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Recent Discovery Contains Oldest Depiction of the Tower of Babel
smitty777 writes "The recent discovery of the Tower of Babel stele by a team of scholars shows what might be the earliest depiction of the ancient Tower of Babel. The stele belongs to Martin Schøyen, who also owns a large number of pictographic and cuneiform tablets, some of the earliest known written documents. The tablet (reconstruction) depicts King Nebuchadnezzar II, under whom Babylon was a cultural leader in astronomy, mathematics, literature and medicine. It's also interesting to note the somewhat recent Slashdot article linking the common ancestry of languages to this area."
The tower comes up to his waist.
The CS equivalent of the tower of Babel original universal language would probably be BAL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Basic_assembly_language
The 360 being the first major unified scientific and business processor, so I guess its most core language would be the first universal language.
There are terminology differences, in that HLASM is the assembler for BAL. So calling it "HLASM" is not entirely correct.
Although Knuth's MIX is more "universal" its not the first and its manufactured not organically grown from its ancestors like BAL.
I would give a pity vote to BASIC, but...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
That tablet has a glossy black surface and rounded corners
"...and even cylcon symbols by Australia's Aborigines which can be up to 20,000 years old."
... I had no idea BSG was a documentary!
Holy crap
From the other article:
Dear Slashdot editors: Do you know where Babylon and Central/Southern Africa are?
I'd also bet money that the timeline is also completely wrong. Babylon existed a few thousand years ago. The origin of language is much, much older.
is a warning against multiple company outsourcing.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
That's not socialism . You're describing a totalitarian state.
The republitians just want to hand over all our rights to our corporate overlords and let the free market take care of itself.
Never mind that our current system comes from the free market not taking care of itself. And while things are that great right now, they aren't nearly as bad as they were back in the glorious 1880s.
The story is nonsense. By the time the ziggurat was built, pretty much all the language families known today were already in existence. The breaking up of languages very likely happened in Africa tens of thousands of years before the first mud bricks that were used to construct the Ziggurat were formed.
And no, it's not socialism, not in any meaningful sense of the word. It was, as another poster pointed out, a dictatorship, or more properly an absolute monarchy. It would be like calling the government of Louis XIV a socialist government.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's funny how much the Tower of Babel looks like every other ziggurat (tell) ever dug up in the Middle East. Oh wait....
When the fuck will people grow up and realize that not every city unearthed with breached walls is Jericho, not every cross dug up is the True Cross, not every Roman spear is the Dolourous Lance, not every Babylonian leader is King Nebuchadnezzar, and not every old cup is the Holy Grail? It's awesome enough that there is an old Babylonian cuneiform tablet without it also fitting into Biblical narrative.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Socialism is worker control of the means of production. The Bible's Tower of Babel story is myth.
Whatever your hobby horse is, you're not riding it very well.
captcha: brayed. Excellent.
That was the ancient space elevator of the former advanced civilization as witnessed by some random nomad goat herder
The submitter is an idiot. The whole "origin of language" bit demonstrates that well enough. WTF is wrong with Slashdot editors?
Ah well, I remember a time when every conman selling a perpetual motion machine could get a submission here, so maybe things haven't changed that much. Maybe next week we'll have an article on Noah's Ark being found, that would be about right if this is the standard.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Not quite. If I remember correctly, God dropped by to check out the tower (various unnamed parties were worried it would actually reach heaven), and found a woman performing manual labor while her baby was unattended. Something like that. Which pissed him off.
Something of a hidden message which states humanity has to deal with its social / welfare issues before trying to reach the stars. Or technology is evil; hard to tell after that garden story. Possibly, anyways. I've found trying to gather understanding from this book to be on par with examining the liver of some poor animal for 'signs' or trying to read tea leaves. If I ever open a practice of psychiatry for the biblically-minded, I'm going to use that book instead of an ink-blot -> "So, what do you think the Bible was trying to tell you this week? Uh huh, that's nice. And how did that make you feel?" However, I never will. Having seen what religion of any sort has done to the minds of mankind, I cannot believe that my tinkering with it would help.
I am John Hurt.
ToB is a story of humanity's first venture down the road of socialism, where all of humanity fell under the rule of a single dictator.
Based on that sentence, I'd say it's a fair bet that you don't even know what the fuck Socialism is...
I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a deliberate parody of religion, or genuine crazy. Impossible to tell sometimes. It's also very common in US poltics for the term 'socialism' to be thrown around to scare people without any obvious relation to its correct meaning - the cultural relics of the Red Menace never entirely left the country.
And no, it's not socialism, not in any meaningful sense of the word. It was, as another poster pointed out, a dictatorship, or more properly an absolute monarchy. It would be like calling the government of Louis XIV a socialist government.
To right-wing nutballs, anything they don't like is socialism. How do they know it's socialism? Because they don't like socialism, and so if there's something they don't like, socialism is what it must be!
Any attempt to point out the flaws in this line of reasoning is, of course, socialist propaganda.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
You forgot one of the most popular of all: Not every boat-shaped feature on a mountain is the ruin of Noah's Ark.
One could make a weak argument that it was Marxist. Of course, the Marxist interpretation would probably differ greatly from the mainstream interpretation: a utopian society, living in a state of peace and egalitarianism, is caused to splinter, because God fears the accomplishments capable of this society that has no need of him. In fact, you could even use that same exact sentence as the Objectivist interpretation. Hey, I should publish this! I bet you could bend it into half a dozen interpretations without changing a word.
But, no, it's definitely not socialist. There's nothing in that story about workers owning the means of production.
Well, you know how it is. Look at how many people call Nazi Germany "socialist" just because the word "Socialist" is in the name, but people do it all the time. It is about as stupid as calling The Democratic People's Republic of Korea a democracy or a republic.
Hell, the sheer number of people that equate socialism and fascism, let alone socialism and communism, or socialism and a social democracy...it's all ridiculous. Ignorance is our greatest threat in this nation, not terrorism.
tablet
Since we're on the topic of tablets. iPad sucks! :)
I remember a time when every conman selling a perpetual motion machine could get a submission here
lol I remember that, anyone who had an idea for a new energy source ended up on slashdot, especially if they were looking for VC funding. Nevermind that their ideas were often trivially shown to be unworkable.....
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Wow. thanks for distilling the essence of the right-wing.
Not. Go call Bill Maher and ask him for a more insightful analysis, as even that would indeed be more insightful.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I thought about adding something to that effect, but I like the way you wrote it better than I was able to frame the statement.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
I would like to purchase one of your perpetual motion machines.
Stonehenge! In ancient times... Hundreds of years before the dawn of history Lived a strange race of people... the Druids No one knows who they were or what they were doing But their legacy remains Hewn into the living rock... Of Stonehenge Stonehenge! Where the demons dwell Where the banshees live and they do live well Stonehenge! Where a man's a man And the children dance to the Pipes of Pan ....
Need to do a bit more reading, my friend. The account doesn't have anything to do with women performing manual labor:
"(The Babylonians) said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9That is why it was called Babelc—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth."
So, it had nothing to do with labor practices. Many scholars think the tower was some sort of astrological artifact, and that the scrambling of the languages had to do with dispersing the population of the earth. That is, according to the scripture.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
The story is nonsense. By the time the ziggurat was built, pretty much all the language families known today were already in existence.
A large group of humans all cooperated (with a common language to facilitate) to build a tower several miles tall to reach the heavens, which angered a god so much that with a swipe of his hand he scattered the humans across the world and made them all speak in different languages.
