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I hate to sound rude or dismissive, but if you can't tell whether someone is intelligent or not after a few dates, then maybe you're having enough conversation. Or maybe YOU are the one who is bad at...

What is at the root of identity? Of personhood? Of self?

What makes a consciousness my consciousness?


You can damage someone's brain so that their personality changes.

You can damage...

I disagree with banning degenerate art, but for exactly the reasons you give above.

If you get rid of the symptoms, how will you know when the underlying disease is cured?


Trying to control...

Identity requires some level of homogeneity, right?

That's the big problem with the United States (well.... one of the big problems): lack of any kind of homogeneity. That's why a step in the...

Now we are deep in the heart of semantics, which is inevitably why conversations such as this fall apart.

Let me try to explain by analogy.

Right now, we consider it a trivial and obvious truth...

That's great. And I'm sure that there are aliens out there who would appear to us to be Gods, just as we would appear to be Gods to many other aliens out there.

But this quite misses the point of...

Not according to this handy guidebook:

http://i47.tinypic.com/16jqzhj.jpg
http://i46.tinypic.com/vxf8g3.jpg

:D

I love this style of argument. And you are absolutely correct about this.

I think the "wiggle room", though, is in the specific application: what are the specific beliefs in each religion that are...

She looks exactly as "African-American" as anime characters looks asian.

http://news.filefront.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/ash_pika.jpg

It amazes me that a cartoonist can draw white-person...

Exactly. It's like dating a girl who is cheating on her husband, somehow assuming that after she divorces him and marries you, somehow she won't do exactly the same thing to you.

Politicians who...

(Warning, this post is kind of long and rambling.... but science is a passion of mine, so it's easy for me to go on and on about it.)

I think it's interesting to see how different approaches to...

The type of politics in any country is a symptom of the type of government.

In a democracy, you get power through election; you get elected by appealing to the masses; the masses are generally...

These questions are difficult to imagine in the abstract.

A true test for this issue would be to have a series of hypothetical situations / scenarios where one type of loyalty was pitted against...

I agree. I'm not saying we should found law based on outliers.

But in my mind, this is merely a matter of accuracy. Society should pinpoint true sources of problems -- not just find correlates...

Donnie Darko
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
Clockwork Orange
12 Monkeys
A Scanner Darkly
Fifth Element
Brazil


... I'm sure there are others I'm not thinking of....

I'm no expert, but I think the distinction between transcendence and hierarchy may be a little fuzzy... if not downright artificial.

One connotation of "transcendence" is that one has "risen...

I wish the article had been more specific. I mean, what are some specific examples of "the rich cultural and Christian heritage" that he wants people to focus more on? What cultural Christian...

I do not consider myself 'militant' about atheism, and I have no strong opinion on that subject.

But... I really have to thank you for posting this thread. As a result, I ended up doing a google...

I am not a lawyer, so I am not certain whether this would fly in court. But, my "lay-person" (i.e. not legally trained) argument would run like this:

If they use aggression and violence to enter...

I live in Texas, so I'm pretty sure I could pull off a self-defense argument in court. :)


However, even if I knew that I could not -- even if I knew that I would be jailed -- I would still do...

If they cannot fend for themselves, then surely they deserve to die.

;)

You're confusing "belief" with "faith".

"Faith" is belief without logic or evidence.

"Knowledge" is rational, justified belief in something that is true.

Both faith and knowledge are forms...

An Übermensch has to be a generalist... not a specialist.

He cannot only be "the height of perfection" physically, just as he cannot only be the "height of perfection" mentally. (Incidentally,...

Thank you, everyone who replied to this question.

And I'm surprise (pleasantly!) that so many people have a vision that is, at least in its overall form, similar to mine.

To me, large-scale...

My thoughts here are similar to the thoughts I posted in another thread, that was discussing feelings about Jews.

If you say, "I hate Jews because they ________".

And if it is true that not ALL...