Mind Expanding Things that Aren't Science

Topic

We seem to have lost the old Thought Provoking (TM) mind expansion thread, so here’s a replacement.
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Astrology:
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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/06/i-was-an-astrologer-how-it-works-psychics
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Before you scoff, there are some interesting insights in the article that you don’t have to be a believer to appreciate. Here’s a couple of extracts that made me wonder:
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I’d understood organised religion to be something between an embarrassment and an evil. Yet as Aids did its dreadful work – this was the 1990s – I watched nuns offer compassionate care to the dying. Christian volunteers checked on derelict men with vomit down their clothes. I became uncomfortably aware that New Agers do not build hospitals or feed alcoholics – they buy self-actualisation at the cash register.

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I also learned that intelligence and education do not protect against superstition. Many customers were stockbrokers, advertising executives or politicians, dealing with issues whose outcomes couldn’t be controlled. It’s uncertainty that drives people into woo, not stupidity, so I’m not surprised millennials are into astrology. They grew up with Harry Potter and graduated into a precarious economy, making them the ideal customers.

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Some repeat customers claimed I’d made very specific predictions, of a kind I never made. It dawned on me that my readings were a co-creation – I would weave a story and, later, the customer’s memory would add new elements. I got to test this theory after a friend raved about a reading she’d had, full of astonishingly accurate predictions. She had a tape of the session, so I asked her to play it.

The clairvoyant had said none of the things my friend claimed. Not a single one. My friend’s imagination had done all the work.

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And my favourite:
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I can still make the odd forecast, though. Here’s one: the venture capital pouring into astrology apps will create a fortune telling system that works, because humans are predictable. As people follow the advice, the apps’ predictive powers will increase, creating an ever-tighter electronic leash. But they’ll be hugely popular – because if you sprinkle magic on top, you can sell people anything.

Replies

I stated it a bit too simply perhaps, of course there are situations where what is morally good or evil isn’t immediately apparent and we could use help pointing us in the right direction. But at the core, I think we all have a pretty good apparatus for determining what is good or bad. We all have a sense for justice, empathy etc. except maybe some deeply disturbed people. I believe most of the worst evil in society comes from “overcorrection”, where toxic religious or ideological indoctrination claiming to teach what is good and evil overrides our natural instincts for good and evil.

 

Of course having a good sense for good and evil doesn’t mean we don’t do bad things. I think pretty much everyone can make a list of some of the bad things they know they have done in their lives.

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Todd

I am not so sure we do. Taking that sense of justice and empathy as an example, we would like to think that we have a natural sense for both, that there’s a Rousseauean noble savage inside us somewhere. But then again, there are a great number of societies in which keeping slaves was seen as normal, and in which the vast majority of kids raised in that society never questioned why these slaves were treated as they were, but readily accept that this is neither unjust should they feel empathy. Is that the case because their natural sense of justice was perverted or because that sense isn’t all that natural but dependent on societal circumstances? How would we know?

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Well I am not saying we don’t need some advice or “calibration”. We all need teachers. But I do think we have a natural instinct…would you say you only do good because someone told you “You better do this, or there will be a punishment” or because you want to be good, you don’t want to hurt others, you have a sense of justice?

 

I haven’t read Rousseau but I think I am in his camp. The Chinese philosopher Mengzi also said something about this, I don’t know the exact quote, but he said if you see a child fall down a well, you immediately feel distressed and you want to help.

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Christian

Anonymous wrote:

I hate being told what to do. I kind of assumed everybody does. But it made me wonder if there are people who actually like it.

I think there can be comfort for many people in being told what to do, within reason, I’m not talking Colditz levels of subjugation.

Infinite personal choice can often cause anxiety. I find a lot of adults miss the simplicity of schooldays where rules and the path to success were very clearly defined. What you wear, where you go, how you succeed is all planned out.  I don’t personally as I hated school but I may be in the minority if I chat with friends and their nostalgia for those days.

It’s not a one way or another thing, coming from a post industrial town I know that while the ‘you’ll work here all your life and then retire and die’ is much maligned, quite rightly in many ways because of then restrictions it has on ambition.  The replacement of it with choice and uncertainty doesn’t seem to have made people any happier though, mostly the opposite.

 

 

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Todd

Christian wrote:

I am not so sure we do. Taking that sense of justice and empathy as an example, we would like to think that we have a natural sense for both, that there’s a Rousseauean noble savage inside us somewhere. But then again, there are a great number of societies in which keeping slaves was seen as normal, and in which the vast majority of kids raised in that society never questioned why these slaves were treated as they were, but readily accept that this is neither unjust should they feel empathy. Is that the case because their natural sense of justice was perverted or because that sense isn’t all that natural but dependent on societal circumstances? How would we know?

Slaves made sense primarily as a source of cheap labor that was necessary to sustain social order and economy. Often, it will be the most “civilized” societies that instituted slavery since it was necessary to support their idea of civilization. The great ideals of Athenian Greece, for example, would not be possible to practice if they didn’t have slaves. Sparta would not have been Sparta without the Helots. The highest ideals also create a demand for the lowest – slavery, warfare, conquest, etc. – to sustain them.

In the case of colonization, it wasn’t so much the desire to conquer the Eastern and American areas for their raw materials, but in Europe, internal squabbles were so intense that England, France and the Dutch felt that if they didn’t take hold of these regions first then their enemies would take them. Also, it was the active and sustained periods of warfare that led these nations to be overwhelmingly superior technologically to the regions they colonized. The scientific advances of Europe would not have come about if they weren’t constantly using them in war.

 

 

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Christian

Anonymous wrote:

The scientific advances of Europe would not have come about if they weren’t constantly using them in war.

That’s a bit hard to tell though, isn’t it? I mean, we don’t have a pacified Europe in the age of industrialisation as a control group… Wars certainly drove certain innovations, but I don’t think that’s the case all across the board, and you could also argue that once the Enlightenment and the natural sciences had arrived, scientific advances would’ve happened no matter what.

Christian wrote:

That’s a bit hard to tell though, isn’t it? I mean, we don’t have a pacified Europe in the age of industrialisation as a control group… Wars certainly drove certain innovations, but I don’t think that’s the case all across the board, and you could also argue that once the Enlightenment and the natural sciences had arrived, scientific advances would’ve happened no matter what.

Possibly, but you have to apply that same logic to your assertion. In other words, what evidence can you provide that the advances would have happened – or more importantly, would have happened at such a fast pace – if not for their constant concern in international conflicts? They didn’t happen in regions that had equivalent or even greater scientific knowledge like China and the Muslim world which had more stable societies and even in those regions, they also advanced rapidly due to warfare.

Even in the 20th century, many of the rapid advancements of science – nuclear physics, telecommunications, automation – were the result of military demands. So, it may not be conclusive, but certainly I wouldn’t say it is completely speculative.

Anonymous wrote:

Possibly, but you have to apply that same logic to your assertion. In other words, what evidence can you provide that the advances would have happened – or more importantly, would have happened at such a fast pace – if not for their constant concern in international conflicts?

None! Well, not without going into current times, and that probably isn’t easily comparable.

