Is it disrespectful to sit during the Pledge?

[Antityranicals]

Except we know what the starting cause was. It's called the Big Bang.

And it was literally postulated by a Catholic Priest.

Radioactive decay is a better example of an event without a clear cause, since Old Earth Creationists who believe in the Big Band and evolution generally state God caused the Big Bang or something along those lines.

Radioactive decay happens because of electromagnetic forces overcoming the strong nuclear forces holding atoms together. Both of these forces were created as time was began by God.

[Fahran]

We have gone to the moon and beyond and you sit here with the chutzpah to ask that question?

It's trickier than you think especially given the philosophical ramifications of many of the arguments post-modernists make.

[Antityranicals]

The Big Bang was postulated by a Catholic priest, and it most likely did happen. But the Big Bang is an event, and events are contingent, and as a result require a cause. The Big Bang isn't the starting cause. It may have been the second cause, but the first cause was non-contingent, and therefore God.

EDIT: In fact, the Big Bang Theory proves very well that there must have been a God. If the universe had always existed, it would be harder to make the case that it requires a cause. But since the universe started with a Big Bang, it must have been caused, and therefore there is a God.

"We don't know why this happened ergo God is real" is really shit logic.

No, we don't necessarily know that God directly caused the Big Bang, what we know is that the Big Bang was caused by something. But what we do know is that something either requires a cause, or it is God, and if it requires a cause, eventually, we'll get to a point when an non-contingent reality, namely, God, is required.

[Vassenor]

"We don't know why this happened ergo God is real" is really shit logic.

No, we don't necessarily know that God directly caused the Big Bang, what we know is that the Big Bang was caused by something. But what we do know is that something either requires a cause, or it is God, and if it requires a cause, eventually, we'll get to a point when an non-contingent reality, namely, God, is required.

Or we won't, because God isn't real.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

The Big Bang was postulated by a Catholic priest, and it most likely did happen. But the Big Bang is an event, and events are contingent, and as a result require a cause. The Big Bang isn't the starting cause. It may have been the second cause, but the first cause was non-contingent, and therefore God.

EDIT: In fact, the Big Bang Theory proves very well that there must have been a God. If the universe had always existed, it would be harder to make the case that it requires a cause. But since the universe started with a Big Bang, it must have been caused, and therefore there is a God.

"We don't know why this happened ergo God is real" is really shit logic.

Given the estimated size of the universe and the fact (yes people it's a fact that can be demonstrated without delving into divination) that the Abrahamitic deity has only been demonstrated in pre-10th century CE literary recordings on one single planet in the entirety of the universe...
I can say with limes to 100% certainty that the Abrahamitic deity is in fact not universal.
Now back to freedom of speech.

[Czechoslovakia and Zakarpatia]

As long as you are unable to prove God's existence using the scientific method, then he is nothing more than a fairytale myth concocted back when humans didn't know any better than to invent deities to explain their world.

Can you prove the accuracy of the scientific method with the scientific method? If not, how can you?

The scientific method is reliable:
https://science.howstuffworks.com/innov ... ethod9.htm
https://explorable.com/validity-and-reliability

And the process of the scientific method is very simple:
Step 1: Make an observation or observations.
Step 2: Ask questions about the observations and gather information.
Step 3: Form a hypothesis — a tentative description of what's been observed, and make predictions based on that hypothesis.
Step 4: Test the hypothesis and predictions in an experiment that can be reproduced.
Step 5: Analyze the data and draw conclusions; accept or reject the hypothesis or modify the hypothesis if necessary.
Step 6: Reproduce the experiment until there are no discrepancies between observations and theory.

There are some caveats, howewer:
The hypothesis must be testable and falsifiable. Falsifiable means that there must be a possible negative answer to the hypothesis (Since Christians claim that the existence of God or his creation of the Earth is not falsifiable, then its not science, and is thus pseudoscientific).

In addition, research must involve deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is the process of using true premises to reach a logical true conclusion while inductive reasoning takes the opposite approach.

Then, an experiment should include a dependent variable (which does not change) and an independent variable (which does change).
Finally, an experiment should include an experimental group and a control group. The control group is what the experimental group is compared against.

That is how we proven the Earth is round, through empirical observation, data analysis, measurement, experimentation, evaluation, and of course, peer review. Now, once again, you are perfectly welcome to use science yourself to prove the existence of gods or magic. After all, the burden of proof is on you since you compared God's existence to the fact the Earth is round without providing evidence.

[Czechoslovakia and Zakarpatia]

"We don't know why this happened ergo God is real" is really shit logic.

No, we don't necessarily know that God directly caused the Big Bang, what we know is that the Big Bang was caused by something. But what we do know is that something either requires a cause, or it is God, and if it requires a cause, eventually, we'll get to a point when an non-contingent reality, namely, God, is required.

Goddidit!

[San Montalbano]

No, we don't necessarily know that God directly caused the Big Bang, what we know is that the Big Bang was caused by something. But what we do know is that something either requires a cause, or it is God, and if it requires a cause, eventually, we'll get to a point when an non-contingent reality, namely, God, is required.

