SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Four police officers and an unknown number of civilians have been hurt in an "active shooter" incident in the US city of Colorado Springs, police say.
Officers were exchanging fire with a gunman inside a Planned Parenthood clinic, police Lt Catherine Buckley said.
It was unclear if hostages had been taken, she said.
The city's Penrose hospital said it had received six patients, but did not say whether they were civilians or police.
The situation was still active and roads were closed, the city's police said in a tweet.
"We do not have the shooter at this point but we do have all of our resources brought to bear," Lt Buckley told local TV.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
"Active Shooter" in Colorado Springs
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 107 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
F.S. Fitzgerald to Hemingway:
"Ernest, the rich are different from us."
Hemingway:
"Yes. They have more money."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday November 28 2015, @04:16AM
So, for all the anti-abortion types here...assuming your reasons are religious, why aren't you upset that your God (this is ALWAYS the Yahweh-cultists pulling this crap) apparently terminates somewhere north of 30% of all pregnancies himself?
I always love getting into this with the hardcore religious types because it very, very quickly forces them to tip their hand: divine command theory (I refuse to dignify that nihilistic trash with the term "metaethics"). Apparently it's okay for Yahweh to do anything from genocide to eternal torture of most of the human race, let alone terminating a few [hundred billion, historically] pregnancies because. ...er...because, well, he's GOD. Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi and so on. There are no moral or immoral acts in and of themselves under DCT. Which means that Yahweh himself is *a-moral,* and this ties directly into why fanatics of all stripes do what they do with no apparent compunction.
It's hilarious, in a very dark way, to drag these people out under the sun and force them to admit their entire "moral" system breaks down to "might makes right." Even funnier, the hardest of the hardcore, the van Tillian presups, are weaker against their own argument than Metalman is to his own weapon in Rockman 2.
Any of you forced-birther types wanna respond?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 28 2015, @06:45AM
"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends." A further corollary to this famous quote would be that only God is wise enough to see all ends, and as such only he has the absolute right to life. If he terminates a few [hundred billion historically] pregnancies it is because he knows how these children might eventually live and he decides in his infinite wisdom (and this is not said in sarcasm as it usually is: God really is supposed to have infinite wisdom) that his plans for the world would be better served by not having them born. Perhaps some of them might eventually grow to become dictators worse than Hitler. Perhaps some of them might cause the lives of their parents to become unacceptably difficult. God only knows, and again this is meant literally.
There are lots of problems and pitfalls when attempting to deal with infinity as mathematicians since at least the days of Cantor found, and reasoning philosophically about a God with infinite wisdom, infinite power, and infinite goodness also has its problems and pitfalls.
(Score: 1) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday November 28 2015, @09:46AM
Problem with that is that it doesn't jibe with Yahweh's attributes. A being which is omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, time-transcendent, and most importantly *absolutely-sovereign* does NOT bargain with the time stream.
You're describing a very powerful but not omnipotent, very puissant but not absolutely-sovereign being here. This is a stolen-concept fallacy. You're absolutely right about the problems with infinity, and what you're describing here is the natural tendency of the human mind to treat infinity as "a really frackin' huge number, too big for me to imagine."
One consequence of all the omni- this and perfect that and so forth is that NOTHING would exist except this Yahweh, if it truly had these attributes. Yahweh is supposedly perfect, self-sufficient, all things unto himself; to create anything else (aside from hypostases of himself like Jesus and the Holy Ghost) is by definition to create imperfection. And he would have no reason to; not boredom, not loneliness, and certainly not something as grovelingly Bronze-Age as ego massage.
This is where even the hardest of the hardcore Calvinist neo-Scholastics trip on their own dicks: they all say "for the purpose of displaying his wrath" or "to show his ultimate justice" -- no. No. That, too, is a want or a need, a lack, and contradicts divine aseity. Sometimes I think these people throw a bunch of theological-technical bullshit at the audience in hopes the critics will get overwhelmed and give up...unfortunately for them, I am the kind of person who eats entire fandom wikis whole, and this is considerably less convoluted than, say, Touhou or Sailor Moon.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 28 2015, @07:28AM
Just so you know, metaethics is not nihilistic. Nihilism is a type of metaethics. DCT isn't metaethics either, but can be treated as such. Metaethics concerns itself with if ethics is possible, it's nature and so on, like how part of phenomenology does for knowledge. DCT is about where a specific ethic comes from and the validity of that specific ethic. It doesn't have anything to do with proving the existence of ethics or the nature of ethics as a whole.