Anonymous wrote:

They didn’t happen in regions that had equivalent or even greater scientific knowledge like China and the Muslim world which had more stable societies

On the other hand, they also didn’t happen in societies that had equivalent or even greater scientific knowlegde and that were constantly at war like the ancient Roman and Greek societies.

There really isn’t enough evidence either way. But it seems to me that other circumstances that played into the change in society (secularisation, democratisation, capitalism) are more unique to the setting that constant warfare.

Christian wrote:

On the other hand, they also didn’t happen in societies that had equivalent or even greater scientific knowlegde and that were constantly at war like the ancient Roman and Greek societies. There really isn’t enough evidence either way. But it seems to me that other circumstances that played into the change in society (secularisation, democratisation, capitalism) are more unique to the setting that constant warfare.

However, Greece and Rome were not constantly at war in the way that Medieval and especially Enlightenment Europe were. The entire point of the Roman Empire was stability and warfare was not a constant concern over most of the land it ruled. There was significant advancement in the early Roman period when it was at war though. The most well-known scientist of the time, also, was Archimedes, whose advancements came while he was defending Sicily from the Romans.

Today, though, in our times, so much technology is driven by the fear of war or developed directly due to war (the computer, modern aircraft, satellites, radar, the Internet) irrespective if the people inventing it were under a totalitarian regime like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union or a democratic one like the UK or United States, that the acceleration of technology by warfare seems pretty well founded.

On the other hand, the accelerating power of warfare on technology has almost certainly had an effect on the direction technology has taken. The only other similar driving force is probably intoxication. Wine in Europe led to glass which in turn provided the foundations for astronomy (lenses, telescopes) and chemistry (tubes, beakers) and of course, a great deal of botany, herbology and chemistry was first discovered in fermentation. Meanwhile, in China, despite their high degree of learning, they were satisfied with porcelain and tea. If they were more alcoholic, they might’ve come up with better glass.

In a lot of ways, I think slavery ended up limiting the ancient world. If they could not depend on slave labor, ancient Rome might have had an industrial revolution.

I think it is a bit broader than just warfare, I think any kind of competition can be a driving force for innovation. But I think there are other factors, for instance the medical sector advances without warfare. The energy sector advances based on need, like the need to switch to a non-carbon based world.

Still, warfare has advanced medicine as battlefields provided plenty of patients and practice to doctors and surgeons. I’d say wars have advanced medicine even more than plagues. Energy as well since the demand provided by warring nations in the industrial era drove the development of new energy sources as well as more efficient machines to use that energy in conflicts.

The Iconic WWI Vehicle That Paved the Way for Modern Cars | WIRED

Even if you don’t accept the principle that war accelerates technological development, it certainly has shaped the sorts of technologies that eventually are used in almost all sectors of a society and civilization.

 

Anonymous wrote:

Even if you don’t accept the principle that war accelerates technological development,

No I accept it, but I don’t think war is the only thing that drives innovation.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

No I accept it, but I don’t think war is the only thing that drives innovation.

Certainly, that wasn’t the essential point. Originally, this was a discussion why the European powers were so much more superior technologically when it came to colonization – and specifically, their superiority was in combat technology and organization to allow a few thousand people to defeat armies many times their size. The obvious reason is that during the age of colonization when the British, French and Dutch empires came about, they were driven by near constant hostility and warfare driving that sort of advancement and what they fought over were trade routes so in some way it was trade that spurred the war, that spurred the development of military technology that led the powers to take over the areas that produced what they fought over.

Ironically, this led to situations where great powers fought over the source of fine porcelain for example until Europeans derived the secret to producing it locally. So, the development of porcelain prevented the Chinese from inventing glass while the Europeans, whose science was greatly accelerated by the invention of glass, would later spend fortunes and fight wars over porcelain.

 

DavidM wrote:

I’d understood organised religion to be something between an embarrassment and an evil. Yet as Aids did its dreadful work – this was the 1990s – I watched nuns offer compassionate care to the dying. Christian volunteers checked on derelict men with vomit down their clothes. I became uncomfortably aware that New Agers do not build hospitals or feed alcoholics – they buy self-actualisation at the cash register.

Not entirely an accurate comparison. New Agers are by definition religious. The New Age is a faith based idea. Instead, the question is how many Christian organizations as opposed to secular universities and corporations developed an actual treatment for the disease.

Also, the problem we have in the United States is that despite an overt injunction between the involvement of Church and State, Christian organizations still manage to receive more federal funding than any other religion or religious based organization. On top of that, they make their money tax-free. I am completely opposed to the distortion of the idea of separation of church and state to mean that some organizations can basically rake it in by claiming religious privilege. If Church and State were actually separate, then the government would treat every organization the same irrespective.

This is a large contributor to so many abuses like the pedophile scandals of many churches – largely Catholic but not exclusively so – and other abuses throughout the Christian, Muslim, Jewish and even Hindu and Buddhist schools and sects in the country. Not to mention Scientology which deserves all the criticism in the world BUT hardly compares historically with any of the other religions (just give it some time).

Looking worldwide, this has been a problem for many religious institutions, and recently, Australia even threatened to rescind tax-exempt status for religious organizations that refuse to commit to reimbursing victims of their churches.

With that in mind, though, it is ironic that astrology probably is the least damaging of the irrational beliefs out there. It is ironic that Christians might consider it black magick when even in the first few chapters of Genesis, it says that God put signs in the stars. Obviously, the original Hebrews were astrologers and fortune tellers. It kinda drives me crazy that the local fortune teller/psychic shop you’ll find probably within a block of your house is at most risk of being busted by the bunko squad in your town or city while any number of evangelist preachers, Muslim clerics, Hindu gurus or Buddhist monk will make thousands to millions of tax-free dollars offering the same fraudulent services in the name of Jesus or Allah or the Buddha.

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DavidM, Christian, Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Not entirely an accurate comparison. New Agers are by definition religious. The New Age is a faith based idea.

But isn’t this what makes it a fair comparison? In both cases, we’re talking about faith-based systems, and it seems to me that it makes sense to point out that one encourages altruism while the other is focused on self-actualisation. I do think that’s one of the major factors that makes Christianity and Islam so successful, that they encourage generosity and helpfulness to others.

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DavidM

Christian wrote:

But isn’t this what makes it a fair comparison? In both cases, we’re talking about faith-based systems, and it seems to me that it makes sense to point out that one encourages altruism while the other is focused on self-actualisation. I do think that’s one of the major factors that makes Christianity and Islam so successful, that they encourage generosity and helpfulness to others.

However, look at the opening premise: “I’d understood organised [sic] religion to be something between an embarrassment and an evil.”

Comparing it to another irrational religious point of view doesn’t support or contradict that assertion. Suppose it was a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses who brought food and donated money to AIDS or any other people suffering an illness. That would be admirable, but they would also be telling these patients that they should not get blood transfusions which might lead to their death.

Also, the “organized” part of the religion is important as well. New Agers covers a lot of beliefs including some Christian ones, but it often does not mean churches as large as Christian or Muslim denominations. Of course, new agers aren’t building hospitals – though I question if that is really true – because they are not organized in large groups with millions of donors. I’d doubt that New Age individuals were also not contributing their own time and money to causes.