And the reason that story is nonsense is because by the time some large Mesopotamian structures were built, humans were already speaking different languages?
Recent Discovery Contains Oldest Depiction of Cthulu
Didn't fascism involve socializing all of the industry?
Nazism too?
Considering that Adolph Hitler was a member of the Communist Party in the Bavarian Soviet Socialist Republic, I think the ties to socialism are a fair bit closer than you might think. Certainly at heart he was a socialist even if his methods may have been a bit extreme.
Then again, other socialist groups have sought totalitarian ideals as well. Just look at North Korea for how wonderful socialism seems to be working out.
Who are these many "scholars"?
Real scholars will tell you that this is a myth and the division of human languages had far more to do with our spread out of Africa than anything else.
So what you're saying is that capitalism should be seen in a worse light if I join the Objectivist Party then go on a raping spree?
Sigh... This old canard again. The Nazis were most certainly socialists, and Hitler certainly espoused a socialist doctrine, but in reality he was simply pursuing power. He aligned himself with the socialist wing of the National Socialists right up until it became clear that he would need to cozy up to the industrialist and aristocratic classes in German society, and it is they that essentially decided to back Hitler as Chancellor.
At any rate, whatever meaningful socialism there was in Hitler or in Nazism was wiped out Rohm was executed during the Night of the Long Knives.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yep, bald sarcasm sure is funny. It sure doesn't need any context highlighting the problem, just being sarcastic puts opponents in their place straight out. Game, set, match.
While the origin of languages thing is clearly out of place, the tablet itself apparently refers to it as "the Great Ziggurat of Babel." That's an easy step to the biblical Tower of Babel. It was apparently 7 stories and almost 300-feet tall. The article also claims Nebby wrote something about this:
"I made it the wonder of the people of the world, I raised its top to the heaven, made doors for the gates, and I covered it with bitumen and bricks," the inscription reads in the translation by professor George.
So, it seems like a pretty safe bet that the Tower of Babel in the Bible and this depiction could refer to the same structure.
Are those the same scholars that told you the account was a women's right issue?
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
I have never heard of such a tale until another poster made that claim.
I did not make such a claim. Perhaps you should learn to read a little better. I suggest starting with some non-fiction works since you seem to already be quite versed with fiction.
Trolled.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
When the **** will people grow up and realize that not every city unearthed with breached walls is Jericho, not every cross dug up is the True Cross, not every Roman spear is the Dolourous Lance, not every Babylonian leader is King Nebuchadnezzar, and not every old cup is the Holy Grail? It's awesome enough that there is an old Babylonian cuneiform tablet without it also fitting into Biblical narrative.
Dude, this is Slashdot. A culture that never ceases to rail against folks (especially religious people) by stating wildly speculative statements as "fact". Is it really a "fact" that the Tower of Babel never existed? If so, how would you prove it? Is it really a "fact" that the great flood never happened? If so, how would you prove it? Is it a "fact" that a deity doesnt exist? If so, how would you prove it? The crux of science is that you can only prove positives, never negatives. Unfortunately true science is really a part of Slashdot either.
If you're looking for reasonable rational thought processes, then you are at the wrong website.
Au CARtraire...
We did get the People's Vagen out of it. You can get a new one for about $20K-$60K.
The industrialists still got rich under the Nazi government. Whatever the Nazi party line in the 1920s and early 1930s might be, when Hitler got into power, he understood very well that he needed to get the industrialists and aristocrats on board. And as I mentioned elsewhere, any meaningfully socialist elements of the Nazi party were eliminated during the Night of the Long Knives; in particular the leader of the SA and one of Hitler's most important early allies; Ernst Rohm.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If the tower of Babel story equates to a Babylonian tower, it would seem that suggests that the book of Genesis, which presents itself as having been written thousands of years before Babylon, actually dates to the era of Babylon (or perhaps parts of Genesis actually are older, but someone 'inserted' the Tower of Babel story much later)?
It's unfortunate but true. Socialism is in concept a very desirable socioeconomic model. In practice it would require that the society in question be bereft of selfishness, slothfulness and to some extent ambition ( We already have enough brain surgeons so we need you to be a sanitation engineer for the good of the people ). In most cases where Socialism/Communism was the goal Totalitarianism was the result. That's probably why the two are usually thought of as one in the same. While I think we can do better than what we have now we really do have it pretty good compared to societies throughout our history.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Nazi Germany was socialist. Among the NSDAP programs were a right to employment, abolishing of unearned income, nationalization of trusts, corporate profit-sharing, abolishing of land speculation, nationalized higher education, outlawing militias (and de facto the right to bear arms) and old-age welfare.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
No, it didn't. At least Naziism, I don't know what Mussolini did as well. Hitler was an ardent supporter of mercantilism and believed in using government power to facilitate the maximizing of profits. He also believed in seizing assets from those he believed were unworthy, like Jewish businessmen. Those assets were then sold to companies that supported the Nazi party. It was a method for consolidating power within a group of elites. They did, however, trumpet their supposed socialism in poor neighborhoods hit hardest by the great depression(at least in the early thirties). It's hard to look at Naziism as anything other than the most well organized dickishness in human history.
There's a mammal that has a duck bill and lays eggs. There's also a single-celled animal that uses photosynthesis. And the United States, which if you believe the media is the most racist and intolerant nation in the world, has a black President. Anything's possible.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Snow, cement and ivory young towers
Someone called us Babylon
Those hungry hunters
Tracking down the hours
But where were all your shoulders when we cried
Were the darlings on the sideline
Dreaming up such cherished lies
To whisper in your ear before you die
It's party time for the guys in the tower of Babel
Sodom meet Gomorrah, Cain meet Abel
Have a ball y'all
See the letches crawl
With the call girls under the table
Watch them dig their graves
`Cause Jesus don't save the guys
In the tower of Babel
The Monkey Theory comes into play here, in an indirect fashion. People can only remember so many facts, figures, names and slogans. Some of the smaller minded people in incapable of separating socialism from communism, and they can't go any further afield into the political spectrum to find terms that might fit their ideas. Assuming, of course, that they have any ideas that need to be articulated.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Scholars, as in those performing an analysis of the text with respect to its social, rather than historical value. Not all scientists reading ancient texts are rabid atheist anthropologists looking for any evidence to tear down the world's belief systems.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
All the stories in the Bible are myths, and most were most likely borrowed from other cultures in the area.
The tower of Babel could refer to any of the ziggurats of Mesopotamia, and it's never been determined that it refers to the ziggurat of Babylon, or to another one, or is really not referencing any one in particular. The Book of Genesis never tells us, and it's later interpreters who associated it with the ziggurat of Babylon. By your logic, you can't say it doesn't refer to the Penis of Marduk.
And a global flood never happened. Never. Not once. Not ever. The flood as described in Genesis is physically impossible, and there is not one iota of evidence for it. Maybe it refers to a regional flood in Mesopotamia (they're common enough, and certainly there have been really big ones), but the idea that there was a flood so great it covered the mountain tops was long ago rejected. It did not happen.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Hitler was one of the leaders of a soldiers' soviet, but he was never a member of the Communist Party. Or do you have evidence to the contrary?
Slashdot had plenty of articles on Atlantis being found too. Slightly different, since the records of its existence is are a little more recent and a little more reliable, but just as hyperbolic and inflaming.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
That's not socialism . You're describing a totalitarian state.
