The issue with "agnostic" is that theists have done such a good job at demonizing the word "atheist" as "angry anti-god religion" that moderate people generally label themselves agnostic to avoid the label. Even though the word doesn't mean what they think it does, creating a division between people that understand the philosophy and people who don't, and helping to marginalize atheists as extremists in the mind of the layman. If everyone actually labeled themselves what they actually were, it would actually help progress due to not being able to pigeonhole opposite viewpoints quite so much.
Pacopoolio
JoinedPosts by Pacopoolio
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Atheists lose latest legal fight 'In God WE TRUST".
by jam inok folks i'm an agnostic.
but to remove the motto from our.
currency is a little too much.
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Atheists lose latest legal fight 'In God WE TRUST".
by jam inok folks i'm an agnostic.
but to remove the motto from our.
currency is a little too much.
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Pacopoolio
Ugh, pet peeve.
Agnostic deals with TYPE of belief. It is NOT an answer to the question "do you actively believe in a God or gods." The answer is "yes" (theist) or "no" (atheist). When asked how sure of that are you, you can say completely (gnostic) or not sure/I don't know/I don't know if I can prove it (agnostic). -
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LIVE from Ford Field international DO
by darth frosty injust wanted to show the activity in downtown detroit from the convention.
trafic is on jam!.
lots of people .
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Pacopoolio
I'm live posting from my loft balcony as I watch them all walk by.I don't think I've seen anyone under 40 outside of a few kids and one single mother since I've been watching them walk.
I saw someone from my old hall that had too much tunnel vision to even notice me.
My dogs can't stand all the people walking by and bark at them.
90% of the people look tired and depressed. Only around 10% have smiled or waved even with my cute dogs showing off for them. -
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Reconciling animals and suffering
by Pacopoolio inwe know that christians generally go through ridiculous mental voodoo to explain why a benevolent god allows human suffering, and none of it makes any sense, or is filled with bunk logic.
that's what happens when you try and retrofit a jewish "god is good and evil" religion into a benevolent religion.. .
one of the biggest "trips" to a jw/christian in continuing this line of thought is asking them why god would create animals simply to suffer and die, then, after they try to blame everything on adam (whose brain god supposedly created, and who put him into the exact situation that had an influence on that brain to cause him to sin).
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Pacopoolio
It's specifically how God is described in the Old Testament - the older the book, the "lesser" he is described. And, while Judaism has evolved, that's still the basic viewpoint of the religion today.
Christianity "stole" Judaism's God and tried to retcon it as a more benevolent being while upping its power level to more powerful than any other God. but by doing this, it creates conflicts with a lot of God's actions and descriptions in the Old Testament that need huge apologetics to attempt to fill. -
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Reconciling animals and suffering
by Pacopoolio inwe know that christians generally go through ridiculous mental voodoo to explain why a benevolent god allows human suffering, and none of it makes any sense, or is filled with bunk logic.
that's what happens when you try and retrofit a jewish "god is good and evil" religion into a benevolent religion.. .
one of the biggest "trips" to a jw/christian in continuing this line of thought is asking them why god would create animals simply to suffer and die, then, after they try to blame everything on adam (whose brain god supposedly created, and who put him into the exact situation that had an influence on that brain to cause him to sin).
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Pacopoolio
Even if that God did exist, the reason why he's worshipped (by Christians) is that he is a loving, benevolent God (supposedly). The "loving" and "benevolent" is a human description of that God's actions, according to Christianity. What loving and benevolent person would torture their pets to death for no reason at all?
If you take the Jewish viewpoint that God is good and bad, and a lot less powerful of a creature, then different arguments would apply.
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Reconciling animals and suffering
by Pacopoolio inwe know that christians generally go through ridiculous mental voodoo to explain why a benevolent god allows human suffering, and none of it makes any sense, or is filled with bunk logic.
that's what happens when you try and retrofit a jewish "god is good and evil" religion into a benevolent religion.. .
one of the biggest "trips" to a jw/christian in continuing this line of thought is asking them why god would create animals simply to suffer and die, then, after they try to blame everything on adam (whose brain god supposedly created, and who put him into the exact situation that had an influence on that brain to cause him to sin).
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Pacopoolio
Also, why would God have to create predators? He's omnipotent - he could make whatever type of system he wanted.
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34
Reconciling animals and suffering
by Pacopoolio inwe know that christians generally go through ridiculous mental voodoo to explain why a benevolent god allows human suffering, and none of it makes any sense, or is filled with bunk logic.
that's what happens when you try and retrofit a jewish "god is good and evil" religion into a benevolent religion.. .
one of the biggest "trips" to a jw/christian in continuing this line of thought is asking them why god would create animals simply to suffer and die, then, after they try to blame everything on adam (whose brain god supposedly created, and who put him into the exact situation that had an influence on that brain to cause him to sin).