Also, considering many “new age” beliefs, I would not want them to build a hospital. If your midwife follows Wiccan beliefs, I still think you’d want her or him to have significant secular medical training when delivering your baby. Even calling it “New Age” is a little strange now that it is actually an old movement repackaging beliefs that go back thousands of years.

It is an interesting article though on how people perceive it and how things like astrology will transform in the age of Big Data.

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Christian, DavidM

Interesting lecture on atheism in the Middle Ages – or, more accurately, unbelief long before any codified argument for atheism appears.

How to be an Atheist in Medieval Europe – YouTube

Though the whole (not too long) lecture is well researched, the initial premise is very interesting. The idea is that people in practice questioned, denied or simply didn’t believe in God or Christianity long before there was any intellectual argument for atheism. Certainly, this was true in ancient polytheistic societies as well. Euripides put this line in his protagonist’s mouth in the Tragedy of Herakles responding to his friend Theseus’ argument that his misfortune is due to the caprice of the Gods.

 In any case, I don’t believe any of it. I don’t believe that the gods engage is such unholy relationships, nor have I never believed this story about gods tying up their parents in chains and I won’t believe it now. Nor can I ever believe that one god is the lord of another. A god, if he is a real god, is in need of nothing. These are just miserable tales made up by poets.

That was more than 400 years BCE. In the next Century, Epicurus would supposedly say such things as:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

For his train of thought, it did not matter if gods existed or not since “A happy and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; hence he is exempt from movements of anger and partiality, for every such movement implies weakness.” and “If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another.”

Essentially, just the experience of living – maybe especially so in Medieval periods – gives a person plenty of reason for behaving as if there was nothing divine in the world or the cause of it despite the universality of the Church. Perhaps that universality actually gave people more reason not to believe.

However, what is interesting is that practice does actually almost always proceed theory. People don’t need a reason to not believe in a god or gods, and conversely, people really don’t need a reason to believe.

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Christian, Rocket, Todd

This seems appropriate for this thread:

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Anonymous wrote:

These are just miserable tales made up by poets.

In Plato’s Symposium, a bunch of guys are literally lying around and making up what the gods must be like. They just suck it our of their thumb. I think this must be true of all mythology and godstuff. It’s speculation.

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Todd

I’ve been attracted to the Groundhog Day view of God for a while.

‘Groundhog Day’ “I’m a god” scene – YouTube

PHIL – Yes, it’s a trick. But maybe the real God cheats, too. Maybe God isn’t omnipotent– he’s just had a lot of practice.

 

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Rocket

I think I like a pantheist view of god, the universe as god. It’s odd how things function to create life. There is something, which you could call god or the biological forces of nature, that gives birth to all the processes that maintain our bodies, that enable cell division, brain activity etc. all of which is pretty amazing. I don’t do that, I am not in charge of the cell division in my body, or the immune system, or my heart beat. It just happens somehow, and it keeps going (for a certain time.)

You could call it god, but that is probably just a metaphor.

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Christian

I worship the Almighty Dollar. Amen.

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Todd

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njerry, Dave, Todd

Anonymous wrote:

I think I like a pantheist view of god, the universe as god. It’s odd how things function to create life. There is something, which you could call god or the biological forces of nature, that gives birth to all the processes that maintain our bodies, that enable cell division, brain activity etc. all of which is pretty amazing. I don’t do that, I am not in charge of the cell division in my body, or the immune system, or my heart beat. It just happens somehow, and it keeps going (for a certain time.)

You could call it god, but that is probably just a metaphor.

Spinoza had a pantheistic attitude toward god which was scandalous for his time. Thomas Jefferson was more of deist which accepted that God must’ve created the universe, but then had no further interest in the actions or desires of people. Kind of like the author of a book who doesn’t go back to it once it is finished.

Essentially, it is pretty nonsensical. Ideas like God, the Self, Justice, Free Will, Evil, Pride, Sin or Destiny are impossible to conclusively define. We all generally know what they mean in the context when they are used, but they are essentially irreducible signifiers. They are concepts that can be used but cannot be examined devoid of the context in which they are used without eventually leading to irreconcilable contradictions — i.e. nonsense.

Even attempting to build a logical or completely reasonable basis for morality and ethics leads to many incredibly terrible outcomes – genocide, totalitarian societies, eugenics, Hiroshima that can overshadow the worst religious terrors have achieved. The most likely final answer to the problems of living seems to be something like having faith in something – but not too seriously. Sorta like the way Elaine Pagels described some early Christian sects that didn’t threaten hell and damnation on people who couldn’t live up to the teachings of Christ but instead said something more like “at least do your best.”

Like when you go back and look at the way the Old Testament delivered the 10 commandment (and hundreds of other laws, actually). There was a story where one of the Hebrews was found picking up sticks on the Sabbath Day. They had just gotten the commandments and one of them said something like “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.” Now that doesn’t clearly outright say, do or don’t do anything specific on the Sabbath Day, but picking up sticks certainly didn’t sit right with his neighbors so they took him up to Moses to ask what should be done with him. Moses said he had to ask God so when he did, God said that the man should be stoned to death by his neighbors. So that’s what they did.

However, if you think about it, it really should have played out like a Black Adder sketch. They would have buried the man up to his waist in the desert, everyone would have picked up a stone, but when the time came to throw it, they should have all just stood there holding the stones… because there just so happens to be another commandment that goes something like “you will not kill.”

So, while they are standing there, shuffling around, Moses would have to say “um… guys? You can start lobbing those rocks at Sid here any time now. Do I need to do a countdown or something?”

After an awkward pause, one of the Hebrews would say, “Well, Moe, you know, I don’t think we can do that.”

“Why not?”

“See, this is the thing. God said that Sid should die because he was working on the Sabbath Day and all.”

Random Hebrew: “He was picking up sticks. You call that working? Sidney wouldn’t know real work if it dropped on his foot.”

Sid: “Screw you, Larry!”

Moses: “Hush up. Yes, Sid must die for breaking the commandment.”

“Well, that’s all well and good, of course, seeing as it is the Lord saying it and all, but, here’s the thing. If we kill Sid, then we’ll be breaking that other commandment that goes something like, um…”

Random Hebrew: “Honor your mother and father.”

“No, the other one.”

Random Hebrew: “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, maybe?”

“No – Don’t kill! You will not kill. Remember?”

Random Hebrew: “Oh, yeah, I always forget that one.”

Moses: “There are only ten of them. How do you forget? What’s your point?”

“My point is that if he’s gotta die for breaking one commandment, then won’t we all have to die for breaking another commandment? I mean, at this rate we’ll end up with only one guy left who has to stone himself, won’t we?”

Moses: “But the Lord has commandeth that he die!”

“Then, let the Lord do it. I’m sure He doesn’t need any help from us.”

Random Hebrew: “I suppose Sid could kill himself.”

Sid: “No I can’t!”

Random Hebrew: “Lazy bastard. Won’t lift a finger to help anyone else, would you?!”

Why did no one in the Bible ever bring this up when the death penalty was being laid down for everything from wearing mixed fabrics to eating shrimp? Why can’t God do his own killing? I mean, eventually he kills everyone, right? The sentence is death eventually irrespective if you follow the commandments or not.

The answer likely is similar with the early Christians who were more “do your best” than “do or die!” The plain truth is that the people who are willing to kill to get their way most often get their way, and they control the narrative. However, that is just as true of any secular philosophy or politics as it is of theology and theocracy.

