Quote:
Originally posted by prosequence
To say people "believed" in democracy and it works because people believe in it is not correct. Democracy works because people use their reasoning to determine if what it does is desirable.
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I have to ask (because my head is spinning with new info)
Do you believe in Democracy? [/QUOTE]
Wow....looks like the theists are playing anti-logic word games. Imagine that! Never would have seen
that coming!
"Do you believe in Democracy?"...strictly speaking this sentance doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Taken litterally it could be taken as meaning:
"Do you believe that Democracy empirically exists?"- Then the answer would be yes. I can indeed see that democracy does indeed exist. Many countries use it as a means of government.
If this system were to be wiped off the face of the earth, then I wouldn't have to conclude that it didn't empirically exist.
"Do you believe that Democracy exists as a concept?" - Well, yes it exists, because it is defined. That is all that it takes! Regardless of whether it "actually" exists, I can conclude that as a cocept it does indeed exist. (In a similar way to infinity).
although I think the REAL question that was asked was:
"Do you believe that Democracy IS A GOOD IDEA....do you believe that democracy is a benificial system to our society. Is democracy favourable over other alternative systems?"
So by decomposing your question, we can see how silly your question was, by comparing democracy to God.
God may exist as an abstract concept, but unfortuanatly that has nothing to do with "actual" existence.
Further more, enough word games. You want word games, go play around in the "Ontological Argument" thread.
But I was under the impression that in this thread we were talking about why we do or do not believe in a God, a rather more important issue than playing pointless word games (as entertaining as they may be).