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timdiggerm

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Join date
23-Jul-2010
Last activity
8-Jul-2025
Posts
3,411
Web Site
https://macrobinoculars.wordpress.com/

Post History

Post
#677856
Topic
Ask the godless heathen - AKA Ask An Atheist
Time

Ryan McAvoy said:

timdiggerm said:

What makes a person evil?

 Feeling empathy yet ignoring it.

 Okay, so the guards at the death camps may have been evil, but Hitler, sufficiently insulated from the messy reality of the gas chambers, was probably fine?

Of course, this all ignores the real problem that your definition is totally arbitrary.

Post
#677850
Topic
Ask the godless heathen - AKA Ask An Atheist
Time

Ryan McAvoy said:

timdiggerm said:

Ryan McAvoy said:

timdiggerm said:

Ryan McAvoy said:

Short easy answer = Because I feel empathy.

I don't need a God to tell me that something is wrong because I can work it out for myself using my brain. e.g. I would miss my family if somebody murdered them so I know somebody else would be sad if I commited murder.

That of course extends and answers every other moral question.

It doesn't though. Lots of people have felt empathy for some and still done terrible things to others. 

Those people were wrong.

 Says who? You? Why do you say that, and how could you justify the statement to them?

To go back a step, when you said "terrible things" what did you mean? I'm guessing you mean something that you consider morally wrong because your feelings of human empathy tell you they are "terrible things".

Okay, I should be more clear. I meant something I consider morally wrong because it's not loving towards people, because that's the ultimate (albeit fraught with difficulties of interpretation, I admit) standard handed down from on high. Not all theists will agree on standards, of course, as I'm particularly a Protestant Christian and not the mythical generic theist.

Humans can be wrong, stupid, sociopaths, ill informed, evil, manipulated, drunk, high etc etc allowing them to ignore, deaden, forget or bypass their feelings of empathy (For sociopaths they never had them of course).

 What makes a person evil?

Post
#677844
Topic
Ask the godless heathen - AKA Ask An Atheist
Time

Ryan McAvoy said:

timdiggerm said:

Ryan McAvoy said:

Short easy answer = Because I feel empathy.

I don't need a God to tell me that something is wrong because I can work it out for myself using my brain. e.g. I would miss my family if somebody murdered them so I know somebody else would be sad if I commited murder.

That of course extends and answers every other moral question.

It doesn't though. Lots of people have felt empathy for some and still done terrible things to others. 

Those people were wrong.

 Says who? You? Why do you say that, and how could you justify the statement to them?

Jaitea said: Yeah, thats no problem, I just found that your original question - 'can you morally condemn the holocost?',...being atheist, & understanding Hitler's religious beliefs......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler

The Most Reputable Source said:

The adult Hitler did not believe in the Judeo-Christian notion of God, though various scholars consider his final religious position may have been a form of deism.

So there's that.

I know right from wrong

How?

Post
#677839
Topic
Ask the godless heathen - AKA Ask An Atheist
Time

Reegar said:

But while the question may be relevant to some religions, the question is irrelevant to someone's lack of belief in God.

Sure it does. If a belief system has undesirable or unappealing end-results or implications, that changes how people view it.

Morality and theism at their core are two different things. Christians, for example, are a bunch drawing an abstract connection between the two.

I'm not saying atheists don't have morals and I'm not saying theists do. I'm interested in the justification for those morals.

Ryan McAvoy said:

Short easy answer = Because I feel empathy.

I don't need a God to tell me that something is wrong because I can work it out for myself using my brain. e.g. I would miss my family if somebody murdered them so I know somebody else would be sad if I commited murder.

That of course extends and answers every other moral question.

It doesn't though. Lots of people have felt empathy for some and still done terrible things to others. 

Post
#677830
Topic
Ask the godless heathen - AKA Ask An Atheist
Time

Leonardo said:

This is an interesting question. I'll try to answer as best as I can, and Reegar, I'd like to hear your take, too.

okay,

Can you morally condemn the holocaust, and, if so, on what grounds?

You're asking me if I think genocide is bad. I'll tell you, I think murder is bad, genocide is horrific. On what grounds? Well, I wouldn't kill anybody.

Not good enough. "I wouldn't do it" is hardly a firm ground for condemning the acts of others.

The "Do unto others" rule, doesn't only exist in Christianity and probably 99% of other religions in the world (look it up). It's plain common sense, dictated by self preservation, killing people is "bad" because it would be detrimental to the survival of the species.

Unless you're killing people who would be detrimental to the survival of the species, of course.


However, you can look at the good that came from the bad. If it weren't for Schicklgruber, Von Braun wouldn't have left Germany, and maybe a German or Russian cosmonaut would've walked on the Moon. I like to think that WWII, while a horrible scar in humanity's past, has brought life to endless material for comedians, whole generations of them. Some have based their entire career on it!

It's unknowable how much good could have happened without the war, the war could have happened without the holocaust and still led to the space race, and the death of millions is hardly a satisfactory justification for men on the moon.

