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No, no. Cenk is saying it should be emotional. I'm the one who's saying it shouldn't.

Where did you get that from? Certainly not the Wiki article.

I get amused at the stress and focus placed on things like reliance by individuals of social safety nets simply because one can always find abuses to the system, like when FOX had on three separate programs a story of a surfer who would buy lobster with EBT cards and then concluded that he...

How so?

I'm reminded of this short clip on how this is an impossible game and how atheism stands in relation to said game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcw1YEtTQCw

Political commentator Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks recently wrote a piece for The New York Times' opinion pages declaring not only the demise of network news but offering us his reasons for it. Rather than think that the sinking ship of network news might be due to younger generations viewing...

Which is hard for those people who are blinded to that to take seriously when the charge of racism is so loosely and recklessly thrown around.

Not necessarily but there is this tendency by the left (of which I am a part) to automatically assume discriminatory causality based on mere disparate outcomes, especially when the one getting the shorter end of the stick is in the minority and the authority figure is in the majority.

Because it's an easy example to call into question your assertion about negative views. You and I both think rape is negative, yes? Put aside your other gripe about moral relativity on the part of atheists, as that is not the specific conversation here (we're having that on the other thread). My...

It shouldn't upon careful reflection. For instance, just as a thought experiment, imagine the worst possible misery for everyone. This, by definition, is "bad" -- if the word bad means anything at all, in any objective sense, it is this. Now, any move away from this space is an improvement. It's...

It's a tautology, actually. All promises are acts of placing oneself under (undertaking) an obligation to do the thing promised. If one has placed oneself under an obligation then, ceteris paribus, one is under an obligation. Searle's premises are not moral or evaluative but rather consist of...

The axioms are consciousness and their well-being. In other words, well-being is a requirement for its definition, though I suppose it depends on what you are pointing to when you refer to morality. You can either point to the axiom of well-being or you can point to the process of getting from...

If a nun files for taxes and puts Jesus as her spouse, should she be pardoned? Should we be up in arms and make a thread on a forum so we can act indignantly at a silly story?

Indeed, but that's the whole point of axioms. To say that morality is arbitrary (or culturally constructed, or merely personal), because we must first assume that the well-being of conscious creatures is good, is exactly like saying that science is arbitrary (or culturally constructed, or...

I suppose it's the fact that, to me, it seems like mythology come alive. Whereas mythology is where all gods have gone to die, Christianity is practiced ardently in the U.S. (where I'm from). It's also "the devil I know" so to speak. I know about other religions from reading about them, but...

So why are you in an internet forum, especially in a subforum titled "Discussion and Debate"?

It's both. It's negative in the sense that it is quite depressing and morally terrible. It's real in the sense that it maps reality. My larger point, which you didn't address head-on, is that you cannot determine whether a belief is true or moral merely on the basis that it makes you...

Sure you can. It's done all the time. This is-ought "problem" is quite frankly just bad philosophy. Consider, for instance, the following scenario. Suppose you come across a chemist lecturing about how water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Further suppose you express skepticism to...

Either you missed the point of the analogy or you're being deliberately difficult here. The point was to show how no one in their right mind merely accepts beliefs because they are pleasant. We both accept negative beliefs (such as rape occurring in the world) not because we wish to persist in...

Really. Of course it's hard to see this when parents evaluate themselves. They'll often scoff at the data showing the negative psychological impact (like lower IQs, say) corporeal punishment has by seeing themselves as functioning adults in society and then proclaiming: "I was spanked as a...