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Author Topic:   The Meaning Of The Trinity
dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(3)
Message 973 of 1864 (905045)
01-14-2023 11:48 PM
Reply to: Message 972 by candle2
01-14-2023 8:55 AM


Re: Simplistically Speaking
Ringo, you say that original life began by natural
processes.

Where is your absolute proof of this.
And you say that original life began by purely supernatural processes. What is your absolute proof of that?
You cannot demand "absolute proof" from anybody else without being able (or at least willing to try) to provide absolute proof for your own position! Do not to others that which is displeasing to yourself! (the original Pharisee Golden Rule, Rabbi Hillel, c. 20 BCE, half a century before Jesus' purported use of it)
Plus, it is a typical dishonest trick of dishonest creationists -- yes, I do realize that "dishonest creationist" is highly redundant -- to demand "absolute proof" for everything while refusing to present even the slightest trace of evidence themselves. Hypocrite! (since I very much doubt that you have ever actually read the Gospels, you undoubtedly are ignorant of what Jesus thought of hypocrites)
Also, "absolute proof" does not exist, though it can be approached in mathematics and possibly in extremely simplistic situations, but most certainly not in the manner that you are using it. In the hands of you dishonest creationists, it's nothing but a cheap trick.
If you can think of non-trivial things for which we have absolute proof, then do please list some of them. BTW, your perverse misinterpretation of religious texts does not count as "absolute proof" for anything.
Rather we rely on preponderance of evidence. And, yet again, no, your perverse misinterpretation of religious texts does not count as evidence for anything ... except for your own perverse nature.
And this one belief casts great doubt on anything that
you hold to be true.
What the hell nonsense are you talking about now? That makes absolutely no sense at all!
What is really sad is that you place so much faith in a
belief that goes against a time-proven law of nature,
and that is simply that life cannot come from non life.
Yet again, your abject ignorance of science betrays you.
Laws are not an inherent part of Nature, but rather they are man-made descriptions of how we observe things to work normally and in normal conditions. There is nothing sacred nor absolute about them, nor can we expect them to hold in all situations.
A few quick examples:
  • What goes up must come down. Two exceptions come to mind immediately:
    1. When the object goes up at or exceeding escape velocity.
    2. Smoke. Though that's only partially true since some particles will eventually settle back to earth while others will stay aloft in the atmosphere.
      This one came to mind since I remembered one Red Ryder comic strip I read as a child. Little Beaver had just learned that truism in school and proudly repeated it to the old man (I forget his name). The old man took a deep draw from his pipe and blew the smoke out. They both watched the smoke keep rising. Little Beaver walked away not knowing what to think.
  • Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion. Two places where they don't apply as stated:
    1. They only apply for a two-body system. The Solar System is not a two-body system. Even the earth-moon system is not a two-body system, but rather is influenced by a third body, the sun. For that matter, while Uranus was discovered accidentally, it didn't behave as it should as per Kepler's laws, which led to the discovery of Neptune. Same was true of perturbations in Neptune's motion leading to the discovery of Pluto.
    2. The behavior of Mercury at perihelion could not be explained by Kepler's laws nor by any Newtonian law. The explanation had to wait for Einstein and relativity.
  • All objects in the same gravitational field fall at the same rate. But when we try that by dropping a feather and a hammer at the same time the hammer hits the ground first. That is because aerodynamic drag slows down the feather more than it does the hammer. Except in a vacuum like on the surface of the moon where both fall at the same rate and hit the lunar surface at the same time (video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo8TaPVsn9Y ).
Similarly, your "Law of Biogenesis" is not absolute in all situations, but rather is a statement of our observations in the current situation of life already existing. If the first steps of life were still happening today, then its name would be "food" as it gets eaten by already existing life -- the earliest stages of original life could only arise in the absence of predators.
 
Now, why would we think that life would have arisen by natural processes and not solely by supernatural means? It's quite obvious:
  • We observe repeatedly that natural phenomena are produced by natural processes and never by any supernatural means. Even when we had long not understood what those natural processes were, in the end it has always proven to be by natural processes.
    For that matter, we have never ever found any evidence of supernatural activity, let alone any evidence of the supernatural even existing. None whatsoever.
  • Even if some kind of supernatural influence had been involved, it would still need to have manifested eventually as natural processes.
We have abundant evidence of natural activity, so where is your evidence of supernatural activity?
Again, your perverse misinterpretation of religious texts does not count as evidence for anything ... except for your own perverse nature.
 
Beliefs are a dime a dozen.
Yes, and yours, which are slip-shod, contrary to reality, and born out of abject willful ignorance, are worth vastly less.
 

