but wait. It's far easier to learn programming, and read physics textbooks, and read Dawkins/Hitchens, and other men bloviating about the evils of religion, when they don't even have any real expertise in theology to begin with (Dawkins is a BIOLOGIST).
And theology is just a bunch of shit someone made up.
One person may be better informed than another about what this or that group believes, but a biologist or carpenter or hobo knows as much about spiritual "reality" as anyone else on the planet.
It's perfectly legitimate to make claims about a religion base on observations of what its adherents actually do. (Though, as you say, stereotyping tends to result in non-legitimate claims.(
In it's early days, mainstream Christian Church killed 10s of thousands of Gnostic Christians
I'm not aware that non-Gnostic Christians acted violently against Gnostic Christians. They basically sidelined them by establishing the canon (New Testament) as the source of spiritual authority, over and against the Gnostic emphasis on personal experience.
In medieval times some European Christian rulers did convert their subjects or neighbors at swordpoint, and the Crusades were religiously induced violence, and later the heretical sects such as Albigenses and Bogomils were exterminated. And there was that wonderful Thirty Years War thing.
Of course, you can rarely distangle religion and politics in these things. People have an uncanny knack for concluding that God wants just what they want, and wants them to be the instrument of His will. I suspect religion is often more of an excuse than the actual cause.
Spare me the nitpicking. You asked for examples and I provided them.
I was asking for support for the claim that "We seem to be willing to cave to the Muslim extremists in every other way", and you gave one example of a public institution doing it and one example of a private group doing it.
For that matter, I don't see how failure to intervene with the shooter qualified as caving in to Muslim extremists. It was actually an example of *our* cultural values, whether it was the right thing to do or not.
Could someone explain why some Muslims believe that their rules need to apply to non-Muslims?
As a point of contrast, many Christians believe that their primary responsibility is to not themselves sin. Secondarily is to encourage their fellow Christian to avoid sinning; this includes (at the worst) kicking people out of the church when they're chronically unwilling to shape up. But But it's pretty hard to find anything directly in Christian theology that suggests Christians are supposed to try to impose these standards on non-Christians.
And yet it's trivially easy to find Christians right here in the enlightened USofA who do exactly that.
Yet another example showing that the Islamic world is still in the Dark Ages that most of the rest of the world emerged from sometime in the 13th century.
Europeans burned people for witchcraft at least as recently as the 17th Century, and occasional religious violence in the USA has continued right up to the present.
What you'll find with Islam, like any other religion with millions of followers, is that the adherents hold a broad variety of attitudes. Best not to judge all by the behavior of some, just as with skin color, nationality, hairstyle, or anything else.
Heck, I remember seeing on the news in the '90s where two sects of Buddhist monks were going at it with quarterstaffs, fighting over control of a shrine.
I met Iranian Moslems in college who were thoroughly westernized.
Phone companies would stand to lose so much money and have their industries labeled alongside big tobacco, so I can't help but think they're pouring as much research into studies that "prove" phone radiation is harmless. Even if they couldn't convince people, at least they'd make the water murkier.
Surely you're not suggesting that the pursuit of money would cause someone to put other people at risk.
I wonder how the medical imaging radiation an average person receives compares to the daily, hourly, sometime nigh-continuous exposure to the lower levels of radiation from a cell phone.
Lawsuits will be a problem. And though we've got the technology for AI medical diagnosis (at least for some stuff), the visual processing suggested by the story is still a bit beyond us. (Cf. yesterday's story about identifying images of genitals on chatroulette.)
Have you ever considered what technologies we wouldn't have today if people hadn't concerned themselves with the surprising spectrum of black body radiation over a century ago?
This is great and all, but does this mean we'll finally get some great new technologies like artificial gravity, FTL propulsion or communication, quantum-fluctuation energy, or interdimensional travel?
We're still getting new technologies out of the strange sub-atomic stuff others started discovering c. 120 years ago.
Every time some idiot goes and posts somewhere "I'm gonna kill people" and it isn't caught, the news is "They were posting it for all the world to see, why didn't somebody stop them!?" Then some idiot is caught from his posting, and the new is "How dare the police read posts!?"
One problem with a surveillance society is that it forces the police to intervene in every event that anyone could interpret as the least bit suspicious, or else face the "Why didn't you do something!" rage whenever something does happen.
The findings do not directly link playing video games to reckless driving. They only show an association. Researchers say the impact of playing games like "Grand Theft Auto" is minimal.
I'm glad TFA admitted that one isn't necessarily the cause of the other, thereby bypassing the whole causation != correlation argument. Kudos for that.
Funny, the very last thing I did before bringing up this story was skim a newsletter from my alma mater, which included a story "Study shows teens wired to engage in risky behavior".
Slashdot Mirror
but wait. It's far easier to learn programming, and read physics textbooks, and read Dawkins/Hitchens, and other men bloviating about the evils of religion, when they don't even have any real expertise in theology to begin with (Dawkins is a BIOLOGIST).
And theology is just a bunch of shit someone made up.
One person may be better informed than another about what this or that group believes, but a biologist or carpenter or hobo knows as much about spiritual "reality" as anyone else on the planet.
It's perfectly legitimate to make claims about a religion base on observations of what its adherents actually do. (Though, as you say, stereotyping tends to result in non-legitimate claims.(
In it's early days, mainstream Christian Church killed 10s of thousands of Gnostic Christians
I'm not aware that non-Gnostic Christians acted violently against Gnostic Christians. They basically sidelined them by establishing the canon (New Testament) as the source of spiritual authority, over and against the Gnostic emphasis on personal experience.
