I watch V for Vendetta every November

I have watched SnowPiercer at least 6 times (and yes, I totally belive it is a sequel to Willy Wonka)

Strictly speaking, we don’t. Legislation has to be in line with the constitutional authority of the acting branch.

Well, that is not where the USA is going if they continue down the MAGA rabbit hole. They are now even quoting the Bible as a reference for law writing.

What are you going to do? Establish a religious exclusion test for candidates? For voters?

No but you are taking it too far. All I want are laws that are not based on religious beliefs. If they coincide with some religious belief I have no issues, I just do not want religion doctrine to be the driving force.

When large numbers of people engage in the same personal choices, they create an implicit policy.

Which can objectively be avoided or mitigated.

When state officials campaign, they appeal to the local customs and taboos. And those customs/taboos become laws

Why should they? this is exactly what I am talking should not happen and something you just claimed “strictly speaking” does not happen.

What prevents this snowball from forming? Are you going to forbid a plurality of people from propagating their views?

Now you are just pearl clutching for effect

That’s precisely the point bud.

You cannot and therefore we should not use religion (in this instance) to write laws… it would be like banning musical genres based on my taste

I do not agree with the original quote from Hitchen that every religion must be wrong (although I do not think any are right since they are all just made up stories) but I do believe that should be left to people’s personal choice and not a centimeter more.

It exactly resembles the logic. Which is the important part.

Not if the components of the formula you are subbing in the logic are so far departed. But this is my opinion and I feel we are just going in circles here. I do agree with you in that the Hitchens original claim is flawed (actually I never found him as wise as people seem to) but I do not believe your reduced scenario proved that.

Your last argument that I responded to is literally that we shouldnt be acting like a belief is right or certain.

How is me saying that an indication I am thinking in black and white?! Precisely saying we shouldN’T be acting like a belief is right or certain is the opposite of black and white thinking.

I used the equivalent logic. I’m demonstrating the logic is wrong, not the conclusion.

By using a scenario that nowhere near resembles the original claim? that’s the part I disagree with

Nit picky. Change it to a million sided die and 999999 people all choose different answers. One doesn’t have to be true, but it’s still ridiculous to claim they all have to be wrong.

OK, 99999 side, no option is correct. How does this disprove the original claim which concluded that “none are correct”?

You gotta shake the black and white thinking.

I’m not, my initial criticism of your logic is precisely that we cannot reduce it to a simple right or wrong. Almost everything is more nuanced than that, specially religion

Proof of lived experience and philosophical conjecture?

Neither… get proof that religion is right/accurate. That is what we are talking about and what I replied with “get proof”. No need to move the goal post.

No one narrowed anything down to 6 discreet choices. I demonstrated a case where it is inconceivable that all people are correct, while at the same time demonstrating it is completely unreasonable to claim that no one can be correct.

Yes but the validity of that “demonstration” is showing an equivalent scenario, which you did not. If I claim “a bird is a living thing and flies, ergo all living things fly” I would be wrong and even if that line does apply to many living things, it is still a gross generalization.

All I am saying is that you are arguing a flawed argument with another flawed argument.

At no point did anyone claim one must be correct.

Your reduced scenario assumed one must be, otherwise you’d be agreeing with the quote posted by OP

The question “why couldn’t it be” is not even remotely equivalent to the claim that “it certainly is.”

I can… but we cannot know if that is the case so we should ALSO not be acting as if it already is right and certain

This is expanding, by leaps and bounds, the argument in the OP’s image

So you are ok with Op narrowing down all religions to 6 discreet choices where one is absolute truth but I’m the one with the scope problem?

You are now introducing a bunch of other things. Unprovable, of course. Seriously, how could you know that being correct about a religious would be "100%

Well, op declared that one must be correct and therefore the actual initial argument was wrong. Lol how can you blame me for saying religion is unprobable while defending an argument that claims some religion is certainly right without an iota of proof???

I have no idea what you are shooting at with this latest goal post move.

I simply stated your analogy was a poor strawman you used to attack the original point

Does that mean every effort at understanding the world around us is pointless? Or does it mean the task of building a working model of the universe is more difficult than any single lifetime - or civilization’s worth of lifetimes - can hope to accomplish?

Where the hell did I even come close to suggest the contrary?

Which seems like it would add some degree of value to our overarching understanding of our human condition.

Absolutely. Get some proof and we’ll talk. But that’s not what you want, you want to define your own version and expect the world around you to follow suit

Something worth studying and learning from, rather than casually dismissing as wrong for being incomplete.

Study it all you want. Just don’t make civil law based on it

Say I have 6 people all guessing a different result of a roll of a D6. It’s inconceivable that they are all right, and it’s absolutely not a “reasonable conclusion” that they are all wrong.

In this strawman, you are correct as you 1) already know there are only 6 possible answers to choose from; 2) you know at least 1 of the participants will get it right as you set the conditions to be “different results” and 3) the result is discrete and absolute.

None of the above conditions apply to religions in general… 1) we do not know how many possible right answer are there; 2) the options are endless and can overlap and 3) if one of them is right in someway, it would 100% be a matter of perspective and context

They are all wrong… only Doug Forcett got it right

That or they are holding for evidence as cops seem to lie all the fucking time

I don’t know what the KDE devs eat

LOL loved that

While I agree we need more, this may not sound like much to you or me… but a SCOTUS judge saying it basically states he already has made up his mind about where he stands before even taking the case. They are supposed to be impartial at all times

Captain America, thank you for your service

These companies do not make profit in paper but have already made millions for others.

It’s all smoke and mirrors

… To the surprise of <checks notes> absolutely nobody

Actually I have a question and I admit knowing nothing of the legal framework here but…

Isn’t it absolutely ridiculous that a not-for-profit entity can exists solely for the purpose of developing a closed-source piece of software, demand to train it for free off copyrighted material, just to switch to a for-profit entity??

Sound 100% like tax avoidance. Like me registering a charity so I can throw a mega concert/party privately, secure preferencial treatment on supplies, get discounts on artists or even free performance and then switch to for profit as I start selling tickets

Indeed… I avoided it for years because I bought into the “it’s too heavy” narrative.

Then I saw a phoronics benchmark sayin it was actually faster and lighter than lxde if you turn effects off

I tried it then and was blown away, never looked back

“I never meant to spark false rumours when I literally spread false rumours”

• this lady

And for those who have not tried it, the desktop is fully functional (not some half baked version. My son uses the desktop mode as a full school workstation for internet browsing, email, teams, Google docs, etc