Goddidit!

Geeze you dont need to belittle to make your point.

[Czechoslovakia and Zakarpatia]

Goddidit!

Geeze you dont need to belittle to make your point.

When one's arguments essentially boil down to "Goddidit!", then it can be dismissed with prejudice.

[San Montalbano]

Geeze you dont need to belittle to make your point.

When one's arguments essentially boil down to "Goddidit!", then it can be dismissed with prejudice.

So your prejudice too, interesting.

[Czechoslovakia and Zakarpatia]

When one's arguments essentially boil down to "Goddidit!", then it can be dismissed with prejudice.

So your prejudice too, interesting.

"Dismissed with prejudice" means striking down an argument for good and not reopening it for further discussion.

[Nagatar Karumuttu Chettiar]

In India, it's illegal to sit during the national anthem before a movie.

[Salandriagado]

So despite making explicit reference to the Abrahamic God it's not Christian?

The Pledge does not read, "One nation, under the God of Abraham." It reads, "One nation, under God." This is the God which actually exists, whoever's God he may be. The pledge makes no statement on which God actually does exists, only that one does exist, which everyone should realize.

There is no reasonable reason to believe that any deity exists, and a whole lot of reasons to believe otherwise.

[Salandriagado]

As long as you are unable to prove God's existence using the scientific method, then he is nothing more than a fairytale myth concocted back when humans didn't know any better than to invent deities to explain their world.

Can you prove the accuracy of the scientific method with the scientific method? If not, how can you?

No (because science doesn't do proof, it does evidence), but you can experimentally validate it. You can also proceed by pure logic to establish the validity of most of the important steps.

[Salandriagado]

Prove them wrong then.

Happily. All contingent realities have a cause.

You haven't defined any of those words, and your statement is either vacuous or false, depending on how you define them.

In order for there to be something instead of nothing, there must have been starting cause.

This is demonstrably false.

However, since this starting cause is the starting cause, it cannot have a cause, because nothing predates it. Therefore, this starting cause must be a non-contingent reality. The ultimate definition of God is "a non-contingent reality".

This definition has absolutely nothing to do with any definition that anybody has ever used for the word "god".

Therefore, this starting cause must be God. This simple proof doesn't tell you anything about God, simply that there is one.

This isn't a proof: it's bullshit dressed up as a proof.

[Czechoslovakia and Zakarpatia]

Happily. All contingent realities have a cause.

You haven't defined any of those words, and your statement is either vacuous or false, depending on how you define them.

In order for there to be something instead of nothing, there must have been starting cause.

This is demonstrably false.

However, since this starting cause is the starting cause, it cannot have a cause, because nothing predates it. Therefore, this starting cause must be a non-contingent reality. The ultimate definition of God is "a non-contingent reality".

This definition has absolutely nothing to do with any definition that anybody has ever used for the word "god".

Therefore, this starting cause must be God. This simple proof doesn't tell you anything about God, simply that there is one.

This isn't a proof: it's bullshit dressed up as a proof.

The "first cause" argument also suffers from several holes as the below text shows:

Special Pleading
"A commonly-raised objection to this argument is that it suffers from special pleading. While everything in the universe is assumed to have a cause, God is free from this requirement. However, while some phrasings of the argument may state that "everything has a cause" as one of the premises (thus contradicting the conclusion of the existence of an uncaused cause), there are also many versions that explicitly or implicitly allow for non-beginning or necessary entities not to have a cause. In the end, the point of the premises is to suggest that reality is a causally-connected whole and that all causal chains originate from a single point, posited to be God. That many people using this argument would consider God exempt from various requirements is a foregone conclusion, but citing "special pleading" because finite causal chains are said to have an uncaused beginning is hardly a convincing objection.

Effect without cause
Most philosophers believe that every effect has a cause, but David Hume critiqued this. Hume came from a tradition that viewed all knowledge as either a priori (from reason) or a posteriori (from experience). From reason alone, it is possible to conceive of an effect without a cause, Hume argued, although others have questioned this and also argued whether conceiving something means it is possible. Based on experience alone, our notion of cause and effect is just based on habitually observing one thing following another, and there's certainly no element of necessity when we observe cause and effect in the world; Hume's criticism of inductive reasoning implied that even if we observe cause and effect repeatedly, we cannot infer that throughout the universe every effect must necessarily have a cause.

Multiple causes
Finally, there is nothing in the argument to rule out the existence of multiple first causes. This can be seen by realizing that for any directed acyclic graph which represents causation in a set of events or entities, the first cause is any vertex that has zero incoming edges. This means that the argument can just as well be used to argue for polytheism.

