> > they derive their view that human dignity is worthy of protection as it is given by God
> q.e.d.
Why would you use q.e.d. with out a reference. I know I am strange in that I studied Greek and know a decent amount of Latin but how were you using q.e.d.?
Also can we please not lump ALL Christians into the same boat it feels kind of like calling all Muslims terrorist. For Global warming the Bible is very clear that we are to protect the Earth which many Bible Global Warming protesters claim to upheld.
> Why would you use q.e.d. with out a reference. I know I am strange in that I studied Greek and know a decent amount of Latin but how were you using q.e.d.?
The claim was that the CDU is somehow christian. The argument against that was that they aren't actually christian, but that they rather get inspiration for their politics from christian theology.
Now, if your opponent presents an argument for your position as if it were for their own, there isn't really any need to restate that argument, you can simply point out that your position has been demonstrated.
> Also can we please not lump ALL Christians into the same boat it feels kind of like calling all Muslims terrorist. For Global warming the Bible is very clear that we are to protect the Earth which many Bible Global Warming protesters claim to upheld.
The problem with christianity (or any religion, for that matter) is that it tends to encourage people to believe things for bad reasons. Now, there might be christians who don't, but that doesn't change that a vast majority of them do. Therefore, it's perfectly reasonable to lump them all together, at least in this regard, when making general statements. The problem is not whether some christians believe that the bible clearly tells them to protect the earth (while other christians ironically equally fervently believe that the bible clearly tells them that they don't need to do anything because god will take care of it), it's that they think that the bible telling them something is a good reason to act accordingly. That is an irresponsible method for trying to obtain knowledge, and it's outright dangerous when other people are affected by the results.
If I feed a starving child because my horoscope told me that I should, then the fact that feeding a starving child is good does not change the fact that the reason why I do it is still bad, and that acting according to astrological advice is not a reliable way to do good, and might well lead to bad consequences in other cases.
q.e.d. means in Latin quod erat demonstrandum, meaning "which is what had to be proven". q.e.d. is used at the end of Philosophy (I was a Theology Student) arguments and in science. It seemed strange to see that used here on Hacker News and I have no idea what you were trying to say. I am asking what did you mean by q.e.d.?
>The problem with christianity (or any religion, for that matter) is that it tends to encourage people to believe things for bad reasons.
You have a strong bias against religion without data. To me it just seems that you really don't care about religion and your reflecting your negative feelings on a subject and building a straw-man out of it. The vast majority of the world and almost every person of historical significance were religious. This idea that religious people are lesser and clearly not enlightened isn't very different then racism.
> bible clearly tells them that they don't need to do anything because god will take care of it.
There is no reference in the Bible for that and it isn't the basis of people's belief why they are against Global Warming (It is based on Conservative Pro-Business politics and not religion (In the US that is they identify as Republicans as they believe all good God Fearing Christians belong :( ) http://www.ibtimes.com/what-do-christians-have-against-clima...
I didn't mean anything by it, that comment wasn't mine. But the comment used it exactly as you defined it: 50CNT tried to show that the CDU is not christian by mentioning that they follow christian doctrine. Given that that is actually an argument for the position that the CDU is in fact christian, there is no need to provide any further arguments, k__ simply concluded: QED.
> You have a strong bias against religion without data.
How do you know what data I have?
> To me it just seems that you really don't care about religion and your reflecting your negative feelings on a subject and building a straw-man out of it.
Well, I can assure you that you are mistaken.
> The vast majority of the world and almost every person of historical significance were religious.
Your point being?
> This idea that religious people are lesser and clearly not enlightened isn't very different then racism.
Could you please show where I made any such claim? Or was that an attempt to build a strawman argument?
> There is no reference in the Bible for that and it isn't the basis of people's belief why they are against Global Warming (It is based on Conservative Pro-Business politics and not religion (In the US that is they identify as Republicans as they believe all good God Fearing Christians belong :( ) http://www.ibtimes.com/what-do-christians-have-against-clima....
You missed the point: I don't care what the bible says on the topic (nor what specifically you think it says), but I notice that others care and try to justify their actions on that basis, which is irresponsible, as nobody has demonstrated that that is a way to obtain reliable knowledge about the world (plus there are plenty of examples to the contrary). That people claim equally loudly completely contradictory conclusions from their respective reading of the bible just is further evidence that it might not be that reliable a source of information.
I am not trying to be mean or arguing as much as I want to have a dialog about what you communicated and what you mean which isn't the same thing normally.
