Sayonara

FDUkd5os4xk Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged To use the youtube tags: youtubeVideoID You need the YouTube video ID from either the URL of the video, or the EMBED code that YouTube generates for it.

I laughed until it hurt

Good for you. Any plans to discuss the topic?

False dichotomy.

Option 2 I think.

Thanks - I have been looking for a new signature!

Keep the random semi-philosophical outbursts away from the physics threads please.

So you'd have us believe. Ha, right. That's just a hypothesis. Show us the evidence! Can't you do that with the use of Redundant this bit. Occam's razor my friend! Emphasis mine. "Merely" only applies if you don't come up with anything to go between the quotes. Criticism requires solid cohesive thought. You can't know something is wrong by comparing it to "nothing". The ones we'd have in a debate competition, i.e. not on a web forum. Which would be funny, but never mind... Yeah, we tried that. Which we like. It's less confrontational because it's less read. People specifically look for direct responses to their own posts and skim the paragraph-posts which don't seem to be aimed at anyone in particular. No. Or do I? Is this post just satire? LIES! Comedy misquote option. You had to bring politics into it didn't you? Shut it.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh. That explains things. I am less inclined to think that Mr Skeptic is quite quite mad now. I generally agree with much of the last few posts from the both of you.

You are quite right, I have missed a point here. But it is not the one you point out. Stating that we acknowledge the right of a person to hold a belief does not make any statement about how reasonable we ourselves find that belief to be. Nor does it mean that actions carried out on the basis of that belief must be reasonable, just because the believer finds them to be so. If this were in fact the case, there would be little legal recourse against people who - for example - find it religiously acceptable to throw stones at adulterers. Whereas in the real world of course, that belief is not a defence against charges of assault. If Mr Skeptic wants to make the case that a person's reasonable belief extends to other people without that belief excusing any actions that come from it, then he must actually make the case. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged You have made a mistake in your reasoning. The Neumanns did not "act on their belief in god" when they allowed Kara to die. They acted on their belief that only prayer can heal and that medicine has no effect, which is patently wrong.

It's always snowing somewhere!

Have you never seen a dog that's eaten tomorrow's ham?

I would have thought that is not fast enough.

Well it IS still January.

That would be horribly damaging to everything living in your yard, and probably the land around it as well. Have you considered looking for a local concrete recycler? It's becoming a lot more common to recycle it these days: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_recycling

Believing in something and acting on that belief are not the same thing, so the requirement you stipulate there is false. If there is no cure and she somehow gets cured, then presumably there would be some medical staff who would call that miraculous. Although whether or not they mean a "miracle" in the sense of divine intervention is of course entirely up to their own individual imaginations. I suspect that given the chance, Kara would take good old insulin over alleged magic. One would assume that given the necessary conditions for a trial to even be brought, much less concluded in favour of the prosecution, that the ones being jailed would be the ones who deserved it. I don't "plan" to do anything. This is your proposal, not mine. You raised it so that you could disagree with it.

Pmb is actually Pete. For some reason he has been using an older account which was never deleted. The Pmb account has now been merged into Pete's account and he has decided not to leave after all. So any posts quoted as "Pmb" now show as being posted by the user Pete.

Is that supposed to be an arrow in the thread title, or a "greater than" symbol? Actual sentences would help North.

Are you high?

It's not just "mutation" that causes species to adapt. And from reading your first post it is clear that you don't understand what a mutation is in the evolutionary sense. That likely goes some way to explaining your confusion. It's beyond the scope of a discussion forum to teach you evolutionary theory from the ground up, so maybe you could give us a pointer by telling us what your current understanding is?

You need to read the book really.

You're right, it doesn't happen. And you know what? Nobody says it does. Hence all you have there is one big fat strawman.

