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mpd
Lammen Gorthaur



Registered: 10/22/12
Posts: 9,660
Loc: Mostly at home... Mostly....
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Re: 73% of the US Population Actually Believes in the Virgin Birth -- Seriously [Re: ShootinD5nukes]
#21036889 - 12/28/14 07:36 PM (9 years, 1 month ago) |
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ShootinD5nukes said:
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Ped said: According to a Pew Research Poll, fully 73% of the US population think it's possible to conceive a child as a virgin, while a similar number believe a magic ghost called an "angel" appeared to shepherds in order to deliver that exciting news. Fully 65% believe that the Biblical account of Jesus' birth is true and historically accurate.
This is completely and totally unacceptable. It is an utterly intolerable situation. Yes, while there's something to be said for "let people choose to believe what they want", there has to be some way to encourage a broader segment of the population to believe in facts and evidence as opposed to wisps and fairy tales. After hearing these numbers, though, I've started to wonder if that's not a hopeless dream: here we are in the 21st century, surrounded by scientific marvels that have us receiving tweets from robots on the moon and Mars, yet still we remain largely trapped in the dark ages of superstition, ignorance, and fear.
This is part of the reason why the Heartland Institute is actually able to convince people that climate change is a "liberal hoax", even as overwhelming and irrefutable evidence piles on to the contrary, revealing the immediate peril faced by civilization and by our species on the whole.
"Once a photograph of the earth is taken from the outside, a new idea as powerful as any other in our history will be let loose. That powerful idea is the recognition of our shared inheritance on this planet. We know more clearly than ever before that we carry common burdens, face common problems, and must respond with common action. As we travel through space, and as we pass one dead planet after another, we look back on our earth--a speck of life in an infinite void--we realize that it is life itself, human life, and the innumerable species of our planet: this we must battle to preserve."
-- Fred Hoyle, 1948 (20 years before that photo was taken by Apollo 8)

I'm with you 100%. A lot of the stuff if the bible is absolutely far fetched.
Twin butthurts.
-------------------- There is no truer calling for mankind than that of true conservatism.
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morrowasted
Worldwide Stepper



Registered: 10/30/09
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Re: 73% of the US Population Actually Believes in the Virgin Birth -- Seriously [Re: Bodhi of Ankou]
#21037002 - 12/28/14 08:14 PM (9 years, 1 month ago) |
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Bodhi of Ankou said: So in other words radical will alone is reason enough to reject determinism. The idea that I can go one way or the other completely barring causative or decisive factors is enough to reject the idea that we operate on a completely linear line of action?
No, the will isn't the reason to reject determinism. That is just saying "I believe in free will therefore determinism doesn't hold." What I'm saying is simple: if you don't want to give up Reason/Rationality, you have to reject determinism.
These so-called "mental games" don't prevent me from learning anything. I have learned many things about the sciences, philosophies, histories, politics, and so forth of mankind. But it is no longer necessary for me to say that I know anything. I have various perceptions and insights that cause me to suspect that there are certain kinds of relationships between the things I have learned, but to say that I know things is an unnecessary extra step. It does not help me achieve anything. I can synthesize any theory without making knowledge claims, but only stating the way things seem and using syllogism to arrive at conclusions. If I have only made claims about my perceptions, I will arrive at incontrovertible conclusions that are as useful as any conclusion that involves operators like "to be (is)" or "know" without having to use them.
It may seem long-winded but in fact the use of performative utterances allows one to escape from personal mind-prisons and thought-loops.
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In the philosophy of language and speech acts theory, performative utterances are sentences which are not only describing a given reality, but also changing the social reality they are describing.
Edited by morrowasted (12/28/14 09:49 PM)
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