Josh F

Sry, I just have to add.... calling Transgendered people delusional, saying that gay people's right to adopt should be segregated, that in-the-closet transgendered people are declaring that being transgendered is unimportant to them, and that being transgendered is a byproduct of being indoctrinated into a cult are fairly offensive. James, try this out. FDR members are delusional. Sounds offensive to me. Abused children hiding the truth from their parents, they must not really value the truth. Pretty offensive, too. Freedomainradio is a cult and requires indoctrination. No one's identity biologically links them to FDR, therefor FDR is a religion. And I also think the above person appropriately distanced themselves from this conversation. I've also read comments on yours regarding this topic elsewhere and you're NOT an unbiased observer. I highly recommend you respect the person's choice to back out of the conversation.

-edit- didint realize i was walking into a bee's nest. Nevermind.

So if you ask a 16 year old boy if he thinks having sex with a teacher would traumatize him, there is a good chance he would say no. And meanwhile society at large would say no, and would praise such an action. Meanwhile if a 16 year old girl was asked the same question, her answer may change. And societies answer changes. Does this mean that they biologically would react to the event differently, or that society's view of sex becomes internalized? So there is a tribe in Africa I read about in college. They encourage their pre-mature children to be sexual with each other. After puberty kids are placed in monogamous relationships. The idea is that they explore sexuality before it comes with the consequence of pregnancy. Once children into the picture, they must be in relationships. In this kind of society, no adult expresses that the experience was traumatic. My big question on this topic is where does the trauma come from? The incident or the reaction? Much the same with most sexual or bodily things there ends up being so much shame around it. Like a kid who normally runs around his house naked being yelled at to put on cloths infront of visiting neighbors. He learns "naked = bad"

So citing a fact is rhetoric but "Evil shit fills their daily conversation" and "They are the most self-centered culture I have run into" are arguments? This discussion is over.

Well, sorry but thats a little annoying to be accused of making an emotional argument based on rhetoric, considering your argument is exactly that. The evidence of your claim that Muslims are more willing to kill civilians does not exist. The megatonnage by the US dropped over Islamic countries is much larger than the combined total of megatonnage dropped by Islamic States on any country: including a nuclear Pakistan. The death count of muslim civilians, its literally hundreds of thousands if not millions. Now you have claimed to understand the mind of the average muslim. Please, before we go any further, describe to me the extend of your experience with Muslims personally. Which islamic countries have you lived in? Do you have a lot of muslim friends or contacts?

"privileged" is a racist and sexist epitaph, it is used only based on your skin color or gender, is only intended derogatorily, and to dismiss your perspective out of hand. It is intolerant, segregating, and derogatory; itself a logical fallacy based on a small and ignorant world view designed and implemented exclusively to disenfranchise a majority of the population.

drives me so nuts. I HATE that argument, its up there with "only white people can be racist" as the most frustrating byproduct of the social justice brainwashing of modern academia.

Can you go into more detail about your parents and their beliefs? I'm always extremely skeptical when a Christian tells me they were once an atheist, or that their parents were once atheist. There has to be so much more missing for that to make any sense. Can you share with us what discipline was like in your home?

You're confusing law with morality. On the soldier in Vietnam question remember: morality, again, has no commands. There is no part of ethics which discuss specific penalties. With the Nazis, remember the argument about free choice and being under duress. Germans unwilling to collaborate with the Nazis were murdered. You're also switching blame for morality. I think this tactic of yours is coming to light. When one set of words and terms creates a coherent understanding you just add a new word into the list. Turning free choice into any choice, turning moral arguments into issues of blame. I understand your arguments, I promise you I do, you don't have to repeat them. In fact, I think I could make a stronger case for you: in that all people are under the threat of violence within a statist system already, and therefor without free choice and without being the initiators of aggression, can one really say anyone is immoral in our system? Would one hold a slave responsible for killing another slave? And while I don't have an answer for that question philosophically, I think the question itself speaks to something important. That we're born into a cycle of violence and aggression that requires deep thought and difficult action to overcome.

Well spankers are big on "teaching consequences" so maybe it will appeal

Yeah, but just apply that logic to all of society though. About westerns "they kill their unborn children, bomb wedding parties, arrest people for smoking plants they like, and they strap machine guns to their dumbest children and indoctrinate them in public school to kill many innocents to make political statements. They hit their children, and yell at them. Their actions show nothing of love in them." I mean this isn't a particularly controversial statement, but people are shaped by their environment. If their environment includes invisible drones flying over the blue sky dropping bombs.... like the 9000 flying over Pakistan alone. If their environment kills so many adults its one of the youngest regions in the world. Life expectancy, trade, happiness, opportunity, etc, are all shrinking to nothing.

