aaa
5mo ago
PS. I'm glad that the religious right is making a comeback because maybe they can succeed in making sex negativity uncool again.
aaa
5mo ago
Sex education works at reducing teenage sex and pregnancies, as advertised, by emphasizing the consequences of having sex. If you wanted to encourage teenage sex you wouldn't tell them anything and let nature take its course.
While repugnance around thirty year old man has sex with six year old child will persist, I'm not so sure that "thirty year old man has sex with sixteen year old" will
This is ironic because your second scenario is legal in most of the world, including most of the US and has always been so and in the places where it isn't it's because of feminist campaigning.
The progressive movement that exists today is overwhelmingly sex negative: they are in favor of raising the age of consent (to 25), against age gaps, against workplace relationships, against flirting in public, or in bars, or everywhere except designated dating apps, against prostitution, against pornography (except onlyfans), against sex comedies, against sexy women in video games, against revealing clothing in movies.
Play some of the wokesploitation games (Dream Daddy, Goodbye Volcano High), for example: everyone is some kind of queer but no sex, not even hinted at, maybe a (one) kiss, maybe the farthest they get is holding hands.
The trans kids stuff is the second most successful mass sterilization project in the world. Puberty blockers likely cause permanent inability to orgasm, what has your church done that's as effective as that at preventing teenage sex?
aaa
7mo ago
Like the theory that the ADL is funding neo-nazis. Why would they do anything like that?
I don't think they actually are, but there is a rational reason to do it: neo nazis are a safe enemy, no one likes them and they don't stand a chance to ever accomplish anything meaningful.
On the other hand progressive antisemitism is dangerous because it doesn't have all the negative associations that nazis have, it has an academic foundation and is part of an hegemonic ideology.
If you consider it, progressive antisemitism makes a lot of sense, jews are white passing, they are (greatly) overrepresented in positions of power and in the israel/palestine they are on the wrong side of the oppressor/oppressed and colonizer/colonized dichotomies (a pro-palestine position is common in the academic left).
So why isn't antisemitism on the left more common? Because nazis exist, so it would make sense for the ADL to want the nazis to continue existing.
aaa
7mo ago
If you were in the marketing department at AB and someone said “hey, why not send a one-time promotional can to this influencer that she’ll only market to her (highly woke) progressive following and that our core audience will never even hear about?” what would you say to convince them of how badly things would go?
"He doesn't have a highly woke following he's a lolcow, hate-watched by a following of alogs. Just read the comments on youtube and then imagine what they would write if this topic wasn't heavily censored. This marketing campaign will only be seen by TERFs and chuds, the best you can hope from it is that it will have zero impact."
"What's an alog?"
But really, I think they knew what they were doing. If you spend enough time on the app formerly known as twitter you start developing a reactive mind, you do/say/think things just to maximally own the libs/chuds. Somebody in marketing just thought "what can I do in my line of work to own the chuds today? I know they seem to hate this Dylan Mulvaney person, I'll sponsor them".
aaa
8mo ago
kiwifarms.st the .pl domain was seized by a german provider.
aaa
8mo ago
Renaissance Europe is a very obvious example of a civilization which was both very scientifically/technologically advanced, and also deeply interested in religious/devotional matters
Intellectual work in renaissance europe was very different from today, the primary mode of argumentation was appeal to authority: they "knew" earth was spherical because aristotle said so, they "knew" it like they "knew" that nerves connected to the heart (not the brain), that planets were carried by large solid spheres of quintessence and that heavy objects fell faster.
They were doing "science" (the word is anachronistic in this context, but whatever) the same way they were doing theology: commentary on a small corpus of approved authors that were assumed to be nearly infallible and to contain the totality of all possible knowledge. It's no wonder that intellectual work and religiosity was compatible.
