It *was* only illegal to deface currency if the intent was fraudulent -- I guess trying to cast a nickel into two dimes, or making a $1 look like a $10.
"I'm not so sure. There are plenty of religious crazies in the world, but then you have atheists like Dawkins who believe that religious instruction is a form of child abuse. If he was made supreme dictator tomorrow, how long do you think it would be before the governement started removing kids from homes or even putting religious people into camps?"
I think your reasoning goes off-track here. People who are serious about atheism don't become dictators. There were a few dictators are power-hungry and want people to obey them. I think it's best explained by the fact that they were power-hungry psychopaths, not that they didn't like people believing in God.
Nobody *makes* dictators; dictators make themselves. They work their way up and arrange events in order to step into power and make it seem like everyone supports them -- usually by killing people who don't.
So nobody is going to stand up and appoint Dawkins, or any other atheist, a dictator. I don't think Dawkins would accept the position of dictator if it were offered. If he was really interested in ruling people and telling them what to do, he would be in politics. But he's not -- he's a scientists, doing research and teaching classes. He is talking, discussing, and debating people -- something that a dictator-to-be would have no time for.
There really are no crazy atheists. All of the 'atheist' communist dictators who mass-murdered people were motivated by their need for power, not their religious beliefs. They were just like any other secular or religious psychopath dictator, like Hitler or Hussein.
Hussein was secular until he found that becoming publicly religious would help his image and power. But neither his secularism nor his Islam had anything to do with his insanity.
Dicators just wanted power; religious belief had little to do with it. The fact that a Buddhist monk or Russian priest would not renounce their religion just gave Stalin a good excuse to send them to a death camp.
I argue that it was a coincidence. I think that Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao were power-hungry politicos who wanted to rule people. If they had been born in the middle ages, they would have killed people in the name of the King. If they had rode the crest of a Fascist revolution, they would have killed people in the name of the dear leader.
What I am claiming is that there are motivations behind mass killings, just like there are motivations behind murder. One guy kills someone because his wife cheated on him, another guy kills someone because he's a psychopath and has no sense empathy or right and wrong. Similarly, there are motivations behind mass killings. Some people want to rule everyone. Other people want total religious conformity.
Stalin really wasn't interested in the Communist revolution, where everybody shared everything; he just wanted everyone to do what he said. He was diagnosed as paranoid by the leading Russian psychologist of his time, who Stalin had killed later that night. If anyone showed the slightest hint of disagreement or disloyalty, Stalin had them killed. He would have been perfectly happy as a fascist dictator or a general. His Atheism ( or even perhaps closet Russian Orthodoxy ) really had nothing to do with why he killed people.
Similarly, there were priests and even townsfolk in the Inquisition who got a kick out of burning people alive. It didn't improve their standing or give them more power really, like Stalin was after; they just got the pleasure of doing the Lord's work and watching unbelievers suffer.
So my argument is that it isn't really Atheists or Atheism that kills people. Stalin, Mao, etc. were opportunistic psychopaths who embraced the philosophy of the day to gain power. However, people who hold deep religious beliefs also seem to want to kill a lot of people, but for reasons other than gaining political power. So I think, in the historical examples, you *can* decouple the atheism from the mass killings.
"Here's the deal. Either Jesus Christ is God, or He's not. If someone teaches that He is not God, according to Christian teaching, and because of the law of non-contradiction, Jesus cannot simultaneously be God and "not God" in the same time and relationship. Since Judaism, Islam, and Christianity teach different things about Jesus, man's relationship to God and how it may be possible to reconcile to God, logically either all three beliefs are wrong, or one is right and the others cannot be right."
I would say that that puts you in the tradition of the Greek mystery cults, who believed that there was a hidden Logos, or logic, behind the every day physical world. Sort of like the matrix. You're constricting the definition of God based on a law. You've put an all-powerful God in the position of having to be logically consistent -- which means that logic is 'above' God, if he has to obey it. A lot of radical Monotheists such as Rabbi Maimonides, most Muslims, and Hindus* say that God exists outside of logic and thought, along with time and space.
It's the old paradox of a God who can make a rock so big that he can't lift it. Of course, a rational thinker must conclude that an all-powerful God does not have to obey the laws of logic. What more powerful being or force invented these rules that God must follow? We would expect an all-powerful God to be able to break the laws of logic and do all sorts of paradoxical things.
