Posted on May 4 at 10:11 a.m.Suggest removal

No surprise here. Lee is, and looks like, a crook.

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Posted on May 2 at 1:43 p.m.Suggest removal

@Rhology (cont'd)

“If I asked you to present evidence for your own worldview, you'd have nothing. I know, I've asked atheists for evidence many, many times, but feel free to give it a shot yourself.”

The difference between my worldview and yours is that mine refutes the ability to understand reality beyond an educated guess at this moment. My worldview seeks understanding where we have none, while yours claims to already have it. You claim to have the answers, not me. Sure, I have opinions on things, and from those opinions I create my worldview but the glaring difference between you and I isn’t that I’ve decided that evidence is a better method of determining my thoughts on external events (clearly, you attempt to do the same within the framework that you’ve chosen). We just disagree on what evidence is and neither of us is satisfied with the other’s explanation for the world around us. You don’t have to prove it to me, just like I'm not required to prove it to you. Your views are incompatible with my worldview and mine are very much the same to you.

“To say "our country can make enough food to feed everyone" displays astonishing ignorance of economics as well as political and military realities of the world. I mean, amazing. Dumbfounding. 
Do you really think that people starve b/c we "can't" grow enough food? 
And can you really not distinguish between someone who is under someone else's knife and someone who, b/c of aforementioned economic/political situations, can't get enough food?”

Our country can make enough food to feed everyone. It is capable of doing so. Yes, I’m also well aware of economics and political/military realities of the world. I would think that a Christian would be more open to hyperbole, but, given that you clearly aren’t I’ll be perfectly straightforward with you.

While we have the capabilities to grow enough food to feed every man, woman, and child on the planet we do not for a number of reasons – many of which have nothing to do with morality. This doesn’t change the fact that suggesting that we could do these things isn’t inherently bad or misguided because, at the end of the day, feeding people who are hungry is a pretty good idea.

While we have the capability to throw away women’s rights in the US, we do not for a number of reasons – none of which have anything to do with the Christian worldview. This doesn’t change the fact that whether you would get an abortion yourself or not, the idea of the government having jurisdiction over a woman’s womb is a pretty bad idea.

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Posted on May 2 at 1:04 p.m.Suggest removal

@Rhology
"Pinchfist,
"Extraordinary" is in the eye of the beholder." 


You are correct, sir. One can manipulate the meaning of that word to fit nearly any circumstance in such ways that it is no longer extraordinary at all. Let’s be honest here – believing in a higher power, force, natural science, whatever that has either influenced or influences our existence now without evidence is an extraordinary claim. It is less extraordinary a claim than one which spells out the names and desires of such forces.

“Atheism says that there was nothing and that nothing happened and everything emerged out of nothing acting on nothing. Now *that*, sir, is extraordinary.”

Atheism doesn’t say anything. It’s not a stance. It’s not a position. The only way atheism becomes a position is by comparison to any particular faith by a person who has faith. Otherwise, it’s nothing.

Your stance, however, makes claims and while an atheist might make a claim, it’s not necessarily related to their lack of belief in something you hold to be true. Additionally, you attempt to employ a rational causal relationship to “disprove” the atheist while still holding that religion has somehow answered the same philosophical questions with any certainty at all.

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Posted on May 2 at 1:03 p.m.Suggest removal

(cont'd)

4.The two atrocities were both mentioned because one is an actual harm to people who actually exist rather than babies whose composition range anywhere within the spectrum from clump of cells to something resembling a human baby. It was not my intent to presume that they are both mutually exclusive – that would be ridiculous.

My intent was to show the uproar from a religious group who stand idly by while they have the power to prevent suffering on a much larger scale. It was merely to illustrate the duplicity of morality that Christians have accepted as a basic premise for their faith. I don’t blame you for these shortcomings, your God seems to be on the fence about a number of, what ought to be, fairly simple and universal concepts (although his opinion on an abortion procedure is largely absent).

