ClearConscience

I'm just going to plop this here. The solution to the "Muslim problem" is to be firm in your convictions. Any Muslim that lives in western society is going to feel uncomfortable, especially Muslim women. Don't cowtow to their reactions to your culture. The French are AGGRESSIVELY taking this perspective - to the point where they're actually denying individual liberty. I'm not advocating BANNING Muslim culture, to that regard, but never give any of your freedoms by virtue of "religious tolerance"... ever. That's the point. Allow people to do their own thing how they see fit, but be mindful of the underground group of people who want to enforce their ideas on you, and attack them hard. Be ruthless. France is being ruthless as fuck, surprisingly. This is France. Westerners think of France is being passive. They're not being passive at all in this regard. That's what you have to do, in the face of a religion that has its roots in intolerance. Sharia law is not your law, and if they want a government that enforces it, then they can go someplace else. Maybe Muslims need their own Israel. That is the Westerner's solution to strict Judaism, is it not? Perhaps Islam needs its own place CALLED MECCA, Saudi Arabia, where they can have their Sharia Law and live in that society that they see fit. But if those "diaspora" Muslims think they can invade another culture and institute their own rules, as a nation, we all need to stand up and say that this is not your home. It is your home, if and only if, you agree that tolerance is a virtue, and that people have the RIGHT to be immoral on this planet. If Allah allows for immorality on this planet, then institutionalized governments should allow for immorality on this planet. That's the principle. That's the winning argument with Muslims, and Christians, and Jews. God doesn't smite gays, and sexual deviants, and people who commit thought crimes, and those who endorse evil in this world. The role of government is to punish people who attack others, to ensure that you can live in peace, to defend you from invasions, to increase societal well-being, and to provide the greatest amount of individual freedom as humanly possible. The end. That's the purpose of government in western society. And any statute that opposes these aims will be aggressively opposed.

No, because there are plenty of women who are losers too. I don't like the judgment that's implicit in the question, but if you define what a "loser" is for men, then that same definition applies to many, many women. And believe it or not, a "loser" male who meets the right "loser" female, can enhance one another in such profound ways that both become winners. You don't have to be intelligent to succeed in life. You simply have to produce. Being productive is about being focused, working for something, or someone, and about sacrifice more than anything else. The combination of two "losers" can create a serious force to be reckoned with. No person is lost. People are a product of their environments more than you would believe.

Yes, because the prisoner's dilemma exists. The end.

I'm a bit confused at what you're hung up on. I agree that the purpose of action is what determines whether that action is rational or irrational. For instance, if your purpose is to provide an education for your children, it would be irrational to mandate that your children are not allowed to attend school. I implore you to ignore your opinions regarding public education, indoctrination, and all that for the moment. If your aim is for your children to be educated, then it is rational to instruct them to attend school, rather than the opposite. But, if you also have a competing purpose/goal/objective/aim for the safety of your children, and you hear that there is a bomb threat at the school, then the purpose of protecting your children will necessarily override the previous purpose to provide education. But allow us to suppose there was no substantive bomb threat, but you feared for the safety of your children nonetheless. The instruction to not attend school due such fear would be irrational. The fear itself is irrational because it does not correspond to a need. In other words, if the fear were tied to an existing need, then the action would be rational. I am drawing a distinction between legitimate fear and illegitimate fear, and this distinction is relevant to whether the action, as a response to fear, is rational. Rational action is action that is narrowly tailored to fulfill an existing need. When you adjust your definitions to make these important distinctions, the claim that "purposeful behavior [sic: I'm an American] can be irrational" is entirely tenable. ​Perhaps my misunderstanding is the use of the word "external forces" to refer to emotions or instinct. When I am emotional, that emotion is not external to me. I am fear. I am sorrow. I am glee. And those emotions are very much rational responses to external stimuli. Only where there is some defect, some damage, do these emotions not respond rationally to external stimuli.

Stefan, You want to engage with people... I'm telling you, you can engage with people BETTER!!! 1) Put ads on your videos 2) Film your videos in an actual set. Don't put a blank, white, wall and your handsome face as the only thing I am seeing. 3) Get decent lighting. These are things that I am demanding as a subscriber of over 6 years! If you want to spread your message, stop creating crap for people to watch (no criticism here regarding the substantive message) and start generating revenue so that you can increase your viewership. Get real!!! My preferential suggestions: 1) Paint your wall a bold color. 2) Adjust lighting so it illuminates one side of your face more than the other. 3) Put framed pictures of philosophers who influenced your life on the wall behind you. 4) Use studio lights to illuminate those pictures exclusively while keeping the painted wall in shadow. 5) Place the camera so the pictures behind you are slightly out of focus but still recognizable while your head and shoulders are perfectly in focus. 6) Put a sofa with some pillows in the background, under the framed pictures, in order to demonstrate that your channel is a place of comfort for your viewers. 7) Use rope light behind the couch to illuminate the frame of the sofa so that it is easily visible for your audience. These changes will dramatically increase your number of subscribers. PUT ADS ON YOUR VIDEOS TO FUND THIS!!!!!!!!!

