MonDie

Your points don't quite hit the mark. How can the militia be regulated if it exists independently of regulation? In order to regulate the militia, you must have requirements, and of course anybody who fails to meet these requirements must be excluded. How is this possible if every citizen, each being the subject of this unalienable right, is automatically included? I'm done arguing for this post, but here is more from Cornell on the individual/collective right distinction. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/billofrights The bolding is mine. Preamble of the US Constitution - Wikipedia "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

If God is good, and he provided that meaning, then that meaning must be good. If God made Satan to be bad, then it would show that God is bad. But he doesn't give Satan a choice. Satan is just stuck evil because God made him to be evil because God is evil. In other words, God willed that hell exist (without him) so that all the bad people could be tortured infinitely for finite crimes, and accomplishes this by taking away our freedom to be saved once we're dead, thereby forcing us to be evil eternally and justifying our infinite punishment. That sounds extra loving. I think my argument can be reduced a bit. God is supposedly loving, and many Christians excuse evil by claiming that God had to give us free will (for some reason). To defend eternal evil, however, they have to explain why God had to both (a) give it that freedom, then (b) take that freedom away. It's arguable that even A alone precludes God's loving nature, and why A was necessary is even more questionable once we learn that B is also possible, that Satan was capable of existing without that freedom in the first place. In retrospect, I guess it doesn't prove 8 as solidly as I thought, but it makes avoiding 8 extra, extra, extra difficult for the apologist.

There is no clear line between the natural versus the artificial. If the artificial is made or influenced by man, then many things are partially natural and partially artificial. If it has to do with natural versus unnatural behaviour, even this is unclear. Even behaviours that weren't specifically selected for by natural selection, such as ideas arrived at through the intellect, are still underpinned by things that were selected for by nature, namely intellect. One is tempted by a slippery slope concluding that everything we do is really just a different expression of our nature, for it is not obvious where the line is drawn or whether there even is a dichotomy between the natural and the artificial.

I found this search for supreme court rulings on the Cornell Law website. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/search/ Here's a pretty recent one. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html It doesn't seem consistent to me. If only a subset of men have this "proper discipline", how can the militia simultaneously include all men and require proper discipline? The only reasonable conclusion is it's a very high standard of what constitutes "physically capable".

Alas, they're also around 77% of homicide victims. https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_02.html https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_02.html https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-2 Okay, let's start simple. One person is hostile toward another. In situation A they're both armed, and in situation B neither is armed. You mostly argue that efforts toward B will fail to achieve B and become counterproductive. This may be difficult to consistently defend, for you must sink every possible approach to achieving B. I only said that B, if it's achievable, would be better than A. If you can sink that, you'll have done some serious damage. The closest you came to attacking this position was here. "That is in theory their dominant, most common legitimate use in self defense - the trouble that never happens."

Free will must be framed probabilistically. If the probability of a choice equals zero or one, that's determinism and does nothing to absolve God of blame, and furthermore I would not call it "free will". Maybe the likelihood of changing their mind was low, but then, given an eternity to make the other choice, they must eventually do so.

I don't understand the fear of confiscation. Assuming everybody is successfuly disarmed, then nobody has the upperhand. Even if it weren't successful, only the non-law-abiding criminals would have guns, which would be the complete opposite of a powerful government. If it could be done successfuly, I think that would be great. Guns can only protect you from other guns (and even that is in question), not from drones or tanks, and pepper spray will beat muscle every time. We can always keep guns readily distributable in case of an invasion. The real threat that we face is each other, and specifically, those of us who, whether they admit it or not, have a power fetish. For those feminists, guess which sex overwhelming (95% of the time) is the one using a gun to "justifiably" kill somebody. It's table four. http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable15.pdf

To rebel he must have free will, and specifically, the freedom to accept or reject God. If he can't accept God once again, then he no longer has that freedom specifically, despite necessarily having it at one point. If we redefine "free will" as that particular freedom, then the integrity of the argument is spared.You are framing free will as circumstantial, that is some freedoms are only available under certain circumstances. Satan had these circumstances at one point. Tell me who withholds these circumstances from Satan, and who withholds these cirvumstances from them as well... for all of eternity.

The slaves only need guns if the slave owners have guns. If the slave owners have guns, they may rebel against the slavery themselves. It's an arms race. The main reason we have guns is to protect us from other guns. Perhaps if we start providing alternatives now, like by subsidizing security systems, a virtuous cycle will gradually occur.

