the village idiot

Excellent! If you're looking for full drumming commitment though, you cant beat this guy!

For goodness sake Matelot. You're speaking just like the far left that you so despise. I'm not judging their race, I'm judging the practice of cutting off girls' clitorises If you think this is racism, or you think this judgement is wrong you are very sick in the head.

You've spectacularly missed the point. If you are not concerned about this it is you that are the barbarian. I am probably one of the least patriotic people you are ever likely to meet. I have zero desire to promote colonialism. I do not think we should go back to the 19th century. I think we should help disperse 21st century reasoned and compassionate ideas to people who are locked into bad ideologies.

This is where I totally disagree with you, and the issue I personally have with a lot of your posts. Your compassion for the human race only extends to the borders of Europe. You are rightly outraged if children are caused to suffer in the UK, but seem nonplussed about children who suffer outside of Europe. Your view seems to be that we should protect those lucky enough to be born in a certain geographical region and not bother about the rest. I can't wrap my head around ths way of thinking, and I think others struggle too. Hence the oposition to most of your posts. It was pure chance that you were not born as a girl in Somalia about to have your clitoris cut off. Try to put yourself in other people's shoes from time to time.

This is exactly the way we need to be talking about this. It's about bad ideas, not bad sets of people. We were very lucky to have been born in the West at the time that we were. It is wrong to feel superior about this. We were just lucky. If we had been born to a poor family in Pakistan it is very likely that we would be Koran thumping Muslims with little or no opportunity to 'better' ourselves or our nation. If we had stuck rigidly to the teachings of the old testament instead of embracing science and reason we would be as stuck in the brutal past as much of the Middle East is now. We need to focus on reducing the commitment to demonstrably bad ideas wherever they occur. This is no easy task, but it's the only thing that can work long term, giving as many people as possible to opportunity to reach their potentials.

Just a little, fairly irrelevant correction. The Buddha wasn't a deity. He was just a bloke interested in the workings of his own mind.

In the years 800 to 1100 the intellectual capital of the world was Baghdad. The West were complete morons in comparison. The Islamic world went to pot when an influential philosopher convinced the majority of the population that Mathmatics were the work of the Devil and that seeking scientific knowledge was an affront to God. There's nothing like death threats to make you pack away your test tubes. Ideas are powerful and the Islamic world has not recovered since. We were lucky in the West. We took the ideas from the Middle East and ran with them, dragging a very reluctant Christianity along with us. If the Islamic world had continued to study nature rather than supernature they would be leagues ahead of us by now and we would be asking why all the best inventions are coming out of the Middle East.

Agreed. It's a very similar issue with upland sheep farming. Vast tracts of land grazed back to biodiversity deserts by sheep to support one sheep farmer. The even more depressing fact is that it is not even profitable. In the main it is a loss making exercise, made viable by EU grants. Completely bonkers. Compounded by the fact that this grazing causes hugely expensive flooding damage further down the valleys that would be alliviated by letting the hillsides rewild. I blame countryfile.

If you know full well that you have an extremely loose grasp of a scientific concept, you can save a lot of future embarassment by keeping your head down.

Very nice! You could make se7enthdevil the mother of all bowling balls.

No. Apparently he's got a phlegm related issue.

Sounds like he ought to go and see a doctor!

Chaps?

OK. I think it's reasonably clear that you are suggesting that a child should never be given the option to choose. If this is the case, I think it is an absolutely terrible idea.

It's not 100% clear from your post Mull. Are you saying that never giving a child choices is a mistake made by many adults, or that it is a mistake to ever let a child have a choice?

Ah! Understood.

Being both Irish and pissed, they probably forgot to load the ammo.

I think it's important to take on board that we have to do something. Our current system is simply not going to work once the number of available jobs is dramatically decreased. Like it or not, the system will have to change. Automation will create high levels of extra wealth for the few that are fortunate enough to be in a position to impliment it, whilst simultaneously removing the option to work standard jobs from millions of people. If we don't find a way to spread the wealth created by these new technologies, and keep roofs over people's heads we are in deep doo doo. You can leave moral ethics off the table if you like and view something akin to UBI as a necessity for maintaining a society in which it is at all desirable for an individual (however wealthy) to live. Yes, some people who are genuinely lazy will get their basic needs met for free, but this will be a relatively insignificant price to pay when you consider the alternatives of sticking with a system not fit for a coming new reality.

Come on people, you're much cleverer than this.

Getting back into the fascinating free will debate here will cause too much of a distraction. Very happy to discuss it in the free will thread. In short, the confusion here arises from looking at free will from a different depth of focus. Taking a 'stepped back' view of the decision making process gives the strong illusion of free will. When you zoom in to look at the mechanics of any decision at the point it is made, you find that a person could not possibly have acted any differently from the way that they did in any given moment. This fact, by extension dissolves the notion of free will. This has important implications for the way we structure society and the motivations behind punishment. It is an extremely unintuitive concept which takes a lot more explaining than I want to do here. The language one has to use to try to explain it also totally muddies the waters, but unfortunately there is no good way around this.