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Todd, DavidM

I read all that dialogue in Monty Python voices rather than Black Adder, but it was still funny as hell. Well done.

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Rocket, Todd

The “just do your best” version is basically what Jesus says in the gospel to the adulteress who had to be stoned. Basically Jesus says “look, nobody is going to stone you, just don’t do that anymore”. No wonder he had to be crucified.

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Anonymous wrote:

mixed fabrics to eating shrimp

God says we’re supposed to wear mixed fabrics while eating shrimp?

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Anonymous wrote:

The “just do your best” version is basically what Jesus says in the gospel to the adulteress who had to be stoned. Basically Jesus says “look, nobody is going to stone you, just don’t do that anymore”. No wonder he had to be crucified.

Honestly, in the bible, Jesus is much more of a hard-ass than he’s generally depicted.

For example
“If any man come to Me and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:26

However, honestly, as far as the teachings of the bible, I don’t think people have generally that much against the Commandments or any of the laws or requirements of a religion no matter how unreasonable. It’s the stoning to death of people for disobeying them that seems a bit too much to accept. Also, the obvious disregard for the rights of women that permeates the Bible as well. It’s not just that the laws seem arbitrary and mostly absurd, but that there is an apparent intent to oppress anything that women do.

Honestly, though, the truth is most likely few if any people were actually killed for disobeying or breaking these laws and instead other atonements or workarounds were implemented. Otherwise, everyone would’ve been executed before they even reached the promised land. Also, it is unlikely that any of these stories about wiping out entire cities and populations had any factual basis as well. The truth is that many cities and whole regions were depopulated during the Bronze Age collapse and the invasions of the mysterious “Sea Peoples.” So, the Hebrews likely told those stories when they moved into these now vacant lands just to warn off any potential invaders or raiders. The Bible depicts them as a genocidal group, but the truth is they were just very vulnerable.

The Bible, of course, wasn’t actually written down until much later, likely following the Babylonian period so it gives the impression that it would have been put together by a very oppressive theocratic group of leaders who wanted to exert power and control over the people as the tribe grew in population and advancement. So they tailored the stories to enhance the aggressive nature of their own regimes. Certainly, Egypt in the Old Testament seems to have more in common with the Babylonians who enslaved the Hebrews than the actual Bronze Age Egyptians who didn’t actually use slaves for any major construction or as a mass labor pool.

Jesus also tells people to find shit out by themselves and not listen to people preaching.

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Anonymous wrote:

Jesus also tells people to find shit out by themselves and not listen to people preaching.

At the same time, he said it to mostly illiterate and superstitious people under Roman occupation who had no way of finding anything out on their own.

What are they supposed to do – Google it? ;)

Anonymous wrote:

What are they supposed to do – Google it? ;)

I don’t know, meditate or do yoga or some shit? Ask Jesus!

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Christian, njerry

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

What are they supposed to do – Google it? ;)

I don’t know, meditate or do yoga or some shit? Ask Jesus!

Ask Jesus to google it for you.

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Todd wrote:

Ask Jesus to google it for you.

He’s blocked me.

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Rocket, DavidM

Anonymous wrote:

Todd wrote:

Ask Jesus to google it for you.

He’s blocked me.

Have you tried Satan?

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Anonymous wrote:

Jesus also tells people to find shit out by themselves and not listen to people preaching.

I can’t remember that from the Bible. But it seems like something he might say.

 

There is a Buddhist sutta, the Kalama sutta that says the same thing. You should trust your own judgment and experience. I think it is kind of a truism though, I mean who decides he should do what some preacher says even though he doesn’t agree with it? “That is clearly bullshit but I think I will believe it and act accordingly.” Nobody does that unless they’re forced to. Authority is often backed up by the threat of force, or the threat of social exclusion.

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Todd wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Todd wrote:

Ask Jesus to google it for you.

He’s blocked me.

Have you tried Satan?

Is that like a satellite cable company?

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

I can’t remember that from the Bible.

That sums up every single conversation I’ve read where people confront christians about what the bible actually says. It’s usually not followed by this though:

Anonymous wrote:

But it seems like something he might say.

Then again, I didn’t specify exactly when and where and didn’t give an exact quote either.

Anonymous wrote:

the Kalama sutta

I love seafood.

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garjones, Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Todd wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Todd wrote:

Ask Jesus to google it for you.

He’s blocked me.

Have you tried Satan?

Is that like a satellite cable company?

Close. Cellular phone company.

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Todd wrote:

Close. Cellular phone company.

Well, if they have service here I could get an account with them and thus probably reach Jesus through Satan.

What are their data rates?

Anonymous wrote:

Todd wrote:

Close. Cellular phone company.

Well, if they have service here I could get an account with them and thus probably reach Jesus through Satan.

What are their data rates?

The basic plan costs and arm and leg.

The premium plan costs you soul.

I think if you use a coupon, you can get a discount.

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Anonymous wrote:

hen the death penalty was being laid down for everything from wearing mixed fabrics to eating shrimp?

Do you have internal evidence that every prohibition was punished with death? I mean, it says “thou shalt not steal”, but specifies that a thief has to pay a fine based on what he or she stole. And if a thief cannot pay the fine, he becomes an indentured servant. On that note, it is forbidden to keep indentured servant’s contracts as valid beyond the Jubilee year, and in Jeremiah’s time (Jer. 33) many noblemen violated this, and Jeremiah convinced King Zedekiah to enforce the rule, and was fine with them releasing the servants and compensating them for the illegal extension of their contracts; he didn’t insist on putting them to death The punishment for certain false oaths was a sacrifice (see end of Leviticus 5) and Deut. 25:1-3 talks about cases where a violation is punished by flogging.

In, it does sometimes say G-d will punish the sinner; His anger will be directed to the eater of blood, He will cut off the soul of those who violate Yom Kippur and those who commit incest with siblings, and will insure that someone who is incestuous with his brother’s divorcée will not have children from that tryst.

On that note of incest, stoning is not the only method of death mentioned; Someone who committed incest  with his mother-in-law was burned to death.

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DavidM

Todd wrote:

The premium plan costs you soul.

Totally going with this option since souls aren’t real.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Totally going with this option since souls aren’t real.

So you’re saying the entire premise of the new Pixar film is based on a FALSEHOOD?!

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Todd

njerry wrote:

|

Oh, it is RIFE with fake news! Souls aren’t real. Cats can’t talk. Women can’t play the sax. Black people don’t have feelings.

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njerry, Todd

Essentially the issue with the big religious texts, they frequently contradict themselves and on top of that are often written in language that is translated several times and open to huge amounts of interpretation. That’s why we have thousands of different denominations of Christianity all with different readings of ‘mostly’ the same text.

I remember seeing an Islamic scholar say the Q’uran was less simpler as it was written as a series of instructions and not parable. However not long after the 9/11 attacks the BBC held a special Question Time shows with 10 Muslim scholars from around the UK. When asked the question ‘what does jihad mean’ you got 10 very different answers, all quoting their own little bits of the text to back them up. All the lines true and unchanged and all giving different answers.

