I do not speak for everyone here, but I think most of us don't really care to hear what your justification for your beliefs are except maybe the OP. I only want to hear it if you are in the process of attempting to impose said beliefs upon me or are spewing some hate Westboro Baptist Church style. I'm going to need some real evidence in those cases before I even begin to think about entertaining an argument. That is something I have not seen you try to do so far, so whatever floats your boat.
I do have to take issue with 2 things you wrote though. It may be a tired argument to many people, but as you may have noticed here it is not tired to many others. The other is your mention of the concept of Dialectic. You may not have meant to, but to me the manner in which it was mentioned came off as "oh so smug and condescending". I feel like you were implying that it is such a complicated concept that many of us just wouldn't understand if you explained it to us or we looked it up ourselves. I agree that in a real debate it is necessary. If we can't agree on a few presuppositions about reality and perhaps some definitions, we might as well be speaking different languages to each other. Hey, maybe you didn't mean it that way. If not, sorry. Its entirely possible that I misinterpreted and I have been dealing with too many "oh so smug and condescending" theists lately who judge me to be an ignorant sinner and other such nonsense.
Okay, I take issue with one more thing. We may be hitting the wall of the previously mentioned unestablished Dialectic here.
"You either believe in a higher meaning to life beyond propagation of the species or you don't."
Is your definition of a higher meaning restricted to belief in a deity? If not, that is utter horseshit my friend. You do not need a religion, organized or personal, to believe your life means more than propagation of the species. My life means many things to me that do not include reproducing. Being happy and attempting to make others happy both directly and through the betterment of society as a whole are among those meanings.
by
marklar1 on
06/20/2009 02:27:48 AM EST
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