5. Let me be clear about this. The site you presented is not, in any way, an accurate depiction of the number of worldwide abortions. It is a “clock” based on what I would suspect are numbers of abortions that favor the person who made the site extended by an automated script to play out in a way that gives folks like you some false sense of impending doom. The numbers I presented, while their biased could be argued as well, are not based on an automatically updating webpage script. Despite that, I’ll grant that the example wasn’t the fairest. It was only an attempt to shed light on the duplicity of the framework of Christian morality. I can proffer other examples of your God’s confusion on moral matters if you would like.

Grant can call himself anything he wants. I couldn’t care less. He can call himself a Crusader for Pink Unicorns, and it wouldn’t impact my life at all. I do find it typical that you’ve fallen back upon the pro-life versus pro-choice rhetoric. Pro-choice doesn’t mean the moral support of abortions, it means the moral rejection of the government’s ability to dictate what a woman can and can’t do with her body. Being against abortion as a procedure is not mutually exclusive with being against the government having legal jurisdiction over a women’s uterus. Why do you insist that they are?

Wake up!

Your crusade is ridiculous at best and dangerous at worst. You are self-righteous and couldn’t be further from the alleged teachings of the very God you extol.

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Posted on May 2 at 1:03 p.m.Suggest removal

@Abolitionist_4
1. I’ve no desire to insult you, but nearly all of those descriptors would also have been correct.

2. And the bible has been used to justify the oppression of women as recently as in your parent’s lifetime (and presently if you include this particular issue). What’s your point? People use religion as a tool to further whatever their agenda is at any given moment.

3. I am not off-base at all. Because both were legal at one time or are legal now does not mean that your claims of being an abolitionist apply in the least. While your usage of the term “abolitionist” is perfunctorily accurate, to align yourself with civil rights as true abolitionists did is disingenuous to the concept of civil rights. Unborn children do not possess these rights. And, even supposing that they do, the mother’s rights are certainly not null and void.

Additionally, I only submitted that the fight against slavery in the US was indeed spearheaded by individuals that used the bible to justify their claims. I did not agree nor imply that their religiously fueled crusade was either accurate or better than a secular approach to end slavery. In fact, if I were able to go back and have a say in the matter, I would have suggested that the religious approach was superficial and short-sided (as we can see now with this issue).

You are not the same people and this is not even a remotely similar law.

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Posted on April 29 at 10:53 a.m.Suggest removal

You've made the claim, you get to prove it. Just because your position is impossible to defend doesn't mean your opponent magically has the onus to prove their point - they've made no extraordinary claims. There's no need for anything stronger for the atheist position than ignoring you. You've presented no evidence, you've made insane claims, and quite frankly, if the atheist confronts you at all, it's either out of extreme pity or for a good laugh.

You're right about a large drive for the abolitionist movement in the United States coming from Christians. That does not mean you're an abolitionist for unborn babies now.

Upon researching your figure on abortion, it appears that you've made it sound like this figure doesn't come from the total number of abortions (with the last 10 years estimated) since 1973. During that same time, nearly 570 million children around the world that were actually born died from starvation. Our country can make enough food to feed the entire world - how can we reconcile the moral bankruptcy of allowing them to die amongst the cries for babies that aren't even born yet. Does the right to life stop once you're born? If so, how is that morally justified?

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Posted on April 27 at 7:40 p.m.Suggest removal

@FlyingSpaghettiMonster - Well said (written).

Religion is a prison of one's own creation. I'll never understand the desire to chalk up the beauty and greatness of the human condition to a vengeful and co-dependant sky god. What's worse is that people like the author place the blame for their inability to enjoy life (amongst other things) on some imaginary void-like existence that is somehow separate from the "blessed" life.

The answer to their problems is found in simply willing an external force into being rather than looking at their own shortcomings. While easier than introspective exercises, it is certainly not as effective.

Their lack of personal accountability, although not surprising, is both sad and frightening.

