunity to pay attention to the seeds of events. And as I had just said, that is the challenge in life... to exercise my awareness to become more attuned to what is going on around me.

To speak of an objective ideal is not to claim to be that ideal.

I think you deceive yourself.

The reality of the just and deserved consequences of my own actions always sets me straight. It always has and always will.

You are not half as smart as you think you are.

You're right, Baal. I'm not smart.

There is a difference between studying to acquire intellectual knowledge, and learning how to become more aware of the flow of events in the world around us.

One day you might learn a little reality based humility.

Ba'al Chatzaf

The reality of the consequences of our own actions will always give each of us exactly what we deserve.

[Francisco Ferrer]

It is more complex than that: there is first the matter of entering or not. There is also the matter of what side to enter on. For example, Finland at different points fought with both the Axis and Allied powers.

The alliance with Stalin happened only because the American public was misled about the nature of the Soviet horror state and is misled to this day. Very few citizens even now know that the communists were the chief mass murderers of the 20th century and that arming them may be described as literally a game of Russian Roulette. So there can be no discussion about what should have been the proper course of action in 1940 without first knowing the actual Russian threat and how much FDR concealed it.

You fretted about "the very real possibility that the Soviet Union would have won WWII an taken over all of Western Europe too," and I merely pointed out that the president who took the military course of action you endorse would have been primarily responsible if such a take-over had happened.

I agree that the American public has been misled about the scope of Communist horror. The Gulag Archipelago should be required reading in school.

As to who would have won the war, there are historians that believe the Soviet Union would have won even without U.S. intervention. (I hesitated to link this video because the historian's excuses for and praise of Stalin turn my stomach, but he makes the point that Hitler probably would have continued his campaign of ethnic cleansing on a massive scale if Germany had won the war).

The link provided broke Soviet atrocities into several periods. Comparing Germany and Russia in the same time span shows that Soviet murders were greater.

The truth of World War II is that Hitler was a vicious mass murderer, and in order to stop him the U.S. made common cause with an even worse murderer.

For argument, let's give Stalin the benefit of a doubt and stipulate that Hitler had a higher per annum body count. Now then, by what moral logic does one argue that we must give military aid and logistical support to a killer of 18 million in order to dispatch a killer of 20 million? Does anyone realistically believe that Stalin was the sort of fellow who would reward a handout from a capitalist nation with future loyalty and good deeds? Is that how he treated his fellow commies?

I went back and checked the links you provided. According to my reading of the linked articles, Stalin killed 22 million of his own people and Hitler killed 20 million people through various mass murders, giving Stalin a slight edge in terms of mass murders. However, the figure of 20 million killed by Hitler doesn't include the number of soldiers or civilians killed as the result of prosecuting the war. It only includes the number killed through extermination campaigns. Since, we are discussing whether the U.S. should have entered the war, in my view, it is only fair to also consider the number killed as a direct result of the war. Unfortunately, those figures are not readily available, but I suspect an additional 20 million deaths could be attributed to Hitler's part in WWII. That would make Hitler, by far, the greater mass murderer.

1. World War II began immediately after Germany invaded Poland. But the Soviet Union invaded Poland at the same time. Why not blame Stalin equally for all military and civilian deaths that followed?

2. One side in a conflict, even if it is the aggressor, cannot be charged with every injustice committed by the other side. If a bank robber hides in an apartment building, and police tear gas sets the building on fire, killing hundreds, it is not the bank robber who is the killer. Similarly, FDR, Churchill, Curtis LeMay and Arthur Harris must assume the moral burden for the destruction of German civilian population centers (which included children, the elderly, prisoners and many others who had zero to do with Hitler's rise to power).

3. If we are to include indirect casualties, we must add to Stalin's total the 76 million that died at the hands of Mao, whose rule in China was made possible in large part due to the assistance of the Allies, including Stalin and FDR.

In any case, you are ignoring my earlier point: there is no moral or strategic justification in going after one aggressor nation by materially aiding another nation which is only marginally less aggressive--especially when the second nation presents over the long term more of a mortal threat than the first one.

