The Earth stands on the brink of its sixth mass extinction and the fault is ours

[Glenzig]

Originally Posted by paulgiamatti [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Nor was it integral to them.

Well, he said it was. Whether you believe that or not, it does give a very legitimate example of a post modern scientist who both believed in God and made enormous contributions to science.

[paulgiamatti]

Originally Posted by Glenzig [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Well, he said it was.

It's quite possible to be prodigious and revolutionary in one field of study, while simply being wrong on other trivial, arbitrary matters. Tesla is a perfect example of that.

[Slathar]

Religious people should be labeled as mentally defective.

[paulgiamatti]

Originally Posted by Slathar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Religious people should be labeled as mentally defective.

I don't think so. I mean, I still contend that it's a question of morality and not intelligence. For example, I don't think Luminari is a hopeless idiot who probably can't outwit a fruit fly because he's religious. I think he's that stupid in the first place; he'd still be just as mind-numbingly, earth-shatteringly deficient in mental faculty if he happened to be an atheist and not a believer.

The fact that he's a Judeo-Christian doesn't make him more of an idiot, it just makes him an immoral idiot. So I suppose you could say that that's a mental defect of a kind, but I get the feeling you were referring to intelligence or intellectual capacity, and there I tend to disagree. The question of belief really needs to be approached from a moralistic angle, without arrogance, and without assuming the intellectual highground. Not only because you're never going to change any minds by broaching a conversation with, "You're a complete idiot, I'm so much smarter than you!" but also because it's just simply not a measure of intelligence.

The corollary argument would be that because it's not a gauge for intelligence, it certainly is for morality or immorality. In this way I think you can get an accurate reading of someone's moral fiber; the deist would have to, in some way, be more moral than the theist, the zealot more immoral than the disciple, and so forth. But that's not to say you can never have an immoral atheist, or a moral theist - there are countless examples of both, but if you give religion to the immoral atheist, or remove it from the moral theist, you'd see that fiber either grow or shrivel in exactly the expected ways.

[Rararboker]

Every time I read one of your post, giamatti, I feel like you should pay me money. You seem like someone who received a decent education but are unable to actually think for yourself so you just spout whatever nonsense is popular as of right now. It actually makes me a little sad and fearful that George Carlin wasn't just a comedian because he made a lot of predictions that are coming true.

[paulgiamatti]

Originally Posted by Rararboker [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You seem like someone who received a decent education but are unable to actually think for yourself so you just spout whatever nonsense is popular as of right now.

Wrong on both accounts, but this is high praise and welcome reaffirmation coming from someone who has any level of appreciation for Carlin's unfunny, worthless senile tirades which only people with the most impoverished sense of humor could possibly call comedy. He's one of the few people I'm happy to know is very dead, and very much returned to the dirt.

[Glenzig]

Originally Posted by paulgiamatti [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I don't think so. I mean, I still contend that it's a question of morality and not intelligence. For example, I don't think Luminari is a hopeless idiot who probably can't outwit a fruit fly because he's religious. I think he's that stupid in the first place; he'd still be just as mind-numbingly, earth-shatteringly deficient in mental faculty if he happened to be an atheist and not a believer.

The fact that he's a Judeo-Christian doesn't make him more of an idiot, it just makes him an immoral idiot. So I suppose you could say that that's a mental defect of a kind, but I get the feeling you were referring to intelligence or intellectual capacity, and there I tend to disagree. The question of belief really needs to be approached from a moralistic angle, without arrogance, and without assuming the intellectual highground. Not only because you're never going to change any minds by broaching a conversation with, "You're a complete idiot, I'm so much smarter than you!" but also because it's just simply not a measure of intelligence.

The corollary argument would be that because it's not a gauge for intelligence, it certainly is for morality or immorality. In this way I think you can get an accurate reading of someone's moral fiber; the deist would have to, in some way, be more moral than the theist, the zealot more immoral than the disciple, and so forth. But that's not to say you can never have an immoral atheist, or a moral theist - there are countless examples of both, but if you give religion to the immoral atheist, or remove it from the moral theist, you'd see that fiber either grow or shrivel in exactly the expected ways.

Straight out of the Harris handbook. I think it's funny that people who insist that the uinverse has no purpose base the bulk of their argument on morality like Harris does.

[paulgiamatti]

And I think it's funny when people who no longer have anything of substance to say immediately put forth these baseless accusations that I'm being unoriginal. But since you seem so sure of yourself, I'd like to challenge you to find anything by Harris that even remotely resembles what I've written here.

By the way, the universe being devoid of purpose isn't something I insist upon, but highly suspect. Nor is it something I try to rationalize with morality. The fact that all religion is fueled by a strong undercurrent of solipsism and immoral, irrational thought is simply an unhappy feature of them, not a reason for which they're less likely to be correct about the nature of the cosmos. I'm only putting forth the moral argument here to make the point that being a believer neither exempts you from immorality, nor makes you unintelligent.

[Tradesonred]

2 articles to try to get this thread back on track a bit

Canada is burning and America is choking on its smoke

http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-0...king-her-smoke

Measuring the sixth mass extinction

https://cosmosmagazine.com/life-scie...ass-extinction

[Tradesonred]

One last bump

For those who actually read the links i provided, this is a really interesting talk by an astro-biologist, on geo-engineering and the anthropocene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmDr...TTiKGAazl83B4P