I can only wish all on this page, a very merry Christmas for 2019 and a "very happy" new year! Particularly when I read the following:

<<The sense of Peter’s “forbids” and of my “condemned” should be understood to mean as follows:

“to force into a specific state or activity (or inactivity)"

As, for example, in the following sentences:

His lack of education forbids him from being promoted to the rank of officer in the army.

His lack of education condemned him to a life of menial jobs.>>

Taking that logic, it is an assumption with a "lack of" what some consider "education", one's ability to change, improve or develop for example as an individual will simply not occur.

This is simply wrong and if some in the community, continue to put out messages about lack of an ability to change, due to a lack of "education" (and I can assume that means institutions like a school and a university for example) there will be a lack of, or no change in society worldwide.

Is this positive?

No one is condemned into anything, because of some peoples set perceptions of education and what it is to include, or condemned as a person in terms of how society is to operate in the minds of some and their views on having varying levels of class.

What some may consider unimportant to some, is very important to others and vice versa. These areas of importance will be very broad and more than a simplistic focus on (set) education like mentioned above.

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Dear NathanJ,

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A happy New Year to you too NathanJ.

I shall leave it to Peter Sellick to do his own explaining of his use of the word “forbids” if he feels inclined to do so – which, I’m afraid to have to say, I very much doubt, knowing him as I do.

I, personally, employed the word “condemned”.

The OED online dictionary defines it as:

« 1. Sentenced to a particular punishment, especially death.
2. Officially declared unfit for use. »

However, as most of us are aware, there are also a number of other meanings which are less important and which are employed less frequently. Dictionary.com provides no less than seven different meanings for the word “condemned”, one of which is the sense in which I employed it :

« 6. to force into a specific state or activity (or inactivity).

[Dictionary.com then indicates the following sentence as an example of the use of the word in this sense] :

His lack of education condemned him to a life of menial jobs »

If you don’t like that example of Dictionary.com, here is another one from the Collins dictionary :

« Just that she can't stand playing the role that she's condemned to by birth »
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This polemic began when Yuyutsu commented on my post to Foxy on page 7 of this thread in which I declared :

« Now, like the Flying Dutchman, I am condemned, not to roam the seas as the legend has it, but to look reality squarely in the face for the rest of my life. There is no way I can escape it »

What I was saying was that as I do not believe in the God hypothesis I am left, forever, facing reality as it is – without the comfort and reassurance that the illusion of a supreme saviour would provide.

The “condemnation” I refer to has nothing to do with any lack of freedom on my part to decide whatever I like. It is simply the consequence of my rejection of the God hypothesis.

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