* A lot of people are confused when they hear about Hindus being monotheists. Aren't they the ones with lots of Gods? Yes -- in fact, the exact number from Hindu scripture is 33 million. But, just like you, me, and everything that exists, the Gods are part of the grand illusion of existence called Samsara, the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. However, there is what is usually translated as the Godhead, the Supreme Reality, which exists outside of time, space, and thought, which is not illusory. This Godhead has no form, no attributes or qualities. A Hindu priest or theologian might say that Christ both is and is not God, and neither is nor is not God, and yet both is-and-is-not-God-but-neither-is-nor-is-not-God but *not* is-and-is-not-God-but-neither-is-nor-is-not-God... ad infinitum, because God, or Ultimate Reality, has nothing to do with logic.
I think someone could make the same kind of argument about the Inquisition and the killings of Native Americans in the New World -- even though all those people gave lip service to God and the church, really it was about exercising political power, and getting rid of a bunch of people whose land you wanted.
I'm not splitting hairs. You are missing my point.
I am simply claiming that more Christians have murdered people *for their religious beliefs* than Atheists have murdered people *for their religious beliefs*.
Now it's true, there have been a lot of murderous Atheist fucks such as Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, but most of their mass killings weren't for religious beliefs, but for political opposition, power, etc. They *did* kill people for their religious beliefs, but not as many as Christians have killed.
Remember, the OP said that the only thing keeping Atheists from killing was fear of getting caught and guilt, while Christians are kept in line by fear of eternal damnation. If that really were true, we should see scores of Atheists shooting up schools and malls, and Atheist governments marching throngs of people into infernos, because those Atheists have no god that they fear. But that's not what has happened. Far and away, the large number of killings are done by people with religious motivations, killing people who didn't have the same beliefs as they did.
So, apparently, the fear of eternal damnation is not as strong a deterrent as guilt and societal punishment.
"Comparing mass-murder high scores makes for a nice pissing contest, but not for particularly enlightening discussion."
I'm glad you think killing innocent people has all the moral weight of urinating.
" A more interesting question to ask would be, what is it that allows people to feel morally justified engaging in mass-murder? I'd say the risk factor for becoming a mass-murderer is being absolutely sure that you're right and "they" are wrong.
"
I doubt it. How do we measure the number of people who are absolutely convinced that they are right and the rest of the world is populated by idiots, and go along on their merry way, never killing a single idiot they come across? Hell, I'm one of those people who thinks they are always right, and I've never killed anyone, let alone mass killings.
I'm all for people disagreeing with me, absolutely convinced that they are right and I am wrong. Just as long as they don't kill me. I think the problem only comes in when the actual killing starts, which you claim is as relevant as pissing.
"Once you have that attitude in mind, it's easy to come up with justifications for eliminating them."
Again, you're not telling us how many people have held that attitude and have never killed anyone. I suspect we can't know the number.
"Jews also believe Jesus was a prophet of God but do not believe he was the son of God."
Do you have a source for this? Every Jew I've talked to, including Rabbis, say that Jesus was just a regular old Jew. He may have said a lot of great things, but hey, anybody can quote Hillel;)
"How many people died under the rule of Stalin & Mao?"
That's exactly the statistic I'm looking for in my question.
"And, AFAIK, radical atheists have never been in control of an agressive country, but I could easily imagine a bunch of asshat atheists trying to wipe out believers."
Communism specifically calls for atheism. Marx believed that religion was the opiate of the masses, empty promises of a happy afterlife if you bust your ass for factory owners here on Earth. Religious was what allowed the Bourgeois to exploit the proletariat. According to Marx, in order to bring about communist revolution, you have to get rid of religion. So you can say that radial atheists, who wanted to destroy all religion, were in control of Soviet Russia, China, North Korea, etc.
"Christianity, or religion in general does NOT have a monopoly on violent asshats."
That's true, but they own the scoreboard far and away. That's why I asked my second question -- how many atheists killed people specifically for their religious beliefs? Stalin had a lot of people liquidated, but most weren't killed for their religious beliefs. However, *everyone* killed in the Inquisition was killed by Christians, specifically for their religious beliefs.
Bottom line, I'd prefer an atheist over a Christian when it comes down to who will let me believe and practice what I want.
And the obligatory reply is, who has been responsible for more mass murder? Christians or Atheists?
And who killed more people specifically because of their religious beliefs -- not political, paranoid, or power-hungry reasons -- Christians or Atheists?
OK, but why is it tht Europeans are happy living in town or row-houses, while American families feel that they need McMansions?
