The death of eternal truths and the new Paganism

Homeopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, etc., are absolute pure BS.

They have no standards of safety. The have no requirements for verifying efficacy. They have no standards of care. They don't even have required labeling so you know what you are getting in what dose.

Actual tests of acupuncture show that practitioners don't even come close to doing their practice in the same way, For example, there is no standard of where acupuncture points are or how to use them. And, there is no testing to verify.

NOBODY can suggest this stuff is valid healthcare.

Basically, those who rely on these practices are at serious risk of allowing disease to progress to the point where medical attention can do little to help.

 

Science is a system of verifying the best understanding - testing to see whether it holds up to the rigors of verification.

You can always say that something isn't the "truth". But, that is absolute BS.

The center of science is in rigorous verification and constant improvement as more is learned.

 

Of course the body is complex but we know how it works. It is controlled by the Brain. The mind is an abstract (verb) function which would not exist without the Brain. Ergo. Our brain controls our body. How the mind works is the brains reaction to the nervous system on information given it. Agreed we don't have the knowledge of just how, but to say 'the mind is unfathomable' limits mans ability to progress. 'Trial and error' is the sceptics way of adapting 'trial and testing'. I haven't gone into this deeply but over the years it has cropped up in my study of religions - why and how - they believed. Nothing is unfathomable except 'the mind of a god'.

Good luck

 

I don’t understand the hatred against pagans. That is a huge segment of humanity.

 

What scares me is the ability of religion to cause people to suspend critical thinking and assert that an invisible man is up in the sky someplace with zero empirical evidence.

So my challenge to you is provide empirical evidence for your claims.

 

What I’ve noticed about conservative thinking is the amount of fear involved and the further right you are the more fear. There is the fear of change, the fear of loss of authority, fear of the other and fear of the loss of control and Shapiro, right-wing troll that he is, plays into all of these. Actual reality just gets in the way.
They walk around with existential dread....the world is turning against them.

 

Explained by this book.

https://www.amazon.com/God-Virus-Re...673364785&sprefix=the+god+viru,aps,199&sr=8-1

 

I am no fan of Shapiro, but I can't help but notice how he crushes the left in debate after debate. Perhaps you can point me to some debate where this did not happen.

 

Perhaps someone would explain to me 'Eternal Truths'. I know of nothing that is eternal or do I see any eternal truths. Every generation from the beginning has had its own ideas of truth and it has varied as the centuries have passed. The only undeniable truth is that we exist but we are not eternal.

Only to those who want to be scared.

 

They are in denial of intelligent design and that there is a God, the creator who made us all in His image. They invent new “doctrines” in order to control through fear. Religion and capitalism are their biggest enemies.

So you know what God looks like. That omni everything God that we can't understand because he is unknowable. Hm. Everything we supposedly know about god is from the brain of man. It varies depending on what culture you come from.The Aztecs, Incas and Mayans had their own true gods. Indians of North America - the Great White Spirit. Most cultures have their own idea of God. All different. Christianity's God came from a book written 2600 years ago by Jewish Scribes who gave us their ideas and 10 commandments and adapted 600 years later by unknown Gospels writers who misinterpreted OT scriptures to have their own god. Hammurabi gave us his god Marduk who gave Hammurabi his version of the commandments. All ancient leaders had rules given them by their god - and they all varied.

 

You do realize that pagans also have a religious belief system of their own and have their own god(s) and methods of worship. Atheists and pagans have nothing in common at all except in America and Europe they share a common opposition, Christianity and Judaism.

 

I disagree with everything you wrote, but that's always a good start to any conversation! Again, I am looking at knowing as actually having a pretty good idea as to what's taking place [although not in absolute terms because nothing is actually knowable because all things intellectual are in constant flux], e.g., NaCl dissolves in water creating a salt water solution. Pretty basic. But how about human vision? Virtually nothing is known about it [and what is known is really basic].

By suggesting that the human mind is unfathomable simply means that we are so far away from understanding it that we cannot even come up with close wild guesses. It's like trying to speculate on what might be on the other side of the Universe. Soon enough, though, this mystery [the mind] will become less opaque.

 

Your statement would be similar to standing in front of the Federal Reserve Building in Washington, DC and saying, "There is no way the dollar can be the global world currency because the banks simply counterfeit into existence."

As Henry Ford said in 1932 [and I paraphrase], "If the American people found out this evening how the banking system works, by tomorrow morning there will be revolution in the streets."

God works for so many people because His absence delivers so many to the gates of Hell. If you do not understand this then it is up to you to figure it out, not the responsibility of those who have already done the work to justify their faith.

 

In other words, you can provide no empirical evidence to support your claims. lol

 

I understand that pagans also cannot provide any evidence to support their claims. Probably for a lot of them the religion provides a justification for the occasional good party. In other words they do not seem to subscribe to the idea that man must suffer due to some origional sin, i.e., a woman eating an apple. So that at least is a plus.

 

You are consumed in the philosophical battle that all highly intelligent people fight when they run out of ideas, explanations, reasons, truths, and all the rest. All you know is that if IT is not knowable, then it does not exist. You are at the door pounding as hard as you can, your hands bruised and bloody, yet you fail to see the knob that will allow entrance into the other side [the non-intellectual].

My friend, there is an entirely different world that exists if you would just allow yourself to suspend your ego [just for a little bit] so you can take the weight of the world off of your shoulders and experience what has drawn the vast majority of humanity since we became aware.

 

Claims for what? You want to be able to see the guy up in the sky? It's actually quite a bit easier to first understand the concept of Hell, as we have all experienced that.

 

Postulated??!!

Postulate, 1st quote, destroyed^ by history and fact = actual reality.

 

Pagan just means having a religion other than your own.

And, there is reasonable opposition when some want secular decisions to be based on ancient religions rather than the understanding built over the intervening years.

 

OK, so you do have your ad hom.

But, that post had nothing else.

 

Look at it this way. On the one hand you have Western Civilization that has given the world a great deal. The standard of living for the entire globe has increased beyond anybody's wildest guesstimates only thirty years ago. Of course there are problems [after all, you have 8B people and 200+ countries]. It's amazing any of us are alive!

Look at the competing systems out there that challenge Western Civ [let's take representative democracy and capitalism as its main tenets]. What system would you rather have in its place...communism?, a theocracy?, dictatorship?, what?

This is why many people are conservative. They want to essentially keep [with constant improvements] a system that has out-performed any system currently imaginable. The main problem is the systemic corruption which has deeply infected the system, not the system itself. Just look at your life today compared to how your great grandparents lived!

You need to appreciate how much worse things could be [look at the USSR and China and everywhere else that did not get with the program].

 

It's like trying to explain to a 10 year old what falling in love is about. It's experiential. And in its pure form, it's 100% experiential.

 

This is not a logical argument.

We are what we are through a LONG progression of improvements dating bake through English history and before.

Now, you want to STOP that progression on the basis that there is China and Russia?? Sorry. That just does not make sense.

As for democracy, I'd point out that we've seen the conservative side of our own population work HARD to subvert our democracy and block efforts to improve it.

 

So, now you are using ad hom to defend your ad hom!!!

That is nowhere near a good enough excuse.