301–310 of 340 posts
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It doesn't have to be a document, but I think it does need to be a thing. For example, most courthouses have an eagle feather you can swear oaths on if you want (several native American tribes do this). I think you can also "affirm" instead of "swearing an oath," and that avoids any need for an object.
Why does there need to be a thing?
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> Indeed, maybe somewhat unusually, despite going to the effort of becoming a British citizen, I've never actually stepped foot in the UK That sounds funny. Doesn't this give you more disadvantages than advantages? I'm surprised it's even possible; in other countries you have to have lived there for around 7 years or so until you get citizenship.
> Doesn't this give you more disadvantages than advantages? No real disadvantages. Being a British citizen means I can live and work in the UK if I want . As I said, I’ve never been there-but you never know what the future holds. Pre-Brexit, it let me live and work anywhere in the EU-not that I ever did that either. But I thought about it. My brother actually did it for a bit. Maybe one day Scotland will become indep…
> By contrast, the UK doesn’t bar dual citizens from Parliament-in fact, it even lets Australians vote, and run for Parliament-and I mean sole Australian citizens, who aren’t UK dual citizens.
[1] https://money.cnn.com/2017/02/09/news/boris-johnson-us-citiz...
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That's one future I work for.
It made me really happy to hear that. Thank you. I’ve been told plenty of times that such a future is implausible. And I grant that our future may look a lot more like The Orville than Star Trek. But from an engineering, public health, and social perspective it seems that both of those visions have more similarities than differences. I accept that the individual work most of us do don’t directly build that future alo…
Our present is equally implausible.
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If they're only pretending to believe, they already know they're wrong. If you sincerely do just want to communicate this to them, I recommend using "God" instead of "Skygod". It doesn't change the message and it makes it sound more like you're speaking in good faith.
You wrongfully assume I want to have any sort of conversation with the converts. The only conversation I want to have with them is to tell them to stay bloody clear of politics. If you want to have rules that govern your life, I'm perfectly fine with that up to where they want legislation that affects the freedom of other people. It seems too much of late that Evangelicals took The Handmaid's Tale as an instruction m…
>If you don't call out the hypocrites, how would they ever know they are wrong?
If you're not actually trying to convince them they're wrong, you can't use that to justify uncivility.
I get that being polite is less important than preventing someone from leveraging the government to restrict others' freedoms. But if everyone defects from social norms, we'll be in the exact same place on those issues while being collectively worse off.
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> If there's not a supernatural enforcer then there are no consequences to lying/breaking your oath. Interestingly, it looks to me that even atheists are endorsing this false idea here! > many folks swear on the Bible out of convention or lack of critical thought, rather than belief, but will rationalize if pressed You have contradicted yourself here. When someone asks why you swore on the Bible, you tell them the su…
>> Amusingly, some really Bible-believing folks will not swear, on a Bible or on anything else, due to Matthew 5:34-37. This intellectual consistency is lost of course when we reduce swearing on the Bible to either convention or magic. > The Bible is infamous for being logically inconsistent. It contradicts itself at every turn. If Jesus says 'do not swear an oath at all' (Matthew 5:34), and some president or officia…
The reality that The Bible is logically inconsistent provides opportunity for biblical followers to be themselves logically inconsistent.
If The Bible were logically consistent, then that opportunity would not be present; and biblical followers would share a homogenous set of moral ideology.
Christianity is well known for having many different denominations, each with their own take on biblical morality and dogma.
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I’m responding to your comment, which seems to be based on misconceptions. If you have a working understanding of what religion is, it is not reflected in your comment. Or maybe I misunderstand the comment—you could elaborate what you mean. I don’t think people who are raised Christianity are taught what Christianity is, so it doesn’t surprise me that you’re born, raised, & confirmed. People who are born and raised C…
I refuse to give any "believer" the benefit of the doubt. I assume they are socially Christian with no real practice or devotion from the getgo. To convince me of anything else they have to have works. There's a reason for the caricature comics have been lambasting for decades. It's only funny cause it's true.