This message is a reply to:
 Message 972 by candle2, posted 01-14-2023 8:55 AM candle2 has replied

Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 1008 of 1864 (905217)
01-19-2023 4:37 PM
Reply to: Message 1006 by Phat
01-19-2023 4:01 PM


Re: The Limitations Of Good And Evil Behaviors
For the same reason that we can't smoke pot at grandma's house.
Because she won't let you bogart that joint, my friend?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or9i5R7jrGw
I do know that pot is legal in Colorado, because of news reports that law enforcement on the border in Nebraska was freaking out at the time. And a proportion of dispensary customers are of retirement age.
 
PS
In 1960, Tom Lehrer's song, Be Prepared, offers advice to scouts concerning bringing pot to a campout, that they be careful not to turn on when the Scoutmaster's around because he will insist that it be shared. So be prepared.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoEVPtVk9nE

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1006 by Phat, posted 01-19-2023 4:01 PM Phat has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 1013 of 1864 (905230)
01-19-2023 7:53 PM
Reply to: Message 985 by Phat
01-18-2023 6:31 PM


Re: Getting Back On Topic
Seeing as how this is a Faith & Belief topic, evolution vs creationism, though fair game, takes us off on a rabbit trail. candle, knock it off.
Let me help you steer back on course, or, if you prefer, start a new topic.
Not going to happen.
candle2 has never ever started a topic. Instead, he just pops into existing topics to spread his nonsense with no regard for staying on topic.
Even when we create a new topic for the discussion, he just ignores it. Case in point: pursuant to his persistent lies about radiocarbon dating, I created a new topic for that discussion: Radiocarbon Dating Discussion with candle2 . Despite my mention of him in the very title of the topic, he is highly conspicuous in his absence.
Sorry, but the only place to respond to him is where he crops up.

This message is a reply to:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 1014 of 1864 (905231)
01-19-2023 7:54 PM
Reply to: Message 981 by candle2
01-18-2023 12:12 PM


Re: Simplistically Speaking
Taq writes:
All I know is that there are millions and millions of Christians who accept evolution.
Taq, the number of people who believe a certain way has
nothing to do with whether they are right or not.
Wrong question yet again. No wonder you never learn anything.
Your question should be "Why do they accept evolution?" and even more importantly, "Why do they have no problem accepting evolution when you, candle2, do?"
What do they know that you don't?
You also must ask these further questions, questions you have never bothered to ask and that you are terrified of asking:
  • What do I, candle2, think that evolution is? And how it works?
    HINT: You repeatedly and consistently demonstrate that you have no idea at all what evolution is nor how it works. "Dogs giving birth to kittens"? Complete and utter idiocy!
  • Why do I, candle2, think that evolution somehow conflicts with God?
    In what ways do I, candle2, think that evolution somehow conflicts with God?
    HINT: Evolution happens quite naturally and is inseparable from life itself and how life works. Evolution conflicts with God no more than gravity or static electricity conflict with God. If you disagree with that, then you need to explain how and why. Seriously.
The reason why those millions and millions of Christians accept evolution is because, unlike you, they know what it actually is. They know that the lies that creationists tell are false. They know that evolution is not the monstrous bogeyman that you have been fooled into thinking it to be.
Many of those Christians even used to be YECs before they learned the truth. One example of a former YEC is Dr. Mary Schweitzer, PhD Biology:
quote:
Based at North Carolina State University, Schweitzer is currently researching Molecular Paleontology, molecular diagenesis and taphonomy, evolution of physiological and reproductive strategies in dinosaurs and their bird descendants, and astrobiology.
She was a young-earth creationist who enrolled in Dr. Jack Horner's class in order to learn the evidence so that she could disprove evolution. She did learn the evidence, including lots of evidence that the creationists had never told her about and would continue to hide from her.
She states outright that the reason she accepts evolution is because of the data. And she is still a Bible-believing Christian, just no longer a YEC (again, because of the data that creationists don't want her nor you to ever see).
Does her name sound familiar to you? It should. In T. Rex fossils she found trace evidence of blood vessels and soft tissue, including collagen:
quote:
Schweitzer was the first researcher to identify and isolate soft tissues from an ancient fossil bone. The soft tissues are collagen, a connective protein. Amino acid sequencing of several samples have shown matches with the known collagens of chickens, frogs, newts and other animals. Schweitzer has also isolated organic compounds and antigenic structures in sauropod egg shells. With respect to the significance of her work, Kevin Padian, Curator of Paleontology, University of California Museum of Paleontology, has stated "Chemicals that might degrade in a laboratory over a short period need not do so in a protected natural chemical environment...it's time to readjust our thinking."
Creationists have repeatedly misrepresented her work and lied about it, especially leaving out the part where that "soft tissue" had to be soaked in acid in order to demineralize it.
A few days ago, AronRa posted this video of his conversation with Dr. Schweitzer about her findings (and how creationists misrepresent them), her beliefs, and her journey from YEC to real scientist.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 981 by candle2, posted 01-18-2023 12:12 PM candle2 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(3)
Message 1092 of 1864 (905480)
01-27-2023 7:19 PM
Reply to: Message 1091 by Tangle
01-27-2023 6:10 PM


