Shinjula

...and can break through my ears? what? Its supposed to be "breathe through my ears"

Oh he doesnt have to justify the things we've done of course we are responsible for our own actions, but he does have to justify the stuff hes done, let me use a for example, how about creating a form of life that is vampiric in nature, thats a pretty big one on my list of greivances with god. We have to feed on each other to survive as a basic tenet of life on this planet, that is not the actions of a benevolent god. (Incidentally id better note that this is explained in genesis, however i have other gripes with the christian god - its more of a general question to gods)

I havent said its unreasonable, I think its perfectly reasonable. I'm trying to get you to understand that the other way round is also reasonable but all your arguments seem to be only one way, I stand here respecting the rights of the non smokers, but you dont respect any rights of the smokers. You think its "It's not unreasonable to lay down basic ground rules for your house" but earlier say that you think any smokers who chose the rules "Ill smoke in my own house when i want to" are jerks, it just looks like people can make any rule for their house as long as its one you agree with.

well done for completely misinterpreting what I said. I wouldnt go to someones house if they wouldnt let me smoke there out of deference to them. I dont want to upset someone or smoke where they dont want me to. I didnt claim anyone was rude or inhospitable. I just would feel given how much I smoke there wouldnt be much point since I'd spend all my time outside in the freezing cold. How on earth does that me selfish. So democracy isnt something to be bothered with on a small scale?

I didnt say they'd be a jerk for asking me to smoke outside, i said id think them a jerk if they asked me to eat a kebab outside because of the smell. I can understand you making the inference that my reaction would be the same for smoking, but it was a response purely to the idea of smell, the health issues do change the reaction completely. Again misrepresenting what I was saying, it was specifically directed at your comment which was quite isolated from your other comments about health, and I specifically made clear at the time that i was meaning it separately to other issues of health. Not allowing someone to smoke purely because of the smell is egotistical, not allowing someone to smoke because it irritates your throat is quite quite different ,and finally transfering it to a completely generalistic "I'm egotistical should I want you to smoke outside" is a step far too far. Please pay attention to the things I am actually saying rather than lashing out at me. I am an intelligent person, if it sounds like im saying something completely crazy its probably because youve misread what I'm saying or trying to say.

I'm sorry, I dont understand your idea of god not needing to explain, this is not a happy and peaceful world, full of content people with no problems. If there is a god he has a *LOT* of explaining to do.

Then I'd simply not visit them, particularly in view of the stuff in the next paragraph, but also in general, I live in a democracy, and I supposrt democracy. if you make your house a dictatorship i will not go there. I realise this to many people is a strange idea, but think about it, think about how you would view a country with those sort of rules and whether or not thats actually a system you want in place in your very home. I was raised in a culture where hospitality was a major feature, in my parents house the guest was almost king for a day, now I dont go that far myself, but having everyone present to be part of the decision making process at any time is not an unreasonable way of living. I hope you understand.

Can I ask where you live and what sort of temperatures you deal with?

Why not? When I invite someone over to my house, I expect them not to stink up my house and irritate my lungs. When I go out to eat my dinner in a restaurant, I expect to be able to enjoy my dinner just as anyone else should without having to inhale irritating smoke. Even if it is your house and you are a smoker, you should put out your cigarette. Many people are bothered by it and can't stand the smell/health risks. Smoking isn't a primary function, if a restaurant is full of people and 1 person is smoking, you can't expect all of those people to walk outside to get fresh air. It's common courtesy, which sadly many people don't care about these days. Firstly a very important thing, whic does keep getting missed off my argument whenever someone new comes in, this is purely directed at a comment earlier about the 'smell' of cigarettes, not the health implications or the physical effects such as irritation of the throat or eyes - you are responding to me, so as such you have to be aware that what you are actually responding to, may not be what you *THINK* you are responding to. Well because its an unfair distribution of rights, if you want something and I want something different then theres two of us so a fifty fity split violates the least amount of wants. Obviously if its a full restaurant and there only one person smoking I wouldnt expect all those people to go outside while the person smoked inside. But the opposite is also true. If one non smoker was in a restaurant full of smokers should he expect all the smokers to move outside? That would be equally unfair. Fairness is a two way street, sure I can understand that you might not want me to smoke in your house (and I would honour that), but if you make that sort of a decision, you have no right at all to expect me to put out my cigarette when I'm smoking in my own house and you visit. If you will not accomadate me I have no reason to accommodate you. Now bear in mind the above applies only to a fictitious cigarette which only smells bad, there are health concerns with tobacco which swing it slightly your way and I'm also a nice guy who is generally happy to go along with whatever people want. But on a purely theoretical basis, you should ideally give and take 50-50.