The Soviet Union was called the Union of Soviet "Socialist" Republics or USSR for short. From their perspective they were socialist and they were a totalitarian state when Stalin was in power. Hitler was the Chancellor of the Germany representing the National Socialist Worker Party (NAZI) and his regime was also a totalitarian state. Totalitarianism is neither left or right because totalitarianism is about "social" control rather than "economic" control. You can have "right wing" totalitarian regimes but the majority have been left or left of centre. The Nazis were never right of centre let alone "far right" even if you compare them to their counterparts of their day. They were "LEFT" of the conservatives in england and had more in common economically with the socialists there.
The british socialists have always been a lot less libertarian than socialists in some other countries which is why Tony Blair accelerated things like the CCTV installations in london.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Reference plz? I have never heard that aspect of it before.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
So pointing out something is a myth is rabid atheism in this case, but anyone would say the same thing about Zeus.
You don't need evidence to tear down such things, they have none to support it.
You couldn't be more wrong.
A)Socialism/Communism
Not comparable, not the same thing, and don't belong link together like that.
B) "In practice it would require that the society in question be bereft of ..."
No, it wouldn't.
You need to learn the difference between social policy and economic policy. You can have a free market and socialism.
You need to read up some more so you get past "Mount stupid":
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2475
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Scholars treat ancient texts with care. You can gleam a good deal about an ancient society even from the more fanciful and mythical writings. Take for instance the Vedas. Scholars have used them to do at least some reconstruction of ancient Indo-Aryan civilization; it's beliefs, social structure and economy, and just as importantly to extrapolate further and get some hints of the Indo-European progenitor society. Even the language of the texts; Vedic Sanskrit, was the first major inspiration that lead to formulation of the field of Indo-European linguistics.
So yes, you're right. Scholars look at ancient texts in various ways, and even where elements of the texts are fantastical, they can illuminate a considerable amount about the culture that developed them. But that doesn't mean scholars believe in Zeus, Vishnu or Yahweh.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The story is nonsense. By the time the ziggurat was built, pretty much all the language families known today were already in existence.
No one is saying the existence of the temple that formed the basis of the story of the Tower of Babel lends any credibility to the rest of the story. That's sort of like saying "Well, Jerusalem actually existed--which lends evidence to the claim that Jesus was the Son of God." Many of the sites, people, and events mentioned in the Bible really existed, or at least had some basis in historical fact. That doesn't mean that everything else in the Bible must therefore be true too.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"And the United States, which if you believe the media is the most racist and intolerant nation in the world, has a black President."
Is that so? Maybe he's white. How can you tell?
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
"Anything's possible."
no, no it's not. Many thing are impossible.
Note what doesn't work and move on.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just a note that claiming that this is any evidence to back-up the validity of the bible and Torrah. It would be an appeal to antiquity logical fallacy to make that claim.
This is just evidence that the story of the Tower of Babel is a very old story. Nothing more.
Nothing to see here, theists.
Get out of here, Dilbert.
The story is nonsense. By the time the ziggurat was built, pretty much all the language families known today were already in existence.
From the Article:
[emphasis added] Calling himself the "great restorer and builder of holy places," he also reconstructed Etemenanki, a 7-story, almost 300-foot-high temple (also known as a ziggurat) dedicated to the god Marduk.
The referenced ziggurat wasn't purported to be the original; it was simply a reconstructed version of an even earlier edifice.
If you're ever near a ziggurat, be sure to run if any part of it catches fire. As is widely known, ziggurat smoke causes cancer.
*Ducks*
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not every cross dug up is the True Cross
There was an old joke about the medieval obsession with holy artifacts that went "If you assembled every piece of the True Cross on display in medieval churches, you could build a fence across Europe." You might have to throw in some Saint's bones to help in that construction too.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Because there are no rich industrialists in Communist Chiner, right? Or in "Socialist" Sweden either, right?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
This article is about a PICTURE on a stone that actually has the words "TOWER OF BABEL" inscribed on it, from around the time of Nebuchadnezzar.
It's like if they dug up a picture that Adolf Hitler drew of himself, in crayon, stabbing Winston Churchill to death with the Spear of Destiny (all labeled, of course, in crayon)... and then you step up and say "PICTURE COULD BE OF ANY GERMAN WIELDING ANY SPEAR."
It's often argued (correctly in my opinion) that socialism inevitably leads to a totalitarian state. Read "The road to Serfdom" by Friedrich Hayek for further info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom
So, you mean people who defend their own religious beliefs in spite of evidence? no, those aren't scholars. Looking at a text critical based on current knowledge is a real scholar.
Anything else is just crap.
And stop trolling, no one said anything about atheist. But since they are such a threat to your poor thinking skills, I suppose you can't help yourself.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
At any rate, whatever meaningful socialism there was in Hitler or in Nazism was wiped out ... during the Night of the Long Knives.
Whatever meaningful socialism there was in _______ was wiped out during ________
1) the USSR / Stalin's purges
2) communist China / Mao's purges
3) Cuba / Castro's purges
and on and on.
Socialism / Communism isn't a way of running a society. It is a method used to disrupt and destroy a society. The nuances and differences between socialism, communism and Progressivism are as meaningless as the nuances and differences between the effects of different types of nuclear weapons on a city. Socialism, Communism and Progressivism are a means to achieving totalitarianism, no more, no less.
lol I remember that ... Nevermind that their ideas were often trivially shown to be unworkable
Hell, I remember when "never mind" was a phrase made up of two words, just like "always mind," as in "one should always mind one's grammar so as not to be thought a twit." Unless I missed the memo, and the proper usage is now "alwaysmind." It's possible, I suppose, since I've seen in a lot. Or is that, "alot," now, even though that's supposed to be a reference to a quantity of something (implying a large amount)... you know, one lot of whatever it is. A lot. Using those words contracted to together in writing seems alittle silly. Sort of like nevermind.
"Never mind" is a directive. As in, "never put your mind to this" (as in, "don't bother thinking about it."). OK, carryon.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
In case this is still puzzling anyone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vbd3E6tK2U
I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a deliberate parody of religion, or genuine crazy.
I'd say genuine crazy considering he got the story wrong and there are plenty of Bibles around for reference. God didn't muddle the languages to keep dictators from ruling everyone. He did it because mankind was reaching the heavens and "nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them!" Why that was considered a bad thing is not mentioned (pride?).
Oh not this nonsense again. The Nazis were socialist in the same sense that the former East Germany was a democratic republic.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
"You don't need evidence to tear down such things, they have none to support it."
For any given value of "such things" and "it". You might, if you want to appear to have a margin of intellectual honesty, though, at least make the singular-plural of your intended omniscient declarations match, in the absence of any specified scope or specifics.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
He's probably referring to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel#Greek_Apocalypse_of_Baruch
"Those who gave counsel to build the tower, for they whom thou seest drove forth multitudes of both men and women, to make bricks; among whom, a woman making bricks was not allowed to be released in the hour of child-birth, but brought forth while she was making bricks, and carried her child in her apron, and continued to make bricks. And the Lord appeared to them and confused their speech..."
Some of the smaller minded people in incapable of separating socialism from communism
Is that anything like the people who can't distinguish between supporters of market economics and Christians? Or those too caught up in their own high dudgeon to realize that it's possible to have principled reasons for disliking both illegal immigration and racists? Do you also consider "small minded" those who scream that anyone opposed to Obama's policies on one matter or another are racists? Or are people who fail to note your choices of appropriate labels for two kinds of Nanny State collectivism "small minded," but people who knowingly spout nonsense about the racism behind differences of opinoin on tax policy are ...what, politically articulate geniuses?
