Here is the thing any race can have any territory if they fill their numbers up in any given area. The Middle East during Neolithic times had a large European population, but do to natural selection, we were slowly pushed aside. Lets hope that doesnt happen to Europe.
Atheism (Do you believe in God? If yes, then why?)
- Thread starter Seditious
- Start date
- Status
Here is the thing any race can have any territory if they fill their numbers up in any given area. The Middle East during Neolithic times had a large European population, but do to natural selection, we were slowly pushed aside. Lets hope that doesnt happen to Europe.
israel has been excessively agressive lately. women and children are being bombed by the israeli military forces. military forces usually are ashamed for such things even at during combat. and there isn't even an army vs army combat. just an army and resisting gangs (terrorists, as they are seen by the rest of the world).
Cythraul
Active Member
- Dec 10, 2003
- 6,755
- 134
- 63
Yeah, that is a problem. There's a pretty good article written by Swinburne (I forgot his first name) about Humean objections to the design argument. One important point that he focuses on is the fact that any argument which makes an inference to the existence of intelligent design from spatial order (what he calls "regularity of copresence") is subject to the possibility of being superseded by typical scientific explanation. He proposes another version of the design argument which argues from the existence of temporal order (or "regularities of succession") to the existence of intelligent design. He claims that this version avoids the typical objections, and that in particular it avoids the possibility of being superseded by typical scientific explanation because scientific explanation must be silent on the subject of why there are regularities of succession. This is because a scientific explanation of the existence of regularities of succession would require further generalizations, thus postulating the existence of yet more regularities. These new regularities would be unaccounted for, and you easily see what happens here; it puts you on an infinite regress of explanation.
sweet, I'ma have to google around on that (though I don't give any weight to the design argument, but I have been meaning to finally read up on Hume (Especially after hearing he wasn't fond of Kant either
)Swinburne has many books in the philosophy of religion. The Existence of God deals specifically with arguments for the existence of God, but it is not a very esay read. Is There a God? is a later book of his in which he presents the same material in a more accessible way.
"Swinburne illustrates that a scientific method should use the simplest explanation if possible. . . . the best explanation of the existence of the ‘natural law’ (regularity of succession), is the existence of a ‘free agent’ (the intelligent Designer)." ( - http://home.pacific.net.hk/~jeremiah/paper4.html)
took me about 2 minutes before my 'hmmm, that is interesting' wore off and I started thinking and realized it's a stupid argument.
the free agent is either created by regularity of succession or not.
If not, by what was its creator created?
it isn't more simply to say '50 generations of Gods back, the first was created by succession in random happenstance' rather than 'the law itself was just a coincidental matter of succession here and now, just as Pi happens to be 3.14159, but could have come about to be anything else.'
obviously you don't explain all this complex shit by succession then explain the succession as an intentionally designed law/order by a complex being whose existence needs to be accounted for, you just take the shortcut and say here and now the design was chance, rather than the designer's designer's designer's creator came about by chance unordered succession which wasn't guided or precisely structured to bring about a certain end.
You are right...Israel has no respect for life or law. They just whenever they want, they will not be able to defy the world forever.
Swinburne's take on the question "is the free agent created by regularity or not?" will be that he is not created at all, hence also not by a regularity or another god for that matter.
I don't believe you really address his position in your post. He says that it is good scientific practice to accept simpler theories over more complex ones if the theories are not significantly different in other respects having to the do with how they explain the phenomena they deal with. This isn't really too controversial. The crux of the issue is in what follows. Swinburne thinks that the simplest hypothesis about the existence of natural laws is that there is a being who ordains that such laws hold. Other explanations of natural laws are more complex and should not preffered over the simpler one.
If we are to resist this argument, we need to challenge the relative simplicity of the explanation in terms of design over any non-theistic explanations. We may perhaps reject the need for any explanation of the existence and character of natural laws and take them to be fundamental to the world as it is. Then it will seem that any way of grounding them in something else, eg. God's will, bring more complexity into the issue than there need be.
and if that is his case then I simply go back to 'that which was not created was a non-agent' which is a simpler explanation, as all examples suggest non-life is more likely than life.
yeh, it's a wonderful semantic solution
'God did it' is a far simpler account of why water turns to steam at high temperatures, but it's only semantically simpler, to actually explain what the simpler statement implies is far less simple.
If you roll a hundred dice eventually it will come up as all sixes. You don't need an agent to order anything to get order, you just need a lot of time and motion (And considering how there may be millions of unsuccessful (at creating life) universes, that ours worked is hardly like rollings all sixes in the first roll.