Arguably that’s also why they do so well so you can fit them around your worldview, like the televangelists that ignore the ‘blessed are the meek’ bits and preach a prosperity gospel.

 

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Totally going with this option since souls aren’t real.

I don’t believe that the “soul” is an actual physical thing, but it’s a good way to describe the “spark of life” that living things have. If a living thing dies, it’s still physically the same, but it’s just a shell – it has no soul.

Also I like the idea that Shinto religions have of inanimate objects having a soul or spirit. If you make something, then you imbue it with a small part of yourself, and therefore give it “life.”

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garjones wrote:

I remember seeing an Islamic scholar say the Q’uran was less simpler as it was written as a series of instructions and not parable. However not long after the 9/11 attacks the BBC held a special Question Time shows with 10 Muslim scholars from around the UK. When asked the question ‘what does jihad mean’ you got 10 very different answers, all quoting their own little bits of the text to back them up. All the lines true and unchanged and all giving different answers.

The Quran is as much a jumble as the New Testament and inherited all the same contradictions of the Jewish and Christian stories it borrowed. Even though it was long after the time of Jesus and the Apostles, there really is not much more historic support for the story of Mohammed and his followers. It was an oral tradition that wasn’t written down, collected and assembled until decades after Mohammed’s death and it had its schisms almost right away concerning the succession which seems strange since why would anyone assume that the role of a prophet could be passed down rather than appointed by god?

Also, Islam claims to be God’s final revelation, but only the Arabic texts of what, as mentioned, was originally only an oral tradition in the time of Mohammed and long after are considered to be authoritative. Why would God put his final revelation in a language not only most of the world cannot understand but that a massive number of Muslims in the world today don’t read or speak? I don’t know, but I think most Muslims today are actually Asian and even in the Middle East, you have plenty of Muslims who aren’t Arab.

Anonymous wrote:

Why would God put his final revelation in a language not only most of the world cannot understand but that a massive number of Muslims in the world today don’t read or speak?

It’s almost as if religion is bullshit.

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Todd

Steve Sensible wrote:

I don’t believe that the “soul” is an actual physical thing, but it’s a good way to describe the “spark of life” that living things have. If a living thing dies, it’s still physically the same, but it’s just a shell – it has no soul. Also I like the idea that Shinto religions have of inanimate objects having a soul or spirit. If you make something, then you imbue it with a small part of yourself, and therefore give it “life.”

Yeah, I think that is the basic “mirage” that supports a lot of spiritual or supernatural belief – the illusion of an “essence.” It seems to be the basic contradiction “essence” versus “existence” that is at the heart of human experience.

In philosophy, it was the source of a lot of metaphysical exploration – coming out of Plato’s idea of reality being universal ideals and experience being the shadows of these ideals interacting. Leibniz’s monadology is possibly the most interesting expression of that concept implying the world we experience is a simulation of an infinite number of isolated monads under the will of a supreme monad that simulates interactions while none of the monads actually touch each other. A lot of this was in the deist beliefs of the time as well, where the world was described as a kind of clockwork machine created and wound up by God but which then proceeded with no need of repair or intervention.

It is interesting to see the similarity between monadology and quantum behavior, but that absolutely was not what Leibniz describes in his actually quite short texts on the topic.

However, all that was exploded when Heidegger, Sartre and others began their more existential philosophies showing experience and phenomenon were better described as having no essential nature.

It is interesting to see the same sort of supernatural conflict in countries like Japan or Thailand where there is a strong and far older animistic tradition like Shinto – where everything has an essential soul – and widespread Buddhism where the idea of a soul or self is really an illusion to overcome.

“There is no spoon.”

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Todd

Buddhism is quite soulful.

Anonymous wrote:

I don’t know, but I think most Muslims today are actually Asian and even in the Middle East, you have plenty of Muslims who aren’t Arab.

Pretty much, the 5 nations with the largest Muslim populations are Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nigeria. Arabic isn’t commonly spoken in any of them.

I know here there are attempts to teach it to Muslim students for religious reasons in schools and mosques but it’s quite half arsed, it’s a bit like Latin or modern language lessons in the UK -about 1% come out with anything approaching fluency at the end of it, the few that really take an interest and study further on their own.

 

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Why would God put his final revelation in a language not only most of the world cannot understand but that a massive number of Muslims in the world today don’t read or speak?

It’s almost as if religion is bullshit.

Hey, it’s been a successful grift for millennia.

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Todd wrote:

Hey, it’s been a successful grift for millennia.

I think you mean:

Todd wrote:

Hey, it’s been seven thousand nine hundred and eighty six successful grifts for millennia.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Why would God put his final revelation in a language not only most of the world cannot understand but that a massive number of Muslims in the world today don’t read or speak? I don’t know, but I think most Muslims today are actually Asian and even in the Middle East, you have plenty of Muslims who aren’t Arab.

Actually, the Jewish Philosopher Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi in his major work, Sefer HaKuzari, criticizes the point that many Muslim polemicists in his day brought up the idea that “The Qu’ran is the perfect expression of Arabic” and that “Only G-d could have made that” with “Well, only Arabic speakers can appreciate that.”

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Todd

As an atheist the simple answer is those are the languages the people who made the stories up spoke.

If you accept the influence of a creator though I don’t particularly see why Islam stands out as any different in that aspect. In fact you could make an argument it makes more sense.

With Jesus, God decided to send his son to Earth so why have him as an Arameic speaker and his words written in Hebrew when Latin or Greek (or even Chinese) were spoken far more widely? At least with God having chosen Mohammed as his prophet you could argue that it was just luck of the draw the right vessel for his words happened to be an Arab.

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Todd

garjones wrote:

If you accept the influence of a creator though I don’t particularly see why Islam stands out as any different in that aspect. In fact you could make an argument it makes more sense.

Still, neither makes a lot of sense. It’s kinda like saying a toothpick is more like a nail than a sponge, but if you need a nail, neither one is at all useful.

garjones wrote:

With Jesus, God decided to send his son to Earth so why have him as an Arameic speaker and his words written in Hebrew when Latin or Greek (or even Chinese) were spoken far more widely? At least with God having chosen Mohammed as his prophet you could argue that it was just luck of the draw the right vessel for his words happened to be an Arab.

Actually, the NT was written in Greek. Also, I was talking about things dominant in Islamic thought at the time, where the idea that the fact that Mohammed was an Arab was planned; G-d was waiting for the right Arab, since Islam, Judaism, (and at least Oriental) Christianity all agreed that the Arabs (at least those in the Northwest Arabian Peninsula)  were descended from Abraham’s son Ishmael, and there was a long time were prophecy was dominant among the Israelites, descended from Jacob son of Isaac, son of Abraham, and given the fact that Islam sees Ishmael as the main heir of Abraham, and the Israelites were given special attention because they were not the main heir, the Seal had to be from Ishmael, an Arab. Islamic polemicists also emphasized the idea that this was natural, since the Hadith says Arabic was the original language- Judaism has a similar claim about Biblical Hebrew, but it’s not emphasized in Jewish Philosophy- Rabbi HaLevi does discuss the idea, but it was really provoked by Aristotalians responding to Islam with “No, it’s Aramaic that’s the ancestor of both Hebrew and Arabic”, so he felt he needed to reply to them.

