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LacklustreFriend

37 Pieces of Flair Minimum

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joined 2022 September 05 17:49:44 UTC

				

User ID: 657

LacklustreFriend

37 Pieces of Flair Minimum

4 followers   follows 1 user   joined 2022 September 05 17:49:44 UTC

					

No bio...


					

User ID: 657

On the one hand, the US public appears to be overwhelmingly favoring Israel over Hamas (>80%), but I am not sure if this means as much as Israel's supporters claim. I've seen many pro-Palestinians and anti-Zionists denounce Hamas for other reasons and I got the sense that not all of them were for sake of optics.

It really fustrates me to no end how many pro-Israel hawks present a false dichotomy between Israel and Hamas, and imply Palestine is necessarily synonymous with Hamas. It doesn't even make sense as a direct comparison - it really should be Israel and Palestine. It's incredibly disingenuous.

Apparently, the Israel-Palestine conflict only began in 2005 with the creation of Hamas. It was all peaceful before that.

I also have sympathy for that view, and it's refreshing to see the discussion around religion evolve from 'religion is stupid and holding us back from rational utopia' to 'religion does have some real social utility'. However, it's hard for me to take this claim of wanting to believe seriously from some people who make this claim when I see a dismissal of all metaphysics out of hand from those same people, from what I believe is not from a serious consideration of metaphysics but a reflexive dismissal of anything that isn't materialist (scientism).

At the same time, I see a lot of what I'll perhaps uncharitably describe as 'playing' at atheism. That is, a refusal to engage with the actual consequences or logic conclusion of atheism, as outlined by philosophers like Nietzsche and Sartre - perhaps because the conclusion is so undesirable. Instead, we see this glossy and superficial atheism professed by the New Atheists, whose critics I think quite rightly point out are attacking Christianity while relying on an underlying implicit Christian morality in practice. They profess a rationalistic/scientific approach to moral issues which I think is a fool's errand - the scientism I was criticising in my original post.

I addressed most of your points in my original post. Ukraine isn't of real important to US interests, but the US has made it important to them for some (ideological) reason.

Calling Russia an existential threat to the US is ridiculous. How are they an exetential threat exactly? The only way I can see this as realistic is Russia a nuclear power - but then war and antagonism only increases the likelihood of nuclear exchange, not decreases it.

If Russia did not exist, the USA would try to create a Russia.

This is a good point, but this pivots the argument from "beating up Russia is good because Russia is an actual serious threat" to "beating up Russia is good because it's a scare tactic to keep the Europeans under American influence". It also basically concedes the point that Russia is an enemy of the US's own making. Although, I'm not really sure how important keeping the Europeans on tight American leash is given that the future geopolitical battle ground is primarily East and South-East Asia.

As for their cooperation with China, that is already occurring

Yes, but it wasn't occuring 25 years ago, but began occuring as a result of the deliberate antagonism towards Russia from the US over this period. That was my point - there is easily an alternate reality where Russia and China are instead regional rivals rather them cooperating as they are now.

What's your point?

Do you mind elaborating on your position? Are you arguing that the 19th century fertility transition being due to men basically just pulling out more ("men's pull out game was stronger")? Assuming for the sake of the argument this is true, why did this occur?

Isn't the social effects of industrialisation in the 19th century a more reason explanation (including mass urbanisation)?

If you just take the Pauline letters as the orthodoxy in the early Church, which it was and still is, there's virtually nothing disagreeable (modern progressivism notwithstanding)

The point of my original post is not to 'attack' atheists, but rather quite the opposite, rather to reconcile belief in science and belief in religion (or belief in God in the general sense). I only 'attack' atheists insofar as I am arguing against scientism which atheists may or may not believe in. Even then, 'attacking' is a pretty uncharitable description of arguing against something.

I think part of the rhetorical divide is that atheists implicitly think that 'faith' is a dirty word. I don't have such a view of the word or meaning behind faith. When I use the word 'faith' here, I'm being quite sincere.

You're also skipping a step with your stand-in empiricist - the empiricist has to first believe it is possible to observe the ordered and knowable universe in first place, and the observations he's make necessary correspond to an objective reality and not, say, it's all in his head to be a bit facetious. This axiomatic foundation is completely foundational religious thought (i.e. a belief in God), and one might argue tends to believe or even necessarily leads to belief in God. This is what Christians mean by God being Logos and God's Logos - that there is an inherent order/structure to the universe and this structure is discernable by Reason (which is one of the possible ways of translating of Logos along with Word). God is identified with this inherent (divine) structure of the universe.

Unfortunately it's just extremely difficult to reconcile modern scientific knowledge with old religious worldviews. I think what many religious people, especially on this forum, miss is that for many agnostics or athiests it's not that they don't want to believe, rather that they find it practically impossible to believe in a religion which demands they lay down the rules of science and empiricism.

