Is Satan Real

Quote: Nareed

We don't know that.

Yes we do. Can you give me one example of something that has come into being that did not have a cause? Can you even imagine something that has begun to exist that does not have a cause?

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We certainly don't know that.

Do you deny the 2nd law of thermodynamics, an expanding universe, red shift, the Big Bang?

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There is no evidence of any kind of god, less so of a particular god. When you have any, I'm willing to reopen the whole mess. Find some godly toolmarks and prove them to be so. Until then, I won't respond to these wishful-thinking fantasies any more.

Let's not go into the finely tuned universe before we at least are on the same page that the universe had a cause.

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So the happiness of Freedonia can be stated to be....? What? Three rainbows and seven unicorns per person per year?

Good dodge of the question, kinda funny. Do you think there is more crime now, more drug use, more depression, and more suicide than times in the past?

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Wealth is what affords people the time to pursue happiness. You won't be very happy if you spend all your time trying to feed yourself. When you have the leisure of free time to be spent on your interests, on creation, on your values, that's when you can make your own happiness.

So money really can buy happiness.

Quote: FrGamble

Good dodge of the question, kinda funny. Do you think there is more crime now, more drug use, more depression, and more suicide than times in the past?

I don't know.

Do you?

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So money really can buy happiness.

Where did I say that?

You know the advantage the rich have over the poor when facing life's problems? the rich know more money is not the answer.

Quote: Nareed

I don't know.

Do you?

I don't know either but from what I hear and see it seems like people were happier in the past. Not to long ago I was confronted by two police officers. One of them had tears in his eyes. He said, "Father, I've been a police officer for almost 25 years. When I first started this job our entire precinct would get one or two calls a month about someone who threatened, attempted, or did take their life. Now, not a single day goes by that I don't myself have to respond to one of these cases." He looked right at me and asked, "What is wrong with the world?" All I could do at that point was give him a big hug.

What do you think? If you had to guess from your feel of things are people happier today than they were 100 years ago?

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Where did I say that?

You know the advantage the rich have over the poor when facing life's problems? the rich know more money is not the answer.

Yet apparently you need money to have leisure and you need leisure to have happiness? I think if you took away the money of the rich their answers would disappear with it.

Of COURSE people are happier now, what
a question. Up until 1900, do you know what
the biggest killer of humanity was throughout
our history? Infant mortality! More humans died
before the age of 5 than died after that age.

Before 1900, do you know what the biggest
killer of women was? Childbirth! Older men
didn't marry young girls because they were
perverts, a young woman had a better chance
of living thru having a baby, and having kids was
very important. They took care of you when
you got old because there was no such thing
as welfare.

Do you know it was common for people to literally
work themselves to death? 95% of the people
lived on farms where everything was done by
hand, from sunrise till sunset. And if you had a
bad year, there's a chance you would starve to death.

Get the picture? Throw in no medicine at all, no hope
for getting better if your or one of your kids got
seriously ill, and you have very few happy people.
You have grim survivors.

Quote: FrGamble

Not to long ago I was confronted by two police officers.

Not too long ago it was extremely unusual for police officers to barge into a home with guns drawn, shooting first and never asking questions. Today it's common place.

Then, too, 25 years ago I could be beaten up or killed with impunity on any street, and cops like your pals would do little but crack offensive jokes about it.

What do you think?

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Yet apparently you need money to have leisure and you need leisure to have happiness? I think if you took away the money of the rich their answers would disappear with it.

Let's try something. Find a nice, deserted island without any edible vegetation and no prey that's easy to catch. Stay there for two weeks without as much as a paper clip or a stitch of clothing. If you come back alive from experiencing this kind of poverty, without even a tiny fraction of the intellectual and material wealth accumulated by humanity in 30,000 years, then you can tell me how happy you were about it.

Odds are you'd starve or get eaten (depending on available predators), if illness doesn't take you first, or exposure doesn't beat illness to the punch.

I don't know about you, but I feel so much happier just knowing the wealth exists that lets me eat regularly, have access to shelter, medicine, tools and all those other things you denigrate so readily.

Quote: Nareed

Then, too, 25 years ago I could be beaten up or killed with impunity on any street, and cops like your pals would do little but crack offensive jokes about it..

I remember in the 60's when Miranda
went into effect. Law enforcement had
a collective cow. No more rubber hoses,
no more arresting anybody they felt like
for no reason at all. The cops said it would
turn the country into the Wild West. It
didn't.

I don't know what infant morality rates have to do with happiness any more than today's obesity rates do. People died more often and earlier in the past, does that equate to more happiness or less. The recent push for assisted suicide might seem to lead one to conclude that people wish modern medicine didn't keep them alive as long as we can today?

The violence we see from police, the rise in crime, terrorism, suicide, murder, drug use seem to me to indicate that we not necessarily be more happy than in ages past, but as Nareed has already admitted I too am not sure. I know for a fact the more we move away from God the worse society will become. I also strongly he more we think that wealth is a prerequisite for happiness the more confused we sound about true happiness. Yes we can use extreme examples of deserted islands to try to make a point, but in general when we have enough of the essentials, food, shelter, clothing, and love we can be happier than those who might live in mansions, have designer clothes, and sumptuous food.

What determines our happiness if it is not dependent completely on materialistic things?

Quote: FrGamble

I don't know what infant morality rates have to do with happiness

So a woman has 8 kids and 4 of them
die before the age of 5. You think this
makes people happy? Are you serious?

Are you seriously asking if kids dying makes people happy? That is crazy, of course not. Having kids however does make people happy and having four kids who are healthy is a source of happiness.

You really have no understanding of how hard life
was, do you. Nobody worried about being happy
or even thought about it. What they worried
about was surviving, was getting through another
year without starving to death or dying from an
infectious disease. Happiness is a modern condition.

When you see photos of people taken in the 1800's,
they are almost never smiling, you know why? If you smiled,
people might take you for a frivolous person, somebody
who didn't take life seriously. Because even then, almost
modern times, life was still taken very seriously.

If this pic was taken today, every one of these people
would be smiling.