Anything save science might still be fun, inspiring, satisfying, interesting, and so forth. It wouldn't be accurate to call it totally worthless.
Good point. I concede I like Santa Claus even though I choose not to believe in him.
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I seem to recall a study that indicated among siblings the younger are more likely to be gay, which provides some support for the point aside from the theoretical.
The research I've read on this suggested that the flood of male hormones that accompany the birth of a male child wreaks all sorts of havoc on the mother's system, and that with each subsequent male child, her body compensates by flooding with female hormones, until, by the third or fourth son, there is a significant chance that the male child will be gay, even in the lack of any genetic component.
Basically, the hormones accompanying a male birth are seen as an attack on the mother's body, and her body starts fighting back...
But I don't know if the theorizing behind the statistics (that third and fourth male children are increasingly likely to be gay) has been confirmed by sampling estrogen levels in women pregnant with third and fourth sons, etc.
Like many theories it 'makes sense,' but is probably only a part of a bigger picture.
Like many theories it 'makes sense,' but is probably only a part of a bigger picture.
Well sure. It wasn't my intention to claim we had discovered the unified field theory of sexuality determination.
Wow, this place is a real merry-go-round sometimes.
Wow, this place is a real merry-go-round sometimes.
"Stop the ride! I've discovered the unified field theory of sexuality determination and want to get off!"
...I thought it was funny.
We are so going to hell. :)
Will she be there? I'd like to hump her leg.
We are so going to hell. :)Will she be there? I'd like to hump her leg.
According to the song, yes she shall be.
According to the song, yes she shall be.
Whoa! Wait! There was a song?!
According to the song, yes she shall be.Whoa! Wait! There was a song?!
I've heard crazier things. Did you know that those three movies from a few years back that everyone liked had something to do with a ring?
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I've heard crazier things. Did you know that those three movies from a few years back that everyone liked had something to do with a ring?
They made a third one? Gah. I didn't see the second, but The Ring was so bad, it's the second movie in my life I've walked out of (despite being a Sarah Michelle Gellar fan).
Oh wait, you meant those other movies, about that other ring...
Frodo was so over his wealth by level. Freaking twink. A 2nd level Rogue with a Ring of Invisibility, a mithral chain shirt, a +1 Orc-Bane Short Sword, a Cloak of Elvenkind, Boots of Elvenkind, and whatever the hell the Phial of Elendri was supposed to be (light source of spider-turning?). Tolkein was such a Monty Haul DM.
Frodo was so over his wealth by level. Freaking twink.
Kind of, yeah. Legolas was a much more typical twink, though. Running around in those tight pants...
A 2nd level Rogue with a Ring of Invisibility, a mithral chain shirt, a +1 Orc-Bane Short Sword, a Cloak of Elvenkind, Boots of Elvenkind, and whatever the hell the Phial of Elendri was supposed to be (light source of spider-turning?).
Forget the shirt, look at the scene where everyone checks it out. About the only person that doesn't cop a feel is Gandalf. Everybody was hitting on him. Small wonder he couldn't cope and went off to Mordor. Sam was not killing them for trying anything.
Kind of missing the forest for all those trees in the way, isn't it? :)
Frodo was so over his wealth by level. Freaking twink. A 2nd level Rogue with a Ring of Invisibility, a mithral chain shirt, a +1 Orc-Bane Short Sword, a Cloak of Elvenkind, Boots of Elvenkind, and whatever the hell the Phial of Elendri was supposed to be (light source of spider-turning?). Tolkien was such a Monty Haul DM.
It was just a swing of the pendulum. Did you see how he hosed the party in his previous campaign? A dozen dwarves, one halfling, and a wizard out on a quest to kill an ancient red wyrm. The wizard can't cast anything higher than 2nd level spells (pyrotechnics), so that pegs him at 4th level tops. The halfling rogue, if you can call him that, is 1st level if he's lucky. They go on a long overland trek with nothing but their mounts and provisions. No armor. No weapons. When they finally get some weapons, its two longswords and a dagger (magical, yes, but hardly enough to go around). The highest level dwarf gets one (good call). The dagger goes to the rogue (ok, I guess). And the final sword goes to the wizard. Really? He's not even proficient in the weapon.
