FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
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User ID: 1739
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
10mo ago
The whole thing about martyrs is that they demonstrated their ultimate belief by maintaining it in the face of the most serious oppression and sanctions which tends to make it quite obvious that they were acting on a true belief that held serious meaning to them. We don't see many martyrs for Christianity these days.
We don't see them in the West much because it's rare for people to kill Christians qua Christians these days. Not that it never happens, but it's rare. In other places, such as several Muslim majority countries or anti-religious authoritarian countries like China and North Korea martyrs are still quite common.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2mo ago
It's not just this one ruling, but this ruling is tying the hands of anyone who tries to fix the problem: letting those who prefer not to fix it free reign to make things worse.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
8mo ago
Definitely circles. As a lifelong Christian I have met exactly one person who called themselves a Christian but didn't believe in the resurrection, and I've met a lot of Christians. Even that guy changed his mind about it and is now an Anglican priest (I'm pretty sure he changed his mind, but being an Anglican priest doesn't exactly prove anything in that regard).
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
15d ago
Being out of order is what makes it funny. If the punchline was "the gas light gate keep girl boss" then it would be mildly funny, but rotating the word pairs so that they're exactly one off, and all in the same direction, makes it hilarious. Like "man door hand hook car door"
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
You cite as evidence an SS document saying no gas chamber was ever built, I cite as evidence a US Army investigative report from 1945 that not only says "yup, there's gas chambers here, we saw them ourselves" but includes photographic evidence. Not based on the testimony of "hundred of Jews" but based on the testimony of American soldiers of the Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment, Seventh Army, who were sent to the camp to investigate and report back. They have photos of the crematoria, the gas chamber buildings, and a detailed physical description of the gas chambers themselves.
I don't see how a single SS documents saying that no gas chamber was built at Dachau beats a comprehensive US report, with photographs, saying that there was a gas chamber there.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
If we had the technological capability to turn a man into a "natural" woman with all the parts and capabilities of a "natural" woman, then it would lead to an interesting Natural Law question. Arguably it would not be against Natural Law, but may still be against Catholic doctrine: the whole "creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created” bit. But from a Natural Law perspective, it may well be licit.
Though there is the question of how you would know that someone is "naturally" a woman despite having a healthy male body. It may seem more likely that their abnormality is not having the wrong body, but having an abnormality of the mind. Imagine we had the technology to perfectly change someone's sex, and also had the technology to cure their GID (as in, they won't feel like they're in the wrong body anymore). From a Natural Law perspective, curing the GID seems to be the superior treatment. After all, humans are not "naturally" supposed to believe they are in the wrong bodies and suffer depression and anxiety and the rest around that belief.
In any case, what is certainly not licit under Natural Law is to take a natural human and lop off bits of it to make an unnatural human, unless the alternative is even more unnatural.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
If I was them I wouldn’t be me, as you’ve said, so it’s a pointless statement to say “if you were them”. It’s like sayin “If X was Y, then X would be Y.” Which is tautologically true, but provides us with no new information. If I was a cat I’d be a cat. If I was Hitler I’d be Hitler. If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
Yes, if I was them I would be them.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
5mo ago
I agree diaper changing is no big deal. Waking up in the middle of the night during the newborn stage is just awful. My littlest is two and I still haven't recovered from sleep deprivation.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
5mo ago
That reiterates the 10 words everyone needs to know when dealing with the police:
"I'm not answering any questions, and I want a lawyer."
Then you shut your trap.
See also Nathan Burney's excellent Self-Incrimination Flowchart, which lays out in detail exactly how to avoid incriminating yourself in the US.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
8mo ago
I have also lived an entirely straightlaced life. I had the opportunity to take a mild psychedelic in a safe environment and took advantage of it: ketamine. People say ketamine is non-addictive (like all psychedelics I guess) and I have to agree. It was a good experience, and I'm glad I did it, but I don't exactly have an urge to go out and have that experience again. It was what it was.
