Random observations for August 2018
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Using laws to stop a technology whose time has come has the same effect as using a sheet of tissue paper to stop an express train.
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Science can't answer every question. Religion can't validly answer any question.
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Our brains did not evolve to perform logical reasoning or to detect conflicts between ideas. They evolved to keep us alive as hunter-gatherers on the east African plains. Logical thought is a learned behavior pattern, and not everyone learns it equally well.
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Any person making the upraised-middle-finger gesture is boring.
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Religion is a camel’s back made of cobweb upon which the straws of reason land like girders of steel. It takes only a little logic to collapse it into incoherence.
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If you refer to evolution as "random", you don't understand it.
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Worship is a degrading stance unworthy of a rational being.
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It’s remarkable how many millions of people have been slaughtered in religious wars over nuances of the correct way to worship a god who supposedly told everybody to love each other.
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Religion messes up our moral sense in two ways. First, because it imposes a random taboo system in place of morality, it imposes irrational guilt for things for which no guilt is warranted, such as homosexual attractions, masturbation, failure to perform certain rituals at the prescribed times, etc. Second, because it sets taboo violations on the same level with violations of actual morality, calling them both "sin", and promotes a doctrine of vicarious forgiveness by confession to a priest or by "washing away" sins, it allows those who commit real moral abuses such as child molestation or self-enrichment at the expense of gullible followers to escape the guilt feelings and moral accountability they genuinely should feel.
[For previous random observations, see here.]
posted by Infidel753 at 3:25 AM
11 Comments:
Mmmm, I particularly like that last one Infidel. But they are all good. Well done!
Excellent observations all. I find the observations on religion and religious beliefs especially so.
Counterpoint: The captured crew members of the U.S.S. Pueblo who made the Hawaiian good luck sign were not boring.
Science can answer any question (unless it's stupid ones that don't count), we just haven't unnlocked them yet.
Professor: Thanks -- there's probably nothing that has caused more moral confusion than religion.
Rational: Religion is really my area of emphasis on this blog, though it may not seem that way sometimes.
Zog: I suppose not, but in general it's like casual swearing -- dull, lazy, and irritating.
Adam: By questions science can't answer, I meant things like "what gives life meaning". For some reason, some people think theologians have some special competence on questions like that, though there's no reason why they would have any more special competence than plumbers, bus drivers, accountants, or anyone else. In reality such questions are just matters of personal preference, like "Is Coke better than Pepsi."
There are an awful lot of things science can't answer. Almost invariably they are things like the Coke/Pepsi question - not amenable to even being asked in a scientifically meaningful way. To a very large extent this limitation is the power of scientific methods.
Of course God can answer every question however vaguely stated. This caught my attention.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6037213/Parents-let-baby-die-malnutrition-refusing-help-religious-reasons.html
Science doesn't tell ya how to live but When Voyager I (or II, I forget) entered Jovian orbit it was roughly 10 metres off course. It had traveled somewhere between (roughly) 590 and 970 billion metres and all of it with Johannes Kepler at throttle and stick. I call that "spot on". Which is why I did astrophysics. Not just that - the girls like it in a way solid state doesn't. Not that had anything to do with my decision...
And BTW Coke knocks Pepsi into a cocked hat and that is true that is.
bookmarked!!, I like your website!
NickM: I could answer every question too, if I were allowed to babble randomly and fart and have that declared to be an answer. If you want an answer that will actually get a space probe that close to its target arrival point at another planet, you'd better get your answers from scientists and mathematicians. Preferably with honkin' huge computers.
As I recall, when the New Horizons probe reached Pluto after almost ten years flight time, its arrival time was only seventy-two seconds off and the actual position was, as best they could tell, right on the dot. Such is the power that science and mathematics have given us over matter. Religion, "spirituality" and suchlike horseshit have no such verifiable achievements to point to.
I have no preference between Coke and Pepsi. I guess that makes me bi-soda-al.
That's a beautiful picture to go along with some really thought provoking sayings.
"It’s remarkable how many millions of people have been slaughtered in religious wars over nuances of the correct way to worship a god who supposedly told everybody to love each other."
This is the one that really caught my attention because it's so true.
About the link Zog provided -
Trump really does want people to paean him. Spread the word.
Mary: It's a striking reality which has persisted for many centuries. The picture is somewhere in France -- I think it's a field of lavender.
Anon: Sorry, I'd rather pwn him.
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