Then, since there's no way they can defeat the dragon, he pulls a deus ex machina by having an NPC kill the dragon for them. Then he has to redeem the characters somehow, so that big mess of a battle at the end comes up.
Face it; Tolkien was a lousy DM.
I don't know whether to be entertained or offended. =D
Stick with entertained. It's more fun that way.
Everything is better/worse with zombies.
also as an aside from a previous post Shroud of Turin Not Jesus', Tomb Discovery Suggests
I predict that the number of true believers in the Shroud of Turin is not materially altered by the finding.
Everything is better/worse with zombies.I keep asking for Grand theft Auto Zombies!
"Braaaaaaiiiiiins...."
"@#$%& just stole mah car!"
Someone here may be going to hell.
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also as an aside from a previous post Shroud of Turin Not Jesus', Tomb Discovery SuggestsI predict that the number of true believers in the Shroud of Turin is not materially altered by the finding.
The "finding" is not proof one way or the other. It is circumstantial evidence which when one looks at the shroud in the first place circumstantial evidence is all we have and are ever likely to get. I just felt if I post one link about something positive and a week or so later a negative shows up I should post that as well.
The "finding" is not proof one way or the other. It is circumstantial evidence which when one looks at the shroud in the first place circumstantial evidence is all we have and are ever likely to get. I just felt if I post one link about something positive and a week or so later a negative shows up I should post that as well.
What was negative about the article? I'm just making the observation, albeit implicitly, that facts wouldn't matter. You said it yourself, CJ:
Truth: ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience.
Fact: something known to exist or to have happened, known by actual experience or observation.
I'll happily agree with you that this is clearly how the vast majority of religious believers think. They're Platonists, though most certainly aren't aware of it.
Having decided that truth is independent of and has nothing to do with facts, and is superior to facts (often for being so fact-free, which is about the height of intellectual perversity to me but I'm a known weirdo) what conclusion could one make except that no amount of facts would persuade a true believer otherwise? They "know" what they "know". Surely you have heard Loyola's famous comment:
That we may be altogether of the same mind and in conformity with the Church herself, if she shall have defined anything to be black which appears to our eyes to be white, we ought in like manner to pronounce it to be black.
Of course this thinking isn't limited to the conventionally religious. The Soviet Union declared Lenninism to be self-evidently and obviously true and then proclaimed anyone who doubted it mentally ill. The treatment involved anything from prison time to bullet lobotomies. Freudianism is replete with the same sort of thing, albeit without the prisons and executions. If you disagree with the diagnosis, you must be in denial. Even if Mommy never did slap you around or whatever the case may be.
You might also consider that the word truth can be used with a capital 'T' or with a small 't' and that it denotes different things when so used.
The treatment involved anything from prison time to bullet lobotomies.
I'm named after a great uncle who got such a "truth" lobotomy. It wasn't the Russians who got him though, it was the Gestapo.
Don't get me wrong, the Russians killed some of us, too....
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Nothing in the article was negative per se. What I should have written is that the article presents possible evidence that does not support the shroud as being authentic. To have a balanced view point one must look at any possible evidence. Don’t you agree?
I fail to understand your comments about fact vs. truth. These are definitions out of a dictionary. They are not religious. I am sorry you disagree.
Nothing in the article was negative per se. What I should have written is that the article presents possible evidence that does not support the shroud as being authentic. To have a balanced view point one must look at any possible evidence. Don’t you agree?
I do, as it happens. (Well ok, one cavil: all "possible" evidence? Surely you mean all available and relevant evidence. We're not omniscient, after all.) I just thought it was strange to call the article negative. Not a big deal.
I fail to understand your comments about fact vs. truth. These are definitions out of a dictionary. They are not religious. I am sorry you disagree.
No, they're not exclusively religious. (I'll point you back to my Communism and Freudianism examples.) I'll certainly agree that people use the words in the way you described. That's the problem, really. Once one has declared that truth is immune to facts, how does one ever know that one in fact has the truth or discover if one is mistaken? Following from your definitions, there is no possible way to know or distinguish between truth and falsehood. The speaker is right because he or she says he's right and that's the end of it.
