Ambassadar

According to this someone that was in a coma couldn't be defined as a person. Heck someone that was knocked unconscious would cease to be a person momentarily. People that are vegetables from an accident wouldn't be a person. There are probably some people with forms of [developmentally delayed]ation that wouldn't be considered people as well under this. Reasons like this are why I left defining what a person was as "separate human life."

I only read about two pages worth of this post so if anyone covered this already my apologies. A division isn't even close to as large as what you describe here. An average division is 10-20,000 strong. You might find this interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_(military) Did you know during the Cold War Russia had a ton more divisions on the Chinese border than they had on the German border? They don't trust each other at all. Do you have a link to this story? I seriously doubt they went into US airspace with bombers. Interesting. So China would mobilize 1/5 of it's entire country and send it across the ocean to invade the US? How exactly would they supply 200 million people? How would they get enough ships to supply 200 million people? How would there even be enough infrastructure to move 200 million people around once they got where they were going? How would they have enough men left in their country to keep manufacturing, farming, and all the other necessary industries running with so many abroad in war? How would they get the money to support an army this large? Let's say China was able to actually get 200 million men on US soil by teleportation to make things even easier for the invasion... Those men would be dead within six months. Do you know why? They would starve to death. There wouldn't be enough guns or bullets for them to use either. The US Navy would slaughter supply convoys coming to feed them. The US Air Force would slaughter naval convoys as well as trucks in the area of land they controlled on US soil. That army would be begging to go home. It would be a slaughter.

The abortion issue is really easy to break down to it's basic level. Either an unborn baby is a person or it is not. If it is a person then it would be wrong to abort "them". If it is not a person then it is ok to abort "it". So the true question is how do we define what a person is? The way I would define what makes a person is to claim that a person has to be separate human life. I feel that is reasonable and covers all of the bases. Anyone differ or have any thoughts on anything I just posted?

Hmm, well it appears I did make some claim of that type then. I'm sleepy heh. Good point. Notice how I am getting information I hadn't considered earlier and now that I am processing it I am changing my opinion on what I had said. :P I'll try to clarify what I meant. If a person claims being open minded or close minded based off the side they are on in a debate then they aren't being open minded in any way. (This is what I was referring to when I said" Why is it most so called open minded people only seem to be "open minded" to one side of of most issues?") If a person has a position in a debate but doesn't base who is "open minded" or "close minded" off their position then according to Intriguing's definition of open minded it would all depend on if that person was actually listening to the other side and weighing it against their opinion. I wouldn't want to as well as couldn't make a claim as to whether they were being open or close minded because it's not like I could read their mind. That's what I was referring to in my other quote. Nice call on pointing that out and hopefully when I wake up in the morning what I just wrote still makes sense since I'm so tired. :P

In my first post I was speaking in third person since I was talking about an idea. In the post where I said "I" I was answering a personal question. Lighten up. I never made any claim as to who does or doesn't listen. All I can answer for is myself. If you read the first line of my original post.

I completely agree. How can one person truly know what the other person knows and feels deep down? How can a person know that another person could never be swayed? How can one side in a debate claim to be the open minded side and that the other side is the close minded side if it differs on an individual basis? I like how you define it and I feel it would be a more honest way of explaining what being open or close minded is but many times it feels like the majority of people say things like "If you believe X then you are close minded or if you believe Y you are open minded." That is making being open or close minded an issue of what a person believes and not a matter of how open or closed they are to being further educated in an area. Do you think most people just don't understand what it really means to be open minded or do you think the way you explained it unfortunately isn't the way it works in reality?

Actually I am doing the opposite. On most topics I am not open minded because I crave knowledge and am constantly learning. I then apply my knowledge to the world around me and form opinions. The only time I would claim I was open minded on a topic was if I wasn't sure what I thought about that topic yet. I would then go learn until I could form an educated opinion. I would no longer be open minded about it then. After that opinion was formed I would continue to listen to people that had an opinion that differed from mine and if I learned more and felt my opinion was wrong then I would change it. I don't know if that is just some awkward lingo we use in the country I am from that other countries don't use but saying someone is playing semantics means they are playing word games or a game of word meanings. It is twisting and manipulating words. Please let me know if anything else I wrote was confusing.

On an even more basic level one could ask is it close minded to think it is always wrong to hurt an innocent person? Is it close minded to think it is wrong to force someone to starve? If a person took those positions then that person isn't being "open minded" to the alternative.

Actually I never mentioned a single religion in my post. See what I mean how word associations have been programmed into our collective psyche over the years to automatically draw conclusions? This isn't a religious topic. It is more a look at word games. My religion or anyone else's religion or lack of is irrelevant to the conversation.

You can say you don't have an opinion on any of those religions because you don't know enough about them yet if you want and claim to be open minded but you cannot claim to believe all of those religions are true since they all contradict each other. So which is it?

