Background Noise
I did warn Apollo that Eric was no more likely to change his perspective on things that Apollo was, or most anyone else on the forum. We're all pretty well set in how we see things.Originally Posted by Danilynn
Does that make us all background noise?
Fallacy
One of my early blogs was called The Foolshill Fallacy, a not so subtler reference to the Beatles' Fool on the Hill. I consider it a great honor to be called a fool by someone like you.
I've seen it, read it.
I have my opinions, and they are mine. No matter what I say or don't say in that thread it will be damned if I do and damned if I don't. Most folks don't truly give a damn about a Southerner's perspective on the War of Northern Aggression. So no need wasting my time, energy or mental health by banging it against a wall.
Again I prefer to stay off watch lists and off Government radar. My family has an honorable unbroken 212 year line of service to this country, every generation has sent sons and now daughters off to the military. Some came home, some served in peace, some in war, some wore grey. I'm a small southern town girl. I can survive.
I garden, sew, quilt, can and hunt. Not much I really need out of modern life. It's nice, I'd like it too continue, but if it stopped tomorrow, me and mine would be just fine.
I treat water for a living, I think I can handle pretty much anything.
nope, just Eric, arguing water treatment with a water treatment operator....really?! that would be like me arguing tarot card meanings with him. I know nothing about them....
Alternate perspectives...
My other explanation is that God isn't omnipotent enough to save you from yourself, but I didn't think you'd appreciate it stated that way.
Fantasy King
In your fantasy world, sure.
this about sums up my feelings
this is a pretty good description of my little bitty corner of the world entertainment
probably am on lists. I'm a veteran, so wouldn't surprise me, but some things are best left unsaid in the ether that is the internet. I'm not going to feed your desire to pick a fight. I've been called enough nasty names on this forum. Now conversing civilly we can do. But not with trash talking, it's unproductive and doesn't lend itself to civil discourse.
Glacial
When I was into the God scene, I always preferred Jesus's perspective to John's, but that's just me. There have been so many people taking so many perspectives on Judeo-Christianity over the years, take your pick of what is most pleasant for you to believe. So many others do the same. The discussion is never ending.
Ummm. There is no way in logic to prove any form of negative. But you know that, right?
Some empiricists use instruments. Some use abstraction, especially if equations can be considered an abstraction. F=MA. E=MC2 Still, if one proposes an equation it is preferable to make a prediction based on the equations, preferably a prediction that would not be anticipated using earlier theories.
But, again, humans cannot sense temperature with enough accuracy to sense climate change. So, if you have faith only in your own senses for empirical knowledge of climate change, you will remain perpetually ignorant. That, and how many glaciers have you visited lately?
So, my kids tell me when I say no they can't do certain stuff....
If I had kids there are many things they would not get to say or do.
They would get very little time with any electronic entertainment, including the Internet. I have known people born between 1883 and 1920 who missed out on it altogether and those between 1920 and roughly 1940 who missed out on it for much of their childhood and seem to have been none the worse for the lack. Scouting? 4-H? Church activities? There we go.
Maybe they would see plenty of old movies (better 1930s fare through a DVD onto a large-screen TV than junk common at the movies), and they would get to use the Internet as a reference tool for schoolwork. Reading off a Kindle or Nook isn't 'worse' than reading a book. Technology is no problem if it provides suitable enrichment to a wholesome life. It is a problem if it delivers mind-rot and soul-rot.
It may be a surprise, but I almost think that the Lost and GIs would fare better in contemporary America than their X and Millennial counterparts.
I'll say this about farm (if not rural -- rural kids are exposed to the same cultural bilge as their urban and suburban counterparts) kids -- there's something to be said about having chores to do.
Admit it -- if you could have apollonian milking cows, you would have him do so. Drudgery might produce some decency in his case.
Last edited by pbrower2a; 07-15-2014 at 10:43 AM.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Just be grateful I am here and at your service.
Yours faithfully, God.
No no, your error in that above post was to allow apollonian to change your perspective from a correct one to an erroneous one.
As always, Eric the Green (aka God) at your service, ho ho ho/hu hu hu.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 07-15-2014 at 12:14 AM.