With the orange TShirt thing, OK sure it was stretching the point to try and illustrate something, I'd hoped you would look at what I was trying to point out, not insist that because so few people would have that reaction is an illogical argument. However I also think that your own reaction, at least from how you describe it is also atypical. You seem throughout your post to be talking about a reaction way above mere dislike and more towards a phobic reaction. And sure if I met you in person and knew you had such an adverse reaction theres no way I'd smoke in front of you, but you also seem to be talking as though everybody who dislikes the smell dislikes it to the same degree as you. I was also assuming that any negitive physical effects such as irritation of your throat was included more in the arguments for health reasons than the dislike reasons. This I think is a lot of what I believe I have miscommunicated to you. I have been purely talking about the dislike aspects of it, in the same way some people dont like the smell of curry or farts. I wasnt including the whole experience of having someone in your house who is smoking, I wasnt including the dirt or irritating effect, I was only arguing that asking someone to leave because of a dislike of a smell would be no different than asking someone to leave because you didnt like the smell of their deodorant. Anything further is a subtly differnt question and I have a different answer to it (most of which are "Yeah sure no problem mate, ill just pop out") I dont know quite where youve got the idea that I put my"rights on a golden pedestal", I've said nothing of the sort, I've just gone back to try and find out where youve got that idea and I can't see quite see where youve got it from. I'm guessing its this comment but I did immediately follow it with Which still says specifically I wouldl go along with their wishes, hardly the act of someone putting thier rights on a golden pedestal. I think many people dislike the smell, and only a few would dislike it as much as you dislike the smell of smoke, but then I doubt whether i could find many people who dislike the smell of smoke as much as you seem to be making out that you do. You didnt quite answer the question directly, did you? Is it because by your own reasoning it makes you out to be a total jerk? No I didnt answer because I thought it was a rhetorical question, no of course I wouldnt smoke. I dont smoke anywhere I'm not asked to and I've said this several times already, so I'm not the jerk you believe me to be. In fact I put myself out all the time for non smokers even when I think they are being unreasonable.

Look I'm sorry your getting me as a total jerk I'm not. Im sorry I havent responded to your own questions I'm going to do so now, I was only holding off answering them I wasnt ignoring them. I didnt really answer them because I agree with them completely, sorry I didnt say until now, it seemed obvious although in hindsight obviously I should. Sure, its a two way street, I thought you were arguing that because it was an irritant to you you should automatically win the negotiation (which you do actually seem to be saying), its just as valid for you to not want to breathe my smoke as it is for me to want to smoke. Of course it is. So to me logically you should get you way half the time and i should get my way half the time. I wasnt arguing that I should always get to smoke, I was arguing you shouldnt get to boot me out of the house *all* the time. I'll respond in more detail to your other comments in a mo, just wanted to get this posted first to clear up this bit.

I would think it fair to say that the same applies to god as to any parent. Parenting is generally accepted to bring responsibilities, creating a universe of sentient beings should bring the same responsibilities as creating a child. I am, I will willingly admit always fazed by the idea of things without a reason and am quite dubious about the existence of such things. I dont deny their existence but I've yet to find anything I'm convinced is actually without reason. However, I dont think that would count as sentient, if he has reasons I cannot understand, that is one thing but I think without reason is without choice and without choice is without sentience. Does that make sense? It is an interesting point, its a bit like, if we have a king (say) who claims that his populace dont understand him but he works for the good of the people but the people look at his works and say "That looks unethical to us". There is one difference though, the king could be forced to justify his actions to the people. In some religeons we have religeous texts to go on as justification, and so far from all the texts I have read which have claimed in some way to be directly from God, I would find them all wanting. Neither have I heard any theories (not directly attributable to a god) from philosophers or the like which can in any way justify an omnipotent god (I have little problem with non omnipotent gods). If however we talk about a god not related to any religious text, my response would still be that it was its responsibility to make sure its creations understood it, and if it hadn't done that it would also be failing in its responsibilities. Lastly the more tricky potential situation, that of it being impossibile to understand god. To me that would be akin to having a pet such as a cat, on fireworks night we keep our cat inside when he wants to go out, theres no way of explaining to the cat that he must stay in, but we must control his actions. However, whenever I do this I am always there to cuddle him, and care for him and provide him with entertainment and diversion and make sure that his needs are met. I'm not at all convinced we see that from god. And I certainly wouldnt expect the cat to worship me unconditionally at this time, nor would I expect his respect. I would not be cross if he scratched me during this time nor would I punish him or allow him to be punished for it in any way. This is a directly opposite position from that of the christian god takes. I'd also question the purpose and ethics of creating a race of people incapable of understanding him, OK at this point you may say that is because I dont undertand him, but ethics are ethics and independant from god (easily seen by the number of moral athiests) if god does not follow ethics hes no god of mine.

