On the other hand, I do see how this could make it harder for residents to have their input heard
Allow residents to email the list. They get to speak at public meetings, so this seems like the obvious equivalent. Public libraries tend to provide free internet access that could be used for the purpose.
You continually make me curious. If you had to say why you call yourself a Christian and what beliefs that entails in a few sentences, how would you do so?
from your quote from TFA, talk therapy and psychiatric medicines are what didn't work.
No, you're reading it incorrectly. "She tried a variety of treatments, including..."; the list is likely substantially incomplete. It probably didn't include various illegal substances. I don't know enough about the things you mentioned to have an opinion. Forgive me, but I won't begin advocating LSD (etc.) for depression based on an anonymous/. comment, though perhaps if you provided a reputable link I would agree.
It's important to note that the patients discussed had severe depression which resisted other forms of treatment:
She tried a variety of treatments, including talk therapy and psychiatric medicines, but nothing worked.
St. Jude is hoping to win Food and Drug Administration approval for commercial use of DBS for treatment-resistant depression.
The summary and title could be taken to imply (incorrectly) that this treatment is aimed at depressed people in general. It's still brain surgery, you need an implanted battery, and it doesn't work on all patients.
I don't drink, but thank you:). Feel free not to respond, but I'm a former Christian and am always curious about how others handle some of the apparent contradictions that made me give it up. How do you reconcile the statement, "I have no compunction to push my belief on anyone," with, say, Matthew 28:19, "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." There are quite a few similar verses exhorting evangelism. It seems to make perfect sense, too, since eg. John 3:36 implies that unbelievers will be punished forever in hell ("The one who believes in the Son has eternal life. The one who rejects the Son will not see life, but God’s wrath remains on him."). And of course there's quite a bit of condemnation against gay folk strewn about the Bible--I'd be very surprised if Paul would have had your accepting view.
I ultimately opted to simply call most of the Bible crap, though I do like large swaths of it, like Jesus' general ~"love others and be kind to everyone" philosophy, and much of the advice in Proverbs.
Hah! I was wondering if someone was going to bring up Spock's irrational behavior. To be fair, strangling Kirk in Amok Time was about as rational as irrationality can get. He fought it the entire episode, warned Kirk what might happen, etc. A few other emotional/irrational/odd Spock scenes:
Sometimes sarcasm and contempt are the perfect responses.
I don't think so. A sarcastic, contemptuous response might make one person feel better, but the other person will just dig their heels in and reason that the first person has to stoop to poor debate methods so must be fundamentally wrong. The converse can hold: in debating fundamentalist Christians, sometimes they'll be particularly respectful to me (clearly trying to "show Christ's love for others" or similar), which is about the only part of their argument that holds any sway with me.
I rather like your "present the debate" idea in Sunday School.
I have to say I personally treasure some irrationalities.
Hear hear! I absolutely love sexuality myself. Still, there's two definitions of "irrational" I like to distinguish. (a) A person's actions are irrational if their actions are based on emotion rather than reason. (b) A person's actions are irrational if their actions follow logically given their emotions as premises.
I case (a), my sexuality is irrational (by the way, I'm gay, so there's no child creation reason there to "justify" it). In case (b), it's quite rational. I prefer definition (b), but it leads to some odd results sometimes, like when a sociopath murders someone that action is rational even if I might be tempted to call the underlying emotions irrational. (Calling emotions rational or irrational is very problematic, so I just sort of ignore the issue most of the time.)
About your sig, I only meant you could change it to say something like "I am frequently sarcastic" (or something a little subtler). I don't have anything against your current sig.
You apparently want people to misinterpret your posts, or at least you don't mind it happening with regularity when you could easily change it (eg. by modifying your signature). That sounds extremely trollish. To each their own, but you got moderated correctly even if the reasons were incorrect.
This is unrelated to your post, but you make me wonder, how does your belief impact others outside of your religion? For instance, I'm gay and have an agenda because of it: talk about it sometimes, perhaps just in passing, with the goal of getting people used to the idea so we can be more accepted. Do you have any equivalent behavior?