Religion, Philosophy and Science
Well, you are the one who sets difficult levels of proof. If you don't trust others to take measurements, if you wants to have a valid opinion on something, you have to take measurements yourself. If you don't bother to take the measurements, you have no basis to have an opinion.
One of my more interesting software projects was a satellite dish on the back of a truck. When the time approached to acquire the bird, the computer had to poll a bunch of instruments. The GPS provided the longitude, latitude and altitude of the truck. The compass found north. A pair of accelerometers told whether the front wheels were higher than the back, and the right wheels higher than the left. One read a very accurate clock. One then checked the ephemeris data, a set of equations that told one exactly where the satellite was at any given time. The computer then did a bunch of calculations I'm glad I've never had to do by hand, and the antenna would pop up from it's stowed position on the back of the truck and point to the satellite.
I may just trust instruments more than you do. I've seen what they can do repeatedly and reliably. I've also seen the integrity one has to have to make science and engineering work. Every one of the above instruments was made by a different company. We bought to specs, counted on the specs being met, and were only slightly disappointed and surprised. To solve a complex technical problem, you can't go back and re-invent the transistor at the start of every project. You do your part of the job, test to see if your part of the job got done right, count on the other guy to do his job, then test to see if he did it right. If any one guy doesn't handle his piece of the puzzle correctly, the whole thing falls apart and doesn't work. That didn't happen that often. Our company didn't always meet schedule, but we delivered what we promised.
It's a culture thing. One has to be a team player, and yet verify the rest of the team. Don't know that I can explain it to someone who has never been a team player, but reading a thermometer isn't a big deal to me. Setting up a network of thermometers isn't either. Liars on the team? You'd know soon enough. The company involved would soon be bankrupt.
John might be the most philosophic, but Jesus wasn't a philosopher... he was a religious man. Thus, the varied emphasis on truth rather than love.
The problem is that religious and philosophical problems by their nature cannot be uniquely solved. There are hundreds or thousands of churches, each with their own Truth, each unable to resolve differences with any other. There are many schools of philosophy as well.
Science tries and generally succeeds in finding unique truths. If one gets a camera and takes a picture of a glacier, one knows where the glacier is. If one wants to know the temperature, one looks at a thermometer. Churches resolving whether love or truth is preeminent in Judeo-Christian religion? One ends up with a Church of Truth and an Assembly of Love. Churches compete with one another in an odd dance that combines features of darwinian evolution and TV ratings contests. Individuals will attend the church that satisfies them most. Factors that favor one church over the other includes who plays the more entertaining music.
Unique truth? Can't get there from here.
I consider the fields of philosophy to be sciences that haven't matured yet. Sciences can only resolve questions that can be answered through observation, analysis and experiment. Philosophy deals with questions that can't be answered through observation, analysis and experiment, and thus philosophy deals with questions that can't be answered at all. As in religion, various philosophers might favor this supposed truth or that, but there is no way to resolve the question. The greatest thing a philosopher might achieve is to reword the question being investigated in such a way that the problem can be resolved through observation, analysis and experiment. The goal should not be to solve a philosophical question, but to invent a new field of science.
That's a good part of why I'm intrigued by the Fourth Turning approach to seeing how cultures change and evolve. One can examine cultures as they change, and see to what extent the predictions are happening.
Last edited by B Butler; 07-15-2014 at 12:02 PM.
Ah, I see you've moved-up from 'lyin' skank'*!
Prince(PoP!)
PS: FWIW, I think 'dumb whores' are kinda hot!
-----------------
*I'm too much of a 'little pussy' to use 'the c-word'.
I Am A Child of God/Nature/The Universe
I Think Globally and Act Individually(and possibly, voluntarily join-together with Others)
I Pray for World Peace & I Choose Less-Just Say: "NO!, Thank You."
Yeah, Dani! Now yer talkin'!
Prince
PS: ("... if it's broke 'round here, we fix it."
I Am A Child of God/Nature/The Universe
I Think Globally and Act Individually(and possibly, voluntarily join-together with Others)
I Pray for World Peace & I Choose Less-Just Say: "NO!, Thank You."
