Announcement

Collapse

Civics 101 Guidelines

Want to argue about politics? Healthcare reform? Taxes? Governments? You've come to the right place!

Try to keep it civil though. The rules still apply here.
See more
See less

O’Rourke: Churches Should Lose Tax-exempt Status

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
    ALL the free-world countries provide a welfare safety net to some degree. Even the USA, with its tendency towards unbridled capitalism has Medicaid. But, compared to most other countries, US welfare benefits are grossly insufficient to meet the needs of the poor.
    Oh so we just don't do enough for you. The fact is I would rather give the poor a job rather than a handout. Black and Hispanic jobless rates are at 50 year lows, 50 years Tass. That is better than welfare. It is better to have people depend on themselves than on government handouts.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/04/blac...ecord-low.html



    Nevertheless, the nations that head the Human Development Index today, as opposed to the actively Christian USA, are the highly secular ones with a large percentage of atheists.
    So what? Again name one other group in history that has helped their fellow man more than Christians.


    We could have done without the slavery, the denigration of women, the religious wars of Europe, The Inquisitions, the Crusades and the destruction of indigenous cultures brought about by Christianity.
    The fact is that the cultures you so laud were informed and formed by Christianity. You think you can take those principles forward without faith in God, good luck. Let's see what it all looks like in 30 or 40 years....
    Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

    Comment


    • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
      ALL the free-world countries provide a welfare safety net to some degree. Even the USA, with its tendency towards unbridled capitalism has Medicaid. But, compared to most other countries, US welfare benefits are grossly insufficient to meet the needs of the poor.
      We send more on social welfare programs as a percentage of GDP than your country Tass:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ocial_spending

      We also beat your country in per capita spending

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ing#Per_capita

      As far as TOTAL net social spending (including public and private) we are second in the WORLD.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ocial_spending

      So get off your high horse.
      Last edited by seer; 11-24-2019, 07:05 AM.
      Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

      Comment


      • Originally posted by seer View Post
        Oh so we just don't do enough for you. The fact is I would rather give the poor a job rather than a handout. Black and Hispanic jobless rates are at 50 year lows, 50 years Tass. That is better than welfare. It is better to have people depend on themselves than on government handouts.
        And yet the ranking of the USA on the Happiness and Human Development Indices make clear that your piecemeal 'good-works' are insufficient.

        So what? Again name one other group in history that has helped their fellow man more than Christians.
        Did slavery, the denigration of women, witch-killing, the religious wars of Europe, The Inquisitions, the Crusades, the destruction of indigenous cultures and discrimination against blacks and homosexuals brought about by Christianity help their fellow man?

        The fact is that the cultures you so laud were informed and formed by Christianity. You think you can take those principles forward without faith in God, good luck. Let's see what it all looks like in 30 or 40 years....
        It is already flourishing in the secular Post-Christian world more effectively than it has ever been done in the overtly Christian world.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postchristianity
        “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
          And yet the ranking of the USA on the Happiness and Human Development Indices make clear that your piecemeal 'good-works' are insufficient.
          Except we send more on social welfare programs as a percentage of GDP than your country Tass. So it is not a money question. We are much more diverse than your lily white countries and that leads to inherent problems. Like Sweden or France are seeing as they import more and more third world immigrants.

          You country is still mostly white, more white than the US:

          https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/...stralians.html


          Did slavery, the denigration of women, witch-killing, the religious wars of Europe, The Inquisitions, the Crusades, the destruction of indigenous cultures and discrimination against blacks and homosexuals brought about by Christianity help their fellow man?
          Sorry Tass, you can not argue against the fact that Christianity informed and formed the very Cultures you so admire, including human rights.

          It is already flourishing in the secular Post-Christian world more effectively than it has ever been done in the overtly Christian world.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postchristianity
          Yes, you are living off Christian principles - see what you have 50 years from now, especially as these countries become more diverse.
          Last edited by seer; 11-25-2019, 07:36 AM.
          Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

          Comment


          • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
            Not when an ultimate, unchanging “objective standard” doesn’t exist.
            But I assume you're arguing for that? If not then you're begging the question.

            It’s something that evolves socially over time.
            If there is no standard, we can't talk of evolution or progress, just equally meaningless actions.

            Comment


            • Originally posted by JimL View Post
              Also, a timeless, unchanging god, for the same reason that you agree that such an entity doesn't think, for that same reason, it doesn't create either.
              God being timeless simply means that what He is and His properties are expressed at all times, and the world relates to God through the same relation always, anywhere at all times. Nothing in that prevents God from being the cause of the universe being.

              Consider a ball rolling across the surface of a table. The table is keeping up the ball, and the ball is kept up by the table. This gives you a hierarchical series of causes, each one present and necessary at each successive step of the ball's motion.

              God is the cause of the universe, in an analogous sense to the floor being the cause of the ball being able to roll along the table.

              There is also not anything that prevents God from causing the world to exist. That reduces simply to there being a limit for long back in time you could go in this universe. Though even if the universe was infinitely old, God would still be the cause of it.
              Last edited by Leonhard; 11-25-2019, 01:05 PM.