I'd shake my head and wish you knew better, but of course you do know better, and you're just being a typical hypocrite, awash in your own faux condescension. You're not as clever as you think you are, and far more transparent.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Yup, the further to the right you go, you only get closer to the left.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Modded troll, but actually quite close to the truth. However it's not only limited to "right-wing nutballs" but anyone with certain views and the lack of imagination to entertain different ones. This includes about 98% of any given population.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is a good example of the infotainment Discovery and all of its subsidiaries have used to replace what was once great, informative programming. Remember the long, droll documentaries you used to watch on the History Channel that were fascinating, somewhat layered, and informative? That all changed the day David M. Zaslav (former head of NBC, http://corporate.discovery.com/leadership/david-zaslav/) took the helm in 2007. Since then the organization has worked tooth and nail to dissolve its reputation as a place to learn something by replacing any programming focused on science, history, or biology with Big Log Muckers, UFO specials, End-of-the-World simulations, When Animals Attack and anything that can go out on a limb to find scientific proof for Biblical anecdotes. It follows the logic that those who are watching television are uneducated and then offers the lowest common demoninator in order to lull larger audiences. What a blight that man's leadership is.
Glad I could help.
I dunno, when you nationalize industry, ignore money and pour the citizenry's efforts into collective social programs, and strongly support trade unions, make sure everyone is fed provided they do their allotted work for the state, what do YOU call it? Arbeit macht frei.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
People got rich under the communist government too. Long story short - there are always weasels who manage to game the system or make friends with the system or somehow bypass the system and make a shit-ton of money, in any form of state.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a deliberate parody of religion, or genuine crazy. Impossible to tell sometimes. It's also very common in US poltics for the term 'socialism' to be thrown around to scare people without any obvious relation to its correct meaning - the cultural relics of the Red Menace never entirely left the country.
Using 'socialism' as a scare-word started after the Soviet Union fell apart and 'communism' lost its ability to cause knees to jerk.
Some people just have to have a Menace to campaign against.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
was an ardent supporter of mercantilism and believed in using government power to facilitate the maximizing of profits.
I suggest you re-read Mein Kampf and Third Reich policy. Profit was not discouraged. However the state was very firm in pointing out that you were only allowed to make an "acceptable" profit. If you made more profit than what the state deemed enough for you, you would be dealt with.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The only way Socialism can be sustained, is through Totalitarianism. It confers "rights" on people, which entail taking from others against their will.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
No, the tablet does not say "Tower of Babel."
It says, "THE HOUSE, THE FOUNDATION OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, ZIGGURAT IN BABYLON."
There is also no linguistic connection between the tower of "balal" (Hebrew) and the ziggaurat of "babili" (Akkadian).
Having seen what religion of any sort has done to the minds of mankind, I cannot believe that my tinkering with it would help.
Neat. Could you specify which of these have suffered your vaguely dire suggested outcome--or name, say, even a single theoretical cognitive downside to, say, Taoism?
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
At any rate, whatever meaningful socialism there was in Hitler or in Nazism was wiped out [when] Rohm was executed during the Night of the Long Knives.
For those who haven't bothered reading up on it, TNOTLK was the result of the fact that Rohm wanted to "complete the socialist revolution" on behalf of disgruntled WWI veterans after AH and HG got public offices with a certain amount of power, but at that point they perceived that revolution to be a threat to *them*.
But clearly, people who want to use 'socialism' to make people's knees jerk aren't interested in what was really going on. Just saying "Hitler was a socialist, so our social programs are bad" suits their purposes better.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You know that Canada is a Social Democracy, right? I can't remember hearing about any purges commited by my government. Nor do I think we're run by a totalitarian.
A correction to your analogy: The nuances and differences between communism, socialism, and progressivism are as meaningful as the nuances and differences between the effects and uses of different types of nuclear reactors. Certain kinds can be found in bombs whose only purpose is to destroy, while others can be found in power plants. The latter can either be horribly dangerous or immensely beneficial, depending on how well they are designed and maintained.
Communism clearly lends itself to totalitarianism (USSR, NK, Cuba) even though that wasn't its original intent by Marx or even Lennin. Socialism can benefit a society if handled carefully (Sweden, Norway), though it has a high potential for abuse. Progressivism concerns itself mostly with social justice issues, and only takes on economic issues when they directly relate to the oppressed, such as advocating for a minimum wage. Advocating for civil rights is a far cry from totalitarianism. MLK Jr. and his movement had no desire for political power. Just for equality.
Just look at North Korea for how wonderful socialism seems to be working out.
If you actually believe that North Korea has anything to do with socialism or social democracy, then I'm really, truly sorry for you.
Didn't fascism involve socializing all of the industry?
As late as 1944, when the world was tightening the noose around the Nazi neck, the heavy industries were *bidding* on who would get the contract to build the next tank.
I think fascism is more a matter of the military and industry getting in bed together, but it's hard to find anything to read about it that isn't peddling some bias that obfuscates the issues.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You must be new here!
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It's hard to look at Naziism as anything other than the most well organized dickishness in human history.
Nice turn of phrase.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You need to stop telling people they need to think like you. It's unattractively arrogant, and your opinions aren't objectively superior.
surely they meant nimrod?
LOL. It wasn't. Try picking up a book every now and again. Socialism is when the government directly controls the means of production. I don't see that in your laundry list....
There is a misconception that is common in some groups that click consonants can't have developed from ordinary pulmonic consonants and therefore must have been in the protolanguage. However, one path is hypothesized that clicks can develop from ejectives.
Mod parent +1, Informative
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There was an old joke about the medieval obsession with holy artifacts that went "If you assembled every piece of the True Cross on display in medieval churches, you could build a fence across Europe."
It's an old joke, but without a basis in reality. The vast majority of the supposed pieces of true cross were tiny, about the size of a match or smaller. The largest piece belonged to the Byzantine emperor and it was described to be 'the size of a man's thigh'. The total volume of the pieces is much smaller than the estimates of how large a crucification cross would have been.
Of course, this doesn't mean that any of the splinters is genuine.
As most Christians outside America know full well.
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They are likely never going to find Noah's Ark. It was likley disassembled in order to build things after the flood. Might find a church that suspicisously looks like it was built from a giant boat though?
so we need you to be a sanitation engineer
If there's a glut of surgeons to the point where hospitals aren't likely to be hiring more, a freshman advisor diverting someone from pre-med to mechanical engineering might not be so unthinkable.
There's a difference between a sanitation technician and a sanitation engineer. A tech drives the garbage truck. A sanitation engineer designs a container and lifting mechanism that work together to collect more waste with a given amount of labor and fuel. There are probably plenty of graduates of the mechanical engineering program at my alma mater who went on to build better garbage trucks.
While the origin of languages thing is clearly out of place, the tablet itself apparently refers to it as "the Great Ziggurat of Babel." That's an easy step to the biblical Tower of Babel.
According to my etymological dictionary, "Babel" is just "Babylon". (Not exactly a difficult guess to begin with.)
Which, BTW, originally meant "Gate of God", which probably explains the silly idea that the ziggurat of Babylon was built as a Stairway to Heaven.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You can see the site of the tower (it has been leveled) from Google Maps: http://g.co/maps/bsd5u
Semantics.
All forms of government that involve a strong and a growing government will end up totalitarian in nature (dictatorships even).
Socialism, Fascism, Communism have plenty similarities, the main similarity being despotism of some over others and denial of individuality through force of government power.