> How do you know what data I have?
The old academic in me is you don't have any unless you show some.
> I don't care what the bible says on the topic (nor what specifically you think it says), but I notice that ...
You are claiming purposeful ignorance and insight on the same subject. If you don't care and then go one to make an argument which you have claimed no real knowledge about. Just don't get involved in discussions when you don't care about the data.
> That people claim equally loudly completely contradictory conclusions from their respective reading of the bible just is further evidence that it might not be that reliable a source of information.
Because people DON'T read the data and refuse to look at it. Just as frustrating is to see Excel spreadsheets of data from an original data set with no idea how they got to their conclusion. You are in one sentence just dismissed 90%+ of knowledge. Statistics, Science, all soft sciences etc.... And in fact this all comes back to data. Look at the data or walk away but don't argue from a point of ignorance and base it on personal experiences, belief systems, and emotions.
Hope you have a good day and know I am not trying to get you to believe what I do but I am trying to encourage you to look at the way you are presenting yourself. I do believe you are trying to communicate A but you are being perceived to hold to B.
> You are claiming purposeful ignorance and insight on the same subject. If you don't care and then go one to make an argument which you have claimed no real knowledge about. Just don't get involved in discussions when you don't care about the data.
First: "not caring" in this context means that I don't consider the content of the bible to be relevant to this argument, which is not to be confused with lack of knowledge, aka ignorance.
Second: I very much care about the data. Now, do you have any data for me to look at?
Now, to avoid any confusion, let me re-state my claim: The bible has not been demonstrated to be a reliable source of knowledge about the world. Therefore, it's irresponsible to make decisions about your or other people's lives based on information from the bible.
This is certainly different then being respectful of religion. I am more then able to go into details and such but I don't think this is the place for it. If you want you can email me at mtelesha at the big G company email account.
If you want information on historical facts and academic inaccurate information and myths by lazy academics dipping their toes in a discipline they don't know about I would love to. I have a ton of those stories. The academic discipline of a Biblical Scholar (I am more of Theology trained aka more history facts and figures and philosophy based) I can lay out a decent academic data.
Just so we are clear this would be non-proselytizing and more of an fact finding from academia. It really is an awesome study and many academics and PhD of the Bible are not even Christians but are fascinated by the historical data and the academic discipline.
> This is certainly different then being respectful of religion.
Do you think that there is anything wrong with that?
> Just so we are clear this would be non-proselytizing and more of an fact finding from academia. It really is an awesome study and many academics and PhD of the Bible are not even Christians but are fascinated by the historical data and the academic discipline.
Now, if you actually could demonstrate the reliability of the bible as a source for knowledge about the world, I certainly would be extremely interested.
The problem is that you are exhibiting many of the common signs that usually indicate someone lacks understanding of the philosophy of science and more generally of epistemology, so it's extremely likely that you are going to trot out the same old arguments that I have heard endless times, and that have been refuted over and over. So, my suggestion would be: Go, get yourself a few books that explain that stuff, and learn what the arguments of the "other side" actually are, that should make for a far more productive conversation. If you like watching videos, this might also be a good place to start: https://www.youtube.com/user/SansDeity/videos - in particular: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAQFYgyEACI , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwG7LJTTZFc , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNIfzlzmJ8Y
Also: Yes, the bible certainly is an important book to study due to its influence on society, and it (or rather, the many versions of it) certainly has/have a history that can give many interesting insights. All I am disagreeing with is that it provides reliable knowledge about the world that is in any way fundamentally different from any other (ancient) book. And just as one can study the iliad without believing that Zeus actually existed, it's perfectly reasonable to study the bible without being a christian, of course.
> The problem with christianity (or any religion, for that matter) is that it tends to encourage people to believe things for bad reasons.
>...acting according to astrological advice is not a reliable way to do good, and might well lead to bad consequences in other cases.
Something needs to inform your knowledge of what is 'good' and what is 'bad'. Why do you take feeding a starving child as a good? It's likely that you've internalized a morality and ethics from your culture that tells you so. So what makes the externalized (religion) more wrong than the internalized (culture)?
Culture is as useless as an authoritative basis for ethics as is religion (plus, I would tend to consider religion a form of culture). That is to say: Yes, my ethics certainly are influenced by culture (and probably even by religion, even though I am not religious, simply due to religion's influence on culture in general), but if someone were to challenge the ethics of some action of mine, "because my culture says so!" is as bad a defense of my position as "because my holy book says so!"