              Comment


              • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                Throughout most of Judeo/Christian history abortion has NOT been regarded as a “sin” at all. This is a recent phenomenon.
                The phenomenon of prevention and morning-after pills are a product of the modern scientific revolution. That there haven't been moral codes against their use in ancient times, is no argument at all to support your conclusion about what they would or wouldn't have concluded. It's an argument from silence.

                In those days parents simple starved their children, or left them outside exposed to the elements. And that very much was condemned, strongly and repeatedly.

                You support adultery by voting for a blatantly adulterous president
                You're not making any sense. Do you support adultery, and toxic masculinity for being in favor of Bill Clinton. Or corruption and cronyism for supporting Hillary Clinton?

                This is one of the passages once employed by Christians to justify slave ownership
                Humans are capable of infinite amounts of motivated reasoning to support what they want to believe. Charles Darwin's works, along with Haeckels was often used to defend heinous racism and still is today. This doesn't teach me that the theory of evolution is socially toxic, but that humans are good at finding bad arguments to support their preconceived ideas.

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                  The table is keeping up the ball, and the ball is kept up by the table. This gives you a hierarchical series of causes, each one present and necessary at each successive step of the ball's motion.
                  I meant to write "The table is keeping up the ball, and the table is kept up by the floor."

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by seer View Post
                    Except we send more on social welfare programs as a percentage of GDP than your country Tass. So it is not a money question. We are much more diverse than your lily white countries and that leads to inherent problems. Like Sweden or France are seeing as they import more and more third world immigrants.

                    You country is still mostly white, more white than the US.
                    Ah, I see. So, blacks and Latinos are the problem, NOT the grossly inequitable distribution of wealth. The USA has by far the largest wealth inequality gap of 55 countries studied.

                    https://fortune.com/2015/09/30/ameri...th-inequality/

                    Sorry Tass, you can not argue against the fact that Christianity informed and formed the very Cultures you so admire, including human rights.

                    Yes, you are living off Christian principles - see what you have 50 years from now, especially as these countries become more diverse.
                    No more than the sophisticated cultures of the pagan Greco–Roman world were living off Christian principles. They weren’t obviously. And yet they have informed a great deal of our Western culture, just as the Post-Christian world has been informed by its predecessors. Our “principles” are a product of the evolution of the necessary social behavior of humanity to survive as a social species.
                    “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                      But I assume you're arguing for that? If not then you're begging the question.
                      I’m NOT arguing for an unchanging “objective standard”, such a thing has never existed. Social values have varied greatly under specific circumstances at specific times in history.

                      If there is no standard, we can't talk of evolution or progress,
                      We can talk about evolution. And changing standards over time.

                      just equally meaningless actions.
                      Why would we do actions we consider “meaningless” - "meaningless" to whom?
                      “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                        The phenomenon of prevention and morning-after pills are a product of the modern scientific revolution. That there haven't been moral codes against their use in ancient times, is no argument at all to support your conclusion about what they would or wouldn't have concluded. It's an argument from silence.
                        No, it’s an argument from Judeo-Christian history. In Jewish law, a fetus attains the status of a full person only at birth.

                        In those days parents simple starved their children, or left them outside exposed to the elements. And that very much was condemned, strongly and repeatedly.
                        Indeed, quite rightly so. But that's got nothing to do with abortion, especially first-term abortion, which is when the vast majority occur.

                        You're not making any sense. Do you support adultery, and toxic masculinity for being in favor of Bill Clinton. Or corruption and cronyism for supporting Hillary Clinton?
                        No more than a Christian cake-maker is supporting gay marriage by providing the wedding cake. You would know this was my argument if you had bothered reading the thread.

                        Humans are capable of infinite amounts of motivated reasoning to support what they want to believe.
                        My point exactly. The bible can be made to mean just what Christians want it to mean. It was used to justify slavery and the subjugation of women etc. for centuries.

                        Charles Darwin's works, along with Haeckels was often used to defend heinous racism and still is today. This doesn't teach me that the theory of evolution is socially toxic, but that humans are good at finding bad arguments to support their preconceived ideas.
                        True. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was blatantly misappropriated by proponents of Social Darwinism such as Herbert Spencer and Walter Bagehot to justify racism. Even so, Darwin never claimed that Evolution was divine revelation, which is the claim made about scripture.
                        Last edited by Tassman; 11-25-2019, 11:35 PM.
                        “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                          Ah, I see. So, blacks and Latinos are the problem, NOT the grossly inequitable distribution of wealth. The USA has by far the largest wealth inequality gap of 55 countries studied.
                          No, diversity has its problems. And Asians do better than whites in the US. Is that an inequitable distribution of wealth too? And your country is not doing that well either...

                          Wealth inequality in Australia is getting worse:

                          http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/77...e-201809210554



                          No more than the sophisticated cultures of the pagan Greco–Roman world were living off Christian principles. They weren’t obviously. And yet they have informed a great deal of our Western culture, just as the Post-Christian world has been informed by its predecessors. Our “principles” are a product of the evolution of the necessary social behavior of humanity to survive as a social species.
                          Humans rights and inherent human worth are not products of the evolution.
                          Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                            I’m NOT arguing for an unchanging “objective standard”, such a thing has never existed.
                            Yes. That's what's why I'm asking you. I assume you'd be arguing that such a standard doesn't exist? If not you're simply begging the question.

