Potshots… how do you go about trade marking drinks…? Just askin’…
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Do people need to be atheists to not appreciate Christianity? I agree that some of the remarks are a bit insensitive, but the topic they are posting in probably underscores something they dislike about such an outlook in the first place. There are people who think many things about my outlook on life are daft - or worse - but I just roll with it instead of taking personal offense or shame-wagging them.
Which is a problem unique to organized religion, and exists in no other context. Nope, none at all.
[snark free] This is actually a fantastic point. But again, more of a human universal, rather than religion-specific one.
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Would be a good name for marijuana tincture drinks.
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Back off my product, fella! 
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Well, what the words “appropriate”, “sane” and “abusive” mean, depends on cultural context. I agree with the concept that people might be on the children’s side in this argument while still arguing for corporal punishment in other contexts.
Let me provide an additional data point:
Where I live, there is no such thing as “appropriate” spanking. Spanking is not appropriate. Ever.
However, cultures change. There used to be such a thing as appropriate spanking where I live some time before my birth, maybe as late as the late 70s. An occasional slap in the misbehaving child’s face (as an immediate reaction to bad behaviour, but not as a delayed punishment) was still widely considered appropriate throughout the 80s. A general ban on violence for punishing children was enacted in 1989.
So, viewed from here, it’s just a difference in degree. If we were from the same cultural background, I would now be denouncing you as a bad person who advocates child abuse. But we’re most likely not from the same part of the world, so more tolerance is needed, and I’ll gladly have you as an ally against the really bad guys. And maybe one day someone will manage to convince you or maybe even your whole country that violence is not an appropriate means to raise a child. Ever.
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I had nice parents with relatively benign Christian beliefs. I’m an atheist because I don’t believe in magic. “but magic isn’t real” shuts down most theological discussions after they get over, the “but Jesus magic isn’t really magic” line of argument. What is the best reason to be an atheist? Because magic isn’t real. There is no supernatural in the world. Sorry. I wish it wasn’t true too.
Seeing a psycho talk about beating his kids because MAGIC IS REALLY REAL is just icing to cake.
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I think in many cases the problem comes from reading James Dobson. It’s also a kind of received wisdom in some circles that physical discipline is more effective. I don’t think it’s unusual for parents to worry about their child not listening to what they say, and some children are more difficult than others. Honestly though, I’ve never even considered hitting my children, but we’ve got one very easy-going son and one very strong-willed daughter. We think that’s a good quality, but we try to make sure she considers other people in addition to believing in herself, and we focus on reinforcing positive actions rather than punishing negative ones. It doesn’t always work, but it would probably be a bad sign if it did.
This is disturbing, but I also don’t like when people refuse to distinguish, even in principle, between physical discipline where the intention is to teach the child and beating which has some kind of cathartic effect on the parent (such as in the poem @SpunkyTWS linked to). It may be that neither is advisable and it may be difficult to draw clear lines, but painting everything as degrees of the same thing is not accurate when the intent and effect are quite different. Teaching and shouting both use words to try to influence people, but one much more likely to be caused by and result in psychological damage.
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Not only do people still spank their children where I live. It’s still legal for the school to spank your child in many states in the USA.
When I was in school it seemed like at least 10% of students got paddled by the school, now it’s only .5% in Indiana (My state)
For the record I did spank my child a few times, and I was spanked by my parents a few times. The only way to get spanked to fail to comply with the terms of the original discipline assigned, though now I’m of the opinion that it’s not necessary at all really, and would support a general prohibition on the practice, because those who do it responsibly and not in a way damaging to their children can certainly manage without it, and abusive parents won’t be able to hide in plain sight or claim that they were just doing what everyone else does.
My Ex made her daughters hug each other whenever they would argue or fight, I always that was brilliant and creative. It annoyed them, got them to make up and was cute, all at the same time.
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But aren’t you by doing this ascribing concepts such as “magic” and “supernatural” with something resembling definitive meaning? You can do that, but it seems obviously to help one concretize their epistemology rather to help them reason more effectively. First you need to define what it is, and then react by explaining it away. Other people can and do define the same terms differently than you do - for example Crowley’s “Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.”, or the use of the word magic as a synonym for illusionism. Neither of those imply anything even remotely supernatural.
If a word describes something, the existence of which you find meaningless, it might be more accurate to say that specific examples for or against their existence are also meaningless. If it wasn’t a real concept, there wouldn’t be a word for it! But it could well be a concept which is misunderstood or used in meaningless ways. Sorry, this probably seems like semantic nitpicking to some!
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Paddlin’
Exactly.
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Betsy Streeter cartoon on our door:
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This assault didn’t took place in Calgary. The a-hole said “Calvary” referring to the Calvary Baptist Church (http://www.cbcwarwick.com/). The a-hole used to be associate pastor there (see: http://www.cbcwarwick.com/component/preachit/messages/teacher/eric-dammann)
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Aren’t you conflating two somewhat separate forms of existence there? Sure such gods exist in the minds of their followers but most religions assert a fairly physical sort of existence to their gods. (Those gods do things like setting bushes on fire, shooting lightning bolts, impregnating virgins, etc.)
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Only if you accept proposition 2. 
Or, for that matter, know what it means to be “perfect” at all.
To veer off on a tangent, that argument always vaugely reminds me of Zorn’s lemma. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorn’s_lemma
I don’t even accept proposition 1.
What about God-God?
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Could God make an argument so circular that even He couldn’t believe it?
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People have assumed this for millennia, but over the past century evidence seems to suggest this to be less likely. There really appears to be no idealistic mind/body split, your mind and your ideas can be considered properties of physical existance. Dichotomies such as observer/observed, objective/subjective have mostly collapsed in neat (if, for some, alarming) ways.
Are you sure about that? Do religions make assertions, or do their adherents? And how about the question as to whether a given outlook might be a popular versus initiated understanding? I have done a bit of study of comparative religion, which has led me to the opposite conclusion - that gods are a real human technology of mythical, rather than historical significance. And that most religions do not say otherwise, rather, they seem to confirm this.
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