Also, as I said in one of my earlier posts, to some extent, a decision about whether to enter a war depends upon who is being killed. Stalin mostly killed his own people. Hitler, on the other hand, waged war against a long list of countries including Britain, France, Denmark, Norway, and Belgium, and, once he had taken over a country, he deported large numbers of its citizens to be exterminated. Although Russia and Poland probably suffered the worst effects of the war, nevertheless, the Western allies were concerned with turning back Hitler's war machine. If Hitler had followed the same pattern as Stalin and only exterminated his own people, it is much less likely that the U.S. would have gotten involved. Even if Hitler had stopped after taking over Austria, the Sudetenland and Western Poland, I doubt the U.S. would have gotten involved.

Since Stalin was a Georgian, the centrally planned starvation of millions of Ukranians and the ethnic cleansing of Chechens--to take just two examples--can hardly be counted as acts against "his own people."

It matters very little to a victim whether or not his murderer speaks his own language.

In any case, communism in the 1930s was a far greater threat to the world than Nazism for this reason: the number of nations in which the majority might be susceptible to the appeal of Aryan socialism is a dozen at the very most. On the other hand, the number of nations in which the majority could potentially fall for the seductive but false appeal of Marxism is close to 100%. Marxism has proven itself to be the world's most marketable, exportable ideology. For that reason it was criminal for FDR to give supplies to Stalin and Mao. Their ideology alone was too dangerous a weapon.

So, what was the justification for propping up the USSR? In my understanding, the U.S. was concerned that the Soviet Union would give up and sue for peace before the U.S. was ready to enter the war. If that had happened, Germany would have been able to shift a large fraction of its forces from the Eastern Front to the Western Front making the D-Day invasion almost impossible and making the liberation of Western Europe very difficult. Keeping the Soviet Union in the war made it possible for the U.S. to achieve its war aims.

I responded to your claim "You don't know what the future might have held if the U.S. had not gotten involved," by pointing out that uncertainty about the future is frequently used to justify government intervention. It is true that we don't know the future with absolute preditability, but that is hardly an argument for empowering statists.

I never claimed that the reason the U.S. should not have aided the Soviets was because we couldn't be sure what would happen. In fact, one can make the argument that strengthening a monster will probably increase the likelihood of future bloodshed.

For comparison let's look at another alternate history. Suppose (as Ayn Rand wished) Goldwater had been elected in 1964 instead of Johnson. Isn't it possible a President Goldwater might have escalated the cold war with the Soviets into a hot war? Yes. Isn't it possible hundreds of millions would have died from thermonuclear blasts in major cities and from the radiation poisoning that would have followed? Yes. Are those sufficient reasons to argue that the election of LBJ was good for the world? I say no. But I can offer no airtight proof that a freer America and not a nuclear wasteland would have been the ultimate outcome of a Goldwater victory.

Could the Great Depression have been avoided? I say yes. But I will never be able to offer a convincing argument to someone who thinks that a laissez-faire approach ignores all of the possibilities for what could have happened if the U.S. had made a choice different from the New Deal. Over the years I've argued with more than a few who are convinced that without the New Deal, the hungry masses would have risen up and installed a brutal Marxist dictatorship.

I guess I wasn't very clear. When I said that I didn't know what might have happened in the future, I meant to say that there was a very real possibility that the outcome would have been worse --- that the probability of something much worse happening would have been much higher than the probability that the outcome would have been better. You can dispute that point, but you can't simply ignore it.

Your example with Goldwater doesn't pass the smell test. I mean, I wasn't alive at that time and don't know that much about Goldwater, but the idea that Goldwater would have escalated the cold war into a shooting war is pure speculation with no supporting evidence.

The Great Depression example is even worse. Why would the people have revolted if the economy had recovered quickly --- the most likely result if someone like Calvin Coolidge had been president --- instead of dragging on for a decade?

The problem is that some assertions have more merit than others, so you can't just dismiss any discussion about what might have happened if we had followed a different course. Each possibility has to be argued on its own merits.

