This website is like a dictatorship

"He has brought down so many accounts just because he disagrees with them." Credit has to be given for my opponent for steadfast and headlong assertions, no amount of argument appears to dissuade them even in the slightest. With that in mind it is time for a new approach, so onto the argument. I will start with a quote from Clarence Darrow, the famous trial lawyer of the early 20'th century [1] : "Every one knows that the heavenly bodies move in certain paths in relation to each other with seeming consistency and regularity which we call [physical] law. ... No one attributes freewill or motive to the material world. Is the conduct of man or the other animals any more subject to whim or choice than the action of the planets? ... We know that man's every act is induced by motives that led or urged him here or there; that the sequence of cause and effect runs through the whole universe, and is nowhere more compelling than with man." followed by : "The principal thing to remember is that we are all the products of heredity and environment; that we have little or no control, as individuals, over ourselves, and that criminals are like the rest of us in that regard." The most famous use of such arguments was in the defense of Nathan Leopold, Jr. and Richard Loeb in which Mr. Darrow was able to keep his clients from receiving the death penalty in spite of the fact they confessed to the brutal murder of a minor. Darrow's argument was straightforward - his clients were not responsible for their actions, they were just "broken machines". This philosophy of determinism can be summed up neatly in the following : "the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature" [2] Simply put, things are the way they are and could not be otherwise. "It is hard to see how, if the state of the world 1000 years ago fixes everything I do during my life, I can meaningfully say that I am a free agent, the author of my own actions, which I could have freely chosen to perform differently. After all, I have neither the power to change the laws of nature, nor to change the past! So in what sense can I attribute freedom of choice to myself?" [2] Thus let us consider the above in light of determinism, from this perspective askbob "has brought down" nothing. He was born babybob, he grew up littlebob, became teeniebob, eventually aged to askbob and even if he does seek to be OZbob, then all of this, from the point of conception to the point of death is determined. askbob chooses to do nothing, he acts as his has to act according to his nature which is prescribed by the heredity traits which are physically present in his biological makeup. He will act as we all will act according to that which we are and could no more do otherwise than water could refrain from turning to ice when it gets cold or turning to steam when it gets hot. If this does not convince you then consider the following, and in fact try them out as social experiments : 1) Enter into an thread and ask about rights, within 30 seconds Cody_Franklin will post verbatim : ""Rights" don't actually exist. I don't really have a right to life, or to liberty, or anything like that. Rights are just the label we give to specific large-scale agreements among agents. I don't kill you, you don't kill me. I don't steal from you, you don't steal from me. They're a social convenience whose enforcement is basically a requirement for (mostly) peaceful coexistence." 2) Make a post about anything remotely grazing on the spiritual and you will get the following from Cosmic : "That is not true spiritualism, that is gibbery-do. True spiritualism, or as I like to call it - artistic physics is about exploring the outside of the inside of your nature. It is about seeing what is not for what it is. It is about tasting the colors of life. It is about seeing what a sound feels like. It is about painting a picture with a grapefruit and realizing that you are actually singing to snowflakes." 3) Even hint at a criticism of anarchy and you will get hit with a deluge of "Come at me Bro!" debate challenges from the Kenyon. 4) Mention the bible and you will get a never ending stream of biblical verses from DAT. These things are as they are for that is how they are and they can not be how they are not for things can not be as they are and as they are not - that way lies to madness, and FREEDO. In closing, askbob is as guilty of his actions as rain is as guilty as falling, as the wind is guilty of blowing and as reptiles are as guilty for running the world in secret from the invisible UFO's in an orbit around a star in the center of this hollow earth.[3] [1] http://www.sfu.ca... [2] http://plato.stanford.edu... [3] http://www.reptoids.com...