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I’m using the term - as I believe it’s commonly used - to describe a non-representative selection of events that gives a misleading impression or supports a dubious thesis.

I present what I think...

I fear a certain amount of these stories you are bringing to the table sound like cherry-picking to stoke fear. Granted I get the militancy evident on the internet and no doubt on college campuses. ...

As a man in my fifties, I might wish I still had the muscle tone, figure, skin health, and general vitality I had when I was, say, twenty. I might even use some cosmetics, diet, exercise, and...

I can understand that, particularly because I’ve never been a big fan of Tolkien :P. So to me Fellowship was a real breakthrough. But maybe GoT is a better example. Certainly when I was a kid the...

Sure but how am I supposed to watch a show that purports to be “The Wheel of Time” and not think of the books? I’ve probably read The Great Hunt like 10 times.

All I can say is, it’s a Wheel-of-Time-inspired story set in a Wheel-of-Time-ish setting, loosely based on characters from the Wheel of Time books. It brings to mind the days before Peter Jackson...

Seems to me fkizz you are trying to put words in the mouths of non-theists. Rejection of the concept of God or “a higher power” does not equate to “nothing but the palpable exists”. The unknown is...

Yeah but if you have make changes, don’t take out the great things.

Yeah but the premise of this argument appears to be that logical consistency is somehow important to religion. This just doesn't appear to be the case generally. I would venture that those who are...

The purported biases of members are not on topic here. Please clearly address the content of posts rather than inferred attitudes of posters. Further speculation about members' biases - real or...

So you don’t ever read purely for entertainment?

I was recently watching the thoroughly enjoyable “Lucky Hank” series on AMC and got to wondering about the venerable obsession with the phenomenon of “writers” as artists. Leading to the question:...

Surely God is incapable of losing his own creations?

I can believe that divorce rates have risen over the last 70 years in the US.

I can believe that Church attendance has decreased over the last 70 years in the US.

I know for a fact that there...

So you think that people getting married in the U.S. do so with no expectation, interest or notion that they want to honor their vows and stay together? Have you ever actually been here? And yeah,...

Hey maybe we should remind people not to murder or rape. You figure all those divorcees just needed to be reminded not to get divorced? Seems like a pretty flimsy plan. Hard to see how BLM has...

Well from what I have heard from various healthcare providers for my teenage children struggling right here in America - you know, the allegedly "degenrate" society at issue - what has a huge impact...

You seem to be trying to make this personal, I don't know why. Everything under discussion in this thread is relevant in my opinion. Try to keep up.

So the hypothesis at hand was that our youth suffer from some kind of woke attack on the "traditional family". I myself find that claim to be unconvincing, for already-stated reasons I wouldn't want...

I wouldn't call you so much a medievalist as a fantasist. You seemed to be more or less making up some past that doesn't appear to have ever existed, cherrypicking some statistics about divorce, and...

Well I'm not the one here fetishising a mythological past with terms like "degenerate society". If you mean to enshrine classical antiquity or the middle ages as our supposed golden age of "nuclear...

The problem there in my experience is that (at least in my case) the expected contribution from the family is way more than said family can afford. It's not so much unwillingness as inability. I...

Not exactly. When it comes to religious assertions like the existence of a creator, my observation - really the gist of this topic IMO - is that skeptics like me tend to think about these topics...

OK, but suppose there were some doubts about these facts. Perhaps there was an inconsistency that bothered you. You could investigate, right? Wouldn't you ask questions like, "Why would anyone...

FWIW the whole concept of modern society as a degeneration seems hopelessly simplistic. Are we to assume that at some time in the distant past there was some pristine society we have all...

So… was that the part where we don’t just wring our hands and weep for the good old days? And what’s this about “degeneracy”? Is that a hint where this is all coming from?

I dunno, there's something weirdly ideological about this whole line of thinking. It's as if there is some particular axe to grind that's not entirely about U.S. society.

I mean, what are you...

Staying together more likely when married vs "just living together" is hardly mysterious. Divorce is financially and legally taxing. It's freaking expensive, sometimes ruinously so.

Suppose I start with the empty set. Can I create something out of it?

So... how do we know this?

I sacrifice my dignity on the altar of satire daily.

As the parent of two American teens I doubt many on this board have a more keen interest in this topic than I do. But since when did we...

So how do you know these couple of things to be true? Is it possible they aren't? How would you know?

IIRC the horny passenger is the one who is already awake.

The first time I watched this movie I was sympathetic to the protagonist's impulse to wake up a companion. However on subsequent watches...

And sometimes the truth doesn't make us feel much better, but it's still the truth. It appears the choice you have given us is to believe in a God regardless of whether the belief is justified, or...

OK but how do you define truth? Do you have a notion of truth that's independent of your religious faith? If I put something in front of you that has no apparent connection to the bible or God,...

OK but aren't you simply arguing from consequences here?

To paraphrase Russell, just because something would make us feel better, or make our lives easier, isn't a legitimate reason to believe...

Believing in fairies might make me the life of the cocktail party, but that won’t make fairies any more real.

I know a number of studies point at social media, and there are also legal actions...

Fair enough. I dated a Wiccan for some time in my twenties, and boy was the Goddess good to me for a while. Not that I particularly believed any of it literally.

For someone who has important...

Well my children are free to make up their own minds about pretty much everything. What I won't countenance is having them brainwashed before they get a chance to develop some mental chops of their...

I think 2008 wants its thread back :P

On the topic of abiogenesis, lots of interesting work has moved us far past the "lightning strike in primordial soup" hypothesis.
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