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Recent content by Rhizomatic

  1. Rhizomatic

    Absence of free will - Consequences

    I think that, as far as accountability goes, it is still often logical to hold people accountable for their actions, but our justification for doing so changes, and as such the way we go about holding people accountable necessarily changes, too. If we believe in free will, we can (perhaps) say...
  2. Rhizomatic

    Is the US founded on "Christian values" ?

    This doesn't really seem to address things like how, for explicitly Christian reasons, sodomy was universally met with capital punishment. Rather it seems to re-iterate what I've already stated, that Christianity was not the core or sole principle upon which the US was founded.
  3. Rhizomatic

    Is the US founded on "Christian values" ?

    Europe, also having its laws modeled on Christianity, criminalized sodomy as well, though the United States was unique in specifically referencing Christianity in its anti-sodomy laws. My point isn't that the country was founded solely to allow people to continue to persecute sodomites. Rather...
  4. Rhizomatic

    Is the US founded on "Christian values" ?

    How do you reconcile this with the fact that every state/colony executed sodomites for explicitly-Christian reasons?
  5. Rhizomatic

    Is the US founded on "Christian values" ?

    The overwhelming majority of the Founding Fathers were Christians, though there were a decent number of deists who believed that a god created the universe but did not continue to actively govern it. Benjamin Franklin and James Madison were probably the best-known and clearest deists. Jefferson...
  6. Rhizomatic

    Is the US founded on "Christian values" ?

    Yes, it was. The kind of separation we have between religion and government today (and between religion and public society in general) would have been absolutely unfathomable to the Founding Fathers. While the First Amendment prohibited Congress from establishing a state religion, no such legal...
  7. Rhizomatic

    Is the material world an illusion?

    I like the Nietzschean perspective. As he sums it up in The Will to Power, I don't think that there's an objective or inherent nature to the universe to contrast with subjective/illusory understandings of it. You might interpret that to mean that illusion is all anyone can ever have or...
  8. Rhizomatic

    Belief in the existence of God is a moral obligation

    When I said "our justification for pursuing and developing subjective morality at the social/collective level is that we have to," it was in a descriptive sense, not an ethical one. We don't really have a viable alternative to developing some kind of collective morality, even if it's just a...
  9. Rhizomatic

    Belief in the existence of God is a moral obligation

    Of course; all of my points presume atheism. I'm not sure that you'd be more justified. Differently justified, yes. Considered justified by more people, sure. But that's not the same as more justified. Let's say that for every living person on the world who perceives a table as a hard object...
  10. Rhizomatic

    Belief in the existence of God is a moral obligation

    I didn't sleep last night, so right now I'm not too great at making points concisely or clearly. Sorry for any incoherent rambling. I think that to deal with this question you have to come at it from the objective morality side, not the subjective morality side. Simply put, (without an...
  11. Rhizomatic

    Belief in the existence of God is a moral obligation

    I'm not sure that I would agree with that. Looking at the scope of human culture and history, the fact that people use beliefs to justify as moral things we find abhorrent shouldn't be a controversial, problematic conclusion. It's a simple, observable fact. What Hitler says is justifiable is...
  12. Rhizomatic

    Emotions and Conversion

    All of my conversions have been calm, gradual, and intellectual. For a period from middle school until when I first went to college I explored various non-theistic religions. Several times I found teachings which resonated with my own beliefs and made a good deal of sense to me and so I...
  13. Rhizomatic

    Belief in the existence of God is a moral obligation

    I don't think that you're overthinking it at all. That's one of the great things about philosophy; you can kind of run off in any direction forever and still have plenty of interesting, important things to say. Looking back at what you bolded, I definitely could have made my point better...
  14. Rhizomatic

    Religion as Literature

    Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but doesn't this amount to just not allowing people to be religious? Insisting that certain religious claims are something that you do not think that they are and acting along religious values (including in the political arena) is essential to how millions...
  15. Rhizomatic

    Religion as Literature

    I think that somewhat sidesteps the point I was making to pick at a small detail; if we want to go that route than my response would be that the vast majority of the historical records we have of religions are not literature, but rather consist of architecture and artifacts that endure as...
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