Choosing a faith

Logically or emotionally?

You do not comprehend logically or emotionally.You simply refuse to think or acknowledge evidence or reasoned arguments.And have done so successfully all your life.

First of all, I am disputing these bills that *some* of society claim I owe. Some abstract concept that I and others have benefited from social privilege, for example, is not good enough. Show me the actual words of a treaty that was violated, and then maybe we can talk. In addition, I would also demand to read the words of the lawyers challenging such a treaty and the status of the treaty in a court of law.

Years ago, while in High School, I was a World War II buff. I bought that book. IIRC it was 1600 pages long and I never read it cover to cover. If you are referring to Hitler, I certainly dont see myself like him, though I can identify to a degree with the suffering of the German people in the twenties after the humiliating bill they were forced to pay from the allied powers. How would you feel, as a young man or woman, if you were born in debt?Besides. as we always argue, there are two sides to every story. Hitler was, like Trump, a Populist. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. Trump wrote The Art Of The Deal. Im sure if I studied further, I could see a bit of Trump in Hitler. I also will acknowledge that if the American people went through another Great Depression, they may feel like electing a Populist with lofty promises of restoration to greatness, but I also have faith in our system of government...in a two party system. Rationality has its place in life. The German people were neither rational nor reasonable. jar is right in that the bill will always get paid. The primary argument that I ascribe to in defense of the American people is that we are not the only ones who owe it. Were China the victorious power in a new war, we would not humiliate ourselves any further. We would be at the crossroads of history just as the German people were after the Great War.

You're denying. You're not showing what you claim. YOU don't get to decide what's "good enough". Society as a whole will decide what is necessary. The slaves were not allowed to sign treaties, moron. They were not considered human. A slave could no more sign a treaty than your fridge can sign a treaty.That's why there are no treaties.But we've changed our minds. We've decided that black people ARE human after all. So human decency requires us to do what we can to atone for the attrocities we committed in the past. See above.But even in the absence of any legal niceties, I think a strong legal case could be made for paying what you owe. Unwritten contracts, "gentlemen's agreements", deals made "on a handshake" have a long history in common law (longer than written contracts).

Not to mention that the US has a long history of not honoring the Treaties that it does make.Phat. Read and try to comprehend Article 2 of the US Constitution. Then consider Hawaii.

So you SAY you read books you don't want to read but you don't actually read them.I'm on my third read. Not just Hitler but the dupes who enabled him. "Oh yes sir, sure sir, three bags full sir." It's a portrait of every RepublicaNazi who enables Trump. Obligated. Wow. If you looked up, could you see the sky too? You keep saying they are going to. They already did. Where were you in 2016? And you also have faith in the Republicans who are trying to destroy that system. That's not an argument. It's just denial.Try going to the bank and telling them that you're not going to pay your mortgage because "that guy" didn't pay his. And look how that turned out.Rationality would tell you, "Don't be Germany!"But you're happy making the same mistakes over and over and over again.

Then consider every treaty signed with an indigenous tribe.

I'm thinking more along the lines of Dawkins' memes. Evolving seems more applicable to a physical characteristic. I assume that you meant "with and not "without". What physical evidence do you have that empathy evolved scientifically? We seem to agree that it spread but that doesn't give us a reason to choose either atheism or theism. Hey, I agree with all of that. I'd add that I said from the beginning, that the god meme speaks to the religious and non-religious and all have the option of responding to it or rejecting it. In the same chapter of the book "Chance and the Arrow" he writes extensively on entropy and thermodynamics.He kinda wraps it up like this:

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That the early universe set the direction of time's arrow is a wonderful and satisfying conclusion, but we are not done. A huge puzzle remains. How is it that the universe began in such a highly ordered configuration, setting things up so that for billions of years to follow everything could slowly evolve through steadily less ordered configurations toward higher and higher entropy? Don't lose sight of how remarkable this is. As we emphasized, from the standpoint of probability it is much more likely that the partially melted ice cubes you saw at 10:30 got there because a statistical fluke acted itself out in a glass of liquid water, than that they originated in the even less likely state of fully formed ice cubes. And what's true for ice cubes is true a gazillion times over the whole universe. Probabilistically speaking, it is mind-boggling more likely that every thing we now see in the universe arose from a rare but every-so-often expectable statistical aberration away from total disorder , rather than having slowly evolved from the even more unlikely, the incredibly more ordered, the astounding low-entropy starting point required by the big bang.