yeah but in the end of the day, these people aren't more violent, they just don't have the option to defer their violence to another authority. Point in fact, for all the old white ladies who supported the wars in Iraq, compared to say, a victim of those attacks seeking revenge... the moral line is not so black and white. The west has blood on its hands, but westerners can just wipe it off. I didn't bomb anyone. I didn't kill anyone. This is the reality of asymmetrical warfare. It is kids with rocks against tanks, men turned into home made bombs against a war machine that drops millions of tons of explosives over people you love. So yes, philosophically Islam is dumb as dirt. Yet so is the "democratic" state, and it is a far more capable killing machine. In Islam they persecute atheists, in the west they persecute marijuana smokers. In islam a woman doesn't have equal access to the law in marital affairs, in the west men don't have equal access to the law in marital affairs. In islam, they brainwash children into their cult. In public school they brainwash children into their cult.

I dont know if confessing in written format for the crime is the best idea. I don't really have any suggestions though, this is beyond my scope.

I think there is some merit to this, especially the last part. My issue isn't that its rape, I think that its very hard to put this act into the same category as someone holding a knife to someone's neck while having sex with them. The issue is that this is public school. This is a common occurrence, I knew many teachers in my high school who allegedly had sex with their students. School boards, like catholic churches, hide these teachers and protect them often. They're also funded by tax payer dollar. Its very similar to a prison guard having sex with an inmate, and speaks volumes as to why public school is bad for children.

Yeah Ben is wrong about Muslims, and Sam is wrong in thinking the democratic world is somehow infinitely better. The majority in the democratic world support politicians who imprison you for smoking a weed, force you into indoctrination camps, etc. The majority in the Muslim world support some degree of islamic influence in our lives or another, from price fixing to stoning rape victims to imprisoning atheists. Now, on the question of blowback.... the topic gets very historical quickly. How far back can we take blow-back? Cold War funding in Afghanistan after WWII? Or WWI with the ottoman empire? Or the fall of Byzantium? The invasion by the failed Crusaders heading east? Or the much larger invasion of Spain and southern Europe by the Muslims? How does the west engage islam in war, and vice versa how does this islamic world engage the west in war? Successfully, the west's only victories against islam are within the culture war. Rock music, porno, fashion, dancing, these are the most devastating element facing modern islamic culture. Militarily, the west props up and then starve out dictators, something the west has been doing in those regions since Alexander the Great (before islam). What does Islam do for war? They tend to make economic attacks. They target shipping lanes, trade centers, public markets, etc. Generally they use extreme terror to inhibit free trade. Its really hard to say hating muslims is a blind prejudice. And its really hard to say the west doesn't deserve a similar amount of scorn.

Interesting topic. I kissed my dad and mom on the lips up until deFOO. I relate to how gross it was when I was instructed to kiss my grandma goodbye, but I definitely didn't see anything sexual about it... she just had a gross old face with fake teeth and stuff. There is a huge cultural element. Not only does everyone in my family kiss, but since expatriation I now live in a country where strangers kiss. In Costa Rica you kiss your female friends. Here in Uruguay you also kiss your male friends on the cheek. You even kiss newly acquainted strangers on the cheek. My friend's son, who is 3, loves to give kisses goodbye. I have a buddy back in LA though, his parents never hug or kiss him, and if I even wrap my arm around his shoulders he gets stiff and awkward.

Yes, they have choices, but not free choices. Thats why we say "free choice" as opposed to just choice. One is very welcome to make any argument they want, but I can't say it will survive rigorous logical examination.

Yes! Excellent points. That is exactly the reason the question is asked, and exactly the reason it is dismissed out of hand, and exactly the correct answer to reconciling the issue.

This is a very common question in moral philosophy, any moral philosophers should be able to either answer it or explain why it isn't a valid question. Dismissing it without argument is "NaA" or "Not an Argument." I don't see how this person is trolling? He might not be in agreement, but he seemed sincere in his question. If you think he is trolling or somehow wasting your time, then move on. Taking this thread seriously is not insulting to anyone, its part of philosophical discovery and discourse. Calling the guy a troll is insulting. Maybe I missed something in his posts that indicated that he was a troll, I thought he was just someone getting into some amateur level philosophy.

Right. If the issue is the disparity between wealth and poverty, then there are good arguments that under a free market there would be much less disparity. Ideally we'll all be millionaires with robots servants! lol

In a free market, it would certainly be much less than they're paid today, because the businesses which afford them those huge salaries would no longer have regulatory exemptions and would instead be facing much stiffer competition. Its easy to see how, for example, Dick Cheney would be worth far less as a Halliburton CEO if couldn't guarantee billions of dollars in contracts through Washington lobbies of stolen tax payer funds.