You can't handle the truth.
Many biblical scholars believe exactly that. That certain portions of the Hebrew oral tradition that was later codified in the Genesis portion of the Torah did in fact originate during the Babylonian exile period.
If the tower of Babel story equates to a Babylonian tower, it would seem that suggests that the book of Genesis, which presents itself as having been written thousands of years before Babylon, actually dates to the era of Babylon (or perhaps parts of Genesis actually are older, but someone 'inserted' the Tower of Babel story much later)?
I think the Man on the Tablet ruled the Neo-Babylonian Empire, but the city itself had already been around for about a thousand years (according to Wikipedia).
Also, IIRC scholars think the books attributed to Moses assumed their near-final form around the time of Solomon, which would have pre-dated the Neo-Babylonian Empire, but not Babylon itself. So if the Babylonians had been building ziggurats all alone, there wouldn't be any anachronism involved.
Not to imply that I think the stories of Genesis have any credibility. Most of it can be understood as a collection of etiological myths, "why the snake crawls on its belly", "why people have to die", "why farming and childbearing are hard work", "why not everyone speaks the same language", etc.
Such myths can be found in lots of culture.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
When talking about socialism/communism, I'm sure he's referring to the marxist style relationship of the two.
Unfortunately, with Lenin's death the early infant Marxism of soviet Russia never had a true play and socialism turned into totalitarianism.
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hard to tell after that garden story
Satan's message was (and continues to be) "God does not want what is best for you." In Eden, Satan spoke through a snake and claimed to Eve that her creator was holding back the knowledge of good and evil because God allegedly did not want what was best for her.
So... what was with the (seemingly obvious) misspelling of 'contraire'?
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The tower of Babel could refer to any of the ziggurats of Mesopotamia, and it's never been determined that it refers to the ziggurat of Babylon, or to another one, or is really not referencing any one in particular. The Book of Genesis never tells us, and it's later interpreters who associated it with the ziggurat of Babylon.
"Tower of Babel" just means "Tower of Babylon", so the association is hard *not* to make. And so for the prior poster, we can assure him that the Tower of Babel *did* exist. But the story of God scrambling a universal language is just nonsense. (And also portrays him as incompetent, since we can in fact understand one another's languages, and people of diverse linguistic backgrounds do work together on marvels that the builders of the Ziggurat could never have dreamed of.)
And a global flood never happened. Never. Not once. Not ever. The flood as described in Genesis is physically impossible, and there is not one iota of evidence for it. Maybe it refers to a regional flood in Mesopotamia (they're common enough, and certainly there have been really big ones), but the idea that there was a flood so great it covered the mountain tops was long ago rejected. It did not happen.
Of course, if he magicked in the water he could have magicked out the evidence afterward. Religious beliefs are not amenable to analysis on the basis of evidence.
But this story also portrays God as incompetent. Why magick in the water and out the evidence to drown a bunch of wicked people, rather than just magicking them away directly? And of course, this fix didn't actually fix the problem; Noah is drunk on his ass in the next scene, and the world has never lacked wicked people after the time of the purported flood. If God regretted creation, why didn't he just uncreate it?
Why didn't he foresee where it was going to begin with?
People who believe this silly stuff simply haven't ever paused to *think* about it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
While I appreciate your historical references and teachings to us, please please please please (did I mention please? I'm trying to be nice) DON'T use acronyms. Unless you've been inundated with the name "adolf hilter", and whatever HG stands for, you don't translate the acronyms on the fly.. and it just ruins your entire paragraph.
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Some of the smaller minded people in incapable of separating socialism from communism
Is that anything like the people who can't distinguish between supporters of market economics and Christians? Or those too caught up in their own high dudgeon to realize that it's possible to have principled reasons for disliking both illegal immigration and racists? Do you also consider "small minded" those who scream that anyone opposed to Obama's policies on one matter or another are racists? Or are people who fail to note your choices of appropriate labels for two kinds of Nanny State collectivism "small minded," but people who knowingly spout nonsense about the racism behind differences of opinoin on tax policy are ...what, politically articulate geniuses?
I'd shake my head and wish you knew better, but of course you do know better, and you're just being a typical hypocrite, awash in your own faux condescension. You're not as clever as you think you are, and far more transparent.
Mod -1: Confused Asshat
I'd have to say that Stalin took the dickishness award by multitudes.
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As someone who was born and raised in the USSR, I can tell you that socialism was exactly what we had there: state ownership of the means of production, and centrally planned economy (for a country of 180 million people stretching across 8 time zones!), with the prices of everything set by the state with no regard for demand. Oh, and, of course, there was totalitarianism as well. The two are by no means mutually exclusive. In fact, they do seem to correlate quite well.
in general, war is fascist.
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Using 'socialism' as a scare-word started after the Soviet Union fell apart and 'communism' lost its ability to cause knees to jerk.
And that makes more sense, because 'socialism' was the name of the socioeconomic system of the USSR. 'Communism' is a name for a utopian society based on the principle "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs", which Khruschev promised to build in the USSR by 1980, but never did.
Need to do a bit more reading, my friend. The account doesn't have anything to do with women performing manual labor:
"(The Babylonians) said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9That is why it was called Babelc—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth."
So, it had nothing to do with labor practices. Many scholars think the tower was some sort of astrological artifact, and that the scrambling of the languages had to do with dispersing the population of the earth. That is, according to the scripture.
Mod -1: Believes evangelicals when they claim to be "scholars"
A Biblical related story? It's just fap material for the anti-Christian crowd to pounce on like a vulture to roadkill, they just love tearing anything and everything apart, especially when they have no evidence, and they love to talk about no evidence, how they love to cling to that!
I'm sure these are the same people who loved Pulp Fiction when the dark character bastardized scripture, the same people who love saw movies and other anti-human movies where people are tortured.
Good old Anti-Christians, you can always depend on them to be more vocal than a good number of Christians, because their lack of belief fills their void and becomes a belief they spread almost as wide as the JW. I'm shocked they don't go door to door with their anti-Christian crusades.
I remember a day where languages slowly evolved in such ways, creating new words that were once derivative colloquialisms of others.
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A neat idea about the language issues in building the Tower of Babel is this:
Public works projects in the ancient world sometimes depended on slave labour, slaves often originating as prisoners of war. Since they were captured from a variety of neighbouring states, they all spoke different languages. All it would take would be a few of the multi-lingual foremen going missing and the whole system could fall apart.
(Incidentally, the pyramids of Egypt were not the product of slave labour - they were a solution to the problem of the Nile River flooding and leaving nearly the whole population homeless and unemployed for two or three months every year.)
"If the tower of Babel story equates to a Babylonian tower,"
it doesn't, but every at the peak of 'stupid mountain' thinks it is.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
While I appreciate your historical references and teachings to us, please please please please (did I mention please? I'm trying to be nice) DON'T use acronyms. Unless you've been inundated with the name "adolf hilter", and whatever HG stands for, you don't translate the acronyms on the fly.. and it just ruins your entire paragraph.
Sorry; I was too lazy to look up the spelling for Hermann Göring (and not sure the umlaut would render correctly for readers using a different operating system).
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
or as far fetched as it is, it was probably a large canoe with some families rowing ;)
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... there's an app for that....
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Bible has be rewritten/added to over the years, the last major rewrite was during the Babylon exile of the Hebrews, when they finally purged the polytheistic views from the bible.
New flash: ;-)
A new discovery was made finding that an Ancient society referenced something we've heard about in our mythology. Could this mean the myth is true??