I don't really have any advice other than "I, a straightlaced square, took a not-too-strong-but-strong-enough does of ketamine in a safe environment, had an experience I consider valuable, and didn't come out of it a loon." I'm pretty much the same person I was. I don't know if that's reassuring, or means that there wasn't any point to it.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
9mo ago
My favorite sci-fi explanation for UFOs is that they're not aliens, they're time travelers from the far future. I don't think it's realistic, but it's fun to think about and avoid the whole "travelled millions of miles to get here and then just abduct some randos and mess with some cows" problem.
Yes, obviously (assuming that harassment is a chargeable offence, which I don't think it is).
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
30d ago
I find your comments intriguing, because I have the opposite reaction you describe. To me a well rendered painting or drawing of a landscape is often more attractive than an actual landscape. Or if not more attractive, more pleasing in a slightly different dimension. Have you ever felt a desire to be inside a picture: not literally, but to be in the place the picture is depicting? That the art is trying to communicate something higher and better than anything we can actually find our our normal existence? That the artist is taking what is beautiful and good about a landscape but crafting it in a way that no real landscape can match up to, throwing out the small bits of ugliness that is inherent in any landscape we can actually see and replacing it with the ideal? Because that's something like 70% of my aesthetic preferences. I want art to be more beautiful than life, more transcendent, more glorious and inspiring.
What do you see attractive about something like Miro painting? To me there's no real attraction at all. It does not show me anywhere I would want to go, any emotion I would want to feel, any state of being I would want to inhabit. I don't find it repulsive, but I don't see the point of it at all. What's the draw for you?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
The trouble is, if you abandon natural law concepts you lose a lot of important philosophical tools. For instance, the concept of disease. If we have no conception of a "natural" human, of what a human is supposed to be like, then we the concept of disease is meaningless. You have tumors? That's fine, there is no immutable concept of human that your body must align with, you're just as "healthy" as anyone else. No legs? Nothing wrong with that, humans have no static nature, being born with no legs is just an example of the diversity of the human form. Depressed, or blind, or deaf? That's a valid way to be, there's nothing wrong with you and anyone who tries to "cure" you is forcing you to conform to an outdated philosophical concept.
Without some idea of what a human is, "healthy" or "unhealthy" are meaningless categories imposed by the powerful on the powerless for their own ends. But it seems pretty clear to me that there is a way that humans are supposed to be. We can argue about how fine the resolution is on that idea, but it seems to exist. It seems that humans really are "supposed" to have two legs, and two eyes, and to be able to reason, and to have one heart with four atria that pumps blood through the body, and to be capable of reproduction, etc, etc. There does seem to be a constant that we can compare all humans to, and which can inform us of real facts (such as, this human has a disease because their liver is not working the way a human liver is "supposed" to work).
Natural Law wouldn't be opposed to giving someone whose legs are missing prosthetics (even cool robot prosthetics) because that restores some of the function they are "naturally" supposed to have. And you could make a Natural Law argument towards even replacing healthy legs with superior super robot legs: it is the nature of humans to have legs, and to run, and jump, and lift with them, and these robot legs let you do all those natural capabilities more perfectly. I don't know if everyone who believes in Natural Law would buy that (especially if the legs in question are spider legs), but you can definitely make a real argument in that direction. You're basically making that Natural Law argument when you say "Humanity has never been about limiting potential".
Your problem with the Catholic Church is more specific than against Natural Law generally. The problem isn't that the Catholic Church has a certain aesthetic, it's that they have certain beliefs about the nature of the universe: namely that human nature is the purposeful design of an omniscient and omnibenevolent God, and that human nature is in a meaningful sense an image of God, which makes human nature (and human life) sacred. You can do things to non-sacred objects that you can't do to sacred ones (see, for instance, how difficult it is to renovate a historically protected building. You can't just replace bits of it with whatever you want). So yes, I don't think Catholicism is likely to make concessions for robot spider legs, unless they're only for people who don't have legs.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2mo ago
How broad is too broad to be considered "elite"? If you told me that 10% of a population were elites, that doesn't sound too weird to me.