I think that the myth is that these countries are more socialist, when in reality they are far less socialist. For example, the "minimum wage" does not exist as a federal mandate, but is created by the unions and businesses in that field. Then they have the nationalized industries. Instead of regulating them into non-existence, the government simply owns shares of those businesses which entitles them as shareholder to influence the business practices. These are also smaller government, held more accountable by the people, who are in a large part some of the most peaceful people on the planet. These are no socialist redistribution economies, they're fascistic or progressive, like our own, but less so. I think they make a great case for liberty in that even their nominal increased economic liberties affords them great wealth.

I like the historical episodes the most, and he has these excellent videos on John Taylor Gatto. I can see your point about the other guests. The most recent one the guest was talking about being an entrepreneur, but at one point he went into some unending sales pitch for his solar panel company and being from LA I've heard the same pitch again and again.

Well, alright! I've tried to bring this topic up several times on here and have struggled to find sympathetic ears. I think moral shaming is a very dangerous proposition worth an open discussion. The history of moral shaming is abysmal, for starters. It is, like you said, a powerful control mechanism. Moral shaming is currently used to justify violence on a massive scale, be it religious or statist. More so, in this particular community, which deals so much with childhood trauma, shaming was often a huge part of that upbringing. To employ it as a tool in the community should involve much much much more sensitivity to its power. Using it to shame violent offenders, like child abusers or soldiers, is a powerful tool I wouldn't want to just give up. Using shaming tactics to dismiss arguments and to encourage donations is manipulative. Post-modernism comes from a much different canon of philosophers than objectivism. This cannon includes Jean Paul Sartre, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Derrida, and others. Some central arguments which oppose the objective truth model is that all things are contingent and contextual. Meaning even 1+1 exists within human definitions, and has a history which goes back to the invention of the idea. Thats another thing, in post-modern philosophy, they compare two ideas of truth: the objective, capitol 'T' Truth and the subjective, lower-case 't', truths (plural). So while an objectivist might say 1+1=2 is axiomatically True, and therefor objective (always true in all places and times) a post-modernist would say 1+1=2 is a popular and useful truth, but limited by its agreed upon use in language, its contingent historical development as an idea, and its context within our culture/society/species/etc. To a computer, for example, 1+1= 10, as 2 does not exist within binary functions. One great example I found insightful was regarding a hypothetical tribal process of pasteurization. This tribe does a ritualistic dance over their milk as it cooks on a fire. They do this, of course, to remove any demons within the milk. Fast forward to modern times, we still heat the milk over the fire, but now we say it is to remove the germs, not the demons. To this tribe, the concept of germs simply was not possible, and yet within the limits of their own understanding of the world they were able to create useful systems of dealing with problems. Similarly, WE as members of modern society, also have a limit to our understanding of reality, in which we describe pasteurization as a process of dealing with potentially harmful bacteria. Are we more right? Do we have THE Truth, and did they not? If they did not, how do we know that we do now? If there is an objective reality, can we know it? If we can't know it, then how can we make any objective truth claims? And if we are limited beings incapable of objectivity, for each of us, as Sartre would say, doesn't our subjective understanding of truth shape our understanding of reality. Or as he said "existence precedes and rules essence" that subjective human existence comes before, and controls, anything we might call truth. Here this is a great article, it is a criticism of Rorty, the leading American Post-Modernist (now dead), and talks about Rorty's criticism of Ayn Rand. It has an objectivist viewpoint, which I am also super sympathetic towards, and the author makes a very good arguments and fair assessments of the debate between Objectivism and Post-Modernism. He does a good job of reconciling some of the above mentioned criticisms of Objectivity, as well. http://www.atlassociety.org/review-richard-rortys-solidarity-or-objectivity-and-contingency-language-0

There is no purpose, guys, to repeating the "this isn't a valid or real question" thing as if thats an argument. The question is valid to this guy, thankfully some people above gave it a shot. What a very sloppy and aggravating way to engage in "the largest philosophical conversation." The first thing is that no philosophy can argue for SHOULDS without running into another philosophical problem. So in the UPB approach, there are no you should do x or y arguments made, only that the outcome of an action can be described as moral or immoral. According to UPB one must be capable of free choice, choice not under the threat or use of violence, for them to be considered to have moral agency. In the case of a guy able to flip a switch to determine who dies, but who is not responsible for setting up that violent scenario, they're not subject to any moral evaluation. If the question is a legal one, then UPB is not going to help. You need to look for the common law way of solving this problems, which is to hold the person who initiated the string of violence responsible for all subsequent violence (intended or not). If you take a Randian approach, morality is determined by self interest, which I suppose would mean either choice and all participants are without moral evaluation, but that it becomes in the interest of the parties involved to operate in a way which best serves those interests... like flipping the switch to save a friend and kill a stranger, or in finding the guy who set up this horrific scenario and just shooting him in the face. I'm more and more sympathetic to this view of morality.