Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (63623)	12/5/2014 1:55:32 AM
From: Solon	Respond to of 69300

"It seems quite unlikely that all the instances of intense suffering occurring daily in our world are intimately related to the occurrence of a greater good or the prevention of evils at least as bad; and even more unlikely, should they somehow all be so related, that an omnipotent, omniscient being could not have achieved at least some of those goods (or prevented some of those evils) without permitting the instances of intense suffering that are supposedly related to them. In the light of our experience and knowledge of the variety and scale of human and animal suffering in our world, the idea that none of this suffering could have been prevented by an omnipotent being without thereby losing a greater good or permitting an evil at least as bad seems an extraordinarily absurd idea, quite beyond our belief." William L. Rowe, "The Problem of Evil & Some Varieties of Atheism" The Evidential Argument from Evil (ed. Daniel Howard-Snyder, Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 5.

To: Brumar89 who wrote (63623)	12/5/2014 1:58:27 AM
From: Solon	Respond to of 69300

"Why should an atheist pay more taxes so that a church which he despises should pay no taxes? That's a fair question. How can the apologists for the church exemption answer it?" [E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life"]

To: Brumar89 who wrote (63623)	12/5/2014 3:34:41 AM
From: Solon	Respond to of 69300

I shan't dwell on these ugly, but all-too-common, manifestations of fundamentalism. Instead, I'd like to finish with a little bouquet of aphorisms to carry with you as you reflect on my story: Today's so-called "evangelical Christians" are fundamentalists in sheep's clothing, many of them still possessing the wolf's fangs. Liberal Christians have traded their fundamentalist heritage for a mess of verbiage, but may be the better for it. Intransigent belief is not a sign of strength or virtue, but of intellectual and moral weakness. Faith in the sanctity of faith itself is the ultimate sacrament of those who abandon reason for unreasoning religion. No faith can be the ultimate arbiter between itself and other faiths: all must submit to the tribunal of reason and experience. Message 29837797