Let me run a quick sanity check. Hmm, 30 seconds of Googling is telling me that in Medieval Europe the nobility were around 1-3% of the population (except in Castille where it was around 10% at certain times, but that seems to be an outlier). So perhaps 9% is too broad.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2mo ago
I'm praying the Supreme Court will strike Martin down. If they don't, I see no solution to the problem.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
5mo ago
I am a HUGE fan of Total Warhammer in general. Love it. TW3 is fine, but the factions it comes with are a bit advanced. Definitely worth picking gup TW1 to get the "core" factions (Empire, Dwarves, Greenskins, and Vampires [which aren't really "core" but are fun]).
What in particular are you finding confusing? The way the Total Warhammer games "stack" together, TW3 is more like a really big expansion pack then a standalone game mechanics wise, so there is a lot to be confused about if you're just jumping in.
Some general advice:
-ABC: Always Be Conquering. The way the economy works massively rewards conquest and looting, and if you aren't constantly expanding you'll struggle. Even just winning a battle will reward you with gold, so the more you're fighting the more you're earning.
-A huge part of strategy is where you place your armies. The maps are huge (absolutely IMMENSE in the case of the Immoral Empires campaign) and it takes time for your armies to move across them. Enemy armies will show up where you didn't expect, so make sure you have armies positioned so that they can intercept an invading force within 2-3 turns.
-Look at the tooltip descriptions for each unit, they can be very handy. Some of them take some jargon learning to get, but you can hover over most things and an explanation will appear. One useful thing to know is that "Shock Cavalry" is great when charging into the enemy, and for about 20 seconds after the charge, but will not hold up in long term melee combat and will need to retreat and charge again. "Melee Cavalry" on the other hand has the stats needed to do well in prolonged melee combat.
-"Anti-large" units are a must, you need at least a couple of them in each army because even crummy anti-large units do great against monsters and cavalry.
-If a settlement you've conquered isn't in a great environment for your faction, or is in a position where it will be too costly to keep defended, then it's generally better to loot it, and then on the next turn raze it. If somebody settles on it the initial defenses will be very weak, so it's easy to roll back in and burn it back down.
There's way too much more to advise on, but I'd be happy to help with specific questions and confusions.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
11mo ago
You can certainly try to believe.
By which I mean, behave as if God's existence is more probable than you currently think it is. Try praying, in earnest (or as earnestly as you can when you think it is very unlikely anyone is listening). Try reading scripture with an openness to the possibility that there is something valuable and true there to learn. Try going to a church: don't pretend you already believe, but be open to the possibility that your mind could be changed.
If there are particular logical issues that prevent you from being open to the possibility of God's existence, then take time to research them. There are a great many very intelligent and well educated Christians out there: is it really the case that you know something they never realized? It's more likely that there is an answer to whatever objection you have. Be open to the possibility that the answer may be right.
If God doesn't exist, then all this will cost you is some of your time and energy. If He does exist then you may gain all the worldly good you were searching for (family, happiness, meaning, community) and the far greater good of salvation from your sins and hope for eternal life.
I can understand an atheist who has no desire to be religious deciding not to go through all that effort, but if you're an atheist who does desire to be religious then the cost-benefit ratio seems pretty good.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
13d ago
I didn’t think I’d make it, but I submitted my entry for the ACX book review contest.
I’m a terrible procrastinator. I have been planning to write my entry since the contest was announced several months ago, and I’ve been intending to enter since the last contest ended, but beyond putting together an outline I didn’t actually start writing until this last Monday, a week before the due date. Still, better last minute than never!
Anybody else enter this year? I don’t have much hope of being a finalist, but I’d like to improve on my performance last year (54th out of 145).
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
I don't think you do lose the concept of disease. You can reclaim it straight from the etymology. Dis-Ease. A disease is when the things you are trying to do are harder than they need to be, physically, emotionally, or existentially.
