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What Is The Point Of Prayer?
RE: What Is The Point Of Prayer?
(August 20, 2013 at 3:30 pm)Tonus Wrote: To be fair, the fellow in that image was at his most helpful when he was doing nothing.

I agree, it was horrifying once the church doors opened for him and the others back onto public streets. Tongue
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RE: What Is The Point Of Prayer?
So if it is up to each individual to imagine or determine what is meaningful in their lives, then the individual who prays, and the individual that does not pray, are simply doing what they find meaningful, right?
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RE: What Is The Point Of Prayer?
That seems fairly obvious.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."

-Stephen Jay Gould
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RE: What Is The Point Of Prayer?
Oh, right. Just like lying is meaningful to some, or rape, or murder. You just watch where you go attaching those qualifying words. Just because someone finds something to be meaningful to him or her does not make this action justified.
[Image: 10314461_875206779161622_3907189760171701548_n.jpg]
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RE: What Is The Point Of Prayer?
(August 20, 2013 at 6:01 pm)BadWriterSparty Wrote: Oh, right. Just like lying is meaningful to some, or rape, or murder. You just watch where you go attaching those qualifying words. Just because someone finds something to be meaningful to him or her does not make this action justified.

Of course it does.

You do not determine what is justified for someone else.
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RE: What Is The Point Of Prayer?
(August 20, 2013 at 6:13 pm)discipulus Wrote:
(August 20, 2013 at 6:01 pm)BadWriterSparty Wrote: Oh, right. Just like lying is meaningful to some, or rape, or murder. You just watch where you go attaching those qualifying words. Just because someone finds something to be meaningful to him or her does not make this action justified.

Of course it does.

You do not determine what is justified for someone else.

Err, then how does rape or murder constitute as being unjustified when it starts interfering with the individual choices of another? Sure, a rapist justifies raping people, but how does the victim recompense for the actions made against them by another person?

This is where I get lost when comprehending your stance.
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RE: What Is The Point Of Prayer?
No, he's trolling to get us to believe that the stance he's submitting is actually our stance. Once he feels he has enough people admitting to this fallacy, he's going to try and shit all over them. It's the old bait and switch technique.
[Image: 10314461_875206779161622_3907189760171701548_n.jpg]
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RE: What Is The Point Of Prayer?
(August 20, 2013 at 6:59 pm)BadWriterSparty Wrote: No, he's trolling to get us to believe that the stance he's submitting is actually our stance. Once he feels he has enough people admitting to this fallacy, he's going to try and shit all over them. It's the old bait and switch technique.

I will go get my shit-proof umbrella. Does anyone need an extra?
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RE: What Is The Point Of Prayer?
(August 20, 2013 at 5:25 pm)discipulus Wrote: So if it is up to each individual to imagine or determine what is meaningful in their lives, then the individual who prays, and the individual that does not pray, are simply doing what they find meaningful, right?

SO, the incoherent babbling of an insane person talking to ghosts in a psych ward is equally as "meaningful" as Dr. Kings' "I have a dream" speech.

Because POV. yeah... Right..
Find the cure for Fundementia!
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RE: What Is The Point Of Prayer?
(August 20, 2013 at 6:55 pm)Walking Void Wrote:
(August 20, 2013 at 6:13 pm)discipulus Wrote: Of course it does.

You do not determine what is justified for someone else.

Err, then how does rape or murder constitute as being unjustified when it starts interfering with the individual choices of another? Sure, a rapist justifies raping people, but how does the victim recompense for the actions made against them by another person?

This is where I get lost when comprehending your stance.

I don't quite understand what you are asking.

Forceful copulation happens all the time in nature. Mating is something animals naturally do by instinct. That is how species are perpetuated. On a naturalistic view, the lion that kills a zebra does not "murder" the zebra. The shark when it mates with another shark does not "rape" the shark.

If we are animals, then ideas such as "rape" and "murder" are simply the results of certain socio-biological pressures that have programmed our brains to regard certain acts as potentially disadvantageous to our survival as a species. Certain actions may not be socially advantageous and over time have had a certain stigma attached to them.

So the rapist or the murderer when acting according to his particular disposition, is simply acting in a manner that we have been programmed to think is not really advantageous to our survival.

That's as far as anyone can go in critiquing such people.

It is definitely not hard to think of situations where forcing a woman to have sex with you would be necessary in order to ensure the survival of our species. In such a situation, rape would then be good and morally obligatory according to the one who believes our sense of right and wrong are biological apaptations that aid in survival.

But then on such a view, rape becomes a moral obligation we must fulfill. But surely this goes against our deepest moral intuitions as humans...and as such this view is not tenable.
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