The Terrible Sweal

Imprecision in the use of words it an ongoing problem. Usually it arises from one of a few reasons: -the speaker is unsophisticated either in terms of language or the subject; -the speaker does not have a clear view of the meaning or intent they wish to convey; -the speaker is attempting to mean one thing while saying another.

Israel should withdraw to its own borders and defend itself aggressively there. The state of Israel faces no immediate strategic danger from any neighboring government, and the criminal actions of some extremists don't give them license to inflict military rule on the entire Palestinian people.

Thank you Kimmy. A very informative post entirely disposing of the notion that the CHP is anything but a rabid bunch of extreme theocrats.

???

That's just silly. When a fire consumes your home, do you expect your insurer to say "Hey, get over it" when they deny your coverage?

Actually, no. Centuries ago we realized that society only damages itself when it attampts to act according to any of the various religious interprateations and we adopted constitutional separation of church and state to avoid these problems.

It is not the government's function to 'decide what is right or wrong', and the government has no business concerning itself with 'morality'. Government must only concern itself with what is effective in acheiving the goals of the society. As with individuals in all walks of life, people in government should personally behave ethically, including in their working-life decisions. But government as an institution has no means separate from the will of individuals and society an it would therefor be presumptuous and wrongheaded for it to purport to establish some morality. And come to think of it, what the hell is 'morality'. As far as I can figure out, to the extent 'morality' differs from 'ethics' it becomes utterly devoid of content and ends up simply being about aesthetics, and therefore basically absurd.

The statistics suggest this, yes. But you cannot leap from those statistics to say that it is BECAUSE they are single parent families. We know, for example, that single parent situations are common among the urban poor. So ... how do you know if the problems of the children are from the poverty or from the lack of parent. Furthermore, many of the 'Family Values' crowd seem to believe that two-opposite-sex-parent families are becoming less the norm thru some sort of moral deficiency. But this understanding implies a lack of parsimony in explanation. Why seek into moral causes when socio-economic forces explain the pressures very well?

European settlers already own and control the vast majority of Canada and it's wealth... How is this good for the environment or the native/non-native relationships?

I was hoping you'd reply to this, my earlier reply to you... Well, you started strong, but came up short, I'm afraid. As you see, I have inserted some markers to refer to my comments in reply... 1. Indeed, it was people who were Christian who did this, but you can hardly claim it was because of Chrisitanity that they did so. Usually it was opposed to Christianity's organized face that any progress was acheived. 2. It's obvious that people who profess Christianity (and other faiths) can and do reason. However, the do not reason (by my definition), through, by, or about religion. Religion requires specifically the suspension of disbelief in a dogma structure. I.e. the suspension of reasoning. To the extent that one exercises true reason in relation to the dogma structure of one's religion, one is failing to be religious. 3. Your harangue against 'secularists' seems to miss the point you were responding to. In fact, I was actually distinguishing 'secularism' from the belief system of science which you criticise. Secularism is a policy choice resulting from the adoption of reason as the prefered meaning-making system for society. Reason is preferable because it invokes objective principles rather than those based on the more or less arbitrary preferences of religious partisans. Accordingly, your long list of complaint about the belief system of science is not really on target of the explanation of 'secularism' I was making. 4. Notwithstanding 3, I do also argue that reason is more useful than religion for making choices, and that religion and reason are essentially incompatible, and in consequence that a reasonable state cannot admit religious imperatives into its decisionmaking and execution processes. 5. Much of what you wrote in this passage is incorrect. Science is very much based on evidence and most of the items you attacked are in fact supported by substantial amounts of evidence. Are the assumptions correct? Is the information sufficient to support their conclusions completely? Science itself answers: "We don't know." And that is what makes it more reliable and useful than religion. Contrary to you assertion, it is not 'blind faith', it is blind groping. 6. To be specific, the religious method goes at the world with an Answer, the rational method goes at the world with a Question. 7. Well, it's difficult to address this point, because of course I have no specific idea what you mean by 'your Christianty'. But look, even if it is granted that the existence of order is evidence of a designer, you need to go a lot further than that to support the dogma structure of Christianity. How, exactly, does Christ's death atone for the sins of someone else? What are the mechanisms and/or moral criteria that make that possible? I don't mean to be offensive, but the central story of your religion lacks explicative content, and so you fill the gaps with Belief. But belief is not reason; it is the opposite. 8. In my opinion you have asserted evidence which doesn't exist -- what evidence has 'he' provided that you invoke? 9. Which IS very convenient. I'm interested in your reactions.

What? How do you leap to that last sentence from the 2nd law of thermodynamics? Am I missing something, or are you? Again, your claim is very confusing. If the universe were older, heavy radioactive elements would have had a longer time to decay (i.e. lose energy exactly as the 2TD law predicts). Ergo, if the universe were older there would be less likelihood of BANG. This is something you've repeated several times, but ignored the replies you've receieved. People could believe such a thing based on 'blind faith', or they could simply think it is the most likely based on an understanding of the available information. The latter is a logical/scientific approach, the former is not. 'Guess'? There would be no point is guessing. Informed speculation however can lead to testable hypotheses. This 'pre-existing universe' you discuss is merely your argumentative fabrication, however (i.e. a red herring or straw man). Science does not need to claim any pre-existing universe to be able to make statements, based on evidence in THIS universe. As to 'evidence' for God, WHAT IS this 'evidence'?