I agree with what you seem to be getting at here. What notion of simplicity we are working with in Swinburne's argument is not clear. He takes an explanation which bottoms out with "God willed that the world be thus and so" to be simpler than an explanation which bottoms out with a multitude of natural laws and statements of initial conditions (if such there be). But even without trying to guess what notion of simplicity will get us this result, we can observe that whatever notion of simplicity is at work here, it isn't the one at work when we choose between different scientific theories. When we choose between scientific theories that are otherwise equal on the basis of considerations of simplicity, we are not presented with alternative theories that use so deeply different concepts. It is a significant question whether or not we can use simplicity as understood in the usual scientific cases in exactly the same way in the case at hand. I frankly don't know if Swinburne deals with objections like these in his writing. I presume that he does have something to say, even if it is not all too convincing.
I would imagine if you ever wanted to convince somebody of such a thing as at hand you would need to. An outlandish self-satisfying answer may work on oneself, but to convince another person it seems like you are required to trump a simpler theory.
ÎÏεβοÏ
Member
Pagan barbarian? Both of those terms were invented by the pathetic church to falsely show themselves to be superior and more "civilized". It is the byzantine and roman empires that forced them to be agressive. They invaded northern europe with their intollerant religion, and attempted to convert the "barbaric pagans" [and largely succeed with coersion, and greedy promises]. Those pagans had every right to slaughter any and every christian that stepped foot into northern europe, they invaded their home, destroyed their culture and religion, and corrupted their way of life. Maybe they were not as "physically agressive", but what they did was a thousand times worse than any upfront war could be. Not to mention they certainly were very agressive, they led wars against the pagans from the beginning, they converted with both coersion and force. And if I am not mistaken, the byzantine empire was the most disgusting. The "pagan forces" were fighting to protect their identity, the christian forces were fighting to destroy it, and overwrite it. So, yea, maybe the "barbarians" were a bit more upfront, but they did not use disgustinly dishonorable and passive agressive means to destroy something they had no right to destroy.
As for the crusades, they were products of the nature of christianity. It is a religion of egoism, greed, materialism, and intollerance. And rightfully? They had no "right" to the land they were trying to take, they even had no right to the land they were executing their crusades from..
[Modern] wars are fueled by greed and lust for power, lust for power and greed is maintained and made possible to thrive, by certain religions [christianity formost].
While you make some points in your post, I have to disagree with this one. The term "barbarian" existed long before Christianity. The Romans used it to mean almost any non-Roman, particularly Germanic peoples. It means, literally, "bearded one."
Krigloch the Furious
Pants full of poo
<---- Proud to be "barbarian" kin
In 998, when it was proposed that Sigrid, daughter of the Swedish king, marry Olaf Trygvasson, the king of Norway, she rebelled because it would have required that she convert to Christianity. She told him to his face , "I will not part from the faith which my forefathers have kept before me." In a rage, Olaf hit her. It is said that Sigrid then calmly told him, "This may some day be thy death." Sigrid proceeded to avoid the marriage, and created instead a coalition of his enemies to bring about his downfall. She accomplished this by allying Sweden and Denmark against Norway. She achieved her purpose when Olaf fell fighting against Sweden and Denmark in the year 1000 during the Battle of Swold. Queen Sigríð won her vengeance that day, for King Óláf saw his Norwegian forces defeated and he himself leapt into the sea to drown rather than face capture by his enemies.
In 998, when it was proposed that Sigrid, daughter of the Swedish king, marry Olaf Trygvasson, the king of Norway, she rebelled because it would have required that she convert to Christianity. She told him to his face , "I will not part from the faith which my forefathers have kept before me." In a rage, Olaf hit her. It is said that Sigrid then calmly told him, "This may some day be thy death." Sigrid proceeded to avoid the marriage, and created instead a coalition of his enemies to bring about his downfall. She accomplished this by allying Sweden and Denmark against Norway. She achieved her purpose when Olaf fell fighting against Sweden and Denmark in the year 1000 during the Battle of Swold. Queen Sigríð won her vengeance that day, for King Óláf saw his Norwegian forces defeated and he himself leapt into the sea to drown rather than face capture by his enemies.
ÎÏεβοÏ
Member
Oh yeah . . . well take out 'invented', and put in 'used'. The definition and use of the word 'barbarian' at the time was as we define the word today, barbaric and uncivilized.
- Status
Similar threads