The cathedrals are beautiful but they are also not designed by intellectuals but by semi-literate head masons. And, tbh, when you understand why all the flying buttresses are really there they start to look kind of ugly.
aaa
8mo ago
this or something close to this might be right
Seriously? Sarah Palin was 49 years old 10 years ago so definitely not fertile. She was also not attractive in any conventional sense of the term.
aaa
9mo ago
So you are making the argument from contingency not from motion? I don't think it matters much, I still think the dismissal of infinites in these types of arguments lack rigor: they were formulated during a period of time where the principle of non-existence of actual infinity was commonly accepted, but this is not the case anymore. Mathematics rutinely deals with actual infinity in a way that is consistent, so you have to justify why this particular actual infinity is impossible.
aaa
9mo ago
Small golf-cart like cars exists in europe, for example this brand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_(marque)
If we had golf cart cities, it would be pretty easy to add secure storage compartments into them. And, I'll be honest, I don't feel that my car is that secure when I park it in Seattle. In fact, a golf cart might be superior since when I get robbed I won't have to replace my auto glass.
The general problem is that they are so light that thieves just take the whole thing.
aaa
9mo ago
The argument of @OracleOutlook is (usually) an argument by necessity, "it is logically impossible that god does not exist because..."
aaa
9mo ago
You are trying to imagine a first hand raising but there wouldn't be a first hand, hands would just start raising backwards in time infinitely. These arguments about the impossibility of infinite are weird, we know of logicaly consistent definitions of infinte that are extremely counterintuitive (a segment can be divided by two indefinitely, there are as many even numbers as there are numbers). You can't just say "I can't imagine" and expect to be done with it. Maybe the problem is with the infinite, maybe the problem is your imagination.
aaa
9mo ago
You say you yearn for the monastic lifestyle yet you do not even attempt practicing the most basic of the ascetic practices: control over your internal feelings. Stop experiencing envy and resentment, just stop. Then maybe you will learn to enjoy watching a thonged ass for what it is rather than tormenting yourself over the philosophies you have constructed around it.
aaa
9mo ago
also, it seems to me, in economic innovation (Europe is responsible for almost no major software companies).
With respect to software there are large path dependence effects: large software companies already in the area attract high quality talent which means there's a larger pool of high quality talent to hire from for new companies and that the possibility of an acquisition exit exists, which in turn means VC is less risky and the system feeds back into itself. We'll have to see if the pandemic and the high crime has finally broken the spell.
It would be interesting to see how big of a difference remains when you take out the effects of the software industry.
aaa
9mo ago
The problem with singling out Jesus as special (or as some kind of flesh robot remotely piloted by god) is that these are heretical (the former would be a kind of Docetism the latter similar to Apollinarianism), Jesus is supposed to be real god and real man.
The problem with making "motion" have a special meaning is that the argument is generally taken to proceed from self evident, observable properties of the universe and making "motion" be some metaphysical property would take that away. I'd argue that the distinction between per se and per accidens already does that but whatever.
Predestination is a whole other can of whorms with the free will problem, the soteriology problems, etc.
aaa
9mo ago
I think the comparison with Newton, assuming you are referring to Newton's works in physics and optics, is unwarranted because him and Pseudo-dyonisius stand on opposite sides of an epistemological divide. Pre modern intellectual work was primarily about interpreting and finding truth within a canon of works of authors in the antiquity. We don't care who wrote Newton's Principia because they stand on the strength of their argument and of empirical evidence. You can't say the same thing about De Coelesti Hierarchia because it doesn't make any argument it just states some facts that have been revealed to the author through divine revelation.
When all of your arguments are appeals to authority, who the author is becomes extermely important. Are you really going to believe some anonymous guy that tells you they received divine revelation when they are also pretending to be a mythical character that lived 500 years earlier?
aaa
9mo ago
Think about it from the perspective of someone who is already religious: you are already prepared to believe on faith that the gospels are a historical account. Many miracles would have only a few witnesses, so it is not surprising that they would not be recorded by historians (there probably were many false accounts of miracolous healers at the time and it would get lost among the fakes). But some of them are so huge and public that they couldn't escape notice.
As far as I am concerned I only believe (1) and partially (6) of that list with any certainty. There's too much conjecture in this part of history, if this standard of proof was applied uniformly we would believe in the existence of the philosopher stone too.
aaa
9mo ago
A true believer should allow life to happen to them, because the outcomes are determined by the omni-potent God.
