hmmm, 2nd person. Bold choice. Dylan has a new book mostly in 2nd. Dylan is only 80 & has more books than our lazy lord.
Our Lord was able to get the point across more succinctly than Dylan. And without the whiny nasally voice. At least according to Cecil B. De Mille.
With that logic, all laws are discriminatory against those who perpetrate them. Where is the line drawn for the make believe exemption?
Apples and oranges. People are known to have mental illnesses and a long history of there being such thing as dysphoria. There is no doubt there are some people who have gender dysphoria. Religion is strictly a belief system. It isn’t provable, or disprovable.
“Religion is strictly a belief system. It isn’t provable, or disprovable.” Sounds like … oh well, I’ve just about beaten that belief to death.
Can a person not be dissatisfied with their understanding of an existence of God or an understanding of a lack of existence of God? I don't think dysphoria needs to be unique to one or the other in this regard. Say somebody was raised under a given religion; have we not seen people that have expressed discontent with their understanding of said religion...maybe they had genuine feelings that differed from what they were taught how they should feel? Is gender identity something that is provable/disprovable? Ultimately, anybody that claims a gender identity is telling others about their personal belief about themselves. How many people believe in God (or don't believe in God), but also struggle with being able to define God to others? Surely this isn't apples and oranges; perhaps more like apples and pears; but the important aspect here is that they each require one to accept on faith what the other person is presenting to you (even if it is just about themselves). It's the notion of falsifiability and objective identifications where the atheists get tripped up in being consistent. Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
I don’t have a problem with religion, to the extent it doesn’t conflict with the laws values and norms of society. But people of faith should look at it for what it is - faith. Pure belief. A choice to believe. You believe it to be true. Stop trying to compare it to science or other concepts that have varying degrees of provability. Gender, as defined today, is not sex. It is something that people think and feel. You can’t biological prove gender dysphoria. But like other mental illness conditions it is medically accepted to be a real thing. I’ve been pretty vocal about my skepticism on the degree of gender fluidity expressed in todays society. Nonetheless, it is a real thing. Also your assumptions about atheists and their degree of belief in modern gender theory is probably off base. Europe and UK is less religious than us and is going through a retreat in the way they think about the issue medically.
^ It is interesting to note how the U.S. appears to be passing much of Europe ON THE LEFT. Here in NC, folks are screeching about how the state legislature is restricting abortion to twelve weeks, bringing us redneck tobacco farmers in line with most oh-so-enlightened European countries.
The whole point of science and skepticism is to not refuse challenges to a given concept. It's how we arrive at the idea that the existence of God is not universally falsifiable. Science is a process, not a result. Science can just as well be applied to the existence of God as it can to the existence of modern gender (the object of gender identity). Of what benefit is it to remove science from the equation? As a Christian, science is useful to get a more objective idea of which of my beliefs are actually falsifiable and which are not (and whether support for such believes would be considered universally acceptable). In short, science helps to define my faith. I think the same ideas can be applied towards one's view of gender and one's personal gender identity. With respect to the part in bold, in what ways do you consider one's personal religious convictions to be different? Obviously they differ in what people think and feel about, but the notion of "think" and "feel" are just as important here, no? I'm not saying it's not real. I'm saying it seems to be wholly subjective...taken entirely on faith. Not whether it exists or not, but how people identify their personal thoughts and feelings about it. They, too, will have to deal with the challenges of falsifiability. Choosing to have faith in one area but not another is the apparent contradiction that I referred to above. Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
You cannot even come close to the demonstration of God by any means of science. Full stop. There is no scientific evidence to support the existence of God. If you think you can you don’t understand science. Gender dysphoria exists as a condition, just like any other mental illness or condition. The evidence is in the behaviors. Gender is not per se unequivocally provable. But there is evidence in behaviors. There is no concrete scientific evidence of God. The only “evidence” is a lot of people have and continue to believe it.
How do you get this from what I wrote? I literally said that the existence of God is not universally falsifiable. I don't think gender dysphoria is properly considered a mental illness. But the "dysphoria" exists, agreed; that doesn't mean that the gender identity exists...just the discomfort of the topic itself or, perhaps, pressure to identify a certain way. Why can't a similar type of "dysphoria" exist as it pertains to a belief in God? God may or may not exist; gender identity as something distinct from sex may or may not exist. Yes, we all know someone who can tell you that God is real; that gender identity (as something distinct from sex) is real...are their views falsifiable? For example? Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
Wasn’t homosexuality considered a mental illness until noisy homosexuals stormed a high level witch doctor confab and so they had to deleted from the Sears Catalogue of mental illnesses ?
Interesting read on how culture warriors are winning in Europe. Pending: they’re poised to win in Spain as well. Meanwhile, our one culture warrior, DeSantis, can’t even get out of the gate … Time for Conservatives to Fight the Culture Wars and Stop Just Hoping They'll Go Away – The Daily Sceptic
God making himself non-falsifible - dick move. hey, the most important decision of your existence has to be made based on faith. yay!
The analogies get a little confusing, and I would just try to make a distinction. If someone declares that they are a Christian (or a Muslim or Scientologist) the fact that they self-identify as such is established by their own declaration. Even if we are skeptical about their sincerity or motives for claiming such, we generally take people at their word about how they feel and what they believe. Whether someone identifies as Christian is falsifiable, but that's different from whether Christian doctrines and beliefs are themselves falsifiable or not.
If you want to set up a new form of condition in the DMS-5 called religious dysphoria have at it. That really is the substance of your argument. The argument that religious belief is not “falsifiable” is a ridiculous argument. It is true, but completely irrelevant. The prospect that you and everyone else here is just a figment of my imagination and I’m some sort of artificial consciousness is “not falsifiable”. The assertion that invisible flying spaghetti monsters are all around is not falsifiable. It’s a fancy sounding word to try to make religious belief science like.