<chuckle!
Guilty, as charged.
Prince
PS: "Thank you, come again".
(I'm making myself LOL! w/that one.
I Am A Child of God/Nature/The Universe
I Think Globally and Act Individually(and possibly, voluntarily join-together with Others)
I Pray for World Peace & I Choose Less-Just Say: "NO!, Thank You."
Some statements are completely wrong. Do you have no problem with the idea that 4 + 6 = 8?
Do you have a problem with the idea that George Washington is a mythological character?
You should -- lest there be no truth.
Some of the insults by you-know-who are outright libel. Sexual abuse of children? Accusations of mental illness? What's next? Murder?2. Part of what bothers the "typical liberals" on this forum is ... repeated insults (yet I note that they don't seem bothered when people who share their views hurl similar types of insults.)
This is the sort of person who puts his hands on an elephant's tusk and thinks that he feels hot tar.3. To me, a lot of what ("A") post(s) seems way out there (i.e. the ass of the blind man's elephant.)
Claims might be imprecise, and there might be some faulty attribution of some murders to "Jewishness" as a cause. But deliberate and inexcusable killing is still murder. The Nazis murdered enough people that even if they had left the Jews alone they would have still been among the most prolific killers of all time.4. I did learn something from your posts about "holocaust denial," which isn't "denial" at all but rather saying that the claims were exaggerated. Given our government's tendency to vilify our enemies, to justify our bombing the living shit out of those enemies, I think that's entirely possible.
I have brought up mass murders that are not so broadly recognized, such as the extermination of the Polish (and non-Jewish) intelligentsia, a horrific crime somewhat hidden under the fog of war and that seems small in numbers only in contrast to the mass murder of Jews in extermination camps that the Nazis established in brutally-occupied Poland. Both were unforgivable crimes. There is no difference between killing someone for being an intelligent, educated Pole and being a Jew -- it is murder.
The obvious truth is that many places that used to have large Jewish communities from Amsterdam to Riga and Salonica no longer have them. Some few Jews hid where they were or fled to safe havens like Sweden, the UK, and Turkey. Far more were gassed, starved, or shot -- paradoxically by people of the culture that owed most to the Jews.
Paradoxically the Allies kept the Holocaust a secret to their own troops. The Allies had good reason for so doing. First, what the Nazis were doing to the Jews was so horrible that few would have believed it on either side of the war. Second, accusations of German atrocities during the First World War had proved lies. Third, troops who believed that the Nazis were committing atrocities might have brutalized captured German soldiers and civilians who had no culpability. Mistreatment of Germans was not an objective of the Allies, and even the Soviets could treat German soldiers with some decency until the horrors committed largely in the pre-war Soviet Union and in Poland had been made so obvious that Soviet soldiers could act only in hatred of Germans. (If a victor wants to ensure that the war recently won is the last such war, then treating the conquered people decently is a good idea).
As Nazi Germany crumpled, Nazi archives fell into Allied hands. The Nazis kept good records of their evil deeds, and those records included railroad timetables, deportation lists, death lists, orders, commendations, personnel records, architectural designs, requisitions, and accounting ledgers. Thus the Nazis could have a complete record of the annihilation of the Jewish population of such a city as a city under Nazi rule -- let us say Bialystok -- available to the Allies.
Jesus may have told us to forgive those who wrong us -- but He never met a Nazi. I have no idea of what potential friends I may have lost due to Hitler. It is hard to imagine how any decent person, no matter what his origin (and that includes Germans and Austrians) can avoid hating Nazis. As someone of much German origin I hate Hitler and those who did monstrous deeds on his behalf as if I were a Jew, a gypsy, or an educated Pole.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Off Base
I heard a story of a computer programmer getting into an intense argument with a bank teller about the balance of his account. They just could not agree... until the programmer realized he had been spending too much time at work doing arithmetic in base 8.
I can believe it.
Last edited by B Butler; 07-15-2014 at 11:26 AM.