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Here again is the wiki quote concerning Greene's religious beliefs.

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Greene has stated that he regards science as being incompatible with literalist interpretations of religion and that there is much in the New Atheism movement which resonates with him because he personally does not feel the need for religious explanation. However, he is uncertain of its efficacy as a strategy for spreading a scientific worldview. In an interview with The Guardian he says "When I'm looking to understand myself as a human, and how I fit in to the long chain of human culture that reaches back thousands of years, religion is a deeply valuable part of that story."

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I agree with your response. All I'm saying is that Greene leaves the question of an intelligent designer open saying essentially that he doesn't see the need for a religious explanation which is not the same as saying that there isn't one. I just wanted to point out that a universe that is not restricted to a single time dimension can exist in answer to the question of infinite regression of gods, allowing for an infinite being. I agree that I have no evidence to support that except that it appears that the laws of physics support the possibility. I also agree that this is miles above my pay grade which is why I resorted to quoting Greene. It's a hypothetical that might be true, but we don't know that. I would add as per the first post on this thread, that in Islam as in other world religions we can be serving God by following His command to love His creation and the lives of everyone in it, friend or foe. That is what ultimately matters. Frankly this is pretty much pointless. I'll try this. There are things in this world that lead me to the conclusions that I have come to which you would say are not evidence that should lead me to my conclusions. I have no idea how you will respond to that but I have a hunch it won't be positive. So then I can assume then that the things we see in our societies today are no worse than the world we grew up in.
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He said nothing at all about a designer. All he said is that religion itself is a part of (and an interesting part) of human culture. He's also saying that fighting over the existence of gods isn't good way to help people learn.

This again is from This wiki site

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The question of whether Jesus historically existed is part of the study undertaken in the quest for the historical Jesus and the scholarly reconstructions of his life.[1][2][3] Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure[note 1][note 2][4][5][6][7] and dismiss denials of his existence as a fringe theory, while many details like his alleged miracles are subject to debate.[8][9][10][11]

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Standard historical criteria have aided in evaluating the historicity of the gospel narratives,[12][13] and only two key events are almost universally accepted, namely that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and crucified by order of the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate.[10][11][9][14]

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Besides the gospels, sources for the historicity of Jesus include Roman historians Josephus and Tacitus, who lived shortly after the time of Jesus and referenced him and his followers in their histories.

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Look, we have enough trouble paying the bills we owe today. Dont drag up 150 year old treaties out of the hope chest and expect that we will find the money to pay them. All you Leftists want is more other leftists to join your cause and vote you in office for perpetuity.There are plenty of moderate or even right wing thinkers in the South American population. Lets get them over here too...without promising the world a Rose garden.

Damn right! Not some party that clings to power with a 5% majority. We will take the issue of reparations global and see how it plays out. I predict it will die. The planet has more pressing issues than bending over backwards to make every global citizen (financially) equal.

There is a common thread that appears in every form of religion that I know of and also is there in the non-theistic world. Golden rule in religion I would say that is an acceptable norm for most societies or cultures, even though it is as often or maybe even more often than not ignored. It is more important to focus on that rather than simply arguing about any specific understanding of the world we live in.We can simply come to our own conclusions about why that is.

So I guess another thing you don't understand is what the word majority means. And in the U.S. the Republicans have lost the popular vote in the last 4 presidential elections.