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Anonymous wrote:

“No, it’s Aramaic that’s the ancestor of both Hebrew and Arabic”, so he felt he needed to reply to them.

That is interesting. Honestly, of course, it is the Bronze Age religions of the Canaanites and Hittites that prefigure the deity that eventually comes to dominate the Hebrew religion and then naturally is adapted to Christian and Muslim beliefs.

As we learn more of the Bronze Age, it does seem to imply that there is a lost much “Older” Testament from which the Torah and Talmud were later chronicles in a line from a polytheistic religion into a monotheistic one. In many of the older, much more complex religions, there are deities that resemble the Hebrew God, and there is a tradition of cults from Egypt to Mycenae where a single god of a pantheon is exalted to dominance even to the exclusion of any other gods. Certainly the mythic tale of Moses and the Exodus implies that the Hebrew God was not the only god, and it reads as a chronicle of a tribe of many separate ethnicities that makes an eternal contract with a single member of a Canaanite pantheon in a cult that eventually becomes a culture. Of course, by the time the actual oral tales are collected into a continuous text or scripture, there are strong implications that all other gods are false.

I was thinking about the “nobody owes you anything” mindset. It’s such bullshit, and it’s a shame that is gets casually tossed around. When you’re born, the world owes you love. You need to be cared for, you need to be fed, raised, protected, educated. You’re born into a community and that community has a responsibility for you.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

I was thinking about the “nobody owes you anything” mindset. It’s such bullshit, and it’s a shame that is gets casually tossed around. When you’re born, the world owes you love. You need to be cared for, you need to be fed, raised, protected, educated. You’re born into a community and that community has a responsibility for you.

It is a good point. Nobody asked to be born, so certainly if a person is a parent, they should have responsibility for that. On the other hand, the parents didn’t ask to be born either so how much can we really expect from a bunch of our fellow sentient beings that find themselves abruptly dropped into this mess?

It’s kinda like the “think of the children” racket that’s thrown at people. They said that when I was a kid and if they were thinking of us, we didn’t end up in much better positions than our parents. Hell, most kids have parents that feed, clothe and house them usually for a minimal charge or even sometimes for free!

Screw the children, think of the adults! We have to make a living, fight in wars (even women, nowadays), vote for one of two candidates every four years and then fight about in the intervening years unless we don’t live in a democracy and only get to vote for one person every decade or so and then quietly complain about it to people we hope are not informants for the secret police.

Then we have to take care of kids, too! Well, I don’t because I don’t have kids. I don’t want them, and they certainly don’t want to be born. Who can blame them, really? Not me.

After all that, even when you finally get to the point where you manage to live paycheck to paycheck, pay your taxes, pay the mortgage (if your “lucky”) and for the car and any repairs, get the groceries (if you’re lucky) manage not to get killed for some absurd reason (of which the world seems to have no end of options from disease to disaster to throw at you), you’re then expected to care about your fellow man.

It’s exhausting.

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It is tough…life is pretty complicated these days. Society really has a duty to make the basic necessities of life easily accessible, like housing and food. Get people a living wage, UBI, or a job guarantee (that was an idea that came up here a while ago, instead of universal basic income give everybody the opportunity to get universal basic employment). So that we can concentrate on the things that really matter. So that we do not have to worry constantly about the precariousness of life.

 

Basic respect for the sanctity of life demands we don’t let anyone fall through the cracks.

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Rocket, Christian, Todd

Sounds like a plan. I bet we can get some of that sweet, sweet venture capital money to start an online company that buys cheap land an hour’s drive outside local metropolitan areas to houses unemployed people in some super cheap barracks that we can throw together, and ensure their security with a lot of chain link fencing and razor-wire. Then we can bus this workforce of people into the cities as the least expensive labor options. We feed, clothe and shelter them and, in return, we get their paychecks.

Heck, since most startups aren’t even expected to make money for about thirty years, we can just use all that investor cash to put people to work building more barracks in more places.

I have a great name for it, too.

 

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lorcan_nagle

Anonymous wrote:

Sounds like a plan. I bet we can get some of that sweet, sweet venture capital money to start an online company that buys cheap land an hour’s drive outside local metropolitan areas to houses unemployed people in some super cheap barracks that we can throw together, and ensure their security with a lot of chain link fencing and razor-wire. Then we can bus this workforce of people into the cities as the least expensive labor options. We feed, clothe and shelter them and, in return, we get their paychecks.

Heck, since most startups aren’t even expected to make money for about thirty years, we can just use all that investor cash to put people to work building more barracks in more places.

I have a great name for it, too.

 

But that doesn’t sound nice at all!

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Christian

Anonymous wrote:

But that doesn’t sound nice at all!

Don’t you care about your fellow man?

Every Thursday, we’ll let them watch television from 6:00 to 10:00 PM. How’s that sound?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

But that doesn’t sound nice at all!

Don’t you care about your fellow man?

Every Thursday, we’ll let them watch television from 6:00 to 10:00 PM. How’s that sound?

Your model seems too authoritarian. I think there must be other ways to get good quality, affordable public housing, and ways to keep people busy and engaged in society. You don’t have to house people in barracks like cattle. You could let people have their own say in how they want to live and what they want to do. The problem seems to be enforcing it from above. Another problem is letting the private sector solve this, that is not going to work.

Anonymous wrote:

I think there must be other ways to get good quality, affordable public housing, and ways to keep people busy and engaged in society. You don’t have to house people in barracks like cattle. You could let people have their own say in how they want to live and what they want to do.

Don’t you care about me?! How else are we gonna make money out of it? 

It’s not authoritarian. The government wouldn’t be involved at all. It would be completely voluntary.

Seriously, though, I do think the “WorryFree” pitch actually would attract a whole lot of people. Especially parents whose children can’t or don’t want to work.

The reason no one has done it yet is that there isn’t that much demand even for slave labor in this country when you can depend on something like it – or worse, actually – from overseas. In the United States, we don’t need workers, we need consumers.

In some ways, for all the “opportunities” in China, I do think that the majority of workers live in something very similar and, actually, if you really think that “caring” for your fellow human is important, that is what they are doing. Certainly more than the Soviets did for the peasants when they collectivized and starved most of them to eradicate capitalism in the countryside.

Honestly, though, you have ask yourself in America and in Europe if we aren’t actually doing very well caring for each other relative to pretty much any time in the history of either continent (or really sub-continent in the case of Europe. Seriously, you guys are really exaggerating the geography and geology over there claiming continent status, fer real). If someone came here from the poorest regions of Pakistan or Venezuela, I bet they’d have to wonder how anyone has any trouble making a living here compared to what they had to do to survive even if they ended up in the poorest parts of our country.

At heart, though, few people who tell you they don’t owe anything to anybody really mean that. What they are saying is they don’t owe anything to you. In other words, it is an assertion of self-possession which you should honestly understand since, like above, you also often object to any authoritarian (or even authoritative) limitation on personal expression. This is the balance we live under – people have the freedom to fail or succeed (usually fail, though) on their own prerogative and we have the desire, if not the obligation, to see that people are also cared for when they cannot care for themselves. I honestly think that Western capitalist nations, despite many despicable elements that are obvious from the inside, have managed that balance better than authoritarian or communist nations have. At the same time, I do think that the current generations of people today have also lost quite a bit of faith in altruism as it has also often simply been a tool to install real con artists into power.