Well ok, if one's into that kind of cognitive onanism. But it's at odds with what you said here:
To have a balanced view point one must look at any possible evidence. Don’t you agree?
And that's where I proceeded from in my prediction as to the prevalence of Shroud true believers and the post thereafter.
CJ, I read your post on the Truth vs. Facts thread. It looks like I'm the one guilty of misunderstanding. Our opinions are closer together than I thought.
I submit myself for the ritual spankings. :)
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Facts lead from Truths. They are not Truths in and of themselves and are subject to revision when new information is obtained. Truths are, whether we have the appropriate information or not.
Not a problem I sometime with limited time do not feel I fully explain my position. So some misunderstandings are expected.
For some reason I think you may enjoy those spankings a little tooooo much. :)
Religion Police
The Freedom From Religion Foundation also has its sign up with various holiday displays at the Illinois capitol. But that bothered someone too.
I have to quibble on another point, though:
The problem is that the Freedom from Religion Foundation is picking a fight where one does not exist. Freedom of religion, by definition, includes the option "none of the above."
That's logically true and it's certainly legally true, but to say it's a common opinion would be going too far. To judge by the FFRF's action alerts, they certainly think there's a fight on.
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The Freedom From Religion Foundation also has its sign up with various holiday displays at the Illinois capitol. But that bothered someone too.
Yes and with the wording of the sign I am not surprised.
I have to quibble on another point, though:The problem is that the Freedom from Religion Foundation is picking a fight where one does not exist. Freedom of religion, by definition, includes the option "none of the above."That's logically true and it's certainly legally true, but to say it's a common opinion would be going too far. To judge by the FFRF's action alerts, they certainly think there's a fight on.
I must have missed where they said it was common knowledge. I will agree that it seems like they feel it is a war they are fighting and I will also say I heard some evangelical groups who say much the same thing. Which scares me, for when you have two diametrically opposed groups not willing to talk or compromise and both act as if they are fighting a war, well eventually you will get one. When that happens neither side will win.
I must have missed where they said it was common knowledge. I will agree that it seems like they feel it is a war they are fighting and I will also say I heard some evangelical groups who say much the same thing. Which scares me, for when you have two diametrically opposed groups not willing to talk or compromise and both act as if they are fighting a war, well eventually you will get one. When that happens neither side will win.
A compromise was offered to the religious by secularists more than two centuries ago. They accepted it, with considerable enthusiasm.
Then they started cheating on it (almost instantly, in fact) and more or less got away with murder for most of that time, albeit more in some times than others. Now when we point out that they've cheated and try to rectify the situation, even modestly, we're persecutors.
An interesting view point
I recently watched Marjoe. The subject was rather frank about how he made his money. The real prize goes to clips of his colleagues. These are paraphrased:
"The Lord said to me, you need to have a Cadillac. So I went right down to that Cadillac dealer and I bought myself a Cadillac."
"There is a man in Florida who owns one acre of commercial property right at the intersection of two interstates. It's in a very good location and the Lord said to him that he needs to give it to me. But he can't do that unless he gets a sacrifice for the Lord, so we're passing around envelopes. This is not for everybody. Only do this if you're ready for a real sacrifice. It's not a sacrifice unless you have to give something up. So if you have it in your heart, if you can give up a new dress or fancy meals, then you fill up that envelope for the Lord."
People say I have no internal monologue. These Prosperity Gospel types with their affluent flocks and big, expensive churches have me beat.
I hadn't heard the line about how Jesus had to be rich because the centurions diced for his underwear, though. Now I'm chuckling over the image of a tense craps game on which the fate of a really ritzy pair of boxers rests.
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At the time of the film's release he generated considerable press, but the movie was never shown in theaters in the Southern United States, based on the fears of the distributor over the outrage it would cause in the Bible Belt.
It should cause outrage. People like this are why so many in the US distrust “organized” religion.
The film that scares me though is the one about the church camps where they train kids to be evangelicals.
That one scares me.
The film that scares me though is the one about the church camps where they train kids to be evangelicals.
That one scares me.
I saw that one, too. I think it scares any thinking person -- Christian, Buddhist, and/or atheist alike.
It should cause outrage. People like this are why so many in the US distrust “organized” religion.