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Some of the smaller minded people in incapable of separating socialism from communism
Hell, they can't even differentiate between communism and "anything I don't like". Even (or especially?) when that anything is your supposed enemies espousing free market principles in opposition to your own statist dictates of the proper value of labour. (*cough*Canada Post labour dispute*cough*)
There is nothing in the Bible associating Burj Babel with the Akkadian Bab-ilan. They may mean the same thing, or they may not.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's often argued (correctly in my opinion) that *****lism inevitably leads to a totalitarian state. Read [A book (of millions that are out there) written by someone with my same ideas (and who nobody knows about) as a proof of what I think] for further info.
There, fixed that for you. Now you have a generic argument for whatever your opinions are.
Why can't
socialism
Noun: 1. A political and economic theory of that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole 2. Policy or practice based on this theory. 3. (in Marxist theory) A transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.
So if I am mistaken then so is the dictionary
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Anybody with even a modicum of knowledge of pre-War German history would see how moronic your statement was. I'm talking about the aristocratic and industrialist elements of Germany, not about some Nooveau Riche class created by the Nazis. Hitler became chancellor because of backroom dealing, in particular by Franz von Papen, who had gained Hindenburg's ear, and who was convinced that they could control Hitler (which they might have, if Hindenburg hadn't been tottering on senility by this point).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Considering that Adolph Hitler was a member of the Communist Party in the Bavarian Soviet Socialist Republic, I think the ties to socialism are a fair bit closer than you might think. Certainly at heart he was a socialist even if his methods may have been a bit extreme.
Extreme methods such as purging the Nazi party of its leftist elements, and directing its jackbooted thugs to conduct mob violence against suspected Communists in the streets? Were those the ones you meant?
Anybody who seriously tries to claim that Hitler was leftist is an idiot. He coopted the slogans and supporters of socialism to gain support for his movement early on, then brutally murdered them once he got power. Nazism in practice was a far right fascist totalitarian system.
Sigh. I'm not talking about a brand new class of rich people, I'm talking about the people who were the power brokers in Germany prior to Hitler's rise. Come on people, this is pretty common fucking knowledge. Put away your "the Nazis were Commies" crap and read a fucking history book. Hitler came to power not because he promised people lots of money and government contracts, but because the power brokers in Germany, in particular Franz von Papen. Hitler achieved ultimate power by having Ernst Rohm and the other proper socialists in the Nazi party executed or imprisoned. When Ernst Rohm was shot in the chest in his jail cell, anything particularly socialist about National Socialism died. Hitler needed the co-operation of the wealthier classes of Germany, and he knew very well he wouldn't get that support, and ultimately the political clout to pass the Enabling Act without handing them Rohm, the SA and the other socialist agitators in the Nazi Party on a platter.
Which, people, is the polar opposite of how Mao came to power. The major industrialists and aristocrats in Nationalist China all scuppered off to Taiwan when Mao seized control of the mainland. The industrial classes you see today in China didn't come into existence until the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, after Mao's death and after the Cultural Revolution had run its course.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This article is about a PICTURE on a stone that actually has the words "TOWER OF BABEL" inscribed on it, from around the time of Nebuchadnezzar.
In English?!
Except that all of modern Europe is socialists...
A /. article about the Tower of Babel and not ONE reference to Doom and the Cyberdemon (E2M8)?
Turn in your geek cards. Now.
The inscription does not say "tower of Babel".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
They weren't compiled, they were made up. If you believe that, then you must believe the 8th century genealogies that claim the kings of Wessex were descended from Odin.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I don't recall anywhere that Hitler was ever a Communist. He was given the job of penetrating some of the nationalist groups that were causing so much trouble in the 1920s, but in a sad bit of irony, did his job so well that he ended up taking over the National Socialists. His views were expressly anti-Communist, because he viewed the Bolsheviks as being a Jewish group.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If there are too many brain surgeons, the wages of a brain surgeon get driven below the cost of medical malpractice insurance. Then what would the friend do once he finds that the vocation he desperately wanted to join is not enough to support him and his family? It would be irresponsible to specialize in a skill that can't be used in a business or in a hobby.
Just about ALL of the "evolution" I've seen in language lately is actually the poor translation to the written word from the sounds of words that people repeat without actually thinking. The result is usually the loss of clarity. The reduction in communication. Typical would be the inability of millions of people to distinguish between "loose" and "lose" when writing. Likewise when people lazily repeat a string a of syllables without actually thinking about what they mean, and end up saying the opposite of what they mean. A la, "I could care less" (when they mean exactly the opposite, and they've made the error out of laziness, not deliberate irony).
We're not taking about differences like "the audience is rambunctious tonight" vs. "the audience are happy to be here," where the American vs. British difference in treating "the audience" as singular or plural marks different evolution in the usage but doesn't diminish the ability to convey clear meaning. No, most of the internet-facing crappy spelling and grammar these days marks an active disinterest in clear communication. And that marks a bunch of sleepy, lazy minds who assume it's always OK to make everyone else do the work of guessing and parsing and asking for clarification.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
May contain mind virus. :P
Socialism / Communism isn't a way of running a society.
I'm not sure either was ever sold as such. And that was the problem. Communism and socialism are ways of running economies, but historically people have tried to use them as the basis of entire societies. (And maybe that's because, in practice, a totalitarian society is the only way to gain enough control over markets to make a planned economy work; nonetheless, we've seen the results.)
Breakfast served all day!
It's the scholars who are making the connection in this case. The online article is quite true to what the scholars are saying about the tablet. I'm not saying that they are necessarily right but this tablet does date to the time of Nebuchadnezzar II.
You had to kick up to der Furher. Hitler was the richest person in the 20th century (because Germany was the richest nation ever to fall to the leftists).
That said the Nazis nationalized many industries (all the foreign and Jewish owned ones just to start). They _were_ socialist in action as well as word. To the end of the war.
Even the industrialists that supported the Nazis were hanging by a thread. One wrong turn and their industries would be taken. They effectively became extensions of the state.
Remember the key point of the definition of socialism is state ownership of the means of production. You can roughly measure how socialist a mixed economy is by what % of GDP is spent by the government.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That never stops anyone from claiming all of Scandinavia as a socialist success story.
What % of German GDP do you think was under government direction during WWII?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"socialism was exactly what we had there: state ownership of the means of production"
One minor nit to pick... that's not socialism. Socialism has very little to do with who owns the means of production or capital. Socialism describes a system in which states provide varying levels of service and economic remuneration to citizens in lieu of markets. Communism is concerned with ownership of the means of production, and it is not the same thing; hence two different terms, if they were indeed identical in form and function, there would be no need to differentiate them.
As for the correlation between "socialism" and totalitarianism... would you classify the Scandinavian states as particularly totalitarian? Most of Europe, really, is socialist to a greater or lesser extent. Most are pretty solidly non-totalitarian in comparison to a state like Singapore, which offers economic freedom virtually unmatched anywhere else. It's only a strong correlation if you choose to look only at data points which show that, ignoring all others.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Not sure what point you're trying to make here, or how it makes my statement "moronic". You seemed to be responding to the OP with the claim that the Nazis must not be Socialists simply because "The industrialists still got rich under the Nazi government", which is no argument at all, because that's happened under EVERY Socialist government before or sense (even if most of the "industrialists" these days are mostly into banking and finance).
And Hitler continued to use the Socialist rhetoric for years after he was installed as Chancellor. Which of those policies he may have ended or changed, I really don't know.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
We also seem to be watching a free market economy drive the world in the same direction - business interests persuading governments to influence others in order to create laws contrary to the desire of the population of countries.