Re: The Limitations Of Good And Evil Behaviors
I'm sure I've heard this kind of argument before.
Oh, yeah. On Big Bang Theory when the girls read a Thor comic book:

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1091 by Tangle, posted 01-27-2023 6:10 PM Tangle has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 1244 of 1864 (906595)
02-13-2023 8:54 PM
Reply to: Message 1242 by candle2
02-13-2023 6:41 PM


Re: Trin Trinity Trin Trinity Trin Trin Teree ©
AZ, I could say that you are spreading the poison of
evolution. And, I do believe that it is poison.
What the hell are you talking about?
WHAT poison? Define it! Describe it! In sufficient detail to make some sense!
Of course, in order to do that you would need to know what evolution is. Rather difficult for you since you have already repeatedly demonstrated that you have no clue what evolution is.
So you will need to answer the question that no creationist has dared to even try to answer: What do you think that evolution is? And (assuming that you believe that it somehow conflicts with your religion) why specifically do you believe that it conflicts with your religion? (AKA "conflicts with God")
Until you know what evolution is, you cannot know what its consequences are ramifications could be. And until you know those consequences and ramifications, you cannot know whether it would be a "poison".
And until we know what your honest and truthful answers to those questions are (despite honesty and truthfulness being completely alien to creationists), we cannot know what the hell you are talking about.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1242 by candle2, posted 02-13-2023 6:41 PM candle2 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1251 by candle2, posted 02-14-2023 11:18 AM dwise1 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(4)
Message 1343 of 1864 (907065)
02-18-2023 4:20 PM
Reply to: Message 1321 by Phat
02-18-2023 10:46 AM


Re: The Meaning Of The Trinity
And if Jesus never existed, the Trinity would fall apart.
Why would it? Why would it make any difference at all whether any of the claims of Christianity (or any other religion, for that matter) are actually true or not? It doesn't!
My first major foray into cyberspace was on CompuServe from about 1986 to about 1992 (at which point their efforts to "improve" the service made it completely unusable). That was where my first online encounters with creationists and attempts at discussion with them occurred. I made several contributions to our section's library (Science & Religion Section of the Religion Forum) which formed the core of my first web site which I created to repost those articles (see my C/E links page)
We had a member, "Suds", who claimed to have been a mathematician who had to retire because of a stroke. He also claimed to have invented Gray Code (a method of encoding binary numbers such that incrementing the value changes one and only one bit at a time -- very important in positional transducers and other hardware applications).
Suds was a Christian, but most of what he posted was even stranger; eg, there are many strong parallels between Mosaic Law and Hammurabic Code which predated Moses by several centuries (thus suggesting that Moses borrowed from Hammurabi) but Suds proclaimed that as proof that Hammurabi had borrowed from Moses (like how President Washington copied all his speeches from President Biden). Very strange stuff.
But Suds did hit the nail on the head with this one: The influence that Christianity has had on Western history and culture did not in any way depend on Christianity being true, but rather on people believing that it was true.
Let that sink in a bit. Does any one of us act on what is actually true? No, we don't, but rather we instead act on what we think and believe to be true. Sometimes the two are the same thing, but more often than not they are not, which is why you have an individual armed with a rifle raiding a pizza parlor in order to rescue the children imprisoned in the pizza parlor's non-existent basement where they are being abused and drained of their blood by pedophilic Satanic Democrats. Completely and utterly untrue (the pedophiles and their enablers (eg, enabler Jim Jordan) are mostly Republicans), but that poor fool believed it to be true so he acted on his false beliefs and we were very lucky that he didn't get anybody killed.
So the effects that a belief has does not in any way depend on it being true, but rather only in how strongly its followers believe it to be true.
That means that the questions of whether Jesus actually existed or about the (super)nature of the Trinity (including whether that's even a real/surreal thing) are completely moot. They do not matter at all. All that does matter is whether people believe it or not.
If Jesus never existed, the church would fall apart.
No, that's not true as already discussed here.
The Church of the Orange Clown MAGAt is still with us because they still believe in The Big Lie of a "stolen election". That "stolen election" never existed, yet that MAGAtry has not yet fallen apart because they still believe the Big Lie. Truth has nothing to do with their continued existence.
Now, in the case of your "the church", as long as its members continue to believe that Jesus existed (and had all the characteristics that they believe in) then it should continue to exist as-is. Only when the members stop believing those things would the consequences you envision come to pass.
Again, what actually is is ignored in favor of of what is believed.
If it stayed together at all, it would simply become a secular humanist do-gooders club.
And you think that would be a bad thing? It would be a very definite improvement over the damage that they do now.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1321 by Phat, posted 02-18-2023 10:46 AM Phat has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 1439 of 1864 (907968)
03-03-2023 7:48 PM
Reply to: Message 1435 by Phat
03-03-2023 5:27 AM