                            We can talk about evolution. And changing standards over time.
                            If you've reduced ethics to mere anthropology, the field is a complete loss.

                            Why would we do actions we consider “meaningless”
                            If an action is truly meaningless, ultimately, you cannot do it for any rational reason. There is no ultimate end to such action except nothingness. They would be meaningless in the objective sense of the word.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                              No, it’s an argument from Judeo-Christian history. In Jewish law, a fetus attains the status of a full person only at birth.
                              False, the murder of a fetus has been condemned as early as the 1st and 2nd Century. Even if they didn't view it as having achieved full personhood, it was still covered by the noahide laws. Killing it, meant spilling the blood of a person.

                              Take this from rabbi Yishmael from 1st and 2nd century.

                              Source: The William Davidson Talmud

                              משום רבי ישמעאל אמרו אף על העוברין מאי טעמיה דרבי ישמעאל דכתיב (בראשית ט, ו) שופך דם האדם באדם דמו ישפך איזהו אדם שהוא באדם הוי אומר זה עובר שבמעי אמו

                              It is stated in that book of Aggadot that the Sages said in the name of Rabbi Yishmael: A descendant of Noah is executed even for killing fetuses. The Gemara asks: What is the reason for the opinion of Rabbi Yishmael? The Gemara answers: It is derived from that which is written: “One who sheds the blood of a person, by a person [ba’adam] his blood shall be shed” (Genesis 9:6). The word ba’adam literally means: In a person, and is interpreted homiletically: What is a person that is in a person? You must say: This is a fetus that is in its mother’s womb. Accordingly, a descendant of Noah is liable for killing a fetus.

                              © Copyright Original Source


                              You keep bringing this point up, and people have consistently argued against it. Infanticide was not acceptable under jewish law. Abortion was not sanctioned either. If you're going to keep restating this argument, at least bring new material to the table, because right now you're arguing precisely like a young earth creationist does, trotting out arguments that have been defeated a thousand times.

                              Seriously, its just copy paste to argue against you.

                              A bad argument stated ten thousand times doesn't suddenly become good.

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Tassman
                                Originally posted by Leonhard
                                In those days parents simple starved their children, or left them outside exposed to the elements. And that very much was condemned, strongly and repeatedly.
                                Indeed, quite rightly so. But that's got nothing to do with abortion, especially first-term abortion, which is when the vast majority occur.
                                Distinction without a difference. In either case you're killing a human being.

                                Originally posted by Tassman
                                Originally posted by Leonhard
                                Originally posted by Tassman
                                You support adultery by voting for a blatantly adulterous president
                                You're not making any sense. Do you support adultery, and toxic masculinity for being in favor of Bill Clinton. Or corruption and cronyism for supporting Hillary Clinton?
                                No more than a Christian cake-maker is supporting gay marriage by providing the wedding cake. You would know this was my argument if you had bothered reading the thread.
                                I've included the quotes here. You've effectively argued against your own position. So I guess I'm the one to ask you whether you've read the thread. Or even your own posts.

                                Seer voting for President Trump in no way implies that he supports Trump's inanities. Your attempt to stretch it by analogy to cover the case of being able to freely opt out of serving certain political causes is a different matter. A baker isn't a politician being voted for, he is a business providing a service, and is in this case asked to carry a political statement.

                                This is a just ruling, as gay bakers have already declined to decorate cakes with political messages they disagree with.

                                Originally posted by Tassman
                                True. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was blatantly misappropriated by proponents of Social Darwinism such as Herbert Spencer and Walter Bagehot to justify racism. Even so, Darwin never claimed that Evolution was divine revelation, which is the claim made about scripture.
                                But that doesn't matter, you're Special Pleading again (which seems to be your favorite logical fallacy).

                                It doesn't matter that the Bible is claimed to be divine revelation, or the Theory of Evolution is considered scientific in nature. Both have been misappropriated and misconstrued.
                                Last edited by Leonhard; 11-26-2019, 04:19 PM.

                                Comment

                                Related Threads

                                Collapse

                                Topics Statistics Last Post
                                Started by little_monkey, 03-27-2024, 04:19 PM
                                16 responses
                                157 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post One Bad Pig  
                                Started by whag, 03-26-2024, 04:38 PM
                                53 responses
                                400 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post Mountain Man  
                                Started by rogue06, 03-26-2024, 11:45 AM
                                25 responses
                                114 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post rogue06
                                by rogue06
                                 
                                Started by Hypatia_Alexandria, 03-26-2024, 09:21 AM
                                33 responses
                                198 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post Roy
                                by Roy
                                 
                                Started by Hypatia_Alexandria, 03-26-2024, 08:34 AM
                                84 responses
                                373 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post JimL
                                by JimL
                                 
                                Working...
                                X