When it comes to repaying victims for harms caused, this is the relationship of civil law. When you see one party sue another party for damages, this is a civil lawsuit. The purpose of civil lawsuits is to repay the damages caused by one party, against another party. When it comes to putting a person into a cage for a certain period of time, this is known as criminal law, as opposed to civil law. This has NOTHING to do with the victim. The victim is TOTALLY irrelevant. The victim isn't even necessary for the trial to proceed. The victim could be wholeheartedly against the prosecutor. In criminal court, it is THE GOVERNMENT against the alleged criminal. This is not an opinion. This is not some philosophical argument based on Stefan's words. This is exactly what they teach you in law school, day one. With regards to your last paragraph, Stefan is an advocate of social ostracism. I can say with 100% certainty, that Stefan is in favor of STRICT AS FUCK borders, and when convicted of heinous crimes, social ostracism. What this means is that a free society creates strict as hell borders and when a criminal is convicted, beyond reasonable doubt, of intentionally harming others in a sociopathic or psychopathic way, such as intentional murder or deliberate schemes to steal massive amounts of money from a huge pool of people, that they are sent elsewhere, out of society, and not allowed to purchase goods, or interact in any capacity with the society that they are ostracized from. That is the solution that Stefan presents. That is absolutely, the most clear and precise answer, to the question that you pose.

Nobody in their right mind will understand what you're referring to when you mention that 1st century philosophers regard government differently than modern writers. The only two philosophers I can imagine you're referring to are either Jesus, or Plato, and you would need to demonstrate that they showed some idea that government precedes society in order for me to even accept this premise, which I think is impossible. However, objectively, no government precedes society, i.e. men never, under any circumstances, are a product of their government. All governments, whether they be monarchies or democracies, are granted their power by the people. That is the central tenet of Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes. Government is a response to undesirable human interaction, and that is undeniably accepted by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As far as political philosophy is concerned, there is no philosopher that I have ever read that ever, under any circumstance, even questioned the relationship between man and government in this way. In all circumstances, man precedes government. More specifically, government is a response to the fact that, in a state of nature, the individual benefits from immorality when interacting with his fellow man. Hobbes referred to a similar idea of the prisoner's dilemma. He showed that the role of governments, in society, is to take our daily interactions with one another, from being comparable to the prisoner's dilemma, into an interaction comparable to an assurance game. I suppose I would need clarification regarding the question that you're asking. Your preface is easily answered, and I'm not sure how it relates to the question about the created being greater than the creator.

Initially, I just need to comment on the fact that you have a massive speaker, probably valued at above $100, set on a tripod in front of the only door to the room. You're literally required to move that speaker every time you want to enter, or exit, the room, unless you can barely squeeze through by cracking the door. You need to make yourself available to women. This shit is unacceptable. You're actually a very attractive man, if you actually bathe yourself and wear clothes that fit correctly. Your style doesn't actually matter... ever... at all. Just buy clothes, when you can afford them, that contour to your body. Let your hair grow out a bit, and walk into the cheapest hair salon imaginable (Great clips?). Find the oldest person in there. Ask for the oldest person in that is working there, explicitly. Tell her that you're conducting an experiment and you want her to give you, in her opinion, the most attractive hair cut and styling that she can based solely on the shape of your face. Tell her that your study is regarding expensive hair stylists vs. more affordable options. Actually make the claim that you're conducting a study. Tell her to do give you a cut, and a style, that she is familiar with, that she has done many times. This is a lie, obviously, but I GUARANTEE that you will walk out of that place with a $15 haircut that looks amazing. Yes, this had nothing to do with your video. I'm just telling you how to win at life. EDIT: you mispronounced several words as you were reciting that horrifically pretentious quote.

Anybody who claims that Stefan isn't influenced by his Christian upbringing contradicts the claim that early childhood development affects self-identification. Furthermore, it's a total disregard for the psychological precedent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erikson%27s_stages_of_psychosocial_development#Fidelity:_identity_vs._role_confusion_.28adolescence.2C_13.E2.80.9319_years.29)

How much research have you actually put into understanding Judaism vs Christianity vs Islam? If I assigned to you, to tell me the similarities and differences between those three religions, would you even know where to begin??? I am guessing that you wouldn't, and if you tried, you would receive an F grade from any religious studies professor at a top 20 university. I know many here don't respect academia, but even in an introductory religious studies class... one where you are required to only know the basics of each religion, I'm willing to guess that you would fail this assignment. You have no education on the tenets of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and therefore you have zero capacity to persuade anybody from their previously held beliefs. You actually need to give a shit about what they believe in order to persuade them otherwise. Jesus learned this at an early age, according to all three religions. I advise you to follow in his footsteps. Fortunately, you're unlikely to be crucified for it, lol.