Re: British Humor Writ Large
GIA writes:
Your bible says you do, but you did not render your due and duty.
To whom do I owe this duty? Certainly not the noble peanut gallery!
Uh, wouldn't that be to God and to Jesus?
As a Christian, are you not bound to serve and obey God and Jesus?
As a Christian, aren't you supposed to believe that what the Bible tells you that God and Jesus want you to do and command you to do is actually what you are supposed to do?
And why is it that you, a Christian, not only do not know that, but fight so adamantly against it?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1435 by Phat, posted 03-03-2023 5:27 AM Phat has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1440 by Phat, posted 03-04-2023 1:42 AM dwise1 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 1553 of 1864 (909214)
03-29-2023 3:34 PM
Reply to: Message 1551 by Dredge
03-29-2023 1:05 PM


Re: Burning The Candle At Both Ends
candle2 writes:
Peter was not the only Apostle with the key. In Matthew
18:19, Jesus used the "second plural form of you, which
Is "ye" to show that all the Apostles had the key to the
Kingdom.
Every interlinear Bible I've consulted says "you" in that verse is SINGULAR, not plural. So Jesus is speaking to ONE person, Peter.

Show me an interlinear Bible that agrees with you.
Jessica H. Christ!
Screw the translations! Go straight to the original Greek!
Κατα Μαθθαιον 18:19 clearly starts with (apologies for not being able to add diacritical marks):
quote:
Παλιν λεγω υμιν οτι ...
("Again I say to you that ...")
"υμιν" is the dative declension of the second person plural personal pronoun. The singular form (again, the dative declension) would be σοι.
{ABE: NOTE: candle2's "second plural form of you" makes no sense, which is one clue that he's a monoglot -- monoglots are notorious for not understanding grammar. I assume he was trying to say "second person plural personal pronoun". Undoubtedly he just miscopied something he barely read in a concordance or the like. }
Therefore, the "you" in that verse is PLURAL, not singular. At least in the original Greek, which says nothing about however it had been subsequently mistranslated. Also, my Metzger Greek New Testament, which includes extensive footnotes concerning alternative text, says nothing about there being alternative versions of this particular verse.
I have little doubt that the both of you are monoglots and hence are unfamiliar with the act of translation. The first half of my college career was as a foreign language major (primarily German, but I also studied about a dozen others though I'm only proficient in four -- that's not including Italian or Russian, though I'm fairly good at understanding written Italian and I often surprise myself at how much Russian I still remember nearly half a century later), so I am rather familiar with how grammars work and what the act of translation entails.
I have been a polyglot for such a large part of my life (well over half a century) that I cannot remember nor even imagine how a monoglot thinks, not unlike the challenge for me to try to imagine what scientific illiterates like creationists think about how things work (eg, how the sun "burns its fuel" which confounds Mr. Kent Hovind).
I would imagine that a monoglot would naïvely think that translating from one language to another is just a matter of substituting the words in the source language with equivalent words in the target language. That couldn't be further from the truth! Languages do not even remotely work that way, especially when the two languages are more remotely related to each other. Rather, the translator must read and understand what the source text is saying and then express in the target language his own understanding of what that source says. This is why it is preferable to translate from a foreign language into your own, since you would be more familiar with expressing ideas in your own language.
That means that every translation is an act of fallible human interpretation. Reading a translation means that you are not reading what the original actually says, but rather what the translator thinks it says. Yes, professional translators use various techniques to minimize that effect, but the fact still remains that you are reading an interpretation, not what it actually says. That is one of the problems I have with biblical literalism, especially when it depends on translated works (eg, the KJV which King James I of England (VI of Scotland) commissioned for the political purpose of strengthening his policy of the Divine Right of Kings).
An additional issue in translating is the loss of information as well as the "reconstruction" of "missing information". One example would be the past tenses in that the tense used carries a lot of information which is missing in English (though that information can be reconstructed periphrastically into English). The choice between the imperfect and the perfective tenses (addressing the question of whether an action in the past was completed or not -- "not" can also include any notion of the action continuing over time), but is very fundamental to the entire Russian verb system wherein verbs are given in pairs: the imperfective and the perfective. Greek took the perfective idea a step further by differentiating between the aorist and perfect tenses, both denoting a single action completed in the past, but with the perfect denoting the result of that action continuing into the present whereas the aorist offers no such information -- expressing that in English could prove cumbersome.
Even translating the second person personal pronoun can be problematic. English has lost the distinction between familiar and formal (AKA "polite") forms of "you", whereas many other European languages have retained it. I have read and watched humorous scenes in Spanish and in French which hinge on the romantic couple having an argument in which they start to shift back and forth between the familiar and the polite (usually the first salvo is to shift to the polite, thus creating emotional distance). That works very well in the original, but the translator for the subtitles had a helluva time expressing that in English.
So to recapitulate, if you want to know what a source really said, read it in the original!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1551 by Dredge, posted 03-29-2023 1:05 PM Dredge has replied

Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 1573 of 1864 (909366)
04-01-2023 8:06 PM
Reply to: Message 1572 by Tanypteryx
04-01-2023 6:19 PM


Re: Burning The Candle At Both Ends
Well, he's also fictional, so he didn't exist in the first place.
Wouldn't be any reason to not ask questions about what a fictional character said, would have said, meant by what he said, etc.
After all, for a very long time, many people have not only studied such things, but also earned college degrees, even doctorates, in the subject of fictional characters; eg, English Literature, Germanistik (which is like an English degree, including lit, just in a different language), etc. Also theology.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1572 by Tanypteryx, posted 04-01-2023 6:19 PM Tanypteryx has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1574 by Tanypteryx, posted 04-01-2023 8:12 PM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 1575 of 1864 (909371)
04-01-2023 9:40 PM
Reply to: Message 1574 by Tanypteryx
04-01-2023 8:12 PM


Re: Burning The Candle At Both Ends
Same with Long John Silver. Or Pip. Or Frodo Baggins. Or Vina on Talos IV. Or Carson Napier of Venus.
{Addressing candle and sludge} Dudes! It's a story! Don't get all hung up on problems writers introduced by not thinking through their write-arounds thoroughly enough -- like how the writers created the transporter in order to avoid the expensive (both in time and money, not to mention the more primitive state of the art at the time) visual effects in order to avoid showing a starship the size of an aircraft carrier landing on a planetary surface every week (and an different planet each time), but didn't think it through to realize that using a transporter actually kills you, but nobody seems to care because there's a new copy of you now. Even worse, don't expend inordinate amounts of time and bandwidth arguing with others about it.
It's a story! Appreciate what the story tells you. And don't miss out on the true value of the story by nit-picking at minor details. One example is the movie, Gravity whose treatment of orbital mechanics is complete and total bollocks (eg, objects moving at much higher velocity than you will move up to a much higher orbit; even though that new orbit would intersect with the original LEO, it would take it longer to get back to there and the chances of it hitting anything also in LEO would be small -- it most certainly would not go ripping through everything in LEO). Other than for that glaring error, it was a pretty good movie, so suspend disbelief and enjoy the show.
Similarly, as an engineer I could appreciate how Star Trek: TNG's technobabble was coherent and actually made sense (allowing for non-existent tech and science), though in the medical aspects they kept playing too fast and loose with modified DNA (that scale of change would have been during development, not in a mature individual). My dermatologist at the time was also a sci-fi fan, so I asked her about the show's medical technobabble and she confirmed that it played well in her ear.
Another example is a joke I had learned in German class, but couldn't tell to a German. Here's the joke translated to English:
quote:
At a dinner in the court of Prussian king Friedrich II, a celebrity (ie, a writer, poet, musician, composer, whatever) is surrounded by adoring fans and making the most of it. Irritated, the king writes a note, "{Celebrity's name} is an ass." and signs it, "Friedrich II", has a servant deliver it to said celebrity, and Friedrich II commands him to read it out loud. The celebrity reads it: "{His own name} is one ass. Friedrich the second".
Translation note: the German indefinite article can be translated either as "a / an" or as a count, "one".
The problem I encountered when I tried to tell it was that I couldn't remember who the celebrity was in the story, so, not having yet learned enough German cultural history, I made a substitution that didn't match the time period. The German I was telling it to was so hung up on that minor anomaly that he kept arguing past the punch line and didn't hear it.
That is what we are witnessing in this tempest in a teacup. Dudes! It's a story! Stop ruining it!