Darrell

My examples of what might have happened in the U.S. after the election of Barry Goldwater as president or during the Depression without the New Deal are no more speculative than the claims you've made about 1940s Europe without U.S. military intervention.

If you want supporting evidence from me, then I'll ask the same of you.

[BaalChatzaf]

The reality of the consequences of our own actions will always give each of us exactly what we deserve.

There are things and situations that have nothing to do with what we "deserve" Sometimes shit happen. Your reduction of everything to a moral or ethical issue is un-sanity. It is true that all our decisions have consequences (that is reality at work). It is equally true that our knowledge of reality is incomplete. The real world is too broad, too expansive and too complicated to be grasped completely by human beings. We do the best we can with our three pound brains, and if we are lucky enough we live long enough to reproduce. That is how hour species survived to this day and how it will continue to survive. Survival of the fit (fit to reproduce) is a grand happening in the Domain of Muddling Through.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

The reality of the consequences of our own actions will always give each of us exactly what we deserve.

There are things and situations that have nothing to do with what we "deserve" Sometimes shit happen. Your reduction of everything to a moral or ethical issue is un-sanity. It is true that all our decisions have consequences (that is reality at work). It is equally true that our knowledge of reality is incomplete. The real world is too broad, too expansive and too complicated to be grasped completely by human beings. We do the best we can with our three pound brains, and if we are lucky enough we live long enough to reproduce. That is how hour species survived to this day and how it will continue to survive. Survival of the fit (fit to reproduce) is a grand happening in the Domain of Muddling Through.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Great post, Bob!

--Brant

I knew you had it in you (so I say)

[dldelancey]

Nietzche once wrote: Every blow that does not break my back or kill me, makes me stronger.

I never knew that originated with Nietzche! I actually hate that saying. It's so often quoted that it hardly has any meaning, and it has become a fallback for people to fill awkward moments when they're avoiding the elephant in the room. That is, they don't want to face the ugly truth - this [fill in horrible negative experience here] blows chunks, and it sucks. When you are the person who has just barely survived getting dead, you don't want to hear someone tell you that you apparently needed a kick in the face to make you a stronger person.

The baby learns to walk by falling down, again and again. Learning to walk is a celebration. Falling down is not what is being celebrated. 14 years later as a teenager he loses his legs in an automobile accident and learns to walk again with artificial limbs. Again, a celebration! The accident is not celebrated. A philosophy that celebrates falling down and accidents is either silly, garbage or the consequence of incomplete thinking.

--Brant

Agreed. On the other hand, a philosphy that does not examine the reasons falling down occurs or that dismisses accidents as having no root cause but the irresponsibility of the victim, is equally mistaken. Toddlers learn to walk because they make adjustments based on what they learned from their falls. If a baby is falling because someone is maliciously pushing him down, the baby will learn nothing if he decides it's his own fault he can't learn to walk. He will believe that it's both okay to push and okay to get pushed. What he needs to learn is that getting pushed down sucks and is wrong, but that he can do something about it that allows him to proceed with his goal of learning to walk.It's obvious that in addressing personal responsibility I was referring to adults and not babies. Parents are responsible for their own children until they are the age of accountability and make moral decisions for themselves.

What I'm arguing is that naming the bad thing that happened and identifying the appropriate responsible party or parties is a necessary step in achieving the goal you were sidetracked from before the bad thing reared its ugly head.

I totally agree with identifying the responsible party:

It's us.

Almost all of our suffering is self inflicted, and almost none is external.

Moralist's view that a person should accept all responsiblity for every bad thing is not conducive to learning from those bad things.

In my view it is exactly the opposite. The most lucid experiences are when I've realized the totality of my personal responsibility for my own life... and the worst ones are when I've been emotionally blinded by angrily blaming others.

I'm glad that each of us is free to clarify their own view and to describe exactly how it differs from the other. Because no matter what we choose... we harvest what we plant.