The purpose of my car is to protect me from other cars. I used to bicycle.

Atheist Is there some kind of god? - No / I don't know Christian Theist Is there some kind of god? - yes - Did he inspire The Bible? - yes - Was he incarnated as Jesus to take away your sins? - yes - Does he answer your prayers or talk to you? - yes Oddly enough, you don't get a whole lot of inbetween.

Amanda Palmer - Runs in the Family

Read the NG article. In short, maybe but probably not but we're going to check for radio signals just in case.

Haha! Thank you for reminding me. Things are weird right now, but I must try harder.

I found FBI data to suplement this. Firstly, it appears to be justifiable homicides by private citizens only, otherwise it would be more than double. https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_15_justifiable_homicide_by_weapon_private_citizen_2008-2012.xls Secondly, of the homicides where it's known, about 22% are strangers. About 44-45% of homicides are "unknown relationship" in these graphs, but even if we assume all of those were strangers, it's still only 57%, 10% below the 67% of "justifiable" homicide victims who were strangers. https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expandhomicidemain The point is that a lot of these people who were "justifiably" killed probably weren't out to kill.

My article appears to be about epigenetic differences. Sorry sir.

Actually, the most blatant (sexual) harassment (hate) I faced was probably about percieved sexual deviance. It all gets so confusing. I just kept thinking "Don't run me over!"

I'm more agnostic than atheist, irreligious agnostic, but I'm not giving any arguments that could be used to defend Christianity. I know from experience that highly religious/spiritual people fear us, and it's probably because of religion. I'm not sure about the person(s) who intimidated me etc. Maybe fear and hate are connected, but regardless I would much rather be hated than feared. I don't support religion, however closed-minded that may seem. It would seem self-defeating to do so.

$750 will cover maybe 6-7 therapy sessions, unless you have a low deductible and your insurance covers it. I haven't looked into it much yet. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_155046.html

Hello, PuppyPower. I don't see the relevance of anything you said. You appear to be soapboxing on my thread. There's also a problem with the prophecies if Satan has free will, which he should if he rebelled. I did read your post. edit: I think he's saying Satan is a force rather than a conscious entity. My next question is why I can't be saved once I'm in hell. What's stopping me?

YdoaPs' article's data came from here. http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable15.pdf For the five-year period, there were 103,000 self-protection instances involving a firearm (with a subset of 1,108 leading to a "justifiable" homicide). 103,000 is roughly double the number of criminal homicides (42,419). However there are also instances wherein a criminal uses a gun but does not kill the victim. note: Are those criminal homicides with guns only? It should be closer to 80,000 for a rate of ~16,000 per year. Another question is whether the justifiable homicides actually prevented a murder, and likewise for those "self-protection bevahiors" in general. Table three tells us the relationships of the killed persons to the justifiable killers. If we exclude "Unknown Relationship", 67% were strangers and another 19% were acquiantances.

I'm reluctant to use my SFN account to post religious threads, but this counterapologetics argument is actually clever and fun. I'm not a philosophy student, so feel free to refine the way in which it is stated. Honestly I think it's a lot simpler than this format makes it out to be. 1) Satan had free will, for he rebelled. 2) Satan exists eternally, for he tortures us eternally. 3) If 2 but not 1, Satan was made to torture us by outside influences (i.e. God). 4) If 1&2 and Satan has free will eternally (E), he must inevitably be saved. 5) If 1&2 but Satan remains evil eternally, then Satan at some point irrevocably loses free will (not E). 6) If Satan loses free will eternally (5), then either God took it away from him or is at least failing to return it to him. 7) Either Satan never had free will (not 1), he has or had it but loses it (5), or he retains it eternally but is eventually saved (4). Under all possibilities, it's up to God whether we're tortured eternally. 8) From 7, God is not loving if we're tortured eternally. It can be Satan's free will, my free will in hell, whatever. There's this regress of who took my free will away and who is withholding their free will, which inevitably leads back to God. It makes it impossible for evil to persist eternally.

Wow, some music video!

Amanda Palmer - The Killing Type

It's all been said already. Another option is taking ballistic fingerprints of all guns sold so that bullets can be traced to shooters. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_fingerprinting