This message is a reply to:
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 Message 1577 by Dredge, posted 04-02-2023 4:38 AM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 1580 of 1864 (909396)
04-02-2023 1:35 PM
Reply to: Message 1577 by Dredge
04-02-2023 4:38 AM


Re: Burning The Candle At Both Ends
BTW, the Tooth Fairy's dress is pink and sky blue - anyone who says differently is an ignoramus, a fool and an imbecile,
The premise of the British sci-fi comedy, Red Dwarf (1988-present through a number of revivals) was:
quote:
The series follows low-ranking technician Dave Lister, who awakens after being in suspended animation for three million years to find that he is the last living human, and that he is alone on the mining spacecraft Red Dwarf—save for a hologram of his deceased bunkmate Arnold Rimmer and "Cat", a life form which evolved from Lister's pregnant cat.
Well, it turns out that those cats created a society with a religion, the story of which is told in the fourth episode, Waiting for God. One of the show's early mysteries was why Cat was the sole survivor of his species, Felis sapiens: most of them were wiped out in a religious war, the survivors of which left in separate shuttles.
Here is an examination of that story of their religion:
Basically, Lister's dream was to build and run a fast food stand in Fiji. He had told his cat all about that and she, against all human prejudice about cats, was listening and remembered. She told those stories to her kittens as they did to theirs and so on, generation after generation, until the religion of The Lister developed. That religion taught that the after life was in Fiji, where they would serve The Lister and help him run his hot dog stand. And they would all wear paper hats ... .
Yeah, those paper hats were a problem. One group believed that those hats would be blue, but others believed that they would be red. That led to a bitter Schism which in turn led to a violent religious war.
As Dave Lister learns this story, he is appalled by almost everything in it. His reaction to the blue-versus-red hat controversy was (quoting from memory): "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! They were going to be green!"
This should help you (singular) to realize why we normals are always laughing at you (plural) fighting with each other over such meaningless minutiae. Not that it would ever get you to start thinking, but the rest of us will just smile and nod.
 
Time to leave for our monthly skeptics brunch. To quote Ian Shoales (see Message 2279), "I gotta go."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1577 by Dredge, posted 04-02-2023 4:38 AM Dredge has replied

Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 1623 of 1864 (909602)
04-06-2023 12:57 PM
Reply to: Message 1620 by Dredge
04-06-2023 12:18 PM


