Viewing profile — xabotage

The Fremen Mirage - https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...

It's clearly been working for decades. The only reason modern software needs so much attention is because 1) Internet connectivity requires constant security updates and 2) new fea…

Homelessness doesn't exactly sound "solved" in Utah... https://www.sltrib.com/news/2022/12/22/this-year-least-159-h...

Empathy is a survival strategy that benefits society as a whole whereas sociopathy is a survival strategy that benefits the individual. Humans are complex and diverse enough to dis…

> Which civilization has been built in honor of nothing? It turns out, civilizations are built to serve the purpose of human existence, not to venerate mythical deities. You must b…

I don't help the poor as a hobby or because I was told to. I help the poor because I have compassion and empathy. Animals also demonstrate these same pro-social behaviors, and I'm …

You are assuming that magical thinking is the optimal survival strategy as opposed to a lesser-evil byproduct of advanced cognition in a particular environment. This is like assumi…

Why do civilizations need to be built to the honor of something? I see plenty of art and architecture created independent of any mythical deity. I can't remember the last time I li…

I somewhat agree, but I am optimistic that society will change in other ways to fill this gap. It need not be any single activity or institution.

There won't be an exact replacement because the circumstances that led to the community cannot (or rather, should not) be replicated. For the sake of the survival of the planet/spe…

There is definitely a massive breakdown of old social institutions that have not adapted to the modern world. People don't need to be closely knit to their families and local relig…

You're looking at weekly religious gatherings through rose-colored lenses. A crossfit gym membership and book club could very well produce a far healthier local community than a ch…

Interesting how you just said science "cannot be used to explain everything" and yet now you're claiming "proof" and "evidence" (i.e. science) for your particular religion. Make up…

Numbers are a human construct, just like words in a language. They don't "exist" in the same sense as anything physically real. Nobody has "faith" in the number one, it's just a co…

I trust scientific facts proportional to the evidence I have that these facts are true. This is not the case for faith, wherein disproportionately large amounts of trust are demand…

Faith is not commitment to "truth," but rather commitment to a belief regardless of its veracity. Science has nothing to do with "believing" something - its a process for determini…

How did I know before I clicked that link that it was going to be apologetics. Faith is not a shortcut to knowledge. "Hey, we can't yet find the answer to big questions through rat…

Where and when, throughout all human history, have there been significant populations not subject to a religion? It seems strange to suggest that demonstrably unscientific belief s…

No. Faith is belief without evidence or belief in the presence of contrary evidence. If we were to suppose the "base presumptions" of science were on the same level as religious cl…

You're saying scientific processes (petri dish experiment) may have created life because we can't yet explain what scientific processes may have created life? And ancient, unscient…

You seem to be missing the point. Cults thrive on manipulating social interactions and slowly chipping away at others' boundaries. No cult pitches the shadiness up-front for the in…

Of course Lewis isn't explicitly humanist - Humanism is a "worldly" movement, and we can't let the "evil", "fallen" world take credit for anything good. I would be more inclined to…

Trash epistemology is the norm. But it would be nice at the very least to normalize evidence-based knowledge as the default instead of religious mythology. Just because the ideolog…

Faith is belief without evidence or belief in the presence of contradicting evidence - people don't "reason their way" into faith, they rationalize. C.S. Lewis is popular because h…

Buses would be way better if roads were designed to prioritize them over single passenger cars. Instead (in the US), you're just stuck in traffic with extra stops, so you might as …