Will Torbald

Because you are making an argument without physics. It's not about whether it's true or false, it's about if it can even be false at all. You are asking someone to prove a statement against the possibility of it being false without proving the premise that it can be false, and still have a working human being.

Religious pity atheists like a lamb that's walking into a slaughter house. Of course they are nice to you. In their minds, you've sold your soul to Satan and are going to suffer for all eternity. They are just being condescending.

I did say "objective reality", and ignoring objective reality is a delusion. Why follow delusions? You are assuming that you can show self ownership from a space without self ownership. First, you'd have to have a being without self ownership, and then show how self ownership when inserted into it makes it a different being. Since we're talking about humans, you would have to show a human without self ownership, then reinsert it back, and show two different states of being. Because that is what it would entail to "show" self ownership, I don't see how else. But I also don't see how it would even be possible to have a human without it. Since we are treading the boundaries of what is possible and impossible, I simply refrain to stay in the "that which is impossible simply must not be considered at all" like gods. I did define it. I said "being the -sole owner/person in charge/responsible agent- for your body, mind" Since you are making the statement that it isn't true, you need to provide evidence of the contrary. Who is your co-owner? Or you whole owner? Who are you asking permission to breathe?

The kind of "end of religion" Harris advocates is not the forceful end you might think. No one is sending a swat team into a church, but it's the end of thinking religiously. There simply is no reason to be religious except for indoctrination. There is no such thing as "the thoughtless", only the deceived and the deceivers.

I find this alarming, as it assumes that religion has thought in it at all. How do you even reconcile this contradiction? It is impossible to think and be religious at the same time.

You're a monster.

"Even more troubling, Molyneux makes numerous statements that the mind instantly rejects. One immediately feels compelled to say that “not-rape” is not the opposite of rape, just like being motionless is not the opposite of walking east. There are problems even with his discussion of physical possibilities; it seems obvious that two people can commit sexual violence against each other at the same time." This is the only attempt at an argument that I could find. First, I'll challenge that the direction a person is walking towards to is irrelevant to the act of walking in the same way that the kind of person someone is raping is irrelevant to the morality of the crime. Therefore, arguing that the opposite of walking east is walking west is like arguing that the opposite of raping men (immoral) should be raping women (moral). This doesn't work for obvious reasons. On the second attempt at an argument, I'll just say that while two people can be sexually violent with each other at the same time, the implicit agreement in this situation is that violence has been given consent. Rape requires aggression against consent to be a rape, therefore two people being violent with each other is kink, bdsm, rough play, or any other variation, but no violation of property rights of self ownership has been made in that case.

"Platonist here" Hello darkness my old friend...

Don't worry, your child will leave your side by himself after realizing how insane you are.

You can't say that a tree ought to be a tree just because it is a tree. It just happened to be a tree. If you listen to Harris, then he is saying that the tree had to be a tree because it was a tree, which is tautological. When you apply it to actions, it ends in similar problems. A man is running is not the same as it ought to run. It just happened to be running. Then he is saying that the running man ought to be a running man because it was running. It is, in a way, a very mechanistic and deterministic view of the world.

What cannot be violated is the objective reality of having caused an argument. When you argue against self ownership you are using your body, mind, time, to argue that you don't own your body, mind, and time while at the same time being the -sole owner/person in charge/responsible agent- for your body, mind, and time since nobody else can act on your body, mind, and time without the initiation of force - or your valid consent, which is in itself an exercise of self ownership. Therefore forceful self defense is the act of delimiting the self ownership of your body, mind, and time against another person's forceful attempt at taking them from you. Having a problem with another person's argument is not a violation of your property rights. It's just a disagreement. I can't cut you for being wrong. I can cut you if you force me to believe in your wrong argument by force, but that's already self defense.

The future is very hard to predict. Especially when it hasn't happened yet.

As a strong atheist advocate I'd say it's not a lot of groundwork to do when a god that isn't contradicting or supernatural is indistinguishable from a space alien. In that case all you'd have to do is point that out.

You're such a victim of yourself. It was painful to read this.

Philosophy can reveal the truth about reality, but happiness can only grow within when you agree with reality personally. If the world you live in is made of marshmallow puffs, and you disagree with marshmallow puffs, you'll be miserable. But why do you still antagonize marshmallow? You'll never be happy pretending they are cocoa puffs instead. You know they are not. The problem is with you and your bigotry against marshmallow.

An atheist is a person who doesn't have the belief that a personal god created the universe, life, and all natural things. It just means that, an absence of belief. In that sense, even an agnostic is an atheist since that person doesn't believe in a god either.

The most annoying one I've met is when the other person claims that private property is a function of the State instead of emerging from self ownership. At that point I just concede the other person is dysfunctional.

I think that the category you are looking for can be called "weak agnostic". There are "strong theists" and "weak theists". A strong theist would "know for sure" there is a god. A weak theist would "believe it on faith" there is a god. Same with strong atheists and weak atheists, where a strong would know for sure there is no god, and a weak would say there is no god, but he can't be sure a hundred percent. A strong agnostic would say he can't know whether there is or isn't, and a weak agnostic would say he doesn't know but could know.

What do you mean by persuasion? If you mean open to reason and evidence, every rational person is open to it. Even an atheist would have to submit to the evidence of a god if there were such a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Funny you should mention Dawkins considering how he had a wonderful relationship with his parents, raised him rather peacefully, and never had significant ACE's. I read his first autobiography, and nothing about his father was abusive.

The mistake I think the OP made was that he made a non related argument. He says "it's not free" and ends with "it's immoral". Begins with economy, and ends with morality. To begin with, it's obvious none of these people have any idea what morality is since all they can think of is consequentialism, not ethics from first principles. It should have stayed on economical principles of how they are still paying for the meds anyway through taxation and debt.

I'm saying there is no end to the struggle against superstition, irrationality, and since we are all born ignorant, against propaganda and misinformation. Even if a free society is achieved, to truly free individuals, it requires constant philosophical vigilance against charlatans, mysticisms, frauds, etc.

Nobody is born knowing. It's impossible for philosophy to retire, even if a free society. It is a constant struggle to push tyranny away from society.

Other reasons: They are just very, very far away. Even at the speed of light, for their signals to reach us would take millions of years. By the time it would even reach us, the signal would have red-shifted to almost nothing. I read an article recently on how Earth is among the first planets from a stable star to have ever formed. Most of the planets that will ever be formed, or the stars that could hold life hadn't formed by the time we did. So being among the first planets to have life, and advanced intelligence is also a reason. Others haven't caught up.