We can do better – and we can do worse, honestly – but if someone expresses the sentiment “no one owes anything to anybody” just assume they’ve been burned badly by some scam playing on their human sympathy, and then maybe you can start to care about the people who claim they don’t care.

 

Anonymous wrote:

Seriously, though, I do think the “WorryFree” pitch actually would attract a whole lot of people. Especially parents whose children can’t or don’t want to work.

The reason no one has done it yet is that there isn’t that much demand even for slave labor in this country when you can depend on something like it – or worse, actually – from overseas. In the United States, we don’t need workers, we need consumers.

A lot of people have done this, actually! Well, minus the selling-the-workforce thing. But having people live in barracks, work themselves to death for you and taking their money is called a cult community, and it’s always a great gig for exactly one person.

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Todd

Christian wrote:

A lot of people have done this, actually! Well, minus the selling-the-workforce thing. But having people live in barracks, work themselves to death for you and taking their money is called a cult community, and it’s always a great gig for exactly one person.

Also, prisons in the US

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Todd, Christian

Anonymous wrote:

In some ways, for all the “opportunities” in China, I do think that the majority of workers live in something very similar and, actually, if you really think that “caring” for your fellow human is important, that is what they are doing.

China has just enslaved its entire population, it’s a horror state.

 

I agree with you the Western countries are not that bad in this regard. We do a lot right, and I think that is because in their heart most people realize we do have to take care of each other.

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Anonymous wrote:

G-d was waiting for the right Arab, since Islam, Judaism, (and at least Oriental) Christianity all agreed that the Arabs (at least those in the Northwest Arabian Peninsula)  were descended from Abraham’s son Ishmael

Well there’s your answer then why it was an Arab. All to do with Abraham. It’s a monarchy thing.

Aside from all that Christianity and Islam haven’t done badly in getting the message out to billions of people so I guess it was never relevant.

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Christian wrote:

A lot of people have done this, actually! Well, minus the selling-the-workforce thing. But having people live in barracks, work themselves to death for you and taking their money is called a cult community, and it’s always a great gig for exactly one person.

Yeah, but how is that so different from Google or Facebook or Tesla?

You Should Run Your Startup Like a Cult. Here’s How | WIRED

Are Successful Companies The New Cults? (forbes.com)

James Damore: Fired Google Engineer Says Google Is ‘Like a Cult’ | Fortune

You gotta do what it takes to succeed!

How MLMs Use Religion to Manipulate You (feat. The Antibot) – YouTube

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Todd

I don’t think that’s right, because Google isn’t evil. They’ve said so. Repeatedly.

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Todd

garjones wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

G-d was waiting for the right Arab, since Islam, Judaism, (and at least Oriental) Christianity all agreed that the Arabs (at least those in the Northwest Arabian Peninsula)  were descended from Abraham’s son Ishmael

Well there’s your answer then why it was an Arab. All to do with Abraham. It’s a monarchy thing.

Aside from all that Christianity and Islam haven’t done badly in getting the message out to billions of people so I guess it was never relevant.

The main part of the argument of the traditionalist Muslim intelligentsia in that time that is  being discussed was that since Muhammad was an Arab, the Qur’an was  revealed in Arabic, and its Arabic is perfect, and since humans could not write Arabic perfectly, and that nobody has a linguistically “perfect” book in another language, this proves that Arabic was the first language and that the Qur’an must be divine. There’s a bit of subtilty to the argument, so the Aristotlian Muslim intelligentsia felt they needed to respond to why that’s a stupid argument, and thus Rabbi HaLevi had to respond to them, but had to introduce the traditionalist Muslim claim for context.

Anonymous wrote:

China has just enslaved its entire population, it’s a horror state.

Not to mention, even if by negligence, they have released a biological weapon on the entire world, and every single government’s hand is tied due to economic collapse or  nukes if they respond.

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Anonymous wrote:

thus Rabbi HaLevi had to respond to them

He really doesn’t as all of it is just folk tales.

Even it isn’t. Why does it ever matter if a religion you don’t believe in makes claims about a different language? Are Buddhists concerned that Jewish texts are in Hebrew? These people need to get a life.

 

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Anonymous wrote:

Not to mention, even if by negligence, they have released a biological weapon on the entire world, and every single government’s hand is tied due to economic collapse or  nukes if they respond.

Though, honestly, it’s the capitalist world’s reliance on China production and loosely regulated global transport that created the vectors for it to spread internationally. Also, the “wet markets” – obviously not communist as they are markets – where the virus originated (unless you go with disproven lab origin theories) are notoriously unregulated and not the result of the PRC or Communist Party’s policies toward the economy and workers. Unless it’s seen as something of a “gray market” allowed by the local officials so they can graft away money that would be spend subsidizing serfdom for the population.

I think it is a separate issue from the authoritarian political system that also involves Western National policies that promoted turning over our supply chains to the Chinese.

Hell, if everybody in the world went vegan, these wet markets would not exist and there wouldn’t be as many opportunities for human-animal interaction that’s led to these viral epidemics. So, you could blame our global food production system for promoting so much meat in our diets for the pandemic.

garjones wrote:

Even it isn’t. Why does it ever matter if a religion you don’t believe in makes claims about a different language? Are Buddhists concerned that Jewish texts are in Hebrew? These people need to get a life.

Still, you can see why Muslim, Jewish and Christians are continuously in debates as they are fighting over much the same intellectual and often physical territories. Whenever the religions coincide, you can usually expect direct debates. It’s rare for different religions to synthesize, but you do see it in cases like Japanese Shinto and Zen with people practicing both. The relationship between South Korean Christianity and Buddhism is interesting as well. Not in that people are both, but that it doesn’t generate much direct conflict in the social order.

Anonymous wrote:

“wet markets”

The ‘wet market’ is bullshit. Believe me as someone in the region it is a term that means nothing of significance. A fishmonger stall in Swansea or Detroit is defined as a wet market. Wet markets exists all over the world and have for centuries.

The issue is with us fucking with animal habitats, forcing ourselves into their areas and deciding we know best when we don’t.

We’ve had this in Asia and Africa in recent times with viruses but it’s basically them catching up with us doing the same thing before, we can’t impose on wild areas any more because we destroyed them 200 years ago. We bemoan and lecture on lost forest in Brazil and Indonesia 150 years after we removed our own for profit.

 

 

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lorcan_nagle, Todd

garjones wrote:

The ‘wet market’ is bullshit. Believe me as someone in the region it is a term that means nothing of significance. A fishmonger stall in Swansea or Detroit is defined as a wet market. Wet markets exists all over the world and have for centuries.

That is interesting. I would see markets in Thailand that were filled with all sorts of fresh meat and fish and I was wondering if wet markets in the news reports were somehow different.

Not really and I think it’s always been a huge distraction, like ‘wet markets’ in China have live meerkats wresting with hippos in a sludge of bacteria.

We divided our wild environments into agricultural plots and spread diseases across the world. Now they are doing it for the same profit motive we sell as the best way.

