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Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

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Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#141

Post by [deleted] »

psychoslave wrote: post #137
starspangled wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worldview of many atheists I know seems to depend on magical thinking, holding of contradictory beliefs, and blind appeal to authority when it comes to the government. I don't think there is clear cause and effect when it comes to religion and irrational behavior.

People often easily conflat religion, theology and theocracy. But an atheist dictator that would put death sentence for anyone that engages in a religion would obviously not be more ethical than some religious zealtoth doing the same for atheism. I'm not aware of any politically powerful atheist in history that went this path. I mean, most likely Stalin was atheist, but I doubt it ever was a matter to send people to…

[deleted]

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#142

Post by paulryanrogers »

psychoslave wrote: post #137
starspangled wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worldview of many atheists I know seems to depend on magical thinking, holding of contradictory beliefs, and blind appeal to authority when it comes to the government. I don't think there is clear cause and effect when it comes to religion and irrational behavior.

People often easily conflat religion, theology and theocracy. But an atheist dictator that would put death sentence for anyone that engages in a religion would obviously not be more ethical than some religious zealtoth doing the same for atheism. I'm not aware of any politically powerful atheist in history that went this path. I mean, most likely Stalin was atheist, but I doubt it ever was a matter to send people to…

Dictators are bad regardless of religion or lack thereof.

IDK what ZFC is, so perhaps you can enlighten me?

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#143

Post by s1artibartfast »

rectang wrote: post #109
s1artibartfast wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a tremendous amount of empathy, if one isn't blinded to it. For every person that dies a violent death, there there are thousands engaging positively with friends, family, loved ones. If you care about sums, you must also acknowledge positive within the Russian state as well? On a given day, it also has lovers meeting, mothers nursing children, friendships. Surely, humanity doesn't have enough empath…

All those Ukrainians basking in that tremendous Russian empathy… It only takes a moment for you or your loved ones to receive death or grievous injury, but not to worry because they’re “spending an exceedingly small amount of time engaged in violence”. Rape might be over in minutes! And besides, it only affects… how much of the population? Those who are most confident about human righteousness are the least qualified…

This is clearly a disagreement about weights. You don't seem to weigh empathy and joy very highly in comparison to violence. How much kind empathetic deeds do you think it takes to outweigh 10 minutes of violent murder? A hug? A romance? A lifetime of Love? One hundred lifetimes of kindness?

Sometimes it helps to make the context personal? How much violence would you endure for a year of kindness and love?

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#144

Post by anon291 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #130
graemep wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big genocides and mass murders of the twentieth century were motivated by non-religious (the holocaust) or atheist (in the Soviet union, China, and Cambodia) ideologies.. Even historically religious motives for "bad behaviours" were rare.

Were those genocides really motivated by of a lack of religion or other factors like racism and authoritarianism? > Even historically religious motives for "bad behaviours" were rare. Doubt. Still, even if that's accurate, my point was that raising people to be easily manipulated sheep doesn't produce a robust society. It just makes them easier to exploit. MLMs are common in predominantly Mormon communities for a rea…

I mean... We constantly hear that European colonization was due to Christianity and yet that cannot account for the treatment of the Syriac Christians of Kerala by the European colonists supposedly driven by Christianity.

This is the heart of the matter: any ill by an atheist is determined to be caused by something other than atheism. Meanwhile any motivation of an evil doer who professes a religion is pinned on that religion.

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#145

Post by anon291 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #133
anon291 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The arc of history simply does not show that. We can point to the various issues in communist states (not criticizing communism but all the communist states are undoubtedly atheist).

Was it the absence of religion that created issues in communist states? Or perhaps authoritarianism, hero worship, overly centralized planning, low trust culture, or some other combination of factors at play? History's arc is much longer than communism, and religion is tied to some pretty horrific events.

Given that some of the hatred was targeting specifically religious people (for example, the CCP bans religious people from their ranks), then I think it's safe to say that it is driven by a dislike of religion

You can agree with their take on religion or not, but their motivation remains the same.

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#146

Post by defrost »

anon291 wrote: post #144
paulryanrogers wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were those genocides really motivated by of a lack of religion or other factors like racism and authoritarianism? > Even historically religious motives for "bad behaviours" were rare. Doubt. Still, even if that's accurate, my point was that raising people to be easily manipulated sheep doesn't produce a robust society. It just makes them easier to exploit. MLMs are common in predominantly Mormon communities for a rea…

I mean... We constantly hear that European colonization was due to Christianity and yet that cannot account for the treatment of the Syriac Christians of Kerala by the European colonists supposedly driven by Christianity. This is the heart of the matter: any ill by an atheist is determined to be caused by something other than atheism. Meanwhile any motivation of an evil doer who professes a religion is pinned on that…

> I mean... We constantly hear that European colonization was due to Christianity ..