Fantastic Ti These open and honest exchanges of thought are so important. People who hold my views on this are so often branded troublesome bullies or even evil. Your willingness to engage fully is really refreshing. I think we both appreciate the crucial importance of finding the correct answer on this. We both want to see humanity flourish in the best possible way. There is a lot to say in response to your post. Woodland duties call, but I'll give you my thoughts this evening.

If the very admirable ethics you list above were all that were in the texts you would have a very good moral guide to life. There is a big problem however in highlighting the good and ignoring the bad to demonstrate that something is true. The deeds that you mention are the teachings that YOU have decided are good to follow, and they are the same morals that any decent person would choose to live out. God's instructions to his flock are to obey his every word. If all of society did this the results would be catastophic. True adherents to the word of the Christian God would be doing good things sometimes and at other times be indistinguishable from Isis. They would be stoning homosexuals to death. They would be stoning their wives to death on their father in law's doorstep if their wife had slept with another man at any time before they were married. They would be stoning their children to death if they answered back They would be not beating their slaves so hard that they damage their eyes or their teeth. The reason Christians are not doing these things is because they have decided that the perfect God was wrong about these things. God is a moral monster in half his moods. Jesus is God and also states very clearly that his presense doesn't change one jot of the law dictated in the old testament. Christianity (although it will never admit it) has forsaken God in favour of human morality. Rejecting the notion of God frees humanity to focus purely on what is best for humanity without all the savagery. We are not perfect at this but we are getting better. The biggest obstacle in our way is religion. We can take some of the good advice from the Bible (there is plenty in there) but it is important to note that Christianity did not invent goodness. People were looking after each other long before Christ came along. Christianity has managed to reform itself by slowly and very reluctantly conceding to the undeniable facts revealed by science. This is fantastic but there is still a long way to go. The Christian fundamentalists are to this day blocking the rights of gay people to be happy, blocking stem cell research which can bring an end to the suffering of millions and blocking the access to birth control in the developing world causing huge amounts of needless suffering and death. All this is directly attributable to the fact that millions of people refuse to stop believing in an unbelievable book. Modern day Christians are radically less harmful than they used to be, but it is crucial to realise that clinging on to the concept of the divine God provides cover for the other religions that are doing huge amounts of damage. The USA lands bombs on fundamentalist Muslims boomin 'God bless America' on the launchpad. This is truly insane and only adds rocket fuel to the fire. There is absolutely no good reason to believe that God exists. HUMANS have decided what is good in the good book, and HUMANS have decided to disect out what is bad. Science proves the Bible wrong every single time they come into conflict. We need to acknowledge this fact, dispense with world fracturing religions and work towards the flourishing of all concious creatures based on what we discover to be true. Bending over backwards to try to justify the impossible and hold onto faith in the divine is needlessly prolonging suffering and holding humanity back. We can do all the good things that Christians undoubtedly do without fooling ourselves in the process and forcing ourselves down harmful paths.

If the organisation were helping for helping's sake I'm sure he would have no problem at all. If there was any indication that there were attempts to 'inject the truth of the gospels' I imagine he would not be happy. Religious doctrine comes with a lot of ridiculous and dangerous baggage. You don't need God to be good. Human morality comes from the human brain, shaped by society. You yourself have used your human brain to decide what to adhere to in the Bible and what to discount. You have decided what is moral, not God. I don't think we are in disagreement that some types of aid relief are counter productive. My argument is simply that there are objectively good ways to help people in need. We shouldn't stop all aid because some of it isn't helping.

Thanks. Always happy for a bit of encouragement. I only heard about her book, from you, an hour before I posted. I watched the video of her that you put up which summarises her views on the subject. I then gave my thoughts, including quotes from books that I have read. The fact that Sam Harris is an atheist is completely irrelevant. The link is an interview he did with the founder of the effective altruism movement. Have you accessed the links? Do you dare!?

Surely keeping people alive well into adulthood is key for making a lasting difference. Once people can feel secure that there will be some children alive to look after them as they age they will not have to go down the 'many kids to make sure one survives' strategy. This obviously needs to be coupled with education and unrestricted access to birth control. Regarding aid. The former Mrs Idiot's parents spent last year volunteering in Uganda. A country still reeling from the grotesque Idi Amin years. Her parents are atheist farmers. (Can you possible imagine a more potent combination of evil?) Nick spent the year teaching sustainable farming methods to a population that had not been taught even the very basics of farming practice. Joan taught beekeeping so they could start to produce their own honey. Their flights, room and board were paid for by a charity. This is aid. To suggest that this sort of assistance should be witheld from people in desperate situations through no fault of their own is truly bizzare and frankly very disturbing. There is good aid and there is bad aid. We need to sort the wheat from the chaff and continue to help people in need.