In medieval times some European Christian rulers did convert their subjects or neighbors at swordpoint, and the Crusades were religiously induced violence, and later the heretical sects such as Albigenses and Bogomils were exterminated. And there was that wonderful Thirty Years War thing.
Of course, you can rarely distangle religion and politics in these things. People have an uncanny knack for concluding that God wants just what they want, and wants them to be the instrument of His will. I suspect religion is often more of an excuse than the actual cause.
Spare me the nitpicking. You asked for examples and I provided them.
I was asking for support for the claim that "We seem to be willing to cave to the Muslim extremists in every other way", and you gave one example of a public institution doing it and one example of a private group doing it.
For that matter, I don't see how failure to intervene with the shooter qualified as caving in to Muslim extremists. It was actually an example of *our* cultural values, whether it was the right thing to do or not.
Except that with Islam it's not just the random followers that promote violent spreading of islam. It's the original founder.
Not sure what point that's supposed to make. Large swaths of Europe were converted to Christianity at sword point.
Oh, and there's that old "I come not to bring peace, but a sword". Lots of religions send mixed messages.
Comedy Central isn't "we", and the single example of the shooter hardly constitutes "in every way".
Weren't we talking about this in the chatroulette story a few days ago?
...fuck a whole bunch of you superstitious savages.
Make that "With all due respect to Planet Earth" - that shot is going to strike home in a lot more places than Pakistan.
Could someone explain why some Muslims believe that their rules need to apply to non-Muslims?
As a point of contrast, many Christians believe that their primary responsibility is to not themselves sin. Secondarily is to encourage their fellow Christian to avoid sinning; this includes (at the worst) kicking people out of the church when they're chronically unwilling to shape up. But But it's pretty hard to find anything directly in Christian theology that suggests Christians are supposed to try to impose these standards on non-Christians.
And yet it's trivially easy to find Christians right here in the enlightened USofA who do exactly that.
I mean, are Muslims really such pussies they can't take a fucking joke about their Prophet?
A large number of Americans think people should go to prison for burning a frikkin' flag.
There are intolerant assholes everywhere.
Yet another example showing that the Islamic world is still in the Dark Ages that most of the rest of the world emerged from sometime in the 13th century.
Europeans burned people for witchcraft at least as recently as the 17th Century, and occasional religious violence in the USA has continued right up to the present.
Islam - a religion of peace. Are you serious?
Has your favorite religion ever killed anyone?
What you'll find with Islam, like any other religion with millions of followers, is that the adherents hold a broad variety of attitudes. Best not to judge all by the behavior of some, just as with skin color, nationality, hairstyle, or anything else.
Heck, I remember seeing on the news in the '90s where two sects of Buddhist monks were going at it with quarterstaffs, fighting over control of a shrine.
I met Iranian Moslems in college who were thoroughly westernized.
We seem to be willing to cave to the Muslim extremists in every other way, so why not this one too?
Examples?
How about having her describe her opinions instead instead: http://www.sharronangle.com/issues/
Is that the page that was hurriedly revised by party hacks who wanted to move her toward the center when she won the primary?
Well, he did say "arguably", which is arguably the worst weasel word in the history of mankind.
Arguably.
Phone companies would stand to lose so much money and have their industries labeled alongside big tobacco, so I can't help but think they're pouring as much research into studies that "prove" phone radiation is harmless. Even if they couldn't convince people, at least they'd make the water murkier.
Surely you're not suggesting that the pursuit of money would cause someone to put other people at risk.
WARNING: The Sun is radioactive! Avoid using it to make phone calls.
Or at least avoid holding it against your ear for prolonged periods.
I wonder how the medical imaging radiation an average person receives compares to the daily, hourly, sometime nigh-continuous exposure to the lower levels of radiation from a cell phone.
BTW, your dental x-rays sound excessive.
Lawsuits will be a problem. And though we've got the technology for AI medical diagnosis (at least for some stuff), the visual processing suggested by the story is still a bit beyond us. (Cf. yesterday's story about identifying images of genitals on chatroulette.)
Anybody else think this is modern-day snake oil?
No.
Have you ever considered what technologies we wouldn't have today if people hadn't concerned themselves with the surprising spectrum of black body radiation over a century ago?
This is great and all, but does this mean we'll finally get some great new technologies like artificial gravity, FTL propulsion or communication, quantum-fluctuation energy, or interdimensional travel?
We're still getting new technologies out of the strange sub-atomic stuff others started discovering c. 120 years ago.
Every time some idiot goes and posts somewhere "I'm gonna kill people" and it isn't caught, the news is "They were posting it for all the world to see, why didn't somebody stop them!?"
Then some idiot is caught from his posting, and the new is "How dare the police read posts!?"
One problem with a surveillance society is that it forces the police to intervene in every event that anyone could interpret as the least bit suspicious, or else face the "Why didn't you do something!" rage whenever something does happen.
Am I the only one that considered flying in mass numbers over areas that have the right conditions to flash flood it?
Only as in "dambusters".
This will just result in games where people try to post non-genital pics that get filtered and genital pics that don't.
The findings do not directly link playing video games to reckless driving. They only show an association. Researchers say the impact of playing games like "Grand Theft Auto" is minimal.
I'm glad TFA admitted that one isn't necessarily the cause of the other, thereby bypassing the whole causation != correlation argument. Kudos for that.
Funny, the very last thing I did before bringing up this story was skim a newsletter from my alma mater, which included a story "Study shows teens wired to engage in risky behavior".
At least you've got three years' lead time to print all your favorite files.