I'll make another example that will, no doubt, make every American cringe. We all know lots of people died on 11 Sept 2001. We all feel bad about it. But maybe (to quote comedian Louis C.K.) there were a couple of assholes that day, on the towers. We don't know for sure, but statistically we can assume at least one person saw the buildings collapse, and sighed with relief, because somebody they had a beef with, was in the middle of that disaster.

Yeah and some people sighed with relief because America had taken a blow and some people sighed with relief because the Jews were dead and... I don't see where you're going with this.

The usual idea is that, without some sort of ultimate authority, there's no way to absolutely say that something is bad.

Well, turns out there is no ultimate authority, in every sense. What was good once, may not fly today. In other words, humanity will make its own rules. If everybody agrees killing each other is good, well, guess what, it's good. But until further notice, it's bad.

And enough people agreed that the Final Solution was a good idea. That wouldn't fly today, but it sure did then.

I feel like I rambled. Did that answer your question?

Nope.

And Jaitea, I'm not going to defend religion being used to justify or itself causing terrible suffering. Of course it has.

EDIT: I forgot to bold Jaitea's name. Fixed that.

Post
#677794
Topic
STAR WARS: EP V &quot;REVISITED EDITION&quot;<strong>ADYWAN</strong> - <strong>12GB 1080p MP4 VERSION AVAILABLE NOW</strong>
Time

Reegar said:

oh_riginal said:

The nature of Revisited, to me, is change for the sake of quality, not change for the sake of change. That is the difference. How does changing "oomphs" and "ahhhs" add up to being something that absolutely needs to be done for ESB:R when it was fine in ESB to begin with?

Why did fixing the blaster bolts in ANH need to be done?

 Because one of the goals of Revisited is a cohesive 6-film saga, and the PT blasters don't look the same.

Post
#677747
Topic
Ask the member of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church AKA Interrogate the Catholic ;)
Time

HotRod said:

So priests bang on about homosexuality being a sinful act, yet have no problem molesting young boys. 

Fucking hypocrites. 

 Yes I don't think you'll find too many people who disagree with you there.

Ric2, thanks for the article, particularly the Petrine Primacy section (the only part I read, as per your recommendation). His point regarding everyone sitting down and listening to Peter certainly indicates they respect him, and he wants to end the bickering and move things along, but not Primacy. The difference between Peter's language and James's language, where Peter talks about God doing this and God doing that, while James is all about his opinion, follows from Peter talking about things God has done, while James is stating his judgment on what should happen next, in a way that will be acceptable to those gathered. While Peter lays it out as a fact ("Why are you putting God to the test?"), James's statements are intended to be a closure, offering something on which they can consider coming to agreement, and are thus phrased in a more inviting manner (Peter is, as usual, a little brusque?). The matter is not settled when Peter speaks, as they still have to hear Paul & Barnabas's testimony, and the text is not clear as to whether the agreement in v22 is just on James's implementation, or the whole matter.

The article asks, at the end

Carl Olson said:

If James was the leader of the early Church, or even the first pope, why aren’t his successors the head of the universal Church?

and that's not helping his point. Readers who don't think Acts 15 demonstrates Petrine Primacy probably aren't going to think the Papal claim to Petrine Succession is important.

As for Catholic-Orthodox relations, I agree that the two are more reconciled today than they have been in a very long time (while we Protestants are...all over the place), but I did mean unity.

Jesus said:

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

and I've never understood how that fits with schisms. And yes, I say that despite being a Protestant.

Post
#677346
Topic
The new Godziller movie
Time

Space Hunter M said:

As a matter of fact, I just ordered the German Godzilla Raids Again DVD because it has better shadow detail and looks better than any Japanese release, but of course it has German credits and is missing about a minute or so of footage, so I'm preparing to make the best looking version of the Japanese cut with the missing footage sourced from the 2008 HV broadcast.

 I have no idea if this is true or if you're just doing the most effective OT.com parody ever.

Post
#677053
Topic
STAR WARS: EP V &quot;REVISITED EDITION&quot;<strong>ADYWAN</strong> - <strong>12GB 1080p MP4 VERSION AVAILABLE NOW</strong>
Time

fishmanlee said:

I daresay that Google drive works well, though I don't know if it would work with the Forum software,

Do you mean more than just a url to a file? If so, no.

or if there is still the chance of the video's being reported,

There definitely is

and there is a GB limit..

 Which makes it pretty useless

Post
#676922
Topic
All Things Star Trek
Time

DuracellEnergizer said:

doubleofive said:

I'm sure that was cost prohibitive for an in-house effects studio. It was never supposed to be a grand restoration, it was supposed to be something to get TV stations to want to air 40 year old reruns.

 In other words, they're cheap.

 In other words, they're not willing to spend more money than it's going to make.

Post
#676858
Topic
All Things Star Trek
Time

doubleofive said:

timdiggerm said:


Off Topic: When did the bolding usernames start, doubleofive? It's one of my favorite quirks of the board, but I'm always slightly concerned that it's actually very common on other sites and I just never knew.

It's only because they're bold on the subject line on this particular forum.

 Ooh. I thought it spread as a way to make fun of some particular user who did it first. I can't remember who, or I'd bold their name.