Questions for American Atheists

[Epimethean]

This wasn't what I was suggesting but at the end of the day, what would be wrong with it? So you've altered a few chromosomes to make your child smarter, so what? Now you've altered a few more to make him kinder and a few others to safe-guard against genetic diseases and defects. Perhaps make him more athletic too.
At what point is any of this a bad thing?

Read moar Sci-fi......... Are you honestly having trouble imagining why this road would lead to tears (just judging by your appraisal of why communism never panned out). Off the top of my head, who decides what we encourage and what we "disable"? Who gets access to these procedures and how are they done? Can anyone opt out? If you're not much of a reader try Gattaca or THX1138

Smarter- Excellent, here's to hoping everyone can avail themselves of this procedure for their children, lest we find ourselves in a transparent (and much more dire) two class society, the altered and the unaltered, owners and possessions.
Kinder- Oh yes, despots the world over would be interested in such a procedure. I know I'd rather have a herd of human cattle to have to deal with if I wanted to rule (lazily) with an iron fist.
Genetic Diseases and Defects- Again, a good one, but I'd rather not see any stormtroopers come over the hill on account of this one, and I hope everybody gets access to it.
Athletic- See stormtroopers above..lol.

Lets imagine a similar scenario with only a single point of divergence. Smarter, genetically "perfect", extremely athletic, and about ten times more aggressive and apathetic than your standard human (bonus points for built in unwavering loyalty to command structure). The technology and system would likely be the same. Bit of a pandoras box situation don't you think? Personally, I don't think we're quite ready for that sort of tampering yet. I do think we'll end up trying it out long before we have any business doing so, learning the hard way is kind of our MO.

Gat-ta-ca, Gat-ta-ca ...

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No matter what side you vote for you'll still get the same result. A candidate who will make handshakes with people who had power before he was in office, will gain power while hes in office and will continue to gain power after he has left office. These handshakes will determine his policies, his statements and his terms. This will have occured with his predecessor and will inevitably occur with his successor.
The candidates are puppets and the puppeteers are many, even should all of these puppeteers succumb to old age most will have a heir to their legacies or be replaced by a competitor.
So don't you worry your pretty little heads off about voting wether you live in America, Spain, France, Russia, Germany, England, Greece, Turkey, etc etc.
Democracy is a stage, the elections just another performance and your freewill a carefully constructed illusion.

If free will is an illusion then how can any be 'puppeteers'? Oh I know what has to come next: because the puppeteers themselves have strings .. yada yada yada.

Mostly the free will debate strikes me as just a waste of time. But then you see it used to justify acquiescing to whatever will come. If only it were possible for everyone to benefit from history. Why does everyone need to make this mistake? It certainly plays into the hands of those who would concentrate wealth into the hands of the very few.

Okay, you get one more try. How about falsifiability? Is that important to you? If so then perhaps you could realize that the no free will illusion is not falsifiable. We reject gods over this, why not absurd paradoxes of human affairs? People exist. They operate pretty much the way you do. Some of those people will make you much worse off if you do nothing. Resistance is not futile.

Democracy has been a long standing stage.