Culture, if anything, is a shortcut for learning about ethical behaviour from others, just as school is a shortcut for learning about, I dunno, the mechanics of rigid bodies from others, but whether what we learn from either of those sources is (tentatively) correct can be determined only by observation of reality/by experiment.
If you think that ethics is something that needs to somehow be provided by someone rather than a property of reality that is to be discovered, that is already a religious presupposition. Sensible ethics are utilitarian/consequentialist: You look at what causes harm and what avoids harm to build an understanding of ethical behaviour. It's not much different from what we do to figure out what is healthy: There is no source of health rules with a book that is not to be questioned, but you look at what causes harm and what avoids harm, and that then is what we label as "healthy" or "unhealthy".
A majority of Americans believe that aliens have visited earth and that the government is hiding evidence of UFOs. By your logic I should conclude that all Americans are stupid, which wouldn't be that extreme, given the popularity of Donald Trump. I then could come up with a rhetoric that it's irresponsible to let americans go to vote. But all of that wouldn't be fair now, would it?
> If I feed a starving child because my horoscope told me ...
In our times astrology is nothing more than a fun conversation piece. I do wonder what your definition for "good" and "bad" is.
> A majority of Americans believe that aliens have visited earth and that the government is hiding evidence of UFOs. By your logic I should conclude that all Americans are stupid, which wouldn't be that extreme, given the popularity of Donald Trump. I then could come up with a rhetoric that it's irresponsible to let americans go to vote. But all of that wouldn't be fair now, would it?
What's your point?
You have straw-manned my argument quite a bit, but let's ignore that for the moment ...
If, say, electing Donald Trump for president were to lead to world-wide nuclear war, and people were to vote for him, how would it not be irresponsible to let americans vote on that if you had any chance to prevent it? Also, how does fairness get into this? How does the fairness of a decision-making process change anything about the consequences of any given decision and that it is irresponsible to not prevent harm that you easily could prevent.
> In our times astrology is nothing more than a fun conversation piece.
For one, that's not actually true. But more importantly: Why is the same not at least mostly true for christianity, islam, judaism, hinduism, ... ?
> I do wonder what your definition for "good" and "bad" is.
The short version: Good is what reduces harm, bad is what increases harm.
Now, I wonder what your definition is if it doesn't agree with mine, at least roughly.
Well, that's just the problem, isn't it? The Bible is always very clear that I'm right and you're wrong.
The traditionalist horror at postmodernism and poststructuralism is that they give the game away: They admit outright what the religious have always done sub rosa, that the meaning of a text is determined by its interpretive context and therefore all religious interpretations, like all artistic interpretations in general, are equally valid.
> The Bible is always very clear that I'm right and you're wrong.
I have studied the Bible and other world religions for over a decade in higher education. Have multiple years of Greek and Hebrew education, and includes Aramaic, and Latin. I can tell you MOST people don't really care what the Bible says and most just care of how thy feel and/or think. Most things in history of Christianity have very little to do with what the Bible says. (I was working on a PhD in Historical Theology which is the nerdiest of focuses when it comes to Theology.
If people ever want to have a discussion and are Christians it is hysterical to me to talk scripture with them and realize they will just twist something out of the air and consider themselves proven. In the exact terms of "Global Warming" which I was speaking about there are zero scriptures that supports the idea that it doesn't matter what people do or don't do with global warming but for those working to protect the earth it is in the Bible. So the funny thing is that these Christians are so strongly opposed to the science of Global Warming against the Bible they claim they are fighting scientist for.
"...quod erat demonstrandum, meaning "which is what had to be proven". The phrase is traditionally placed in its abbreviated form at the end of a mathematical proof or philosophical argument when what was specified in the enunciation—and in the setting-out—has been exactly restated as the conclusion of the demonstration." from Wikipedia[0].
I've seen this kind of answer between computer engineering/sciences people as some sort of "you haven't explained anything" response, though in a more thorough reading of OP and response, I can't really say what was the intention. The downvotes on the response would seem to support that interpretation.
> q.e.d.
Why would you use q.e.d. with out a reference. I know I am strange in that I studied Greek and know a decent amount of Latin but how were you using q.e.d.?
Also can we please not lump ALL Christians into the same boat it feels kind of like calling all Muslims terrorist. For Global warming the Bible is very clear that we are to protect the Earth which many Bible Global Warming protesters claim to upheld.