These are just some thoughts I have had on the topic of being open minded. I would be interested to hear what other people thought on this perspective. Why is it most so called open minded people only seem to be "open minded" to one side of of most issues? Think about it. I bet most people that use the term don't even consider that. How can they just take a side? Isn't the act of taking a side the act of closing your mind to the other side hence the loss of being truly "open minded"? Wouldn't being truly open minded mean being open to every single idea out there? I could understand someone being "open minded" until they learned enough to form an opinion(this is a good thing) but as soon as that opinion was formed on the issue they would cease to be open minded on the topic. The act of forming an opinion means they are rejecting a position in favor of another position. That is not open mindedness. To me the only people that should be going around claiming to be open minded on a topic are only those people that haven't made up their minds on the issue yet. True open mindedness should be a position of neutrality since a side has not been taken and all sides are being considered. Claiming open mindedness on a topic should be the same as claiming ignorance(this isn't bad, just being honest with oneself saying I don't know enough to make a decision yet) on that topic until said person has educated themselves enough to form an opinion. Let's face it, in a debate where everyone is taking sides true open mindedness doesn't exist. Taking a side in a debate and then proclaiming your side open minded while claiming the other position as close minded is just a subtle little game in semantics to try to make people of one position look good and people of the opposing position look bad due to word associations. I would go as far to say that many people that sling these words around don't even realize they are just using semantics to try to make the people they disagree with seem backwards, ill informed, or just ignorant. You have to admit, even if it is dishonest(intentionally or not), it is an effective tactic because most people don't even think about what it really means. All most people get is the negative or positive feel of the words and how those words were associated to the issues. Just remember, if you disagree with anything I wrote you aren't being open minded! :wink:

Warrior posted while I was typing up my above response so here is my response to his last post. Would we even be alive if these different practices were normal? Agreed. However, if murdering someone for looking at your ear was a normal occurance recognized throughout the ages then no one would debate that as an issue either... Would that make it right though? But that is why we have minds so we can use our real world experiences to filter through what we learn to constantly analyze the knowledge we have learned to determine it's validity. Sure it's not the perfect solution but it is pretty darn effective when rigorously applied.

Lucky... NEVERMIND!! :P hehe True. Debatable. It all depends on which culture you are talking about. If you want my definition of marriage we need to keep it relatively vague since it can vary a little between cultures. When looking at human history marriage has always involved members of the opposite sex pledging their lives together. The number of females can vary but they are always marrying the man and not his other wives as well. Warrior was making the point that marriage is not natural. My counter was what would human history have looked like if marriage had never occurred? I want to hear some people come up with some answers before I give any answer. What do you think Bluetear?

Now that I start thinking about it I know a few other straight guys that have been hit on by gay guys. I had a college roommate who had been hit on multiple times. I also had a neighbor that had some gay man hit on him when he was about 15...

What would the human race be like if marriage had never been invented?

Sad to say but I got hit on by a gay guy once. Pretty awkward...

We should be compassionate to the sufferings of poor animals. I propose a plan. To minimize the sufferings of as many animals as possible we need to kill larger animals so that the amount of meals we get per animal death is maximized. For example. 12 oysters must die a painful and agonizing death to bring us one meal of a dozen oysters on a half shell. Oysters are small. 12 deaths for 1 meal A chicken can feed one meal to two hungry guys. Chickens are larger. 1 death for 2 meals Of course this trend holds true the larger the animals we get so when we kill larger animals less pain and trauma as well as less lives interrupted occur for the animals. This leads us to the best solution to help the poor suffering creatures around the world and minimize animal suffering by giving us the best death to meal ratio. Kill the whales! :twisted:

Just remember, for every baby cow that gets killed it saves the life of 37 chickens. :wink:

Cool quiz ya found Highlander. It was pretty darn accurate for me.

Bonds is on my fantasy team this year so the more homers he hits the better. 8-) I'm more of a college football fan anyways so aside from fantasy baseball I have little interest in the sport so I'm not really one of these "oh holy sacred home run record" type people.

I'm not sure about the rounded formation but it is definitely not a phalanx. A phalanx is a rectangular formation where all the spears point the same direction.

Imagine going to a job interview with a name like that...

Your worst nightmare. :shock: lol

"Because they might fall in!" That's the answer I always hear why guys should always put down the seat but girls shouldn't have to raise it back up when they are done. And then they wonder why a lot of guys don't take them seriously when they admit to having potential problems falling into toilets. :P

You admit not many 14 year old girls would want to do that(I agree) which means there are actually some that would want to do it. The example is only bullcrap if there isn't a single girl out there that would want to do it. Since there are some then the question "Now imagine it is your daughter. Would you be cool with that?" is still applicable. Aside from that where do ya'll draw the line of inappropriate contact between a younger teenager and a 30 year old woman?