The funny thing is, there is probably a reasonably straightforward way of measuring the equilibrium point for efficient state support of an unemployed person, ie, the point were if we spend X on him or her, we avoid cost or capture gains equal to Y. I bet it would be a lot higher than many might think.

High hopes!

That's rather eliptical. People with political agendas behind the charter? Certainly. The Charter is a political document, like the rest of the constitution. Force other people to take their position? No. The Charter applies only to government agencies, and legislatures.

I guess you miss this part, right at the beginning of it... HAd you read it, you would be aware that I'm obviously capable of typing in both cases, and that I used the caps for a specific readability purpose. I guess you just missed that somehow and felt that a pompous lecture was necesarry. Now that you are otherwise informed, you're welcome.

You go into further detail about the characteristics of 'God', an dof course, the less persuasive is the evidence as you do. The detailed claims of religions become increasingly farcical as the detailed scientific claims are proven out by experience again and again.

If one believes in an omnipotent God, clearly S/He/It would be capable of deceiving human inquiry forever. Of course, if one believes in an omnipotent God, it becomes difficult to explain why that being should be worshipped.

It might be productive to properly qualify our claims on all sides. To claim that there is 'NO' evidence for the existence of 'God', is actually incorrect. The evidence includes the claims of religious people, and the improbability of existence taking this particular form. So what we have is inconclusive evidence for the existence of God. The same is true for the evidence that there is no 'God'. It includes the positive evidence otherwise explaining natural phenomena, and the absence of clear intentionality in the unfolding of natural law. It too is inconclusive. This leaves us in the position of having to evaluate the plausibility and probability of the claims. (In this respect, both sides must concede or abandon the claim about the probability of their ontology, because viewed from our position of ignorance here inside the box, the probablilty of either one is immeasurable but undeniable.)

Well, you started strong, but came up short, I'm afraid. As you see, I have inserted some markers to refer to my comments in reply... 1. Indeed, it was people who were Christian who did this, but you can hardly claim it was because of Chrisitanity that they did so. Usually it was opposed to Christianity's organized face that any progress was acheived. 2. It's obvious that people who profess Christianity (and other faiths) can and do reason. However, the do not reason (by my definition), through, by, or about religion. Religion requires specifically the suspension of disbelief in a dogma structure. I.e. the suspension of reasoning. To the extent that one exercises true reason in relation to the dogma structure of one's religion, one is failing to be religious. 3. Your harangue against 'secularists' seems to miss the point you were responding to. In fact, I was actually distinguishing 'secularism' from the belief system of science which you criticise. Secularism is a policy choice resulting from the adoption of reason as the prefered meaning-making system for society. Reason is preferable because it invokes objective principles rather than those based on the more or less arbitrary preferences of religious partisans. Accordingly, your long list of complaint about the belief system of science is not really on target of the explanation of 'secularism' I was making. 4. Notwithstanding 3, I do also argue that reason is more useful than religion for making choices, and that religion and reason are essentially incompatible, and in consequence that a reasonable state cannot admit religious imperatives into its decisionmaking and execution processes. 5. Much of what you wrote in this passage is incorrect. Science is very much based on evidence and most of the items you attacked are in fact supported by substantial amounts of evidence. Are the assumptions correct? Is the information sufficient to support their conclusions completely? Science itself answers: "We don't know." And that is what makes it more reliable and useful than religion. Contrary to you assertion, it is not 'blind faith', it is blind groping. 6. To be specific, the religious method goes at the world with an Answer, the rational method goes at the world with a Question. 7. Well, it's difficult to address this point, because of course I have no specific idea what you mean by 'your Christianty'. But look, even if it is granted that the existence of order is evidence of a designer, you need to go a lot further than that to support the dogma structure of Christianity. How, exactly, does Christ's death atone for the sins of someone else? What are the mechanisms and/or moral criteria that make that possible? I don't mean to be offensive, but the central story of your religion lacks explicative content, and so you fill the gaps with Belief. But belief is not reason; it is the opposite. 8. In my opinion you have asserted evidence which doesn't exist -- what evidence has 'he' provided that you invoke? 9. Which IS very convenient.

The crown should definitely appeal. I think the judge here has clearly failed to give proper weight to the 'repudiation' element of sentencing.

We should abolish victimless 'crimes'. Not only is there no need to enforce such laws, doing so costs moeny and time which could be better spent on real crimes. Furthermore, because such laws are inimical to freedom, the serve to undermine the relationship between citizens and their police.

First, Alberta doesn't have 'zero say'. You elect members to Parliament. Second, wealth is not supposed to be the measure of decisionmaking influence in a democracy. What is that, exactly, in your view?

It's a way to get even more precise fractional representation. Consider it a PR threshold of 0.2 percent of the population for each party of one. You're right that fewer than the maximum could be elected, but that would be the Will of the People too.

The idea behind proportional representation is to achieve more precise representation of fractional political views in the electorate. Conceding for the moment that this is a laudable objectives (which I don't really), then I suggest an alternative approach to regular PR.... I suggest taking the total number of voters (e.g. 20M) divided by the total number of seats (say a nice round number like 500) (=40,000) for the total number of ballots any single individual must poll to obtain a seat. No Parties allowed to participate in the campaign (thought they could operate in Parliament), and strict spending limits by candidates. Whataya think?

Questioning why Ontario voters continue to vote in a bunch of liars and then brazenly distorting or ignoring their reasons is insulting. The voters quite conscienciously don't want what the Cons are offering. It's not about region, except to people predisposed to see it that way.