I have no knowledge of what your arguments could possibly be. I have not read your post whatsoever. I have only quoted it and am responding to what I believe is most likely your initial claims based on experience alone. The reason why I am doing this is because I want to clear the air before I receive responses. The most important aspect of Christianity is to understand that Christianity is not a vacuum. Christianity is a sect of Judaism. To further this explain this OBJECTIVE FACT, Christianity is the replacement (in the book, Jesus calls it the "fulfillment") of the Davidic covenant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_(biblical)#Davidic_covenant). Regardless of what you want to call it, quoting Old Testament scripture as a representation of Christian ethics is entirely a strawman argument. I really wanted to preface everything I have to say with this statement, and I wanted to support it with commonly accepted facts... a wikipedia article. Many will scoff at the fact that it's wikipedia, but there are a lot of Christians, and Christians read wikipedia and agree to what that wikipedia article says... because Wikipedia is edited by many Christian scholars all the time.. so it's the most common, most well-accepted, most universal statements. So I require you to grant me the fact that the Old Testament is a HISTORICAL CONTEXT for which we should use to interpret the New Testament, which demonstrates Christian values. The Old Testament SOLELY demonstrates NOTHING BUT Jewish values. That being said, I find issue with none of your premises. The single, solitary, problem with you argument is simply that it doesn't follow from your premises. Simply by stating that fact that God wholeheartedly and intentionally created the capcity, fully knowing that we would fail, to sin does not in any way mean that God is malicious in so far as he "purposefully created a reality where there is pain and suffering." I agree that God created pain and suffering. I do not dispute this fact. I dispute that its malicious. Jesus underwent pain and suffering for his righteousness, correct? And I believe that is the point to all of this. The pain and the suffering is temporary and a result of our own sin, each and every one of us. Think about the free society that Stefan describes in his idealized "FREE SOCIETY" that he glosses over but never truty discusses in depth. It's exactly the society that God intended, isn't it. It's a society without judgement, where little tiny babies are treated as slightly less educated, less experienced, adults... but otherwise no different... right? No judgement, and that is exactly what Jesus prescribed, is it not? Google what Jesus said about treatment of children. I'm going to leave that to you. I want you to discover it for youreslf. What did Jesus say about how we should treat children, and then compare that to what Stefan describes. Please inform me. This isn't a rhetorical assignment. Please, I beg you, inform us of your findings.

I made some posts on reddit and I received quote a few dislikes, but as you may know, reddit is a cesspool of entitled leftist neanderthals. Here is a link to the conversation: https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4t5vtj/kentucky_judge_turns_away_nonreligious_couple/d5f4wbh?context=3 My username is "WolverinesFirst". I throw insults at those who initiate insults. Mark Twain said never to argue with stupid people because they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. Well, I used to be stupid. I used to be really fucking stupid. And now I'm not. So I don't fear arguing with stupid people and I enjoy getting dirty. I want to open up this discussion with a forum that supposedly prides itself on being philosophical and open-minded.

I haven't read anything by Girard and I honestly don't plan on it. I have no interest in psychoanalyzing the authors of the Bible. In my view, the historical and socio-political context is the furthest people can possibly hope to understand regarding the authors of the book. Trying to psychoanalyze the inner mind of people you've never met, who lived thousands of years ago, is a fools errand. I want to be clear that I'm not saying Girard is wrong. He could be 100% accurate. I simply do not know, and have no hope of ever being able to find out. I would hesitate to try to determine what atheists think about Christianity. Every atheist is different and often times atheists reject Christianity because they're strict empiricists. I would consider myself a rationalist. I don't know if anything in the Bible is true (it might be made up stories), but I know that those stories hold true moral virtue - because I study philosophy. And since that really really old book contains so much abstract truth, that I can verify, it would be silly to conclude that the other aspects that I cannot verify would be false. In short, if Jesus wasn't such an awesome guy, I probably wouldn't believe in the Bible. He's just so undeniably awesome.

I'm not going to speak for "many Christians" as you did, but I don't see anything said by Jesus or any disciple of Jesus that would lead any Christian to believe what you claim we believe. This entire post is a massive strawman. American politicans want to gain control over the natural resources in th middle East. That's why we're there. There's nothing in the Bible that says Jesus is coming back once America secures the oil.

I didn't read anything in this post. I noticed there was a premise/conclusion format to the argument, at first glass, so I skipped directly to the first premise. This is a false premise. god may be all knowing and all powerful, but certainly God does not control everything. Although the vast majority of Christians believe God has the capacity to control everything, I know of zero Christians who would ever subscribe to the belief that God chooses to control everything. In fact, the Bible strictly denies that God controls everything. So I'm not going to continue reading anything from this point until you amend your argument.