This position was historically held by quietists and you can read the general principles in the papal encyclical condemning them as heretical: https://www.papalencyclicals.net/Innoc11/i11coel.htm
aaa
9mo ago
I’m merely pointing out that the specific argument “the Prime Mover argument is wrong because even a Prime Mover would need a mover” is a bad argument
Yes, you are right about this. I've just been thinking about this for a while and latched on to your message to write it down since you also said: "You’re rejecting Christians’ conception of God out of hand, but then acting like you actually refuted their argument". The argument has other problems, though.
aaa
9mo ago
I think you can reconcile any religion with modern science, but I also think you are going to have some serious work to do.
For example, for christianity, the pain points would be:
- original sin/early genesis and evolution
- soul and thermodynamics/neurology
- lack of evidence for angels and demons compared to the medieval way of conceiving them, demonic possessions especially
- angelology being largely based on a forgery (de coelesti hierarchia)
- transubstantiation/consubstantiation and atomism
- lack of evidence for some of jesus miracles
- the lack of contemporary miracles (or poor evidence for them) compared to biblical times some you can discard as medieval superstitions that don't really matter (even ardently religious people don't believe them anymore), others not so much. You have to have an explanation for original sin, I think.
Other religions would have different pain points.
Somewhere along the way, yes, a religion implies some unmoved mover (or a pantheon of them?).
Ironically I think the unmoved mover argument is very hard to reconcile with modern science, however it's more of a christian thing and even there it doesn't really matter.
aaa
9mo ago
Also I wanted to point out how bizarre the entry about the wager in the pensées is: it ends with a note that, if this argument (the wager) isn't enough to convince you to believe you should then go to mass every day and the monotonous repetition of the liturgy will make you as stupid as a beast and then you will be able to believe. It seems unexplicably blasphemous to me.
aaa
9mo ago
Let's say that all that argumentation fails. There still seem to be reasons that it might be a sensible thing to adhere to, even if you think it's relatively unlikely. Pascal's wager is formidable, for one.
Pascal's wager is terrible because infinite rewards break game theory.
Suppose I ask you to give me $10 and in exchange I will reward you with $10000. Should you take this wager? To answer this question you could estimate the probability p that I'm telling the truth and calculate the expected value of the wager: 10000p - 10(1-p). If it is positive you should pay, if it isn't you shouldn't. It's unlikely that you will be able to prove that p=0 but it also doesn't matter, as long as you estimate it to be low enough that all you need to know.
But suppose I promise you an infinite reward for your $10. The condition is now ∞p - 10(1-p) > 0 which is always true if p > 0. So, as long as you can't call me a liar certainly you have to enter the wager. What's worse this is independent of the entry price. As long as I ask for a finite price, no matter how large, you have to pay it.
What does this mean? Either we should reject all wagers that involve infinite rewards (because otherwise we would have to take all of them) or, if we choose not to, we are lucky that there are multiple incompatible religion. Because taking one religion's wager means rejecting many other and some of the other will have infinite punishments for rejecting them all of the wagers are undecidable and we are free to choose whichever we want or reject all of them.
aaa
9mo ago
You lose a lot of the persuasive power of the argument if you admit that there are things (Jesus Christ) that appear to be moving but do not in fact count as "moving" for the argument. The observation that there are some things that move falls away, as far as I am concerned everything could be like Jesus and actually be motionless.
The problem with those biblical quotes is that there is a colloquial meaning to change and a philosophical one, cosmological arguments only work with the latter but those quotes in context point to the former.
aaa
9mo ago
It's amazing to me how much sway the aristotelian unmoved mover god has on a religion that clearly describes a moving, changing god. In genesis god has human emotions, moves around and even shows up at the door of Abraham, on earth. In other words he behaves more like Odin (or rather Baal) than like god-the-philosophical-entity. And even if you discount genesis (and much of the old testament) as analogical writing and superstitions of simple people, how can it be that Jesus is god and also that god is unmoved, unchanging, simple, etc?
For problems with cosmological arguments see Sobel, Logic and Theism, chapter 5.
So your evidence for the pendulum swinging in direction X is evidence that it is going in the opposite direction?
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