Steve3007 wrote: ↑July 19th, 2018, 3:32 am
Dark Matter wrote:What I have a problem with are those who haven’t the courage to deal with the facts at hand.
I don't see how that has anything to do with stories which have headlines saying "the Universe shouldn't exist" and which are about such things as the predicted distribution of matter and anti-matter in models beings different to their distribution in reality and the consequent need to change the models to better fit reality.
Exactly.
When DM is defeated he reverts to random Twitter style put downs with almost nothing to do with the topic or the person at the end of the ad hominem.
Rather, it is clear that DM had zero idea what he was talking about when he shot off that line - it was just a mindless, reflexive hostile reaction to being proven wrong.
He know the truth, though - Dark Matter made a hasty and wildly wrong supposition that was corrected, and he simply wimped out. He simply lacked the character to admit being wrong.
It is time to put the arrow in the bullseye with this character ...
What he has done says much about theism and the scriptures. If adherents don't even have the strength of character to admit a little mistake on a little philosophy forum, then that demonstrates that their claims about religion's character-building qualities are false.
Religiosity no longer brings truthfulness as it once tended to do with the old pre-evangelist breed of believer, many of whom still toddle off the church on Sundays. They were sincere - they meant it. Today's religions are largely corrupt. Thus, if we find examples of theists of strong character then that is because they are inherently good, good enough not to be corrupted by their distorted creeds.
Today's evangelists are nothing more political beasts and seemingly almost largely amoral, certainly when it comes to dealing with non--Christians. I just dealt with a rabid Christian on another forum who, after spending YEARS complaining and bad-mouthing what he calls "secularists" on a daily basis, flatly denied that he complains about secularists. Other forum members were simply agog at the Trumpian shamelessness of it. It was akin to Trump denying that he was blonde while staring at the cameras with with windswept blonde locks.
It's as if words don't mean anything to these people so they don't worry about how they use them to manipulate others who take truthfulness seriously.
At the risk of perhaps throwing out the baby with the bathwater, it seems to me that religions have become exactly the opposite to what they intended and should ideally be discarded altogether over time. Rather than a means of transcendence religion has become a political conduit, one that chains people to the profane rather than lifting them above it.
When was the last time you saw a theist on a forum inspired and waxing lyrical over God's creation. Showing love for nature? Never, because they are too busy applauding Trump's attempts to remove as much untamed nature from the Earth as possible.
So religions are now now just politics. Right wing politics, claiming tax exemptions for their partisan gaming or society's moral systems. It fits the spirit of today's tendency towards rationalisation in industry where the soulfulness is removed for efficiency, leaving only an ugly shell, eg. pop music, architecture. In religions' case "efficiency" means bums on pews and, like (especially conservative) politicians, most seem happy to exploit the darkness of human nature to bring in the flock.