Yes, it is. Their church teaches them that only prayer can heal. This is a patent falsehood and there must have been a point before they became members of the church when they did not hold this belief, much less allow it to override their common sense or knowledge of medical science. It will be interesting to see if any other member of the church is called as a witness or co-defendant. No. This is a false premise, and as you know a false premise gives a faulty argument. If I grant that other people can believe in a god with particular abilities, the belief in those abilities is for them to hold - it does not extend to my belief. It does not follow. I have only granted that they may choose to hold that belief if that is what they wish. I have not magically transmuted that belief into a rational and well-informed basis for making decisions that affect people's lives. This is not strictly true. They are perfectly entitled to hold those beliefs but that in itself does not grant them the privilege of disregarding the law, nor does it somehow undo all of the other working knowledge they have of the world which screams at them "medicine saves dozens of children every second". You are equivocating reasonable acts with acts that are commensurate with their beliefs. The two are not the same thing. I thought we were done with this spurious notion of forcing diagnosis and treatment on people. But since you asked, such a law would save many people who would otherwise have died. I'm sorry, I don't see the relevance Consider the situation. You have an 11 year old girl, 11, who has type-1 diabetes and does not know it. As far as she is concerned she just feels a bit poorly. Her parents maintain a religiously-centred household which eschews medicine in favour of prayer, and that is the environment she has been brought up in. If you had to pick the major contributing factor for her not asking to go to hospital, and we are just assuming she didn't, what would it be? Would it be that she didn't really mind dying on the floor while her parents came to their senses? I suspect not. I could not disagree more regarding the aunt. Any adult should hold themselves responsible for summoning medical aid on behalf of a child when their guardians have so blatantly and visibly failed to do so themselves. It is 'the place' of all adults to safeguard the lives of children. And where do you stand on 'individuals' who have their ability to exercise that responsibility obstructed by the very people whose charge they are in? How does your opinion change in the case of 'individuals' who are slipping into a coma the nature of which severely impedes those faculties they require in order to summon help? Physically, there probably is no such line that can be drawn. But legally there is, and the Neumanns have fallen foul of it. As far as this case goes, it only matters in a visceral sense. Regardless of what Kara wanted her parents are legally responsible for her welfare.

By definition, an omnipotent god is more "powerful" than medical staff. However that is not the issue. The issue is whether or not one can reasonably expect that repeatedly asking god to cure a serious illness is likely to be as successful as the proper medical procedure, on a comparable number of occasions. This is two separate questions. One: are you saying that it is unreasonable for people to believe in god? No, of course not. Two: are you saying people who believe in god are legally liable for such belief? Not exactly. They are legally liable for the consequences of any actions which they carry out which are based in that belief. Just as they are liable for the consequences of actions they carry out which are not based in that belief. You do not get to disavow responsibility for your actions by saying "I thought God would make it all better". As iNow said, "it's amazing how quickly people relinquish their faith when reality sets in". The key word there is reality. The fact that the Neumanns finally called 911 will actually work against them in court because it demonstrates that when they actually confronted the reality of the situation, they knew precisely who they should turn to for help. So any appeal to the tenets of religious belief in their defence will be severely undermined. The aunt is not so much "deciding" about medical treatment as alerting other responsible parties when she perceives that the appropriate adults have not done so. If you were walking through a park and saw a child with a broken leg trapped under a bicycle, and the parents nearby taking no notice, you would phone for an ambulance. You would not wring your hands and hop from one foot to the other debating whether or not you had the right to decide about that child's medical treatment. Kara's wishes will not be relevant in the courtroom because the parents had a legal responsibility to maintain the welfare of their child, and it is their negligence in shouldering that responsibility which they are being tried for. The culpability of the parents in Kara's death will be determined by whether or not they could have reasonably foreseen the consequences of praying for a solution instead of seeking medical assistance. You keep mentioning the rights of the child to choose. However you are also defending the rights of the parents to choose for them. What about the scenarios where you can't have it both ways? What if the child wants to be cured of leukaemia by being catapulted into an Arctic crevasse? Does their own personal wish trump that of the parents? I don't think you have thought this through at all. Giving someone a right always damages someone else's right. You argue as if you are just trying to protect everyone's rights, even though the content of your arguments invariably shows that this is not possible. I don't understand what your objective is. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Reading back I am partly responsible anyway, because I earlier discussed the idea of "treatment after circumventing the parents" without pointing out that it was distinct from my original position. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged As insane_alien pointed out in the case of the Neumanns, they definitely would have realised that something was seriously wrong with their daughter. Of course, not all illnesses present such obvious symptoms, and any prosecution for negligence would - like any other court case - be brought only in the light of the facts of the individual case. However if you are prosecuting someone for negligence because they prayed instead of seeking medical advice, then one has to assume that there was a certain level of recognition of a threat to life, otherwise they would not have been praying in the first place. Although there may also be sects who pray to god to get rid of colds and grazes. Nothing would surprise me at this point.

Bear in mind there is a difference between choosing who you can be attracted to, and choosing who you will be sleeping with on a particular occasion.