Just thought I'd point out was that Newton didnt discover gravity, he experimentally derived the 3 laws of motion.

NorthernHero - I get what your saying, but why do you state it with such certainty? Sure the case is that we cannot know whether or not it exists, why assert with such certainty what is not known? The idea that the past doesnt exist, only our memories of it do, is also no different to the idea that a chair doesnt exist only our perceptions of it do. Yet we still sit on the chair and we still remember the past, and in the case of time its quite easy to use our memories to construct stuff like newtons laws of motion and other physical laws which then allow us to extrapolate and formulate and eventually come up with things like the computer you are sat at. If you assume that because we cannot go back to the past it doesnt exist you can't do any of that and it drives us into a world of no innovation.

No because you are offering no constructive critisism, not joining the debate and basically just being rude. No its under the assumption that you should only WORSHIP a god who is benevolent and fair. If God is unbenevolent and unfair he should be fought just like any other dictator. That's under the assumption God must be unbenevolent and unfair if he is not benevolent and fair. What if God is apathetic or random? What if he cannot be personified by man as so many people do? My point is you're assuming humanlike characteristics of a nonhuman being. You also seek a reason for what God does, when surely he can be without reason. Well I was just going with the most obvious possibility. An apathetic or random god shouldnt be worshipped, and even then I'd suggest we fight against it, whats the phrase, with great power comes great responsibility - if a god is not living up to its responsibiity then we should go out and set that god straight. I'm assuming sentient characteristics rather than human ones, because if god isnt sentient at least vaguely then he doesnt really fall under the definition of god (I think - this point could make for an interesting debate if youd like). This kinda correlates to him being with reason, if god is without reason then i dont think hed count as sentient. I'm kinda using sentient to mean able to make choices, in case it needs defining for the sake of the debate. If god is sentient but not understandable then we cant judge the ethics of his actions, in which case we have to act with extreme care when dealing with him and we certainly shouldnt worship him until we are capable of judging his actions. I'd certainly say that from my point of view the christian god falls under the category "Jugdable and found lacking", he certainly claims do be doing things for reasons i can understand and if I foud any human being doing those actions I would certainly want them locked up as a lunatic and I see no reason this cannot be applied to god. Ethics and morality should be applicable to any being whether human or god.

Well firstly I'm talkin about forcing your will onto others because the thread is about whether or not smoking should be made illegal and so I assume (reasonably I think) that if people are putting forwards arguments against smoking that they are doing so in support of the proposition that smoking should be illegal. If you aren't doing so, then I'm not convinced that you aren't using the thread to get a bit of complaining about smokers done to relieve tension, something I can understand but it could do with being labelled as such so it isn't confused with the topic. OK Sure, explain to me where the difference actually lies? Remember we are purely talking about the smell here rather than any health concern, each of them is a sensory input which is disliked, I really can't see the difference, sure the orange t shirt thing is ridiculous, but the implication I'm making is that because the nature of the two is identical then from someone elses perspective the dislike of the smell of smoke would appear just as ridiculous. There is no problem with you disliking it at all, its when your dislike impinges on my actions I have a problem with it. I would certainly do so because of the health reasons. But if someone asked me to eat a kebab outside because the garlic sauce smelled bad I would certainly look at them funny. I'd probably say something along the lines of "Oh c'mon, its flipping freezing outside, its only a kebab, can we just open the windows please?). I'd reluctantly agree to go outside after all its their house but id still think they were a jerk for making a fuss (I live in Newcastle and its flipping cold outside). It's exactly the same thing Because the only reason I would do so are health reasons. Health trumps likes/dislikes.

No its under the assumption that you should only WORSHIP a god who is benevolent and fair. If God is unbenevolent and unfair he should be fought just like any other dictator.

Your opinion sucks. Because...?

It's not so much a matter of explaining why god does things, as explaining why he doesnt. You cant claim its god mending your friends foot if he doesnt do it for every devout christian, what sort of a god would that make him? One who chooses favourites? I'm sorry but the sort of god who intervenes in one persons life and refuses to do so for others is an abomination.

No of course we cant explain we aren't doctors, havent seen the x rays, and obviously couldnt hazard a guess... however.... can you explain similarly, if this happened to your friend because hes a devoted christian why god doesnt do that for all christians? why do devout christians get hurt all the time and miraculously NOT get healed? (Incidentally, id hazard a guess that his foot xray got mixed up with someone elses foot x ray and his foot was never broken in the first place - boring I know but plausible - or possibly a fairy fixed it for him? - or maybe he just has a magic foot?)