Pork
The Nazis took to an extreme a long tradition. Ironically, the laws against usury were originally Jewish. Lending money and collecting interest can be a practice beneficial to both sides, but either side can get itself into big trouble if care isn't taken. I'm not surprised that some Jewish holy man decided that enough is enough and declared that God doesn't want people charging interest. I take it in the same spirit as because people died ugly when eating pork not cooked well enough, it follows that God doesn't want people eating pork.
Holy men, you know, can read God's mind and speak with His authority. Sometimes they do so for understandable reasons. Me? I like a good pork chop, God or some forgotten holy man aside.
Then somebody decided that it wasn't a sin to charge interest if the loaner was a jew and the loanee a gentile. In many cases, as with usury in general, both sides benefited. Then the time came when a powerful Christian lord wound up on the wrong end of a loan turned ugly. The answer to this problem came to be called a pogrom. Remind everyone that the jews killed Jesus, kill the banker, take his money, then kill a lot of other jews. From the so called Christian's point of view, problem solved. It became a habit in some parts of the world.
Which is precisely why God doesn't like usury?
Eventually, after a few jewish bankers became very very rich, the Christians decided it was ok to charge each other interest. These days the sin of usury isn't a big deal. Many people aren't even aware they are sinning. (I can imagine the arguments as St. Peter turns them away at the front gate.) This wasn't before a few jewish banking families came to become as rich and influential as Carnegie, Rockefeller and other giants of the time. Because a few jews became rich, those inclined to hate would hate the vast majority of jews who never became rich. Hitler just used that hate big time. To some degree, he financed World War II with a %100 death tax on certain minorities. I think it is questionable whether the Holocaust was the result of prejudice and hate, or whether it was just a sound financial decision.
I'd like to say that with everybody charging everybody usury the problem is no more. It is certainly much less, though a few keep alive the memories of old hatreds. Still, when one has a few rich and powerful individuals in a position to manipulate banking rules to their advantage, there is a problem. I don't consider it to be an ethnic or religious problem anymore. It's a class problem, the 1% taking advantage of the 99%. I'm in favor of a more even playing field and better regulation of the banking industry. If too many people borrow money to buy stocks, and the stock market dips, there is a potential for an artificially created disaster. Let's not do that sort of thing.
But for me the sin of usury and the prejudice and hate that blossomed from it are or ought to be a past problem.
Last edited by B Butler; 07-15-2014 at 11:44 AM.
The beginning of wisdom is to know that you know nothing---
Socrates
The fount of all wisdom and truth (me) disagrees with you on that.
I'm sure you don't use that language with your lucky patients.Oh who cares. I've been accused on this forum of being an evil psychiatrist who shouldn't be seeing patients. Fuck those assholes.
Tone
While I'm a northerner, and likely shouldn't mention the beginnings of the Civil War, I can approve of the tone you are maintaining. While I'm not in general a fan of country music, I like the way you have been using it to illustrate where you're coming from.
I'm not pleased by our current excursion into crudity. Thank you for being an exception. Who knows what comes next. The Fourth Turning: The Musical?
Religions have much in common; the more so as you get to their mystical and esoteric levels. Consider for example that the golden rule is taught in all religions. There is Truth at the core, and experience is the path.
I know Bob, that's your view. Stick with it. Myself, I swam in the opposite direction, since my Awakening in the sixties, my "contact high." I discovered a different path for myself, one that brightened up the dull, flat and weary first-turning world, and it does provide answers. Without it, I would only have a world that offers nothing for me.I consider the fields of philosophy to be sciences that haven't matured yet. Sciences can only resolve questions that can be answered through observation, analysis and experiment. Philosophy deals with questions that can't be answered through observation, analysis and experiment, and thus philosophy deals with questions that can't be answered at all. As in religion, various philosophers might favor this supposed truth or that, but there is no way to resolve the question. The greatest thing a philosopher might achieve is to reword the question being investigated in such a way that the problem can be resolved through observation, analysis and experiment. The goal should not be to solve a philosophical question, but to invent a new field of science.
I'd be left in vandal's world
No fun, that.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 07-15-2014 at 12:19 PM.