You've made me curious. How is someone supposed to tell when you're being sarcastic, considering how many silly statements get made on the internet? Many people use smilies, italics, excessive punctuation, sarcasm tags, etc., but you use none of the above.
In my own case, I originally thought you were serious, but you had more karma than I would expect of a troll, so I glanced through a few of your recent posts for more information. The picture I got was of a thick-skinned but paradoxically insecure, acerbic person who states strong, controversial opinions half-seriously and who sometimes overstates their points as sarcasm. Of course, this analysis is all preliminary and would need a fair amount more evidence to confirm or deny, but it was enough for me to write "(The GP may not have been serious, but assume for now that it was.)".
I'm currently unconvinced either way, and I'm too young to have my own personal opinion here. Do you have some solid evidence that might convince me? The opinion of an expert in modern religious groups would go a long way with me. Also, your diaeresis reminded me that this may vary too much depending on region to discuss in the crude terms we're using.
As a counter argument, I'd ask; do you think it logical for any reasonable individual to become religious purely out of protest to atheists?
There's no reason to restrict ourselves to reasonable individuals. I imagine very few people convert to some religion simply to protest atheism--a more likely path to conversion is through youth outreach targeting kids in non-religious families. Tim Tebow, an American football player who prays while kneeling just before games, gives an interesting example here. His actions made national headlines and made many people at least think about Christianity. I'm sure he's a hero to thousands of children, including some non-religious ones, a few of whom will convert who wouldn't without his actions.
People in general don't just suddenly switch from non-religious to religious.
Well, one often hears that older people get religion as they near death (though I don't know how true this is). I think the more important point in today's world is not people switching from atheism to some religion, but rather already religious people becoming more vocal about their religion.
You're referring to transubstantiation. It's really convoluted, and I'm not Catholic, but the opening of the Wiki article implies the physical attributes of the wine and bread aren't altered, even though the "substance" changes to that of Christ's flesh and blood (no idea what that means). My crude opinion is that they made up an invisible attribute so their crazy theory can't be proven wrong by a simple autopsy.
You made me curious. I opened up a Bible to 3 random places around 1/4, 2/4, and 3/4ths in and read about half a page each. Whether or not science and the Bible conflict apparently depends a lot on your view of the scientific merit of miracles and how literally you interpret things.
1/4th:
* 2 Samuel 21:15-22 -- historical summary of King David's battles with Philistines; probably unobjectionable.
* 2 Samuel 21:20 -- describes a man with polydactylism, rare but certainly existent.
* 2 Samuel 21:19 -- appears to conflict with 1 Chronicles 20:5; here Goliath is killed, whereas there Goliath's brother is killed. Contradictions might be deemed unscientific.
2/4ths:
* Isaiah 51:10 -- miracle described: "Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made a road in the depths of the sea so that the redeemed might cross over?" (Presumably referring to the parting of the Red Sea.)
* Isaiah 51:13,15 -- creation/God described: "[I] who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth" / "[I] who churns up the sea so that its waves roar" / "I who set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth". Saying God churns up the sea to the exclusion of a complex interplay between wind, tides, and other forces would be scientifically inaccurate, at least.
3/4ths:
* Matthew 9:14-17 -- nothing scientific here; "Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins" and such.
* Matthew 9:18-26 -- two miracles. A woman is healed because, as Jesus says, "your faith has healed you." Also, Jesus resurrects a dead girl.
To someone who thinks miracles are scientifically impossible (or at least so improbable as to be practically impossible), the above conflicts quite a bit with science. A literal interpretation of the second Isaiah passage would also conflict, though a more metaphorical one would not.
Whether or not the Bible and science conflict depends quite heavily on who you ask and their other views. Simply saying, "the Bible and science do (not) conflict" isn't actually that informative.
