http://www.thecleanslate.org/19-ugly-truths-addiction-recovery-nobody-wants-look/

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19 ugly truths about addiction and recovery that nobody wants to look at

Some people really fall for the whole thing, hook, line, and sinker, and that leads to a lot of unnecessary pain. But here’s what’s really going on with addiction, treatment, and recovery – they are social constructs that are killing us:

The entire concept of addiction – a state in which people are involuntarily using drugs/alcohol, and incapable of stopping – is a myth, and a harmful one at that.
Anyone can voluntarily stop using substances at any time, but we agree to play along with the myth of addiction because it serves other selfish purposes.
Moral crusaders created the myth of addiction to scare people out of using alcohol and other drugs.
Parents like the myth of the “disease of addiction”, because it absolves them of any potential guilt/shame for being “bad parents.”
Heavy substance users like the myth of addiction because it gives them a socially acceptable excuse to keep using drugs and alcohol.
“Addiction treatment” is a sham treatment for a fake disease, and results in no greater success at getting over a substance use problem than if people received no help whatsoever.
Parents, spouses, other family members, and moral crusaders like addiction treatment because it allows them to tell substance users how to live their lives while not appearing to do so. Ordering people to stop drinking/drugging is reframed as generously offering “the gift of treatment.”
It’s impossible to recover from a fake disease. So “treatment” for “addiction” and “recovery” from it is nothing more than a charade – a ritual and a show that we put on for each other.
“Working on recovery” is a show that heavy substance users put on to save face, and to signal to society and their families that they’re sorry, and trying to conform and live up to cultural standards.
Families

Miguel wrote:

"Most Christian nation" = nation with highest number of christians, even if the vast majority of Chinese are not Christians?

I suppose the Vatican is the least Christian nation then

 
That might soon be Somalia.

As far as I’m aware, most creationists don’t hold to the view that you describe in [4]. They have developed models that purport to explain the issue without it being deceitful. So, it’s a false dichotomy.

For example, there’s Russell Humphreys’ model that has something to do with general relativity and gravitational time dilation, and there’s John Hartnett’s model, etc.

Whatever we think of these models, they don’t fit your description.

Welcome. May you find what you seek here.

seigneur wrote:

Ouros wrote:

For what I've saw of him, Jeffery Jay Lowder is good. Still, he's not a professional philosopher if I remember well.

Lowder's best work is collected here https://infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/ It represents what I'd call a formalistic approach, if you are into that kind of stuff.

Secular Outpost is a blog that Lowder and Bradley Bowen started. The main blogger these days is Bradley Bowen who has responded to very many current theistic arguments in a serial manner in excruciating detail. This includes one of Feser's Proofs fairly recently. Right now Bowen is busy with an argument from Kreeft, and in the past with Plantinga, Craig, etc.

Keith Parsons, whom Feser debated in writing, moderated by Lowder (a good debate, worth checking out), is also a co-blogger at Secular Outpost.

Lowder's and Bowen's method is propositional logic. They go about things rationally, defining each concept at every step. Ordinarily their rebuttals involve either declaring a premise in the opponent's argument vague or introducing an irrelevant distinction at some point. They use "science says" arguments rather moderately.

The best about them is their attitude. They are openly anti-New Atheist. When engaging with theism, they firmly believe they are dealing with serious, though flawed, arguments and with serious, at least historically formidable, opposition.

And I personally would recommend some readings in the good old genre of naturalizing the Bible narrative, such as Ernest Renan's Life of Jesus or Thomas Mann's The Tables of the Law. Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ, based on Nikos Kazantzakis' novel, and Monty Python's Life of Brian also fall in the same category. The genre emerged

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