Someone is passing out cookies? I want one.

It's a long time since I studied philosophy, but my recollection is that knowledge derived through logic is a priori. It doesn't depend on other knowledge. For example, if x is always greater than 3, x can never be 2.

Empirical knowledge is a posteriori. It comes after observations and experience. And we can use logic to derive additional knowledge from it. My cookie jar is empty. Your fingerprints on the jar. Therefore you ate my cookies.

No religion has ever provided empirical evidence for their claims. So they try desperately to cobble together fake a priori knowledge, such as the nonsensical arguments of Kalam, Anselm, and Aquinas. That's because a priori is the end of the road. You can't argue past it.

I think morals are mostly empirical. We have instincts as social apes, but our moral sense is really formed as we experience the existence of others and their reactions to our behavior. However, morality also has a logical component. The Golden Rule expressed by Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and my mother is logical morality.

History is a minefield. It can be highly subjective. Who wore the black hats and white hats in World War II? Who started it? Every bit of evidence has to be weighed and interpreted, and our interpretations are colored by our backgrounds. I grew up in the Cold War, so I'm biased against Russia and China and in favor of America, Britain, Europe, and Japan.

What we really need from history today is an objective analysis of the role played by religion in every conflict in the past four millennia. And on that basis we need to print up some warning labels to be attached to every religious book in the world.

Heh, the level of supernaturalist stupidity and duplicity I observe regularly on Facebook, pretty much establishes the neurotoxic effects of mythological adherence.

I'm still encountering on that medium, mindless trollbots who think "atheists think the universe came from nothing" constitutes some sort of killer "gotcha", instead of a repeatedly destroyed canard that those of us who paid attention in class can swat into the bin in our sleep. Then we have the "you think your granpda was a monkey" retarded gibberish from creationists who are clearly still in receipt of potty training from Mummy, and whose command of literacy is best described as "eats crayons", most of whom couldn't even spell "molecular phylogeny", let alone understand its foundational concepts.

The picture would not be complete, of course, without at least one instance of the "Hitler/Stalin/Mao were atheists" well poisoning garbage putting in an appearance from these specimens. One of said specimens in particular, being a lying sack of shit living in Australia, who upon further examination, revealed himself to be a fifth-rate Kent Hovind wannabee hick town preacher, who obviously has no no problem about lying for right-wing Jeebus. You can take it as read that the specimen in question is also a rampant Trumpoid, a racist throwback who appears to be harking back to the 1850s, not the 1950s, as his "golden era" in the past that only existed in the television in his head. I suspect it will only be a matter of time before this individual comes to the attention of law enforcement, and you can take your pick whether any future indictments against this individual involve tax fraud, money laundering, or playing "Hide the Sausage" with 12 year old girls.

This one is, I can tell, just itching to write his one way plane ticket to the American slave state fundagelical belt, where he will have a nice, lucratively gullible audience to be bilked, as was found by Ken Ham, another Antipodean religious schistosome, who found the pickings much riper in the land of polydactylous products of recursive genealogy.

Indeed, all too often, I find myself entertaining the darkly humorous thought, that any real, existing god type entity, if it happens to be sentient, is thinking to itself "Just exactly what did I do, to deserve being lumbered with these charlatans, liars and cretins queueing up to be my advocates?" I know for a fact that if I was occupying the "god chair", I wouldn't want any of these verminous and pestilential life forms stapling their monobrows to my mast, or soiling the decks of my ship with the shed secretions and pubic hairs they leave behind them when they're getting frisky with farm animals. I've observed prokaryotic life forms under the microscope with higher IQs, and encountered clouds of piss steam that possess more integrity.

If I was occupying that particular hot seat, I'd make fucking damn sure that I had the Nobel calibre people on my side, not the likes of Cardinal Pell or that Osteen money vampire. For that matter, if it were within my remit, I'd sort out the whole mess once and for all, by arranging for a pandemic to target selectively the morons and the criminals, while ensuring that the remaining Sagans and Curies of this world would be immune thereto. None of this stupid, primitive "global flood" shit for me, I'd choose an option that possessed surgical precision.

@Cognostic

To be fair, this is Jo we're talking about. Willful ignorance and dishonesty are the hallmarks of his posts since first came here. He's incorrigible as well, he'll never change as he doesn't care about what is true, only his blinkered pursuit of defending his blind faith based religious beliefs. He also has failed to show a shred of integrity since coming here. Quite deliberately in my opinion.

Except that anyone bringing this drivel here is bringing a peashooter to a tank battle.