Your two posts summarize some of the major problems with religion debates. (The GP may not have been serious, but assume for now that it was.)
mvdwege:
* Unfair generalizations: "The current crop of atheists is indeed loud, and particularly obnoxious." People are not a ubiquitous mass and treating them that way inevitably leads to problems. Humans like to personify everything, especially groups of other humans, but that natural urge needs to be replaced with complex mental models that accurately reflect reality to the extent a human mind can do so.
* Defensiveness: "sheer seething stupidity"... "current crop of idiots" -- those statements will only convince people to fight you.
TheGratefulNet:
* Sarcastic responses: "yeah, they're to blame." See defensiveness.
* Poor reasoning: "to blame athiests FOR the rise in religion is hand-waving". The obvious argument (likely missed because of defensiveness) is that religion felt threatened by a rise in atheism and responded by becoming louder. Whether there's any truth to that argument is a good question, but it isn't patently ridiculous hand-waving.
Each of the problems above is caused by an emotional response overcoming clear thinking. People in general could stand to be more like Spock when it comes to debates.
Just to clarify, I did understand your point, and I agree with it. I also didn't mean to advocate religion, just to point out how it tends to perpetuate itself.
I still don't get that. [...] You can take the man out of the stone age, but you can't take the stone age out of the man.
My guess is that you didn't grow up in a religious family. Despite what preachers say, a religion isn't really about beliefs. It's about being part of a social club that allows you to feel transcendent emotional experiences while also making you feel better about yourself. Megachurches do it right (which is why they're so big). They have a zillion groups to join outside of the Sunday sermons (Bible studies, sports teams, prayer groups,...) which gives you the social club. They have high emotion, professional music programs where you'll often see camera shots of people in a sort of ecstasy--arms up, swaying, crying, eyes closed, that sort of thing--which gives you the transcendent emotional experience. And finally, the sermon may try to convict you of sin, but it will also offer absolution and firm reassurance in the existence and benevolence of God, making you feel better about yourself. This last one is crucial; the best preachers are the ones who really reassure people with a comforting, compelling view of God.
If you grow up in that environment, you get taught the doctrines when you're too young to think for yourself. By the time you grow up the social and emotional benefits are so important to you that you don't care enough about the truth to reexamine in a clinical light what you were taught when you were young.
I read an interesting article recently by an evolutionary psychologist. He noted that religions offer numerous societal benefits because they make people work together as a group. Religion is most likely an advantageous evolutionary adaptation. Note also that evolution applies to religions themselves--only the fittest survive. Christianity and Islam both place great emphasis on proselytizing; Judaism emphasizes having Jewish babies to keep it going, etc. Today's religions essentially evolved the ability to convince people and perpetuate themselves. It's not terribly surprising that the underlying reasons religions convince people don't stand up to scrutiny, since evolution is so imperfect.
I hope that rationality is the next big thing in human evolution, but I'm not terribly optimistic. Smart people don't have many kids.
While your links were interesting, the near-field link says nothing at all about creating ionizing radiation, and the situation it describes is in the context of high energy industrial equipment. I asked for evidence that cell phones create ionizing radiation in the near field and you have not provided it. Instead, you've ranted about physics illiteracy while giving rambling discussions on a number of topics and insulting everyone repeatedly. That is not a good way to get people to listen to you regardless of the merit of what you have to say.
Lurie also echoed Claus' caution that radiation levels from dental X-rays when some of the participants were younger was much greater than is used now.
The result may be different if everyone had used today's equipment the whole time.
According to the EPA (and other places), radio waves are firmly in the non-ionizing range whereas x-rays are definitely in the ionizing range. You'll have to provide some evidence that near field effects increase radio wave energy sufficiently to shift the radiation into the ionizing range with cell phones; I couldn't find any, and it's a strong claim to make. Considering the lack of unambiguous cell phone/cancer links I doubt such evidence exists.
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Evolution has the advantage of being dependent on time and space, making mathematical logic completely irrelevant to how nature actually works
That's silly. The GP was just oversimplifying the situation. That mistake hardly makes mathematical logic irrelevant to evolution or nature.
If you had a valid point, what was it?