[[Helpful response to article, published 8 December --> http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6027/346.abstract/reply#sci_el_15711]]
Language is complex, having many variables with many possible values; selection of modeled variables has tremendous impact on model's claims; seriously, claims of founder effects are unjustified when you realize that linguists are still debating the basic VARIABLES and MODES of speech perception (gestures or acoustic cues, how they relate, how speech plans are translated into articulation and into perception, rules or constraints, ranked or weighted, exemplars or not, and if so, exemplars for allophony?).
Interesting archaeological discovery -- and I'm sure interesting to historical linguists --, as always, though, the tower of babel remains a fable.
If the tower of Babel story equates to a Babylonian tower, it would seem that suggests that the book of Genesis, which presents itself as having been written thousands of years before Babylon, actually dates to the era of Babylon (or perhaps parts of Genesis actually are older, but someone 'inserted' the Tower of Babel story much later)?
The stele is about the reconstruction of the tower, not its initial construction. The original construction of the tower/ziggurat would have been considerably earlier.
Genesis is the first of the five books of Moses. It was legendarily attributed to Moses. That would make the legendary time of its writing less than a thousand years before the writing of the stele, when Babylon did already exist. [Of course, if you agree with modern scholarship, then Genesis was written/collated considerably after the time of Moses.]
Thanks, nice reference. It's nice to know where that came from. Note that the Baruch is considered pseudepicgraphical.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
"If the tower of Babel story equates to a Babylonian tower,"
it doesn't, but every at the peak of 'stupid mountain' thinks it is.
What is so preposterous about one Middle Eastern culture referencing another culture's actual uncompleted building in their legends?
There is nothing in the Bible associating Burj Babel with the Akkadian Bab-ilan. They may mean the same thing, or they may not.
Other than the fact that "Babel" is the Hebrew word for Babylon?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They are only thought of as one and the same by [sic] more ons.
Are writing and thinking mutually exclusive ?
Seriously did your educators have ANY students that graduated (or did they simply pass everyone?)
Sorry for the Ad hominem argument, but the fact that you were modded +5 trumps my ability to explain reality, culture or language.
Ignorance is not our greatest threat as much as wanton stupidity couched in the belief that everyone is entitled to *your* opinion.
Neat. Could you specify which of these have suffered your vaguely dire suggested outcome
All of the above.
--or name, say, even a single theoretical cognitive downside to, say, Taoism?
A religion which includes animal sacrifices, shamen, demonic possession and fortune telling? Naw. I can't think of any downsides.
Okay, so your response is just going to be the directly absurd, then.
Ockham, Copernicus, Kepler, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Newton, Bayes, Linnaeus, Euler, Faraday, Babbage, Mendel, Pasteur, Kelvin, Planck, Lemaitre, Knuth... all demented fools compared, no doubt, to the awesome intellectual prowess of... let me guess... you.
As for Taoism, I was thinking of the simplified Western notion from which Zen is derived, but thanks for demonstrating yet again that with sufficient insistence on denigrating it, one can play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (not the Roger Bacon duly listed) with anything.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
i do not believe that America had Successful landing on the moon yet . http://www.jpzentai.com/ http://www.udreamybridal.com/jp/
My gawd, what a fucking retarded thing to say.
I suppose it indicates you're a strong supporter of fascism/capitalism, which using your moronic logic are the same damned thing?
Where the fuck do you idiots keep coming up with this shit? Do you not realize that semi-socialist countries are regularly voted best countries to live by that bastion of commie-lovers, The Economist Magazine?
I'm not sure whether your trolling or whether you are that big a fucking idiot. Odin was most assuredly present in the Germanic pantheon long before any major Germanic migrations to England. What you wrote is pure unadulterated bullshit.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I've always felt the Babel story is one of destruction of science in the name of protecting religious dogmas. The way it was explained to me is that man was trying to build a tower to reach to the heavens and understand god and this pissed god and his hand came down and stirred up the pot to stop man from trying to be too smart. I see it as the mythical story to cover up the evil actions of man's past. I relate it to the Libraries of Alexandria that were plundered for scientific writings and anything that conflicted with the requirements for current religious belief were burned. Kinda like what some still try to do today. I just see it as a story of a warning not to look to hard at the world around you... and it implies permission to stop and destroy those who attempt to question your dogma. Because after all... that is what god did.
Okay, so your response is just going to be the directly absurd, then.
If you think it's absurd to say that irrational beliefs negatively impact anyone who holds them, then yeah, I suppose my response is absurd by your standards.
Ockham, Copernicus, Kepler, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Newton, Bayes, Linnaeus, Euler, Faraday, Babbage, Mendel, Pasteur, Kelvin, Planck, Lemaitre, Knuth... all demented fools compared, no doubt, to the awesome intellectual prowess of... let me guess... you.
I'm touched that you hold me in such esteem, but I must disagree. Certainly Netwon was demented to a large extent, and the same might be said of a few others on that list, but it would be quite unfair to say that it applies to the list as a whole. Nor was that the point being made by "lightknight" or myself.
As for Taoism, I was thinking of the simplified Western notion from which Zen is derived, but thanks for demonstrating yet again that with sufficient insistence on denigrating it, one can play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (not the Roger Bacon duly listed) with anything.
I'm not psychic, so you can't blame me for not divining your intended question. Regardless, you've done a wonderful job of demonstrating exactly how unnecessary religion is. Like all modern theists, you cling to interpretations which minimize the original beliefs and, instead, offer a more secularized version. Your own words - and the words of other religious moderates - are the most damning condemnation of religion which exist; even you admit that the fewer irrational, superstitious, faith-based views we have, the better off we are. You're one step removed from an atheist.
Good point. I wonder how many fundamentalists fought against the Apollo program?
One minor nit to pick... that's not socialism. Socialism has very little to do with who owns the means of production or capital.
That is at best incredibly misleading, if they can all agree on something it's that a factory owner reaping all the profits while the employees are sweatshop workers is not socialism. True, it's not a strict requirement as the government can hire private companies so costs are socialized but execution is privatized, but "in lieu of markets" the owner won't have many other choices. Most countries today don't subscribe to the idea that everything should be socialized in a plan economy, but the parts that are socialized are typically also served by the public sector or private companies that exist solely to work for the government. Here in Norway 34.5% of the working population now work for the public sector, even more on behalf of the government and that is no coincidence. And that doesn't count that some very dominant directions in socialism like marxism has seen social ownership as essential.
As for the correlation between "socialism" and totalitarianism... would you classify the Scandinavian states as particularly totalitarian?
While there's no totalitarianism in it, there's a very clear tendencies to surveillance and social interference in what people can and can't do. The first is usually justified by fairness, in order for each person to pay their appropriate share the government must know everything, our version of the IRS knows so much I don't even have to fill out the tax form. My employer reports in, the banks report in, stocks and funds are reported, the property registry reports in, the car registry reports in and so on, unless you have special deductibles, foreign holdings or something like that you literally don't need to do a thing. The second is usually to protect some weak group, because 1% would develop a gambling addiction the other 99% can't have casinos and things like that. Just like there's a collectivist-individualist axis to the economic policy, there's also one to the social policy. So while we're in many ways very liberal, I also can't get a beer on 7 PM on Saturday if I've run out. It's not the Soviet Union but I think many Americans would be freaked out by it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
He did it because mankind was reaching the heavens and "nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them!" Why that was considered a bad thing is not mentioned (pride?).
