Night FM

True. I'm just armchair imagining what I would do if I was a dictator, but realistically it will never happen and overall society would fare worse under a dictator. I also like taking ideas about fascism and turning them against people who identify as fascists (e.x. classifying the racists as the undesirables rather than whichever race they happen to dislike). Though I'm still pondering the idea that "human rights" shouldn't be automatically assumed simply on the basis of being "homo sapien". If an incel or a racist hates women or black people, for example, then IMO they lack redeeming human qualities, since there is more than enough knowledge that women and people of all races are equal in terms of their humanity. So for a person who is legally an "adult" to be able to maintain such as view would require a serious depravity in humanity, and would lead me to view them as less than human despite their biology.

While I don't consider this a serious proposal, these are my thoughts on how totalitarianism could have beneficial social effects in the right situations. It's purely a devil's advocate argument. Everyone is treated as equal and human under the law, but obviously people aren't equal in terms of other qualities. As an example, the type of people who identify as "incels" are obviously defective in most if not all redeeming human traits. Whether this is a product of bad genetics, bad environment, bad character, or a combination of multiple factors, I'm not sure, and it is probably multifaceted. But, regardless, I don't see any redeeming value in allowing such individuals to exist in society even if they haven't actually committed a crime, and I feel like the merciful thing to do would be to simply disallow them to exist as they currently do. If I had the authority, I would be tempted to simply have them executed, or at least have all of their human rights removed and them reduced to the status of second-class citizens, possibly allowing for them to perform forced labor. This would all be done legally and on the books, no one would be committing any vigilante violence against incels, white supremacists, and the like. They would simply de-classified as human altogether, and legally it wouldn't be any different than putting rabid animals to sleep. So while totalitarianism ultimately would do social harm than good, I can see it having social utility in a scenario like this. The subhuman state of existence that some individuals reside in simply isn't something a better human would consider worth living, so if society was slightly less liberal in their application of the definition of "human rights", it might make the world a cleaner place, provided that it was able to only be applied in scenarios like this (e.x. exterminating incels, white supremacists, and other undesirables), rather than in the whole context of society.

Right, but you could say that about anything. Most people don't believe in science because they've discovered any scientific theories on their own, they believe it because they were taught that such things are true in the culture they were born into, and probably would have believed whatever they were taught was true or scientific if they had been born into any other culture or era.

How so?

No, I specifically mentioned Lawrence Krauss as one example.

Right, so in other words you have people using nonscientific terms like "chaos" to describe the origin of the universe. Proving my point. I'm not sure why someone will change their belief that rape is wrong when presented with better evidence. (But maybe it's better that they don't).

But I haven't said anything about the science, merely things other people say about it that misunderstand it. As an example which can be sourced, Lawrence Kraus says that he likes to think that the world is "chaotic", but as mentioned in the OP, this has nothing to do with Chaos theory, and if anything is closer to the ancient Greek myth of "Chaos" being the originator of the universe rather than anything "scientific". So when you even have scientists themselves bastardizing it, let alone people on social media, it lends one to be skeptical.

My understanding is perfectly fine and often better.

Right, so the position they're coming from often isn't one of understanding. And I'm not talking about professionals in a field, but merely the "casual atheist" on social media who may have no understanding of the topic beyond what they learned in primary school or read in a Twitter post. I think most biologists who've used the theory of evolution would believe it even if they hadn't been indoctrinated into it, but that a good chunk of atheists would just as easily believe what the Medieval Church told them was true if they had been born during that era.

I'd argue the issue is what it controls and prevents people from doing, not that "it does". Given that laws do the same thing, and most sane people wouldn't say people should be able to do "everything" they might want to do to begin with (e.x. most wouldn't say a rapist should be allowed to rape simply because "he likes doing it"). It's a fairly popular criticism, so I don't think I need to attribute it to a specific source.

That's just gender-baiting and doesn't attempt to subjectively define terms like "misogyny" or how they could be "over". If misogyny is a view that some people hold, then while people can discourage behavior and change laws that align with misogyny, I'm not sure how one could prevent individuals determined to hold such a view from doing so. Especially given that the views may originate in the individuals themselves rather than some element of wider society which can be effectively addressed, such as by legislation. If anything, education is probably the best remedy to misogynistic views. This also doesn't address the reasons or the necessity for marketing subject matter such as fitness specifically to men or to women, when the subject matter is a broad enough category that it should generally be applicable to both men and women.

The biology is irrelevant, since classifications aren't mutually exclusive, and this doesn't bother to address arguments whether or not explaining life as originating from nature alone is sufficient. (Another example which comes to mind is atheists stating that abiogenesis originated life, when in actuality it didn't. The science only shows that it originated certain components of life). You could, for example, classify a Honda and a Ferrari the same on the basis of having "4 wheels", or differently on the basis of differences in horsepower. If one is insisting on one classification over the other (e.x. the "4 wheels" classification), then that begs the question as to why.

As an example, we could categories living things based on their needs as per Maslow's hierarchy. Presumably, most animals needs would fall into those lower on the hierarchy (e.x. material needs) while humans would be distinct from other animals due to having needs higher on the hierarchy. The statement "humans are animals" isn't "true" beyond how people choose to arbitrarily classify them. It doesn't matter that "similarities between humans and animals exist". This doesn't beget a need to classify humans on the basis of those similarities, when they could just as easily be classified an infinite number of ways based on an infinite number of similarities or differences.

As mentioned already, "animals" is simply a classification invented by humans based on shared similarities, and we could just as easily classify humans as something different altogether. So the statement that "humans are animals" is only as true as people decide it is. (If we decided on a completely different system of zoological classification, we could decide that humans are something else altogether).

This is what I arrived at by taking part of the Epicurean paradox and reversing it. (In some quotes, I've heard it argued that God is malevolent if he is able and not willing to prevent evil, though according to Wikipedia, it argues that God is "not completely benevolent"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurean_paradox Therefore, if God is able to prevent good, but not willing to do so. God is not completely malevolent. Or that if God is both able and willing to prevent good, then where does good come from? I think this would make a good counter to arguments that "God is evil" merely because of the existence of evil or on the basis of God "having created evil". To be consistent, one would have to argue that God is not "completely evil" even if they would still argue that God is not completely benevolent. Or likewise, if God was "completely evil", then he presumably would be able and willing to prevent any good from occurring (which would raise the question as to where good comes from)?