Radioactive decay
Through modern science, specifically physics, natural phenomena have been discovered whose causes have not yet been discerned or are non-existent. The best known example is radioactive decay. Although decay follows statistical laws and it's possible to predict the amount of a radioactive substance that will decay over a period of time, it is impossible — according to our current understanding of physics — to predict when a specific atom will disintegrate. The spontaneous disintegration of radioactive nuclei is stochastic and might be uncaused, providing an arguable counterexample to the assumption that everything must have a cause. An objection to this counterexample is that knowledge regarding such phenomena is limited and there may be an underlying but presently unknown cause. However, if the causal status of radioactive decay is unknown then the truth of the premise that 'everything has a cause' is indeterminate rather than false. In either case, the first cause argument is rendered ineffective. Another objection is that only the timing of decay events do not appear to have a cause, whereas a spontaneous decay is the release of energy previously stored, so that the storage event was the cause.

Virtual particles
Another counterexample is the spontaneous generation of virtual particles, which randomly appear even in complete vacuum. These particles are responsible for the Casimir effect and Hawking radiation. The release of such radiation comes in the form of gamma rays, which we now know from experiment are simply a very energetic form of light at the extreme end of the electromagnetic spectrum. Consequently, as long as there has been vacuum, there has been light, even if it's not the light that our eyes are equipped to see. What this means is that long before God is ever purported to have said "Let there be light!", the universe was already filled with light, and God is rendered quite the Johnny-come-lately. Furthermore, this phenomenon is subject to the same objection as radioactive decay.

Fallacy of composition
The argument also suffers from the fallacy of composition: what is true of a member of a group is not necessarily true for the group as a whole. Just because most things within the universe require a cause/causes, does not mean that the universe itself requires a cause. For instance, while it is absolutely true that within a flock of sheep that every member ("an individual sheep") has a mother, it does not therefore follow that the flock has a mother.

Equivocation error
There is an equivocation error lurking in the two premises of the Kalām version of the argument. They both mention something "coming into existence". The syllogism is only valid if both occurrences of that clause refer to the exact same notion.

In the first premise, all the things ("everything") that we observe coming into existence forms by some sort of transformation of matter or energy, or a change of some state or process. So this is the notion of "coming into existence" in the first premise.

In the second premise there is no matter or energy to be transformed or reshaped into the universe. (We are probably speaking of something coming from nothing.)

The two notions of "coming into existence" are thus not identical and therefore the syllogism is invalid."

[San Montalbano]

Geeze you dont need to belittle to make your point.

When one's arguments essentially boil down to "Goddidit!", then it can be dismissed with prejudice.

Alright we will pretend you didnt use the term “goddidit” in a way to paint someone as uneducated and religous.

[Vassenor]

When one's arguments essentially boil down to "Goddidit!", then it can be dismissed with prejudice.

Alright we will pretend you didnt use the term “goddidit” in a way to paint someone as uneducated and religous.

So basically you're going to pretend that they didn't do a thing you're pretending they did.

[True Refuge]

When one's arguments essentially boil down to "Goddidit!", then it can be dismissed with prejudice.

Alright we will pretend you didnt use the term “goddidit” in a way to paint someone as uneducated and religous.

Is "goddidit" not an accurate representation of their argument?

[Hurtful Thoughts]

So you're saying the battle of Trenton was fought because Washington wanted a loaf of bread?

For what resource, was the battle of Bunker Hill fought for?

The Alamo?

What precious resources were at stake in Vietnam and Korea?
Reagan will tell you why

pre-ww2 conflicts don't really factor into veterans Day. It's telling that before such an event successive administrations saw little need for such a holiday.
As for Vietnam and korea, the government's the US backed are pretty indicative of the worthlessness of the causes. It's telling that South Korea democratized *in spite* of the US, rather than because of it.

Um... Rememberance day got its start at the end of WW1... as it's kinda the aniversary of the Treaty of Versailles.
-Before that there was Memorial-day in regards to the end of the American Civil war, and Evacuation-day/Thanksgiving for the end of the American Revolution.

Such things are not being factored-in on an individual level only.

Anyways, Veteran's day is kinda far-tangentinial to the flag and pledge of alliegence. So I'm going to segeway back with an assumption that you do not approve of today's government, and wish to take those frustrations out on a flag, even though the flag represents you and therefore you're engaging in self-harm in a public venue for attention.

[San Montalbano]

Alright we will pretend you didnt use the term “goddidit” in a way to paint someone as uneducated and religous.

Is "goddidit" not an accurate representation of their argument?

No, because goddidit isn’t even a word from what I know

[Senkaku]

Is "goddidit" not an accurate representation of their argument?

No, because goddidit isn’t even a word from what I know

i think you've all strayed a bit from the topic lol

[San Montalbano]

No, because goddidit isn’t even a word from what I know

i think you've all strayed a bit from the topic lol

Your telling me lol

[San Montalbano]

No, because goddidit isn’t even a word from what I know

i think you've all strayed a bit from the topic lol

Your telling me lol

[Lady Scylla]

Not really. From a soldier perspective, the pledge is a weird thing to begin with -- very 'brainwashy'. My brother and dad are both Army and have never done the pledge, and the rest of my family don't. We'll stand for the anthem, and we love our country but the pledge part is a no-go.