On the other hand, I do see how this could make it harder for residents to have their input heard
Allow residents to email the list. They get to speak at public meetings, so this seems like the obvious equivalent. Public libraries tend to provide free internet access that could be used for the purpose.
You continually make me curious. If you had to say why you call yourself a Christian and what beliefs that entails in a few sentences, how would you do so?
You mean, "You mean, like Code Canvas (minus the 'Microsoft')"? This is /. after all.
from your quote from TFA, talk therapy and psychiatric medicines are what didn't work.
No, you're reading it incorrectly. "She tried a variety of treatments, including..."; the list is likely substantially incomplete. It probably didn't include various illegal substances. I don't know enough about the things you mentioned to have an opinion. Forgive me, but I won't begin advocating LSD (etc.) for depression based on an anonymous /. comment, though perhaps if you provided a reputable link I would agree.
It's important to note that the patients discussed had severe depression which resisted other forms of treatment:
She tried a variety of treatments, including talk therapy and psychiatric medicines, but nothing worked.
St. Jude is hoping to win Food and Drug Administration approval for commercial use of DBS for treatment-resistant depression.
The summary and title could be taken to imply (incorrectly) that this treatment is aimed at depressed people in general. It's still brain surgery, you need an implanted battery, and it doesn't work on all patients.
I don't drink, but thank you :). Feel free not to respond, but I'm a former Christian and am always curious about how others handle some of the apparent contradictions that made me give it up. How do you reconcile the statement, "I have no compunction to push my belief on anyone," with, say, Matthew 28:19, "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." There are quite a few similar verses exhorting evangelism. It seems to make perfect sense, too, since eg. John 3:36 implies that unbelievers will be punished forever in hell ("The one who believes in the Son has eternal life. The one who rejects the Son will not see life, but God’s wrath remains on him."). And of course there's quite a bit of condemnation against gay folk strewn about the Bible--I'd be very surprised if Paul would have had your accepting view.
I ultimately opted to simply call most of the Bible crap, though I do like large swaths of it, like Jesus' general ~"love others and be kind to everyone" philosophy, and much of the advice in Proverbs.
Hah! I was wondering if someone was going to bring up Spock's irrational behavior. To be fair, strangling Kirk in Amok Time was about as rational as irrationality can get. He fought it the entire episode, warned Kirk what might happen, etc. A few other emotional/irrational/odd Spock scenes:
* Crying in The Naked Time
* Hippy Spock in This Side of Paradise
* Spock Sings in Plato's Stepchildren
Sometimes sarcasm and contempt are the perfect responses.
I don't think so. A sarcastic, contemptuous response might make one person feel better, but the other person will just dig their heels in and reason that the first person has to stoop to poor debate methods so must be fundamentally wrong. The converse can hold: in debating fundamentalist Christians, sometimes they'll be particularly respectful to me (clearly trying to "show Christ's love for others" or similar), which is about the only part of their argument that holds any sway with me.
I rather like your "present the debate" idea in Sunday School.
I have to say I personally treasure some irrationalities.
Hear hear! I absolutely love sexuality myself. Still, there's two definitions of "irrational" I like to distinguish.
(a) A person's actions are irrational if their actions are based on emotion rather than reason.
(b) A person's actions are irrational if their actions follow logically given their emotions as premises.
I case (a), my sexuality is irrational (by the way, I'm gay, so there's no child creation reason there to "justify" it). In case (b), it's quite rational. I prefer definition (b), but it leads to some odd results sometimes, like when a sociopath murders someone that action is rational even if I might be tempted to call the underlying emotions irrational. (Calling emotions rational or irrational is very problematic, so I just sort of ignore the issue most of the time.)
About your sig, I only meant you could change it to say something like "I am frequently sarcastic" (or something a little subtler). I don't have anything against your current sig.
You apparently want people to misinterpret your posts, or at least you don't mind it happening with regularity when you could easily change it (eg. by modifying your signature). That sounds extremely trollish. To each their own, but you got moderated correctly even if the reasons were incorrect.
By the way, I rather like your sense of humor.
Thanks for the chuckle, but I would like my question answered.