Marjoe himself got out of the business. He liked it, but he said in the film that he was to the point where either he had to convince himself that he was really doing the right thing and this would be his career, or he had to quit. So he did the film in part to make sure the first option wasn't available to him.
But that's pretty much why when someone complains about something being "controversial" or "offensive" I roll my eyes. Sometimes the facts are offensive and paint people in a very bad light because, well, those people aren't behaving so well. The story of the Holocaust flatters pretty much nobody, excepting maybe the soldiers who liberated the camps, but that's no good excuse for not telling it. In fact, it's an imperative reason to do so. This is what happened, and this is how and why everyone stood by and did nothing, or worse even sent people back into the camps after they escaped. We need to know these things so we do not repeat the process.
The film that scares me though is the one about the church camps where they train kids to be evangelicals.
That one scares me.
Maybe it's because I went to an Evangelical college (Through a branch program; long story.) but Jesus Camp was just boring to me. I already saw this kind of thing fairly close-up. I even saw a fairly bright relative with good potential to improve herself through education instead end up at an unaccredited fundamentalist Bible college (even her rather religious mother was worried about this place) after being sucked into the culture. Now talking to her is like pulling the string on one of those stuffed animals from the 80s with a wheel of recorded phrases inside. I've known her all my life, but now a psychologist who never met her has as good a handle on her mentality as I do.
It's disturbing, and it's even more so to know that one can go through one's entire education without ever leaving that environment. No exposure to contrary thought at all. No risk of ever finding out that one is wrong. How is that even a school? I don't know about you guys, but I don't think my upbringing was infallible. Goodness knows I've been wrong before. Isn't learning that one was wrong about something, and why and how, an indispensable part of an education?
"Isn't learning that one was wrong about something, and why and how, an indispensable part of an education?"
In theory, yes. But watch heads explode if you disagree with "facts" like man-induced global warming...
Smurf
But watch heads explode if you disagree with "facts" like man-induced global warming...
Especially if you disagree (or agree, for that matter) without knowing the first thing about it...
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But watch heads explode if you disagree with "facts" like man-induced global warming...Especially if you disagree (or agree, for that matter) without knowing the first thing about it...
All I know is, a whole lot of data manipulation was going on, apparently, on both sides (and why is NASA slow rolling those FOIA requests?), so, basically, we're supposed to make a huge economically distressful decision over complete and total bullshit...
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Well, the way I look at the whole GW thing: ever since it became so politicized, the train went off the rails. The greatest weakness in the warming/climate change argument is the demand for sacrifice with no obvious short term return. If people cannot see or feel it, in their lifetime -- they won't buy into it. That's human nature.
The second is the science never really was absolute and unequivocal. I have read the IPCC reports, and all I see are extremely low probabilities and recorded changes in climate too small to be purely 100% man-made. All I see are hints and suggestions based on weasel-words like "most likely". One does not use "most likely" in science -- it is not credible. I accept a lot of interesting hard work was done, but I do not believe all the parameters are accounted for. One big volcano will blow all the tender calculations to smithereens. (Remember Mount St. Helen's in the 1980s?)
There's no denying we use our atmosphere, lands and waters as a "toilet", but I'd be more concerned about local and regional environmental problems that we can actually see and work on to fix -- than the vague info from the IPCC that has been blown out of proportion by those who may probably wish to personally profit from the paradigm shift they are screaming for. Remember, scientists gave their best info -- in most cases - - to the IPCC, but the "I" in IPCC stands for intergovernmental (pure politics) and not "inter-scientist". The IPCC is at its base a political organization full of government, diplomatic and NGO interests vetting the final report the scientists compiled. The scientists did all the work, but their words have been doctored by political interests. So, always remember the IPCC is a political organization, not a scientific one.
It is also very unfortunate that big oil and their allies have the power to make so much noise that everyone is now fed up.
I think we'd be stupid to ignore the risk that humans may be affecting the Earth's climate on a wholly global level... But the hysteria and political gamesmanship on both sides has buggered the works and set back reasoned research and discussion by perhaps 10 years.
I think it is time to get back to the drawing board, review all the work, and report "outside" the influence of the IPCC...
Sorry for the tangent, back to our regularly scheduled programming: a discussion of religion, both pro and con.
:-)
-W.