Well cheers for that, thats quite a bit of intersting information and I'll certainly look into it more. Note that the original graph which annoyed me is still quite suspect (for the original reasons I mentioned). However I'm not really surprised that the results are as they are, some of those studies do look quite good, reasonable questions, however I can't help but notice that a lot of them seem appallingly biased, and I'm also concerned about the nature of the questions being answered. Obviously we may be talking at cross purposes, so let me just state my opinion about what we are/might be talking about here - that religion connotes low IQ, I say this because this isn't quite what those surveys are addressing, or showing. It seems to me that they are showing that people in the mainstream of society haven't been educated to critically examine ideas. This I would completely agree with. Now obviously this doesn't apply to all the surveys done in the list, but if you remove from the list all those it does apply to we have a lot less to look at. I also see there's an odd definition of 'more religious' which counts a Unitarian as someone who believes less strongly than a Baptist, dunno what's going on there. There's a fair few reports that count liberal religion as being somehow less religious than conservative religion, which I'm a bit confused about. Theres just a whole bunch of doubt in my head about so many of those. Having said that there are some intersting ones which do give me pause for thought. I'd also like to posit that part of it is the nature of the religions looked at, I do think Christianity and conservative Christianity in particular are likely to be unrepresented in the sciences because of their attitude to science and I would really like to see the results of similar survey for the eastern religions such as Buddhism, Taoism and also Shamanism, because I would suspect those do have markedly different results.

Well I'm a gay man, so "Hello" usually works fine for me. (I do love being gay, there are a lot of advantages)

Because its still just a smell. The idea that you would force your will onto others make them change the way they want to live their life simply because of a personal preference is egotistical. To put it another way, suppose I said that I thought people really shouldnt wear orange TShirt simply because I dont like the colour orange? You'd think i was mad. It would be fine for me to make the statement "I dont like the colour orange", but its arrogance for me to go around expecting other people to change their behaviour simply because of it.

I wouldnt have thought that dress would count as being different unless it was something youd made yourself? Equally I dont think listening to a particular band makes you different unless its music youve written yourself, but thats just my opinion.

As for the creationist stuff its all been debunked many times before, its just part of the way science works. There are always going to be gaps in the knowledge but thats no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water. Firstly the scientific method remains, whatever the data. We hypothesise, we experiment and then confirm or reject the hypothesis based on that data. This is why young earth creationism is rejected because its hypothesis doesnt match up with the data, and there is a lot of it. Secondly there is tweaking of theories to consider. If you have 4000 pieces of data confirming your hypothesis and 1 piece which differs (assuming they have all been checked and confirmed to be error free), the chances are that your theory is wrong, but probably only slightly wrong, maybe there is a small factor which hasnt been taken into account. At that point you dont throw away the theory and embrace creationism. Take for example your "Minerals have too much Helium", how many different variables are there contained in the hypothesis about the age of the earth, there are so many that its impossible to disprove something with so much backing it without an enormous wealth of data and that data simply isnt there, so we take occams razor and say its far more likely that we dont know quite enough about the helium content of rock than it is that our estimation for the age of the earth is wrong. Part of the problem here is simply humans and numbers, its difficult to get humans to correctly estimate the size of data we have for this sort of thing, imagine a tiny tiny droplet of blue ink dropped into a 10 gallon barrel of water, anyone lookign at it will conclude that the water is still clear afterwards, and this is how much difference one piece of data makes to the age of the earth estimate. Yes we must still work out why the helium in rocks is of higher levels that we'd expect, but we dont know everything, thats not a problem. What it doesnt show is that all the other pieces of data are wrong. As far as most people are concerned, what you need to consider is are you willing to trust the scientific process, the peer review system and publishing systems which allow us to build a scientific consensus of the world around us. There is too much knowledge for any one man to know it all (the last person considered able to do that was Pasteur and he died in 1895), either you trust the system or you dont, or you look into the areas that you consider particularly troublesome and get enough qualifcations in the area to be able to legitimately comment on it. At the level we are talking about you cant come in with high school (or even graduate level knowledge) and pass comment, that level of knowledge is simply not informed enough to have an opinion, I wont do it and I wont pay any attention to anyone else who does it. And lastly and heres a very important part. It has also been shown that a lot of the information passed on by creationist is either just plain wrong or lies, (no transitional forms for example) there have been a few cases where its even been seen to be malicious lies fostered for political reasons deliberately by people who knew precisely what they were doing. Things like the documentation for the wedge strategy being leaked online, where the ultimate goal of these people is seen to be the complete removal of western rationalism from education by starting with evolution and the big bang theory, using the courts to push creationsim into the science class room, using the rationalism against people by forcing the idea of "Teaching the Controversy" (another lie, no such controversy existed at the time, however look around you now, the 'controversy' is here, at least it appears to be) in order to bring even the most ardent disbelievers at least inrto the arena where they are supposed to defend their beliefs against...what? a single idea with no testable hypothesis... ....I DONT THINK SO!!!!