Well he didn't like them getting knowledge in the Garden of Eden either. Ignorant and mostly harmless, that's how he likes his creations. The whole old testament is mostly vicious, the New Testament is a complete change of character.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You're on the lucky branch of socialism, where the wiping was done by democrats instead of dictators. That gets you another derivative. Less deaths involved, which is a definite plus. But you still lose the people's control of banking and industry in the process.
Essentially, from an engineering viewpoint, the problem with socialism isn't its quality, but its stability. It decays into other forms of government because its underlying sociological assumptions about humans are flawed. People are too varied, have different goals and abilities, and tend to form smaller and larger groups. More robust political systems (which range from well-functioning democracies to fundamentalist regimes) are less influenced by these factors.
It does say owned or regulated i.e. there is some room for private ownership of capital there. Germany is an example of a very successful state that has implemented socialist policies. It amazes me (although I should be more cynical at my age) that British politicians and businessmen believe that the "devil take the hindmost" policies of the USA are the way to go when a highly successful social democracy with strong social protections and strong unions is just a few hundred miles away and could just as easily have been emulated instead.
I'm touched that you hold me in such esteem, but I must disagree.
I hold your position in no esteem. That's why you correctly understood my sense as sarcastic, just couldn't stick with an honest rendering of the content, as is your habit further on...
but it would be quite unfair to say that it applies to the list as a whole. Nor was that the point being made by "lightknight" or myself.
And who said that? I asked for a statement as to -which- he considered "cognitively impaired" due to theistic belief, to make even the initial preconditions to serious consideration of his stance possible. Feel free to continue to argue with yourself, though.
Your own words - and the words of other religious moderates - are the most damning condemnation of religion which exist; even you admit that the fewer irrational, superstitious, faith-based views we have, the better off we are.
When quoting my words, please make them words that are actually there that I made. Firstly, I do not consider the particular views of a subset of Taoism referenced to be harmonious with the core of Taoism's worldview of an abstract, impersonal "uniting spiritual nature" to existence. I do, in fact, accept nonphysical conscious entities, but would reject a worldview that simultaneously claims them in particular while not having an overall metaphysics supporting the notion. I am not debating "correct" in my response, rather "objectionable on any level", which is called-for by his extensively-refuted, if commonplace, tactic of "refutation by psychologization".
Secondly, it seems self-evident that there are no worldviews whatsoever that can be claimed to have -no- potential negative effects ("downsides" as I put it, relative to Taoism and your make-believe void-utopia of no particular content, no particular stances, and thus no particular questionable behavior resulting from that non-content)--but this is wholly irrelevant. For any -actually existing- philosophy anywhere, there are conjectural downsides, and these must be a) demonstrated realistic, and b) weighed against the benefits to form any kind of valid overall evaluation.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
It's not semantics. You're generalizing and conflating economic system (socialism) and political ideology (fascism, communism) and a form of government (despotism) to dismiss them all as bad.
Mind you, what you're doing is a common tactic used by those who wish to establish totalitarian rule: generalizing everything else as bad makes it easier to justify your own ideology/regime.
You cannot define socialism as a system where the government provides varying levels of service and economic remuneration, because every government in every social system does that. In the US, which is arguably the most capitalist society in the world, the government provides lots of services including education, retirement, and welfare benefits, and employs thousands of people. Even in a feudal society the government, i.e. the nobles, provided defense at the very least. So the question is not whether the government provides services, but how much. In socialism, the government provides all or almost all the services and economic remuneration.
As far as the Scandinavian countries, no I would not characterize them as totalitarian. I would not characterize them as entirely socialist either. They are hybrid systems which have a huge public sector, but still allow private enterprise. They do, however, seem to have a lower level of personal freedom compared to the US (see the post by Kjella below).
Also, keep in mind that all the Scandinavian countries are much smaller than either the USSR or the US. Socialism, or even communism (e. g. Israeli kibbutzim) does seem to work on a small scale in some circumstances. However, it definitely does not scale up. One reason is simply the complexity of the problem of centralized management of a large economy, like the USSR. Another is the lack of incentives and lots of opportunities for the abuse of such a system.
Couldn't muster enough concern about your views to check if the "lateknight" reference was indicating another as the OP poster, or yourself. Read "he" as "you", where appropriate.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
So let me invoke Godwin's law (Sieg) and end this straw man line of questioning.
You are prolly crect.
I'm sorry, but as long as you insist on picking up the goalposts and running in zigzags and circles, I have no desire to play.
You have fun, though.
Sssh, you're ruining their delusions.
My own ideology dismisses collectivization and subjugation of the individual to the collective, which is the exact opposite of every system described here, all of which do exactly that - destroy the individual and promote the collective turning entire nations to slavery.
You can't handle the truth.
Nonsense. Your continued generalization of "every" system described here while making boastful claims of your own ideology (relying heavily - if not entirely - on truisms) only further proves my point.
You have no point that can be 'proven' in any way. I lived in 'communism' (USSR), 'fascism' (USA), 'socialism' (Canada, Germany, Switzerland) and 'capitalism' (Singapore) to be able to compare these notions and build an opinion. You, on the other hand, are a worthless /. theorist.
You can't handle the truth.
Well, aside from Revelation. It's back to Wrathful Smitey God for that bit.
...that the Tower of Babel was built and destroyed long before the Babylonian empire existed, and that the was only one nation with one language at the time it was built, and it resulted in creation of numerous languages simultaneously, the scattering of people across the earth (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2011:1-9&version=NIV, Genesis 11:1-8). But when did archeologies let facts get in the way of what they wanted to proclaim?
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Okay, so simpler: Your characterization of the supposed consistently-negative effects across theists: Directly, provably, and proven, wrong. Your lame attempts at recasting an issue of fact as a psychological issue and thus evading the matter at hand: Wholly invalid, though a reasonably competent parroting of Dawkins, and suitably peppered with incorrectly-used terms such as "irrational". You entire mechanism of relative evaluation of worldviews: Disingenuous in its relative comparison of an actual demographic to a non-demographic of no particular stance on anything beyond "not God". You handwaving and vague dismissal of what you can't, or won't, respond to while exiting: Transparent. The mechanism by which I would automatically win this argument by inevitable default on your part anyway: Entropy. Thanks for playing.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
You make a wonderful pigeon.Okay, so simpler: Your characterization of the supposed consistently-non-negative effects across theists: Directly, provably, and proven, wrong. Your lame attempts at recasting an issue of fact as a psychological issue and thus evading the matter at hand: Wholly invalid, though a reasonably competent mishmash of intelligent sounding phrases with no real meaning. You entire mechanism of relative evaluation of worldviews: Disingenuous in its relative comparison of an actual demographic to a non-demographic of no particular stance on anything beyond "not God". You handwaving and vague dismissal of what you can't, or won't, respond to while exiting: Transparent. The mechanism by which I would automatically win this argument by inevitable default on your part anyway: Entropy. Thanks for playing.
But not the organization. Stalin was pretty sloppy, or maybe that's just a side effect of being in power longer. More loose threads start to be visible. Hard to say.
I lived in 'communism' (USSR), 'fascism' (USA), 'socialism' (Canada, Germany, Switzerland) and 'capitalism' (Singapore)
you forgot to mention the times you lived on mars, or your long stay on io that caused you to reach an epiphany and accept ron paul as your personal lord and savior.
You make sense from what I know of the theories, plural, of language as very partially posted above.