Re: Burning The Candle At Both Ends
There are probably more reliable sources of information than South Park.
Such as the investigation by the Boston Globe into the massive cover-up by the Catholic Church of the sexual abuse of children by priests.
The movie, Spotlight (2015), tells the story of that investigation. They worked closely with the actual journalists who had conducted that investigation.
It starts with the movie trailer, which also appears on its own:
If you weren't so preoccupied with sucking up mass quantities of scum from the bottom, you wouldn't be so willfully ignorant (and willfully stupid).
When the movie came out I heard an interview on NPR about the film: Film Shines A 'Spotlight' On Boston's Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal : NPR ; eg:
quote:
DAVIES: Tom McCarthy, Walter Robinson, welcome to FRESH AIR. Walter, I want to begin with you and talk about this remarkable story. How did it get started?
WALTER ROBINSON: It got started at the very end of July, 2001. The Globe got a new editor, Marty Baron, who came to us from the Miami Herald. And that's important because in Florida, virtually everything is public. And Marty got to Boston, and he read a column by Eileen McNamara about a case - lawsuits against a priest allegedly involved in sexual abuse in which the court records had been sealed by a judge. So the personnel records of the priest were not available publicly. And in her column, Eileen had written the truth may never be known. And to Marty Baron, that's like waving a red flag. And so in his very first news meeting in his first day at The Globe, he asked, has The Globe considered going to court to get these records? And of course, nobody had. And later that same day, he called myself and Ben Bradlee Jr., my superior, into his office and asked me as editor of the Spotlight Team, to have our team begin investigating the case of this one priest, Father John Goeghan. And we set out to do that, and very quickly discovered that Father Goeghan was the tip of a quite-large iceberg, that there were many, many other priests - we thought perhaps 15 or 20 at the time - who had done the same thing, yet the archdiocese had covered up their crimes by making secret settlements. And eventually, as we learned, we got it up to 70 priests and then 90 priests. And in the end, it turned out to be almost 250 priests.
quote:
DAVIES: The film really captures the business of journalism. It's remarkable to me that so much of it is really about how reporters do their work. And I spent 20 years as a reporter for a daily paper, so I particularly appreciated this. And, Walter Robinson, one of the interesting things here is that this was before the age when everything was online. I mean, the Internet was around, but it wasn't like reporters could hit a few keys and get a lot of public records. And there's a fascinating part here where you guys had to go to old catalogs of the Catholic Church to find who the priests were who had been moved around. You want to just talk about that a bit?
ROBINSON: Sure. How quaint that seems nowadays. You know, we were dealing with an institution that had no public records. You couldn't send them a public records request. They operated in secret, and they were protected by the law. They didn't have to file tax returns. One thing they did do is they published an annual directory that was like a phone book. And it listed every parish in the archdiocese, and it listed every priest - about 1,500 priests. And each year, they published this. And we knew of several priests who we had done research on that they had been put in categories like sick leave, awaiting assignment in an archdiocese, like all others, that had so few priests that they couldn't afford to let anybody languish on the sidelines. So we finally said let’s take these directories, and let's find every priest who's ever been in one of these categories. And for everyone who's ever been in that category, we're going to create a record of every assignment he has ever had. And it took us three weeks of really hard work to do that. And in the end, we came up with records on 87 priests whose assignment patterns and such things as the sick-leave designation made us very suspicious that they had, in fact, molested children. And when the records finally came out in the following year, there was an amazing number of priests on that list, the vast majority, who matched up with those who had actually abused children. One of the things that I'm amused about by that - when we were doing that, we had a reporter, Matt Carroll, who was our computer-assisted reporter, who was entering information in his computer. And, you know, I'm a 20th-century guy, and I wandered over to his screen. And on his screen was something with vertical lines and horizontal lines, and I said, well, what is that? And he said, it's a spreadsheet. That was my - or our very first spreadsheet.
DAVIES: This is a film about journalism, and I wanted to ask you both if you have particular feelings about journalism in film - you know, either films that get it right or get it wrong. Walter Robinson, what about you?
ROBINSON: Well, I guess I'd have to say that most films about journalism don't get it right. I'm just delighted, as are my colleagues, that this film just nailed it. They - what we actually did is so accurately and genuinely portrayed in this film - the reporting steps we took, how making the sausage isn't always a pleasant task to watch, how reporters disagree with one another, how we stumble around in the dark, how, sometimes, we find the most important things quite by accident, how we make mistakes in our reporting and how we double back, but always, and certainly in this case, you know, with a mind - we have to get this story, and we have to get it out.
DAVIES: Walter Robinson directed The Boston Globe’s investigation into clergy child sex abuse. Tom McCarthy directed the film, “Spotlight” about that investigation. We’ll hear more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
Building that spreadsheet. It took four long days for them to go through those Church catalogs and enter that data into the spreadsheet. They described it as the most mind-numbingly tedious work they had ever done and that they were amazed at how the director was able to make that scene look exciting.
I also remember this part of the interview about how over lunch the actors were carefully studying the journalists they were to portray:
quote:
DAVIES: And that's Mark Ruffalo - also in there, Michael Keaton from the film "Spotlight," which is directed and co-written by our guest Tom McCarthy. And the Michael Keaton character, Walter Robinson, headed that investigative team. He's also our guest. Tom McCarthy, you put together this terrific ensemble cast, you know, Liev Schreiber and Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams and Michael Keaton and Brian d'Arcy James, Stanley Tucci. How much contact did the actors have with the characters that they were playing, the reporters? And did you encourage that?
MCCARTHY: Look, these guys are pros. They take their job very seriously. And as soon as they were hired, they reached out. They found a way. I was usually hearing about it from the reporters themselves being like, hey, I'm sitting - Mark Ruffalo's up here, he's in my office, or Rachel McAdams is reaching out and asking me a lot of questions via email. And look, most people don't know who these reporters are. They're not public personas. But I can tell you to the one, these actors really capture the essence of each of them. It was really exciting work to watch take shape on set. And, you know, these reporters stayed involved not only though the script stage and the research stage, but they were on set all the time. And they just had a major impact, I think, on the authenticity of the film.
DAVIES: They were on set a lot?
MCCARTHY: Yeah, yeah, it was great. Yeah we would have them...
DAVIES: Just because they wanted to be there or why?
MCCARTHY: They wanted to be a part of it, and we wanted them there, specifically Robby and Mike were probably up there the most. Even Marty Baron made it up - took some time out of The Washington Post. And I remember one day we were talking about one of the penultimate scenes in the film in Marty's office. And it starts with Marty correcting copy, and we're like, blue pen, red pen, blue pen, red pen, what would they use? And I was like, well, there's Ben Bradlee Jr., why don't we ask him? And Ben was like, red. So red it was. And every little detail like that matters. We had a very special day, Dave, the first day we moved into the "Spotlight" set, which we had to build. Steve Carter built this massive reproduction of the newsroom and of the Spotlight office, which is a small office where the four reporters worked tucked away in the bowels of The Globe. And the first day we went on set, the reporters were there with us. And it was just so fascinating to watch both them and the actors explore the space for the first time. And they sort of just automatically gravitated to their desk. And I don't even think they realize this, but to the one, they started rearranging the desk as they would've had it. It was really great to watch.
And of course that's just one investigation into a far more extensive system of abuse and coverup by the Church. Nor is such abuse restricted to the Catholic Church; they're just so much larger, better organized, and wealthier than other churches.
Stand-up joke at the time:
quote:
At one time I seriously considered becoming a priest, but then realized that it just wasn't for me. I'm just not sexually attracted to young boys.
 
