Justin Thomas

@BeaLawson27 @Garnet_2203 Show me how it differs in any meaningful way. The point of both is to end a life.

@Footofthepath @Garnet_2203 I see. You think murder is a better choice than legal assisted suicide. You should up your meds.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. My mother died of lung cancer. Almost a full year of constant pain and suffering. We couldn’t use MAID not because she didn’t deserve that choice, but because she also had dementia and wasn’t legally allowed to consent. We had the conversation before she got sick she was clear. If she ever faced a terminal illness, she would choose MAID. But dementia took that choice away from her. Our only option was palliative care. And because it was during COVID, we were told we wouldn’t be able to be with her in her final moments if she stayed in hospital. So I brought her home and cared for with the support of the palliative care nursing team. There were ambulance calls when her blood sugar spiralled out of control. Pain medication didn’t work. Prednisone made things worse. In the end it was pure suffering. So she suffered. Bedsores. Pain. The slow, cruel reality of a terminal illness. People who haven’t lived this don’t understand what they’re taking away. These aren’t people choosing death over life they’re choosing peace over prolonged suffering. MAID is compassion.

@LatFilosof @Galcondude And they're dependent. What's your point?

@Footofthepath @Galcondude Energy and mass is interchangeable.

Arguably, premise 1 isnt true. It’s not clear that if every element has property X, the set has property X. The set in itself can be uncaused while all the elements of set are caused. The universe can be the set of all caused things while not being caused. Fallacy of composition.

@Brilliand__ Thank you for defining dependence in case anyone was confused, I guess? Again "the universe" is a label for the set of all dependent things. It doesn't attain independence by virtue of inheritance as it doesn't have separate ontology. That's reification.

@Footofthepath It follows therefore that if you combine something dependent with what it's dependent on into a single object - the original object's property of being dependent is not inherited (because that property transforms into "independent").

@Brilliand__ The "what" isn't strictly relevant to the original syllogism and wasn't challenged by OP. He's claiming the syllogism commits a composition fallacy and I'm showing that it doesn't apply here.

@Footofthepath Dependent on what? I think you're perceiving "dependent" as "dependent on something that is not itself dependent on anything". But, what we learn from our observations is that generally, things are dependent on something else that it itself dependent.

@Galcondude @LatFilosof The first law describes how energy behaves, not its ontological status. We observe energy as a property of physical objects ie. magnetism, kinetic energy, temperature etc. which are themselves contingent.

@Footofthepath @LatFilosof So what is energy contingent upon? The first law of thermodynamics would indicate nothing.

@Brilliand__ Let me put this a little more plainly; contingency is an ontological statement about x, y or z. "This exists. It doesn't need to but it can". That's not a physical property like mass or temperature. The elements in the set we call "the universe" are symmetrical in this regard.

@Footofthepath You've gotta be careful about carrying properties over. Many properties simply don't carry over from elements of the set to the entire set. (Which is his point.)

@Brilliand__ @LatFilosof Or maybe it's a bad argument predicated on a reification fallacy. Who's to say?

@Footofthepath @LatFilosof I daresay you're rather badly misunderstanding his argument.

@Samdrow5 @LatFilosof No. It was a response to a specific argument.

@Footofthepath @LatFilosof Did you just deny logic and philosophy as a discipline?

@LatFilosof The set that you've labeled "the universe" is dependent upon its elements just as all sets depend upon what they collect. To argue otherwise is to redefine what is meant by "set" to begin with.

anything else, yet still contain elements that are dependent on there being a set, and this set being the universe. This argument doesn’t establish a cause for the universe, only a dependency relationship. How best to describe the set is a completely different question.

@LatFilosof And I'll add that insofar as you've identified "the universe" as the set which includes all dependent things you have to explain how any given set that exists can be independent of its elements. Even a set of necessary elements is dependent on said elements.

@LatFilosof You're also ironically reifying "the universe" here as if it's a concrete thing in itself which it is plainly not true. Absent the things that we observe "the universe" has no ontology of its own any more than New York City exists absent people, buildings, laws, etc.

@heymike33 @LatFilosof I'd question whether "nothing" is actually possible given that the act of imagination presupposes an observer. Infinite regress rests solely on imagination whereas contingency arguments rest on empirical observation. If we want to move beyond idle fancies we need a metric.

@Footofthepath @LatFilosof Imagination at least frames the possible things that can be said about it: from nothing, an infinite regress, or a first cause that is itself uncaused.

@CailinasEirinn @gilmcgowan Why don't you take care of it for him? It's "dignified" and "compassionate", right? You love him? It's the right thing to do? Then what's stopping you?

My son is terminally ill and how DARE you take away his right to MAID??? I’ll got to me last day taking you down. Fuck you. @gilmcgowan

@BanjoAtheist "skepticism" seems to mean "asking questions that have been answered for millennia and acting smug when you can't understand the answer."

The greatest hoodwinker line in history. Sorry, Christian pals, but “Jesus died for us” is a real problem.

@prairiecentrist @The_Syrups Nobody's stopping you.

@prairiecentrist She's the premier. You don't like democracy?

@more_amalek On top of that if we remove persecution from the equation how does she explain Christianity conquering Rome? Rome crushed many false messiahs and incorporated every other religion into their pantheon. What made Christianity different?

@more_amalek Saint Justin Martyr wrote letters to the emperor asking for the persecution to end. He was martyred for his efforts. At no point did the emperor respond "We're not persecuting you". He had the saint killed.

In this clip, Prof. Candida Moss explains early Christians were not under constant persecution. Some were killed, often for breaking laws rather than belief. The “martyr” idea is messy, and the persecution narrative is exaggerated and still used politically today. Many cases resemble the ancient version of suicide by cop.