I was going with the baby falling example that was given. It's a good analogy and applies equally well to adults. Babies, children, teenagers, adults - none of us can learn anything from our experiences if we don't recognize them for what they truly are.

I don't understand why you insist that appropriate responsibility placement is equivalent to "angrily blaming others." If, using a prior example, I have parked my car legally, and someone driving a dump truck drops a load of gravel (or whatever it was that was mentioned) onto my car because of some negligence on his part, it is entirely appropriate to place legal, financial, moral, and ethical responsibility on that driver. It has nothing to do with my feelings or emotions. There is nothing for anyone to gain from me saying, "Oh sorry Mr. Negligent Driver, that was all my fault for being in your way."

Or maybe it's simply that you don't (or can't or won't) separate an event from your reactions to that event? As that is essentially what I do. An event occurs. I react to that event and my reactions become events themselves.

In any case, yes it is nice that we are free to clarify. It is also nice that we can agree to disagree which I think is probably where we are now, at least you and I.

[BaalChatzaf]

--Brant

I knew you had it in you (so I say)

So say we all --- Captain. Wm. Adama, master of the BattleStar Gallactica.

[anthony]

Greg: Simply put, there's no causality (many other things, yes) from human consciousness to human consciousness.

That's only another form of determinism.

I think you're pretty damn smart, and definitely strong in character which I rate higher than almost anything.

Btw, would you say you are more Deist than Theist by conviction? Seems like a 'hands off' God you believe in. I'm interested.

[moralist]

I was going with the baby falling example that was given. It's a good analogy and applies equally well to adults.

With the one exception: Parents are personally responsible for their babies, while adults are personally responsible for themselves.

Wait... On second thought... you are right. For it does apply to many adults because they're just grown babies who expect others (or government) to be responsible for the consequences of their actions, and then blame them when they are not.

I don't understand why you insist that appropriate responsibility placement is equivalent to "angrily blaming others."

Because that's all that left once personal responsibility is denied. That's only my view derived from my own personal life experience. You are perfectly free to disagree if your experience is different.

If, using a prior example, I have parked my car legally, and someone driving a dump truck drops a load of gravel (or whatever it was that was mentioned) onto my car because of some negligence on his part, it is entirely appropriate to place legal, financial, moral, and ethical responsibility on that driver.

That example is unrealistic because it adds artificial innocence of "legally parked" when real world common sense tells you that you don't park, even "legally", in a heavy equipment construction zone. (I've worked in construction for 35 years.)

That artificial innocence has to be added so as not to see the TWO matching ingredients of an "accident":

The unawareness of ~both~ parties involved.

When ~one~ party is aware... there is no possibility of an "accident". Because of their awareness, they are free to act by making allowances for the unawareness of others so as not to become the collateral damage of the unawareness of others.

True, this is the description of an ideal, but an ideal is not invalid just because it is not fully achieved. On the contrary, it is all the more worthy of our aspirations.

I find exploring the facets of this topic to be enjoyable with the understanding that agreement is never the goal.

Greg

[moralist]

Greg: Simply put, there's no causality (many other things, yes) from human consciousness to human consciousness.

That's only another form of determinism.

I think you're pretty damn smart, and definitely strong in character which I rate higher than almost anything.

Btw, would you say you are more Deist than Theist by conviction? Seems like a 'hands off' God you believe in. I'm interested.

I confess needing to look up deist and theist as I was not clear on the distinction.

Deism:

Is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine the existence of God,

accompanied with the rejection of revelation and authority as a source of religious knowledge.

Theism:

In the broadest sense, is the belief that at least one deity exists. In a more specific sense, theism is commonly a monotheistic doctrine concerning the nature of a deity, and that deity's relationship to the universe. Theism, in this specific sense, conceives of God as personal, present and active in the governance and organization of the world and the universe.

Considering these definitions, I live by elements of both.

As a Deist, by simple observation of creation is the Creator revealed. It's so obvious even the rocks cry out. Consider hydrogen atoms at one end of universe and hydrogen atoms at the other end. BOTH obey precisely the SAME exquisitely ordered physical laws governing matter and energy.

