User talk:Alex.deWitte

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Hello, Alex.deWitte, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! RJFJR (talk) 20:53, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Atheism

User:Alex.deWitte quoted on User_talk:Yottamaster <<It's not my fight, but I am very disappointed when people make absurd absolutist claims, such as "If you are an atheist, you can't be moral." A morally clear person would not be passing this kind of sweeping judgment.>>

I am not making absurd claims. I did not want to post this but I thought I must defend my point. I beg you to read the following paragraph carefully (if you have not on the Atheism talk page). If truth offends, I cannot help it. They are not my own words, but of a spiritual teacher in India who was known to have the highest moral standards. Please analyse it carefully.

«Pushed by their own selfish desires, people ("moral atheists") may act morally for some time, but when they think it over, they will eventually sin. They will say to themselves: "O my brother, don't stay away from sense pleasures. Enjoy sense pleasures as you like, as long as others do not know of them. Why not? I do not think the world will collapse because of them. There is no God, an all-seeing God who gives to us the results of our actions. What have you to fear? Just be a little careful, so no one will know. If they learn of it, then you will lose your good reputation, and perhaps the government or bad people will make trouble for you. If that happens neither you nor others will be happy." Know for certain that if the hearts of the preachers of atheistic morality were examined, these thoughts would be found.Yottamaster (talk) 18:58, 14 September 2011 (UTC)»

The point I'm trying to make: "If there is no God, there is no point in being moral." Whether God exists or not—that is a different thing. If you are an atheist and think my statement is absurd then please define the 2 words: sin and morality. Can you please defeat my statement, by refuting the above paragraph? Of course we should not discuss it on Wikipedia, but let me know of another site where we can. I believe this should be the last post by me on Wikipedia talk pages with respect to this subject. Yottamaster (talk) 15:06, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, at least, we agree on something (your last line). The rest, I'm sorry to say, is complete unsubstantiated gibberish. At best, it's a sectarian opinion. But philosophy it is not. Go read some Descartes, Kant and Spinoza. They've struggled with more complex versions of the question when it was not particularly plausible to have been an atheist. But one thing they did not do is use God as a crutch to hold on to morality. You're blithely confusing libertine with atheist--in words that you should recognize, "you're not even wrong!" That is the final comment I will make on this subject.

--Alex.deWitte (talk) 03:08, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is not unsubstantiated gibberish. God is not a crutch. God is absolutely the basis for morality. If there is no established standard for morality by an absolute, unchanging authority there is no meaning to morality. Suppose you take admission in a reputed University, can you do whatever you want there? Aren't rules established by the university authorities? Similarly morality is "rules" established by God. There is no sense in denying God. Take the origin of the universe for example. What happened before the so-called big bang? What is the origin of the big bang? An atheist generally accepts that the universe ultimately came from nothing, but refuses to believe that a human being, or an eye, or a wristwatch, or a leaf or a tissue or a living cell came out of nothing. Isn't that nonsense? Everything in the universe has a cause, including the universe. God is beyond the created universe and He created it. You may ask, "Who created God?" God is defined as the "Cause of all causes" in various ancient Vedic texts. So by definition: God has no creator, He is the ultimate origin of everything else. One should try to understand these simpler things first. [Why God is "He"? The concept of gender is a very complex subject matter. Gender is a "principle", not just having a male or female body. God is not material. God is beyond the purview of material senses (five senses + the mind) The Vedas deal with very, very complex subject matters and our scholarly but tiny brains may not be ready to grasp them.] Myyyyy (talk) 16:35, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

MIT Dorms

Alright, I will leave the dorms alone if you will make the language sound encyclopedic rather than narrative. Sources should also be there, but I will leave that for someone else to argue another day. Chamberlian (talk) 15:18, 18 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the article sounds encyclopedic the way it is currently ([1]) written and I don't think that "Personal remembrance, Paul M Lieberman (SB 1976 Course 8)" counts as a reliable published source, but since you are the one who has committed to fixing that article while I am not really contributing, I won't say anything more. Chamberlian (talk) 23:41, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

ACTA

Hi there. I had some questions about recent edits you made to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni page. You deleted the portion where Lynne Cheney was referred to as the former Second Lady of the United States. Could you explain your reason for doing this? Also, you added a sentence, "Although nominally a nonpartisan organization, ACTA's philosophy is usually described as conservative." You didn't have a reference for this claim, so I'm going to delete that sentence. Please feel free to re-add if and when you can find a credible source. Thanks. Safehaven86 (talk) 16:40, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your reply. That makes sense about the Cheney description, thanks for clarifying that. While many of those involved in ACTA's founding are affiliated with the Republican Party, not all are (i.e. Richard Lamm, who was a Democratic governor of Colorado). As for the conservative description, I'm just concerned with everything in the article being sourced. I noticed that many of the references in the article are from the ACTA website or from ACTA publications, so I'm trying to broaden the references and make the article more neutral. It looks like it needs quite a bit of work, and I'd like to make it better-referenced and more neutral overall. I'd welcome your input and help with improving the page. Safehaven86 (talk) 17:26, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oghuz Turks

It's okay to disagree with me over the inclusion things in the article, but please do not engage in personal attacks by calling my edit unjust. Do you have any sources that support the section you restored? If you do and they are reliable sources, I would fully support that section staying in the article. Edward321 (talk) 23:57, 14 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]