Only because of an implicit scientism that is pervasive in our society, which is particularly popular among liberal atheistic/agnostic types. I can't speak for every religion but the Catholic Church believes that there is no conflict between (Catholic Christian) religion and science, a belief I share.

The issue with this scientism is really quite obvious when you ask a straight-forward question: is all knowledge (or all truths) discernable via science or the scientific method? The answer to this question to me is clearly no, and that some truths (e.g. moral truths) cannot be discerned through science, and this enters the realm of philosophy and ultimately religion or faith. Many a philosopher has attempted derive moral truths through scientific/materialist means (including atheist star Sam Harris, if we want to call him a philosopher), but these projects inevitably end up as failures trying to square the circle. The alternative is moral nihilism and a completely materialist outlook, but very few atheists seem to actually want to bite that bullet.

Many philosophers have identified religion has giving rise to science in the first place. Because at the most basic, fundamental level, believe in natural science assumes a priori that that reality is ordered and knowable, a proposition one must take on faith.

Diamonds suck and are boring. Aesthetically they're really uninteresting, extremely expensive pink diamonds etc not withstanding.Hopefully, (and she sounds like she isn't) your girlfriend isn't the kind of woman who just wants a real big diamond for supeficial reasons cause that's what you're meant to do.

For a yellow gemstone I recommend a yellow sapphire/corundum. They are nearly as hard and wear resistant as diamond, and are only a fraction of the cost, and can be quite beautiful. You can use extra budget to get a really large stone and/or have multiple stones in a nice custom design that symbolises something meaningful to both of you. Maybe even go a multicolour arrangement with different coloured sapphires with a large yellow sapphire in the middle. If you put a lot of thought into coming up with a beautiful custom multigem design, that will just as or more meaningful then shelling out many thousands on a big diamond.

Ultimately, it's up to you, you know your girlfriend best. Don't worry about what other people will think, just get something your girlfriend will love and appreciate (within budget of course!)

which brings to mind images of Platonic virtue and philosopher kings. Well, what actually kings could be described that way?

Two immediately come to mind coming very, very, close if they didn't actually achieve it - Marcus Aurelius, and Pedro II of Brazil. I'm less familiar with non-Western history, but I imagine some others would qualify, perhaps Harun Al-Rashid, Ashoka (after conversion) and others.

Also, this engaging in a bit of a nirvana fallacy. A hypothetical just monarchy doesn't have to be perfect, just reasonably and practically just. Our own liberal democracies aren't perfect either (as was and is commonly proclaimed in communist propaganda)

This is a pretty obvious weakman. The steelman is that Nuland being involved in an region is indictative of larger US interest and involvement in the region, of which Nuland herself is just one part of the effort. It's not like Nuland is acting by herself, a one woman agency - there are powerful USA agencies and actors as part of the foreign policy apparatus.

This line on Russia also seems a bit paradoxical: the demand seems to be that the US treat Russia as an equal (it wasn't; they lost) but also that the US is responsible for Russia's economic and political malaise , as if it was a vassal or occupied state like Japan or South Korea (which, btw, didn't just uncritically bow to neoliberal policy- if a small Asian country could forge a smarter path...)

It's not paradoxical because I never used the word equal. As with all the other times, I commented on this issue on the Motte, I will say that Russia is and can only ever be a regional power in its current state. I used the word 'partnership' which does not require equal status. This is contrast to 'hegemony' which this absolutely the approach the US has taken in this region and many others. As to the issue of America's responsibility to the current political and economic status of Russia, I strongly recommend reading "Russia's Road to Corruption" a US Congressional report on the issue from the year 2000. At best, you can say this was the result of gross incompetence by the Clinton administration and their economic advisors. At worst, it wouldn't be remiss to believe that that Clinton administration's policies were actively malicious. At some level, it's hard to distinguish between the two.

What they were supposed to do?

Not fuck up Russia in the first place with the Clinton administration's disasterious attempt to 'reform' a post-Soviet Russia and seek partnership instead of hegemony? Agree to a healthy buffer zone in Eastern Europe? Not create and amplify the various revolutions in Eastern Europe, including the various 'Color Revolutions', and more recently and relevantly the heavy American involvement in Euromaidan and Ukrainian politics generally? Not deliberately antagonize Russia by constantly demanding Ukraine and Georgia should be admitted into NATO (despite their questionable strategic value) the same way the US would never tolerate a country in their immediate sphere (Monroe Doctrine) to ally with a hostile power (e.g. China or Russia) let alone one on their border?

but their current solution is probably something like a dead-simple "no divorce allowed" stance.

How many prominent conservatives (particularly politicans) openly advocate for getting rid of no-fault divorce?