BTW, South Park did do a bang-up job on Scientology, so don't try to sell them short. They have infinitely more on the ball than you do -- though you do set a very low bar.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1620 by Dredge, posted 04-06-2023 12:18 PM Dredge has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1624 by Phat, posted 04-06-2023 3:19 PM dwise1 has not replied
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 1762 of 1864 (910246)
04-19-2023 10:24 PM
Reply to: Message 1757 by Dredge
04-19-2023 9:04 PM


Re: Burning The Candle At Both Ends
From Wikipedia article on Christian B. Anfinsen (my emphasis added):
quote:
In 1979, he married Libby Shulman Ely, with whom he had 4 stepchildren,[5] and converted to Orthodox Judaism. However, Anfinsen wrote in 1987 that "my feelings about religion still very strongly reflect a fifty-year period of orthodox agnosticism." [3][6]
...
3.
  • "The Christian B. Anfinsen Papers: Biographical Overview". National institute of Health. March 12, 2019.
  • "Anfinsen, Christian B. ." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. . Encyclopedia.com.
6.
From reference 6:
quote:
I married Libby Shulman Ely in 1979 and, at the same time, converted to Orthodox Judaism which fitted quite nicely into her backgraoudn and with my interstes in Israel. Although my feelings about religion still very strongly reflect a fifty-year period of orthodox agnosticism, I must say that I do find the history, practice and intensity of Judaism an extremely interesting, philosophical package.
"Orthodox agnosticism". "... extremely interesting, philosophical package."
Zero evidence that he had become a theist. For that matter, his agnosticism would have informed him that no mere mortal is or was ever capable of actually knowing anything about the gods, including HaShem. Since his ties to his new religion were based on its philosophy, then for him "God" would be a philosophical concept, not some "personal God" one would have a personal relationship with *.
Theodoric is still correct: Anfinsen would not support your position. So stop putting words into his mouth; we know where your filthy words have been.
------------------
FOOTNOTE*
In one of five or six books of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, we learn about computer sex -- actual citation was Excerpts from The Complete Douglas Adams, 'The Lost Chapters of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy':
quote:
Interface - Sex
(The thought of a man to machine interface is repulsive to most devices)
One cannot help but realize how thoroughly disgusting the thought of an intimate personal relationship to a human (especially to a scum sucking/spewing troll such as yourself) would be to any Supreme Being.
PS
Old standard inside Jewish joke:
A synagogue had a staff of three: the rabbi, the cantor, and the custodian (ie, janitor, repairman, etc).
One day, the rabbi kneels and prays: "Adonai, you are so great; compared to you I am nothing, etc etc" (and again and again with the "I am nothing"). Then the cantor kneels with the same prayer. Seeing this, the custodian decides why not, so he kneels and says the same prayer.
Seeing this, the cantor nudges the rabbi with his elbow and says derisively, "Look who thinks he's nothing!"
 

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1757 by Dredge, posted 04-19-2023 9:04 PM Dredge has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1769 by Dredge, posted 04-20-2023 6:42 PM dwise1 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 1831 of 1864 (910841)
05-19-2023 1:34 PM
Reply to: Message 1830 by candle2
05-19-2023 10:34 AM


Re: Burning The Candle At Both Ends
I am trying to make a very important point.
Then state it at the start. A cardinal rule in writing that they teach in college is that you start your essay with a thesis statement (preferably in the very first paragraph), then use the body of the essay for exposition and support of that thesis statement, concluded with a conclusion to the effect that the body of the essay does support and lead to the thesis statement.
IOW, be upfront with what it is that you are talking about. The very question that strikes terror in the hearts of all creationists and most apologists.
Instead, you are employing a standard dishonest apologist tactic of bombarding us with a mountain of bullshit in order to muddy the waters enough for you to slip in a bait-and-switch or similar act of deception.
Why does serving your god require dishonesty and deception? According to Christian doctrine, which Christian deity is served by dishonesty and deception?
And what does this tangent have to do with your lie in Message 1820?:
I do know have life started.
You are just trying to change the subject. Typical creationist dishonesty.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1830 by candle2, posted 05-19-2023 10:34 AM candle2 has not replied

  
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