This is unrelated to your post, but you make me wonder, how does your belief impact others outside of your religion? For instance, I'm gay and have an agenda because of it: talk about it sometimes, perhaps just in passing, with the goal of getting people used to the idea so we can be more accepted. Do you have any equivalent behavior?
You've made me curious. How is someone supposed to tell when you're being sarcastic, considering how many silly statements get made on the internet? Many people use smilies, italics, excessive punctuation, sarcasm tags, etc., but you use none of the above.
In my own case, I originally thought you were serious, but you had more karma than I would expect of a troll, so I glanced through a few of your recent posts for more information. The picture I got was of a thick-skinned but paradoxically insecure, acerbic person who states strong, controversial opinions half-seriously and who sometimes overstates their points as sarcasm. Of course, this analysis is all preliminary and would need a fair amount more evidence to confirm or deny, but it was enough for me to write "(The GP may not have been serious, but assume for now that it was.)".
In general religion has not become louder.
I'm currently unconvinced either way, and I'm too young to have my own personal opinion here. Do you have some solid evidence that might convince me? The opinion of an expert in modern religious groups would go a long way with me. Also, your diaeresis reminded me that this may vary too much depending on region to discuss in the crude terms we're using.
As a counter argument, I'd ask; do you think it logical for any reasonable individual to become religious purely out of protest to atheists?
There's no reason to restrict ourselves to reasonable individuals. I imagine very few people convert to some religion simply to protest atheism--a more likely path to conversion is through youth outreach targeting kids in non-religious families. Tim Tebow, an American football player who prays while kneeling just before games, gives an interesting example here. His actions made national headlines and made many people at least think about Christianity. I'm sure he's a hero to thousands of children, including some non-religious ones, a few of whom will convert who wouldn't without his actions.
People in general don't just suddenly switch from non-religious to religious.
Well, one often hears that older people get religion as they near death (though I don't know how true this is). I think the more important point in today's world is not people switching from atheism to some religion, but rather already religious people becoming more vocal about their religion.
To be explicit, I meant that sarcasm usually cases the other person to get defensive.
You're referring to transubstantiation. It's really convoluted, and I'm not Catholic, but the opening of the Wiki article implies the physical attributes of the wine and bread aren't altered, even though the "substance" changes to that of Christ's flesh and blood (no idea what that means). My crude opinion is that they made up an invisible attribute so their crazy theory can't be proven wrong by a simple autopsy.
You made me curious. I opened up a Bible to 3 random places around 1/4, 2/4, and 3/4ths in and read about half a page each. Whether or not science and the Bible conflict apparently depends a lot on your view of the scientific merit of miracles and how literally you interpret things.
1/4th:
* 2 Samuel 21:15-22 -- historical summary of King David's battles with Philistines; probably unobjectionable.
* 2 Samuel 21:20 -- describes a man with polydactylism, rare but certainly existent.
* 2 Samuel 21:19 -- appears to conflict with 1 Chronicles 20:5; here Goliath is killed, whereas there Goliath's brother is killed. Contradictions might be deemed unscientific.
2/4ths:
* Isaiah 51:10 -- miracle described: "Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made a road in the depths of the sea so that the redeemed might cross over?" (Presumably referring to the parting of the Red Sea.)
* Isaiah 51:13,15 -- creation/God described: "[I] who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth" / "[I] who churns up the sea so that its waves roar" / "I who set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth". Saying God churns up the sea to the exclusion of a complex interplay between wind, tides, and other forces would be scientifically inaccurate, at least.
3/4ths:
* Matthew 9:14-17 -- nothing scientific here; "Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins" and such.
* Matthew 9:18-26 -- two miracles. A woman is healed because, as Jesus says, "your faith has healed you." Also, Jesus resurrects a dead girl.
To someone who thinks miracles are scientifically impossible (or at least so improbable as to be practically impossible), the above conflicts quite a bit with science. A literal interpretation of the second Isaiah passage would also conflict, though a more metaphorical one would not.