You can see Christians who are behaving the wrong way, by your judgment, without accusing them of acting unfaithfully.
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That's one future I work for.
It made me really happy to hear that. Thank you. I’ve been told plenty of times that such a future is implausible. And I grant that our future may look a lot more like The Orville than Star Trek. But from an engineering, public health, and social perspective it seems that both of those visions have more similarities than differences. I accept that the individual work most of us do don’t directly build that future alo…
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For a positivist, you’re not very strong on logic. I didn’t say anything about the god having to exist, that is not part of it. The point is that the person believes he is talking to a being, rather than relying on a law of (super)nature. The rock has no will, it is not the rock that decides you grant you luck, it’s an inevitable consequence of your action. The god, real or not, is a being with a will, he presumably…
> For a positivist, you’re not very strong on logic. When the ad hominems start I know I'm on the right track > The rock has no will / The god, real or not, is a being with a will. How do you know god is a being with a will? This is the fallacy of special pleading. You are defining god and giving it characteristics that precisely allows you to say it is different than something with no will. > It doesn’t matter if yo…
And btw I also studied math, in a special mathematics high school, and then theoretical physics at university. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t also learn rudimentary concepts from anthropology and religious studies.
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It made me really happy to hear that. Thank you. I’ve been told plenty of times that such a future is implausible. And I grant that our future may look a lot more like The Orville than Star Trek. But from an engineering, public health, and social perspective it seems that both of those visions have more similarities than differences. I accept that the individual work most of us do don’t directly build that future alo…
I always assumed we would hit some big filter and die off. If not a filter maybe something in the dark forest would get us
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This definition confuses cause and effect. A person believes something that results in superstition. This definition states that superstition creates itself rather than being the result of external factors. As a finer point, laws of nature could themselves be superstition. Godel's incompleteness theorem proves that we cannot prove all the laws in the universe. As such, we assert a truth that we know we cannot prove t…
> A person believes something that results in superstition. This definition states that superstition creates itself. This is nonsense. Nothing is "created" when someone says something superstitious. There is no cause and effect. Supernatural entities/realms either exits or they do not. And there is zero evidence they do. Whether or not they actually do doesn't matter, it is rational to not believe in them until someo…
WHY does a person say something superstitions? What makes it superstitious if not the beliefs behind the statement? You didn't answer this fundamental question.
> Whether or not they actually do doesn't matter, it is rational to not believe in them until someone presents evidence for their existence.
This is an assertion without any proof. Your only proof for this is the burden of proof. The burden of proof itself demands that it be proven. A religious person might assert that it is true because it was made so, but you have no such fallback, so you MUST prove the burden of proof in order to assert it as a meaningful argument.
> His theorem says no such thing. It simply makes a statement about the trade-off between the consistency of axiomatic systems and the provability of truth statements. I could easily just argue the universe is a system with inconsistent axioms where every law can be proved.
He most definitely does. His point was to expressly disprove the "theory of everything" that mathematics attempted to achieve at the time.
If you come up with a mathematical framework of the universe, either it cannot be proven or it is NOT the correct framework.
Trusting in a model that MIGHT be correct, but is not provable shares your definition of superstition. Just because your superstition changes over time doesn't make it any less superstitious (in fact, most superstitions change over time).
Your appeal to science is just a no true Scotsman fallacy where you attempt to redefine superstition to be "everything except what I believe".
> This is called science. We collect evidence. We develop approximations of reality that best conform to this evidence. We collect new evidence. We refine our approximations.
This was the original claim of astrology and many other superstitions.
> I don't care what "so many theoretical physicists" believe. I care what they publish in peer-reviewed literature.
You should care because it will be reflected in what they publish and why they publish it. Likewise, it will reflect what they do not publish or decide not to research in the first place.
> Perhaps humans are hardwired to make spears and kill each other or hunt and gather. That doesn't mean we should be doing that in 2023.
This is a non-sequitur. Humans are hardwired to breath. Should we stop that in 2023? Your statement is completely orthogonal to the current value of religion or the ability to "overcome" its influence.