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Pacopoolio
Raymond,
That view isn't scientifically backed up, however. Not only are "higher thinking" (we're talking, like, cats and up) animals aware of their own pain; they are also EMPATHETIC enough to recognize pain in other creatures that they're symathetic to. In fact, current science is hedging towards even things that we previously thought to not feel pain, like shellfish, possibly having a different type of pain sensory input that we just don't recognize given reactions to their harm.
It also has errors (that invalidate the whole claim). For instance, it's not true that only "higher apes" have prefrontal cortexes. Even rodents do! (and mice are VERY intelligent animals) And even if the claim was true, it's only the author's supposition that this means they "don't realllly feel pain," there's no evidence for it at all.
He's basically doing what the WTS attempted to do when covering this lesson - started from an assumption that humans and animals are uniquely different, and then layering the assumption with, "since God is good, then he must have made their pain different, so we'll just say whatever differences are there are what makes the pain different even though we can obviously see that those animals show the exact same pain indicators that we do when injured!"
The most telling part of that excerpt, though, is that, if that is the indicator of the difference in pain and why it's okay to kill other living beings, it becomes a support for even late term abortion. -
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LIVE from Ford Field international DO
by darth frosty injust wanted to show the activity in downtown detroit from the convention.
trafic is on jam!.
lots of people .
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Pacopoolio
Judging by the traffic, it SEEMS to be attendence levels for a big game at Comerica Park or something - but that COULD be because Witnesses are clueless about parking/maneuvering downtown and making it a worse cluster-cuss than it normally is.
Also, the Downtown Kingdom Hall hilariously has ben working the past two months in renovating their outside and making it look prettier for some reason (why couldn't it just be what it is?). -
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Reconciling animals and suffering
by Pacopoolio inwe know that christians generally go through ridiculous mental voodoo to explain why a benevolent god allows human suffering, and none of it makes any sense, or is filled with bunk logic.
that's what happens when you try and retrofit a jewish "god is good and evil" religion into a benevolent religion.. .
one of the biggest "trips" to a jw/christian in continuing this line of thought is asking them why god would create animals simply to suffer and die, then, after they try to blame everything on adam (whose brain god supposedly created, and who put him into the exact situation that had an influence on that brain to cause him to sin).
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Pacopoolio
That's why pets are generally used as the illustrative point.
Many people have a cognitive dissonance between animals for food and animals for companionship. We/They generally just block off giving anything we eat any kind of "personhood" while granting it to animals that we let into our homes as a way to continue enjoy what we're eating.
When you know those people have Fluffy or Fido or whatever and cuddle next to them, -that's- what you generally use as the point. Instead of their minds going to "dumb cows" (they aren't really, but it's easy to get that impression) or "dumb fish" or whatever, if the point of reference is something that they care about, -then- it typically becomes an issue. It's something like:
"What would you do if I grabbed your cat, slit its throat while it screamed, put it on a rock, set it on fire, and then happily went home?"
- Angry answer.
"Why would God demand that of countless animals then?"
That same allegory can also be applied to any way an animal is killed in the wild via the natural order that God supposedly designed. "What if I disembowled your dog and let it slowly bleed out in pain for the rest of the day in torture?" "Why did a loving God create a system where similar has happened BILLIONS of times?!" Etc.It's true that it only works with people that can actually empathize with non human suffering, however, a TON of meat eating humans have animals they empathize with. If that's the point of relation, it's a bit of inescapable logic that drives them crazy.
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Reconciling animals and suffering
by Pacopoolio inwe know that christians generally go through ridiculous mental voodoo to explain why a benevolent god allows human suffering, and none of it makes any sense, or is filled with bunk logic.
that's what happens when you try and retrofit a jewish "god is good and evil" religion into a benevolent religion.. .
one of the biggest "trips" to a jw/christian in continuing this line of thought is asking them why god would create animals simply to suffer and die, then, after they try to blame everything on adam (whose brain god supposedly created, and who put him into the exact situation that had an influence on that brain to cause him to sin).
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Pacopoolio
Yeah, I became a vegetarian as it was the best balance of not purposely causing animals pain for my pleasure (ie. animals don't -need- to be harmed or killed to support a vegetarian diet, even though they sadly are in most instances), while still being able to survive somewhat comfortably, since a vegan diet would make eating a giant pain and my health would start to suffer. I want to go vegan eventually, but weaning myself to be able to do a livable vegan diet is taking a while.
When my mom would talk to me about Christian morality and my reasons for not practicing, etc. my response became, "you torture and kill animals strictly for your pleasure." Her response was always a variation of "well it's not the Paradise yet."