Whether or not the Bible and science conflict depends quite heavily on who you ask and their other views. Simply saying, "the Bible and science do (not) conflict" isn't actually that informative.
Your two posts summarize some of the major problems with religion debates. (The GP may not have been serious, but assume for now that it was.)
mvdwege: ... "current crop of idiots" -- those statements will only convince people to fight you.
* Unfair generalizations: "The current crop of atheists is indeed loud, and particularly obnoxious." People are not a ubiquitous mass and treating them that way inevitably leads to problems. Humans like to personify everything, especially groups of other humans, but that natural urge needs to be replaced with complex mental models that accurately reflect reality to the extent a human mind can do so.
* Defensiveness: "sheer seething stupidity"
TheGratefulNet:
* Sarcastic responses: "yeah, they're to blame." See defensiveness.
* Poor reasoning: "to blame athiests FOR the rise in religion is hand-waving". The obvious argument (likely missed because of defensiveness) is that religion felt threatened by a rise in atheism and responded by becoming louder. Whether there's any truth to that argument is a good question, but it isn't patently ridiculous hand-waving.
Each of the problems above is caused by an emotional response overcoming clear thinking. People in general could stand to be more like Spock when it comes to debates.
Just to clarify, I did understand your point, and I agree with it. I also didn't mean to advocate religion, just to point out how it tends to perpetuate itself.
I still don't get that. [...] You can take the man out of the stone age, but you can't take the stone age out of the man.
My guess is that you didn't grow up in a religious family. Despite what preachers say, a religion isn't really about beliefs. It's about being part of a social club that allows you to feel transcendent emotional experiences while also making you feel better about yourself. Megachurches do it right (which is why they're so big). They have a zillion groups to join outside of the Sunday sermons (Bible studies, sports teams, prayer groups, ...) which gives you the social club. They have high emotion, professional music programs where you'll often see camera shots of people in a sort of ecstasy--arms up, swaying, crying, eyes closed, that sort of thing--which gives you the transcendent emotional experience. And finally, the sermon may try to convict you of sin, but it will also offer absolution and firm reassurance in the existence and benevolence of God, making you feel better about yourself. This last one is crucial; the best preachers are the ones who really reassure people with a comforting, compelling view of God.
If you grow up in that environment, you get taught the doctrines when you're too young to think for yourself. By the time you grow up the social and emotional benefits are so important to you that you don't care enough about the truth to reexamine in a clinical light what you were taught when you were young.
I read an interesting article recently by an evolutionary psychologist. He noted that religions offer numerous societal benefits because they make people work together as a group. Religion is most likely an advantageous evolutionary adaptation. Note also that evolution applies to religions themselves--only the fittest survive. Christianity and Islam both place great emphasis on proselytizing; Judaism emphasizes having Jewish babies to keep it going, etc. Today's religions essentially evolved the ability to convince people and perpetuate themselves. It's not terribly surprising that the underlying reasons religions convince people don't stand up to scrutiny, since evolution is so imperfect.
I hope that rationality is the next big thing in human evolution, but I'm not terribly optimistic. Smart people don't have many kids.
While your links were interesting, the near-field link says nothing at all about creating ionizing radiation, and the situation it describes is in the context of high energy industrial equipment. I asked for evidence that cell phones create ionizing radiation in the near field and you have not provided it. Instead, you've ranted about physics illiteracy while giving rambling discussions on a number of topics and insulting everyone repeatedly. That is not a good way to get people to listen to you regardless of the merit of what you have to say.
The article sort of touches on this:
Lurie also echoed Claus' caution that radiation levels from dental X-rays when some of the participants were younger was much greater than is used now.
The result may be different if everyone had used today's equipment the whole time.
According to the EPA (and other places), radio waves are firmly in the non-ionizing range whereas x-rays are definitely in the ionizing range. You'll have to provide some evidence that near field effects increase radio wave energy sufficiently to shift the radiation into the ionizing range with cell phones; I couldn't find any, and it's a strong claim to make. Considering the lack of unambiguous cell phone/cancer links I doubt such evidence exists.