And no, DCT and acts do not mean that Yahweh is amoral. DCT describes morality as being what Yahweh commands. By definition, Yahweh can't be anything but moral under DCT because he is the personification of morality. What you are thinking of is the euthyphro argument, stemming from the euthyphro dilemma of which you have a firm grasp of one of the horns. Without the other the thought is not yet complete.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 28 2015, @07:50AM
Well fuck. "bockquote" strikes again.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:06AM
"Blockquoth," this is a religious discussion, after all.
(Score: 1) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday November 28 2015, @09:30AM
> Just so you know, metaethics is not nihilistic.
Sorry for the ambiguity. I didn't mean metaethics was, I meant DCT is.
> And no, DCT and acts do not mean that Yahweh is amoral. DCT describes morality as being what Yahweh commands
This is in my opinion a category error on the part of DCT proponents and their close cousins, the "divine nature theorists" (i.e., "Yahweh commands what Yahweh commands of his own nature, which is good").
> By definition, Yahweh can't be anything but moral under DCT because he is the personification of morality
Hah, yes, "by definition." I will sing the Sye-clones the song of their people: "How Do You KNOWWWWWW That? (TM)" I can define shit all day long; doesn't mean it exists in the real world, or even COULD exist. You'd need a working ontological argument for that, which no one from Anselm to Plantinga has been able to supply. Ontological arguments themselves are cases of bad grammar if you ask me...
> What you are thinking of is the euthyphro argument, stemming from the euthyphro dilemma of which you have a firm grasp of one of the horns. Without the other the thought is not yet complete.
Yup :) I know both horns: either Yahweh is commanding something, by definition, for no reason other than his own opinion, or there is some standard he must adhere to (which can in principle be discovered without him, and therefore precedes him). DCT is impaled through the anus, shish-kebabed through all the internal organs, and topped off with its own eye out the front end on these horns; the first horn reduces "Yahweh commands what is good" down to "Yahweh commands that which he commands," and the second wrecks the idea of divine aseity, for a start.
Apologists often try to dodge this with the above "divine nature" gambit, but this merely pushes the problem back a step: is Yahweh's nature good simply because it is his nature, or is there some external standard by which we, and he, know his nature is good? ALL arguments of the form "because Yahweh's $ATTRIBUTE" are subject to this: either it is completely arbitrary and could take any value, XOR this is coming from somewhere outside of Yahweh.
> Not so hilarious when you realize that, among people that are truly devout and really have read their bible, they know might makes right already and simply believe they have the strongest entity or god on their side.
> That is why monotheism is based around praising their lord. They are literally groveling before the greatest might they believe to exist between once a week and five times a day to avoid his terrible and awesome wrath
> Hey, even note how often they use the word awesome to mean "impressive and frightening" when talking about god. Note how "God is great" in the various languages repeated over and over is just another way of subjugating themselves
> to the might of their master.
> Not so hilarious when you realize that they see themselves as mighty too...
Very, very well-spoken. What has me laughing like a Joker venom victim, and for many of the same reasons, is that these resentful, hateful, bilious little mediocrities think kissing up to the literal Platonic ideal of the schoolyard bully is going to keep them safe from its sadistic excesses for all eternity. If it is possible to be thrown out of Heaven, then as time T approaches infinity -- excuse me, *eternity* -- there is a 100% probability that it will happen. If they think their worldview through at all, EVERYONE is going to Hell. It's just a matter of when.
These people have spent 3,500 years dreaming up an omnipotent psychopath, at war with its own creation by necessity. What a mess.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @12:35AM
Well, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "forced-birther", but I think that it seems rather obvious that your personal comfort is apparently not God's highest purpose. I will leave you to figure out what His real purpose is. Happy cogitating!
(Score: 1) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday November 29 2015, @01:35AM
Oh, I would LOVE to hear you tell me what Yahweh's purpose is. I'll let you flail around a bit before pointing out that a being with the attributes commonly given to Yahweh by definition CANNOT HAVE a purpose.
...then again, if you were capable of this level of discourse and thought, you wouldn't be an Abrahamic death cultist :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2015, @08:36PM
By definition? Really? Care to unpack that a bit? Call me skeptical but I don't think you can.