That definition of disease would lead to some very unintuitive results. For example, if I want to remove a 1,000 pound stone from my backyard but find I am not physically strong enough to do so, does that mean I have a disease? The thing I'm trying to do is certainly harder than I'd like it to be. How do you define how hard something needs to be, so that it makes sense to call not being strong enough to life up a glass of water a disease, but not being strong enough to lift an elephant isn't? The only route I can see to defining how hard something needs to be is to have in your mind an idea of a normal human, and an idea of how hard things would be for that human. Since I have an idea on how strong a "natural" male should be, I can make a judgement that the man who can't life a 1,000 pound stone unaided is normal and healthy, while the grown man who can't lift a glass of water has something wrong with them: a disease.
In the case of benign tumors that aren't causing an inconvenience, we don't typically call them a disease.
Do we? I would consider benign tumors a disease, just not a threatening one. The International Classification of Disease manual, version 10 (ICD-10) is the handbook used by medical providers to identify diseases (it's in the name). ICD-10 code D21.9 is "benign neoplasm", ie a benign tumor.
It is true that typically doctors do not recommend removing benign tumors, but that's not because they're not a disease: it's because the cure would likely cause more harm than the disease would.
I get that some people don't call aging or mortality or ignorance diseases. But my in-group does.
Christians would agree, death is not natural to man. "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he 'has put everything under his feet.'"
My issue is that the things that I think are the divine and sacred nature of human beings, are things that they call Sin.
Which things exactly? Just self-modification, or is there something else? Pride? Lust? Envy?
And the things that they call the divine and sacred nature of human beings, are often the things I call skill issues that the divine wishes to see us overcome.
Which things? Love? Joy? Peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, or self control? Or is it just the human's being sacred thing?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
It seems likely. I mean, if someone says they're actually a fish, and if we had the technology to turn them into a fish, we'd still probably err on the side of their mind having a problem as opposed to their bodies having a problem. If someone is physically male but claims to be a female, either their body or their mind is wrong. Given all the ways the mind can go wrong, and given that there is nothing obviously abnormal about their body, it seems reasonable to assume the abnormality is in the mind. Especially since we can't actually physically change someone from a male to a female or vice versa, we can make them look and feel a bit more like the other gender.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
If someone put up missing posters of Gazan children buried in rubble, it would still be a pretty awful move for someone to tear them down. You don't tear down other people's posters, and doing so looks especially bad when the posters are raising awareness of dead kids.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3d ago
If builders are confident they'll actually be allowed to build, the market price will be high enough that most people will want to sell. Those that don't won't, but many will for the right price.
Like most people I had desires and aspirations as a child that I no longer have as an adult. I no longer care to eat hard candies or chew bubblegum, I prefer a prime rib steak to a pop tart, and I have no plans to be the first astronaut on Mars. With maturity comes the inevitable putting away of childish things.
Recently, however, I discovered there was one ridiculous, childish desire that deep down I still very much want.
I love Reese's peanut butter cups. When I was 8 or so I imagined that when I was an adult and had money I would buy so many peanut butter cups that you could fill bathtub with them, and eat them all. When I was 11 or so I realized that would be impractical, and imagined instead sitting in an airchair with boxes of Reese's cups stacked high enough to reach them without bending down, and eating as many as physically possible.
Friends, this dream still appeals to me greatly. I didn't realize how appealing it still was until last Christmas, when (after a several months of strict dieting) I allowed myself to cut loose for the holiday. My wife always buys me Reese's to put in my stocking each year, and this year had a big bag of Reese's minis. I ate the entire bag, 1,300 calories worth, within an hour.
And all I could think was that I wanted more.
I'm not planning on making my childhood dream a reality: but this knowledge weighs heavy on me. Each time I'm at Costco I find myself calculating the price of 5 or six cases of cups. Someday, perhaps all too soon, my willpower may fail me.
Which, honestly, wouldn't be so bad. I'd probably get sick, throw up, and if I'm lucky my brain will associate Reese's with nausea and I won't have to worry about this ever again. Worst case scenario, I think the maximum amount of weight you can gain in a day is fixed, (maybe two pounds?) so at least the damage would be limited.
All this preamble to say: do you have any childish dreams that deep down (or maybe not so deep) you'd still like to make a reality?
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