You have about 50 TRILLION cells in your body.

If the DNA in ONE cell was completely uncoiled and laid end to end, it would be 6.5 feet long

If the DNA of all the cells in your body was completely uncoiled and laid end to end, it would reach from the Earth to the Sun and back... 70 TIMES.

Denying the existence of a Creator Who is made so obvious in the light of just that ONE physical fact, is irrational. By any measure of human reason, just DNA itself is a highly sophisticated infinitely intelligent physical design.

And as a Theist, I know there is One Creator Who is good. And He wants us to do good... because it's for our own good. And just as every hydrogen atom is governed by the same well ordered physical laws... every human is also governed by exactly the same well ordered moral laws. Rather than micromanaging events, I observe that just as everything in this world is governed by physical laws... we are also governed by moral laws.

[BaalChatzaf]

DNA can come about by purely -natural means-. If the Cosmos can come from an energy singularity and make matter, then matter could possibly organize itself into complex molocules by purely natural means. God is not necessary. Which does not prove the non-existence of God.

Baal Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

DNA can come about by purely -natural means-. If the Cosmos can come from an energy singularity and make matter, then matter could possibly organize itself into complex molocules by purely natural means. God is not necessary. Which does not prove the non-existence of God.

Baal Chatzaf

The simplest life is so complex it's beyond our present explanations as to what it came out of including your suggestion. Your "complex" molecules doesn't even begin to approach that complexity. "God did it" is all we can say if we want to say anything that's not completely ignorant about the beginning of life--that is, all we have is poetry. Conceivably it's so rare and strange there's no life anywhere in the universe except in this galaxy--we could say this planet and start from there--and we were seeded with life or we will eventually seed life. That's one reason why we are so curious to find any evidence of Martian life or in asteroids and comets. We can observe physicalness back to over 14 billion years ago, but that's nothing comparatively. Physics is simple enough compared to biology that great minds therein can do doctorate work as late teenagers and run out of gas by their thirties and forties just repeating themselves. Compared to biological knowledge--known, not yet to be discovered--the liberal arts take a lifetime to get on top of for it's learning what is known but not yet in one's mind. Respecting this last is the necessity of not learning or unlearning a towering pile of ignorance and garbage constantly coming at you from people not interested in or motivated by truth or the truth but power lust and protecting fragile egos and personal cowardice and group allegiances.

--Brant

futurist

[BaalChatzaf]

Goddidit is not an explanation. Any explanationthat can explain anything and everything explains nothing.

In the well know Dover PA case, Michael Behe a PhD Biologist testified in favor of Intelligent Design (which is, in reality, Stealth Creationism). He invoke the doctrine of irreducible complexity, in somewhat the same way as you have. The fact that people have not completed a Reduction is no proof that the Reduction does not exist.

His testimony was deconstructed by expert witnesses (also PhD biologists) and his testimony was reduced to scrap and flinders.

Even Judge Jones who was and is not a biologist could see what Behe was promoting was nonsense.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[moralist]

DNA can come about by purely -natural means...

You're totally correct.

DNA did come about by purely natural means... but ~only~ by following highly sophisticated exquisitely designed natural laws.

The word "natural" itself implies existence in accord with an order of preexisting laws.

When choosing to look only at a physical object, the myriad of perfectly structured natural laws which made the existence of that object possible are not seen.

[BaalChatzaf]

DNA can come about by purely -natural means...

You're totally correct.

DNA did come about by purely natural means... but ~only~ by following highly sophisticated exquisitely designed natural laws.

The word "natural" itself implies existence in accord with an order of preexisting laws.

When choosing to look only at a physical object, the myriad of perfectly structured natural laws which made the existence of that object possible are not seen.

"Laws" are our descriptions of the manner in which the natural world works.

The natural world is what it is whether we have formulated laws concerning its nature or not and whether our "laws" are correct or not.

Nature does not care what we know nor how much we know.

Nature just IS.

Ba'al Chatzaf