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lorcan_nagle, Todd

Anonymous wrote:

obviously not communist as they are markets

Though in general, the CCP is less communist then they make out to be. Compared to the USSR or Cuba, they’re more on the border of actual communism and totalitarian socialism. I also lean towards the idea that they’re not Marxist; they’re their own form of communism.

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Todd

garjones wrote:

Not really and I think it’s always been a huge distraction, like ‘wet markets’ in China have live meerkats wresting with hippos in a sludge of bacteria.

Yeah, a butcher’s or fishmonger’s is a wet market by the definition of the term.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

obviously not communist as they are markets

Though in general, the CCP is less communist then they make out to be. Compared to the USSR or Cuba, they’re more on the border of actual communism and totalitarian socialism. I also lean towards the idea that they’re not Marxist; they’re their own form of communism.

I think “true” communism isn’t supposed to be authoritarian. China is its own unique mix of awful.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

I think “true” communism isn’t supposed to be authoritarian. China is its own unique mix of awful.

It generally always turns out that way though. Communism can exist with some capitalist elements, but it cannot exist without a monopoly on the political structure. There can be minority communist parties in capitalist and democratic nations, but there cannot be minority non-communist parties in a nation controlled by a communist party.

The Chinese government and Communist party is entirely committed to the communist ideology just as the Soviet Union was. If the Soviets were not in such amazing debt after the Bolshevik revolution, they may have evolved into a similar system. The countryside was still market based and had resisted all attempts to collectivize. Stalin, though, needed control of that harvest to balance the USSR economy and forced collectivization as well as killing millions of peasants through starvation. There were many – possibly even a majority – of communist leaders who were willing to accept capitalism in the countryside, but all of them were still committed to eventual collectivization. Stalin though could not wait.

Personally, I think the Chinese government and communist leadership will eventually clamp down on its capitalist elements once it has achieved its primarily political objectives in the region (like recapturing Taiwan and pacifying the Western borders), but, unlike Stalin, they are willing to wait – generations if necessary.

Anonymous wrote:

The Chinese government and Communist party is entirely committed to the communist ideology just as the Soviet Union was.

Isn’t communism supposed to be the withering away of the state though? China seem to be the most determined statists in the world.

 

How does that work? Is there supposed to be a magic moment when the state has complete control, and then the state just abolishes itself, and paradise arrives?

 

It’s so sad. China’s ancient culture is so amazingly rich and the revolution has wiped that away. Taoism, Confucianism, Zen Buddhism, they were pretty much destroyed. It is revived in a way, but it seems a kind of Disneyfied version now. Although I am sure it could bloom again.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

How does that work? Is there supposed to be a magic moment when the state has complete control, and then the state just abolishes itself, and paradise arrives?

It will always happen at some point after everyone alive today has died. Ten years ago, they said they would reach the next stage of communism in about 100 years. Today they say they will reach it in about a hundred years, and ten years from now, they will still be targeting a hundred years from then.

It is important to note that communism itself is not actually a definite concept, but treated more like a science with differing theories like  Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism (and Marxist Leninism and Marxist Leninist Maoism) as well as many other different approaches like Anarcho-Syndicalist. Capitalism is the same – can anyone really say what Capitalism is? Any definition will find exceptions in practice. Even socialism is pretty vague – National Socialism and Democratic Socialism both use the term, but they are completely separate from the Marxist idea of socialism and from each other.

However, that doesn’t mean that the CCP simply makes up whatever it wants to to justify whatever it does. Everyone in the party leadership is well versed in their communist ideology and it is guiding their decisions in every aspect of government and economic management.

Yeah these political -isms get reinterpreted all the time. Also North Korea calls itsels democratic.

 

I like what Noam Chomsky said, that societies can’t be designed, it’s way too complicated, and also life is too unpredictable. So I think a 1oo year plan like that is a kind of fairy tale.

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Todd

True – to be concise, it isn’t a plan, but more like a scientific prediction like something in geology. This much heat and pressure will turn carbon into its diamond form after this much time. At the same time, this ideological fidelity has allowed them to maintain a successful monopoly on political power for longer than we’ve been alive and far longer than the Soviets were and without the totalitarian sort of control North Korea uses.

At heart, the party’s approach is people centric. Basically, they ask or find out what people what they need to be more productive and then provide it. Then they take advantage of that productivity. However, certainly there is a very ethnic element to the ideology with Han Chinese nationalism dominating the idea of who exactly “the People” are.

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I’m sure that Marx and Lenin would find the fact that NK is a Necrocracy, that Kim Jong-un claims that Kim Il-Sung is still President, and he’s just Supreme Leader in his dead grandfather’s place, as weird as I do, and I’m a capitalist pig.

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Honestly, the Juche philosophy in the DPRK is much closer to Leninism than Maoism. Actually, I think it is likely very close to Stalin’s idea of Leninism and certainly Stalin would have applauded its remarkable ability to survive against near total global opposition.

However, today, Maoism certainly still has considerable support. Essentially, it explains why communist revolution is practical impossible in first world nations and how third world nations can align their nationalist proletariat with their national capitalists to revolt against imperialist interests. Then, the State is controlled by the proletariat but cooperates with the capitalists to develop national industries. Once those industries are in place, then capitalism is eradicated.

That’s also a good description why China appears to be an authoritarian capitalist country while actually still  pursuing communism. Theoretically, the State, through the CCP, is entirely a dictatorship of the proletariat. This is unlikely to be true, though with an elite leadership that actually wields power, but ideologically, even the leaders quite likely believe they are representing the interests of the workers and the People, and their strict punishments of capitalists who break the law, for example, is certainly designed to tell their people and the world that the Party, not the business leaders, is totally in charge.

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Todd

garjones wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

thus Rabbi HaLevi had to respond to them

He really doesn’t as all of it is just folk tales.

Even it isn’t. Why does it ever matter if a religion you don’t believe in makes claims about a different language? Are Buddhists concerned that Jewish texts are in Hebrew? These people need to get a life.

 

That’s not the point. There was a school of thought in the Islam of his time that somehow said that the fact the Qur’an is in Arabic proves it is divine. Rabbi HaLevi was discussing what proof is, and used them as an example of proof that is not proof. It’s clear most Muslims did not go so far, but he was using them as an example of what he wouldn’t do in relation to the Neo-Aristotlians.

Christian wrote:

I don’t think that’s right, because Google isn’t evil. They’ve said so. Repeatedly.

Ha that always amazes me. It is like a bank that has as its slogan “We are not thieves, honestly.”

Google actually dropped the whole “Don’t be evil” motto a few years ago

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lorcan_nagle wrote:

Google actually dropped the whole “Don’t be evil” motto a few years ago

Well, clearly that’s just because they thought that being a little evil now and then never hurt anyone.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

Christian wrote:

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Google actually dropped the whole “Don’t be evil” motto a few years ago

Well, clearly that’s just because they thought that being a little evil now and then never hurt anyone.

Google can have a little evil, as a treat

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Todd

It was an inspired move when they switched to the more enigmatic “Are we evil?”

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Christian, Todd, lorcan_nagle

Dave wrote:

It was an inspired move when they switched to the more enigmatic “Are we evil?”

A record label I liked used to sell T-shirts that said “Are We Evil? Yes We Are!” on them, and Inever managed to get one before they went out of business. One of my greatest regrets.

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Todd, Dave

Wrong thread