Who is "we" and why do they hear that?

Eg: Australia was colonised to take land possession ahead of the Dutch and the French, for finnancial gain, and to utilise the prisoners piling up in hulks on the river flats once the thirteen colonies in North America stopped taking them.

The thirteen US colonies were largely established as hard nosed business ventures with substantial private investments that looked for an eventual return.

The South and Central American colonies were pretty much all established to support plantations for sugar and other goods.

In these examples religion came along for the ride and provided a carrotof comfort in contrast to the sticks and guns of the military who also rode in.

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#147

Post by anon291 »

defrost wrote: post #146
anon291 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... We constantly hear that European colonization was due to Christianity and yet that cannot account for the treatment of the Syriac Christians of Kerala by the European colonists supposedly driven by Christianity. This is the heart of the matter: any ill by an atheist is determined to be caused by something other than atheism. Meanwhile any motivation of an evil doer who professes a religion is pinned on that…

> I mean... We constantly hear that European colonization was due to Christianity .. Who is "we" and why do they hear that? Eg: Australia was colonised to take land possession ahead of the Dutch and the French, for finnancial gain, and to utilise the prisoners piling up in hulks on the river flats once the thirteen colonies in North America stopped taking them. The thirteen US colonies were largely established as har…

It's constantly used in polemics of Christianity. Whereas actions of atheists are unable to be used against atheism

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#148

Post by defrost »

anon291 wrote: post #147
defrost wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean... We constantly hear that European colonization was due to Christianity .. Who is "we" and why do they hear that? Eg: Australia was colonised to take land possession ahead of the Dutch and the French, for finnancial gain, and to utilise the prisoners piling up in hulks on the river flats once the thirteen colonies in North America stopped taking them. The thirteen US colonies were largely established as har…

It's constantly used in polemics of Christianity. Whereas actions of atheists are unable to be used against atheism

> It's constantly used in polemics of Christianity.

Doesn't make it true though.

> Whereas actions of atheists are unable to be used against atheism

Why not, aside from the obvious observation that "atheists" are not as homogenuous in their belief as, say, "Catholics".

In general the actions of, say, Nazis, can be used against them (ie Nazis) but not against humans globally or atheists in Australia, that's nonsensical.

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#149

Post by defrost »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #142
psychoslave wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often easily conflat religion, theology and theocracy. But an atheist dictator that would put death sentence for anyone that engages in a religion would obviously not be more ethical than some religious zealtoth doing the same for atheism. I'm not aware of any politically powerful atheist in history that went this path. I mean, most likely Stalin was atheist, but I doubt it ever was a matter to send people to…

Dictators are bad regardless of religion or lack thereof. IDK what ZFC is, so perhaps you can enlighten me?

Crudely overviewing:

Mathematics is seen a formally grown, logical system, that has features that are "discovered" rather than invented .. "Given some {X}, {Y} follows without question".

However it rests(?) on Axiomatic foundations ..

Most famously: https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/euclid.htm

It is understood that one can tweak an axiom, the fifth posulate for example, and get a different logical ediface - a non Euclidean hyperbolic geometry in that case.

The ZFC "Axiom of Choice" has bearing on infinities and other things, including many proofs that depend on reduction by absurdity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo%E2%80%93Fraenkel_set_t...

Re: Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage

#150

Post by [deleted] »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #143
rectang wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those Ukrainians basking in that tremendous Russian empathy… It only takes a moment for you or your loved ones to receive death or grievous injury, but not to worry because they’re “spending an exceedingly small amount of time engaged in violence”. Rape might be over in minutes! And besides, it only affects… how much of the population? Those who are most confident about human righteousness are the least qualified…

This is clearly a disagreement about weights. You don't seem to weigh empathy and joy very highly in comparison to violence. How much kind empathetic deeds do you think it takes to outweigh 10 minutes of violent murder? A hug? A romance? A lifetime of Love? One hundred lifetimes of kindness? Sometimes it helps to make the context personal? How much violence would you endure for a year of kindness and love?

[deleted]
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