I guess where I disagree with most people here is that I don't believe that war with Russia was a certainty and that peaceful scenarios where everyone benefits was possible (that doesn't require Ukrainian submission to Russia), had the last 30 years of foreign policy and geopolitics in Eastern Europe had been handled better. And that pursuing a road to peace asap now is ideal rather than trying to 'destroy Russia'.

If you could wave a magic wand to establish some collective norm to improve this situation, what would you do?

Unironically, as I say this as a pretty unobservant/lapsed Catholic, make everyone go to church. Alternatively, some substitute secular social club that theoretically fulfils a similar socializing role, but realistically this doesn't work, no matter how much atheists believe they can construct secular equivalents of the social role the religion plays.

I don't accept the explanations that tie all this to wokeness. There's nothing particularly diverse or marginalized about Ukrainians. Slavs are not around the top of the totem pole. And in fact things like Azov are the polar opposite.

I don't disagree with you, but I do want to play devil's advocate and raise a counterpoint of Israel and Palestine. While Palestinian are marginalized by Israel, Palestinians are mostly what the woke stand against. Mostly Islamic, heavily anti-LGBT. If the woke were purely concerned with this point, they would support Israel which is broadly way more LGBT friendly than Palestine is. But I think the real reason the woke support Palestine is not because they're really concerned proPalestine, who they would see as oppressors in most other circumstances, but really anti-Israel insofar as Israel represents American imperialism/hegemony in the Middle East.

I think there might be a similar thing, where, yes, the woke support for Ukraine is not actually motivated by Ukraine itself as you say, but it is still politically motived by being anti-Russia, with Russia kind of being a woke boogeyman.

The whole of Easter involves the passion of Christ, His crucifixion, His redemption of mankind's sin, and His death, ressurection and eventual assumption. It's literally the point of Christianity, and the core holy-day. In this case I would just say the American Christians who think Christmas is more important than Easter from a Christian point of view are just wrong and have been unduly influenced by the secular popularity of Christmas.

I actually very much agree with you, that men and women are by nature complementary and cooperative. However, I was arguing withing the author's own feminist frame of reference.

All the Greek words I dropped being Logos, and... all the other ones?

Even if I had "dropped" a bunch of Greek words, how is this a rebuttal? Greek terminology is extremely commonly used in Western philosophy in general and a basic Greek vocabulary is useful for anyone wanting to engage with it.

I mean, that's true, but I have two comments:

  • Even if the APS is left-leaning, which it is, there is a commitment to impartiality that is clearly being eroded when events like above are allowed to pass, something that didn't happen before.

  • The APS is become decidedly MORE left wing and woke than it has ever been. This is mostly a flow on effect from the universities and academia. Most non-clerical or mid-high level APS employees are university educated, so as the academy becomes more left wing and woke, so does the APS, and all other instutions which take university/college grads (which turns out to be basically everything). Which is why I maintain the root issue is the academy and the key way to fix this issue is to target them.

These people even manage to infiltrate the elected offices of government too. You of course would've heard of the many astonishing deeds of Lidia Thorpe but I doubt anyone else would've.

In Thorpe's defense, she is an elected politican, so it's explicitedly her job to be political, even if those politics are extremely radical and unsavoury.

What is a bit a disgrace is her leaving the party that got her elected less than a year after the election because they weren't radical enough for her, and now she's going to sit on the crossbench for the next five years while I would argue not really having the democratic legitimacy to do so.

You also missed one juicy Lidia Thorpe controversy that happened just very recently, where she got into a huge argument with Labor Indigenous Senator McCarthy during this same round of Senate Estimates, both of them calling each other disgraces to the Indigenous community and resulting in Senator Thorpe storming out of the proceedings.

Sure, it was not incredibly likely, but it was still a much greater chance than anything happening for women.

Does it just not occur to people anymore that maybe women don't want the exact same things out of life as men?

I find it interesting that the historical female figure that is perhaps best known and fantasised about by women is Cleopatra. A figure who has entered the public conciousness as a master seductress and manipulator of men (albeit one that met a tragic end).

Why is it so many women today adore and imagine themselves as Marilyn Monroe, and very few as Madeleine Albright?

You accidently replied to the wrong comment ;)

But here's a source.

An amusing consequence of this was you had suffragettes in the late 19th century stating that women shouldn't be allowed to vote on whether to grant themselves the right to vote.

Trade itself isn't zero-sum. That is, the very act of exchanging goods and services between mutually consenting and informed parts is not zero-sum, and is in-fact mutually beneficial.

The issue is 1) rentseeking behaviour by organisations and individuals which is self explanatory, 2) goods, particularly exotic commodities are finite, so there is competiton and an incentive to monopolise. But this doesn't change the fact that trading in of itself is mutually beneficial. Preventing someone else from trading because you traded with a third party and they did not is still a net benefit overall. You and the third party trading partner benefit. The trading competitor who was muscled out of the market doesn't lose anything except the opportunity to trade and benefit themselves, destroyed and captured ships notwithstanding.