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Posted on April 27 at 1:05 a.m.Suggest removal

@leimapapa

"Trevor's argument here is that most peoples' view of "reality" consists of little more than predetermined rejection which is an exercise in intellectual laziness."

Are you actually suggesting that questioning extraordinary claims is intellectual laziness?

The only intellectual laziness that I see is Trevor claiming that we should tell stories to one another and forbid any attempt to look toward actual empirical evidence to determine the validity of the claims within the stories.

Intellectual laziness is saying we should look at the evidence surrounding an event, then supplying nothing more than 2000 year old fairy tales as fact. Creating a pseudo-logic to bolster pseudo-evidence is intellectual laziness as well.

"He's asking people to be less like the intellectually lazy world they live in so, as a result, the world might change for the better.
How was that not clear?"

How does the unquestioned belief in a sky camera and his zombie son make the world a better place?

How does Xenu make your life more complete?

What's so amazingly world boosting about wearing strange underwear once you're married?

What about the allegedly righteous killing of the non-believer makes our world safer or better?

These are the products of intellectual laziness, not of asking for evidence to support a claim. Trevor is condemning those who believe in Christ's resurrection as parable, not an actual event as well as rational thought as a whole. He argues that "it must be right because lots of people believed it." Intellectual laziness, indeed.

If intellectual laziness is holding religious claims to the same standard that one would hold any other claim about the world around us, then count me in. Trevor's extraordinary claims aren't off-limits and when he attempts to bring them into the fold of reality as fact, he should expect rational people to question it.

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Posted on April 25 at 4:13 p.m.Suggest removal

Also, Okie3L, I don't want to create the impression that I agree with or support Bruenig's approach. Just about anyone else, going through the proper channels, could have done a much better job contesting the run-off results. I understand the election standing rules, and I understand how they can be abused. In this case, I must admit that I assumed that Bruenig went outside of General Counsel or the Election Chair because they refused to do anything about it. If so, well, you can't blame him for trying. If not, see my above comments about my thoughts on Bruenig.

Despite that, and here I think we both agree, if we want to allow a voter the ability to contest election results, we would probably need to amend the election statutes to clearly state as much.

Still though, Bruenig may not have had "distinct" harm as you see it, but the "voters," as referenced in the election provisions and intent of election provisions, do. If they don't, then democracy means nothing. And, if the whole of voters are distinctly harmed by illegal elections, why can't Bruenig request judicial review on their behalf if no one else is?

Were we supposed to wait on General Counsel to file a grievance?

Was General Counsel unable to file a grievance in tandem with Bruenig's if they felt so inclined?

My suspicion is that no one in General Counsel cared, and Bruenig's response was out of frustration (or worse yet, the desire to show voters that no one cares about cheating and by proxy, the voters). He did at least succeed at that. Due to the lack of diligence of those who have the power to contest the election (in your view, I still hold that Bruenig could make a case, albeit a difficult one), someone who ran an illegal election is now sworn in.

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Posted on April 25 at 3:27 p.m.Suggest removal

I'm telling you, Okie3L, there's a case there. Although, approaching a student rep would have been much easier, I agree.

I'm advocating that we determine harm by the clear intent of the law - it's a plausible approach. There is more to this than simply saying "no distinct or palpable harm" over and over again. If we're going to pretend that this is big boy court, then let's employ a the zone of interest test like the US Supreme Court would. They've been using it to allow environmental lawsuits where the defense hides behind legal standing like Mock's defense did. This is the ultimate cop out in these types of cases and you know it. The US Supreme Court knows it as well, hence the existence of the zone of interest test as a product of prudential ruling.

I've no doubt that people could abuse the system, but that doesn't mean we should restrict grievances so much that they can't practically be made by a voter. That wasn't the intent of the laws on standing, nor is it the intent of any of the election provisions - the Court made that abundantly clear. Why then are we allowing cheaters to hide behind standing when we don't have to (and shouldn't in this case)?

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