Europeans could stop taking 6 weeks of vacation and work a little more to get bigger houses, you know. Maybe it doesn't have to do with evolution, but rather their 'preferences'?
I have a degree in anthropology. I probably read about 50 theories as to why humans walked upright. These theories kind of come and go like fads. They all have their strengths and weaknesses.
I think the problem is that we have a bias towards a single cause. The 'soft' sciences that developed at the turn of the 20th century always wanted to be mathematical like physics. But I think something like human evolution had multiple influences and feedback loops, instead of a single cause. There are a lot of benefits and hazards to walking upright. One of the problems of walking upright is that we can't have as much jaw muscle wrapped around the back of our heads. Our jaws shrunk and are teeth are frankly good for nothing, as far as eating. This means that we depended on fire to cook and pre-digest our food for us -- both plants *and* meat. So now we need agile hands in order to spin wood into fire, and knock rocks into sharp blades. But now that we don't have to devote so much dentition and muscle to ripping and chewing, now we can have agile tongues, and resonant, bowl-shaped mouths that can produce a variety of tones and pauses. Which came first? Did developments in speech lead to wimpier mouths? Did the development of hands lead to wimpier mouths which gave rise to better speech? Did walking upright free our front feet to become hands?
I think instead of pointing to one single thing that caused us to take our modern form, there were many factors or influences, all feeding into each other, reinforcing each other, that gave rise to modern form.
">> it's about understanding a human's place in the ecosystem and coming to terms with our natural history
why can't you think about that without blowing some beautiful wild animals brains out?"
You can think about it all you want, but until you actually do it and take responsibility for it, it's just an abstraction with no reality. You are alienated from it. Like raising a child or traveling overseas -- you can theorize all you want, but there's no reality to it until you jump into it. You're just engaging in fantasy. It's like saying you feel sorry for poor people but you don't actually give to charity or try to help people out. It's all in your mind, no reality.
">> Certainly there are some people who are bloodthirsty, but that doesn't mean that everyone who hunts is.
Of course it does. Anyone with half a brain and who isn't bloodthirsty would prefer the continuation of natural beauty from the animal continuing to live. Or do you find a field full of corpses attractive?"
You do realize that prey animals need to be hunted in order to be healthy, right? Prey animals produce more offspring than the environment can support. It's natural selection.
Here in Ohio, there are so many deer, feeding off corn in the summer, and then there are too many and they slowly starve to death in the winter. We have taken away their natural predators such as wolves and mountain lions, so now it is more important than ever that we hunt them. In the case where there are not enough deer taken by hunters, the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources has to go out and kill enough so that they don't totally strip bark off of trees in their desperate search for food. In fact, about five years ago, we had a deer overpopulation in Sharon woods park here in Columbus. The department of parks had to shoot female deer with birth control so they wouldn't destroy the park. Most rural counties can't afford the expensive deer birth control and can't tag every female deer in the county, so hunting has to happen.
Your field full of corpses is strawman is disgusting. I'm taking about hunting and eating. In many parts of the country, hunting makes up a large part of a family's food throughout the year. They take a few deer, put them in the freezer, and eat from it all year long. If they had to give up hunting and buy their meat from a store, they wouldn't be able to afford it. The fact that you can't separate a horror-movie psychopath from a responsible hunter shows how closed-minded you are. Your sick fantasies of rotting corpses shows how little you know and how disconnected you are from the reality of hunting.
"I am taking more responsibility, by ensuring the animal get killed by professionals in a regulated humane way."
What exactly do you do to take more responsibility other than just buy meat? You are aware of the outright torture that goes on in factory farming, I would assume? Do you buy free range meat?
You're missing the point. It's not about enjoying killing; it's about understanding a human's place in the ecosystem and coming to terms with our natural history as predators. Like grandparent said, if you're a meat eater, you are taking responsibility for your actions and gaining a greater understanding of life, death, and nature when you hunt and eat. Far more than just wandering up to the cash register at McDonalds and ordering a burger while talking on your cell phone.
Certainly there are some people who are bloodthirsty, but that doesn't mean that everyone who hunts is. I agree with grandparent -- if you eat meat and have never hunted, you are not taking responsibility for your actions by letting someone else do your dirty work.
"But shouldn't these guys be investing their time and resources into industries where price fixing is a REAL PROBLEM that affects the consumer?"
I think they guys who would be investigating shenanigans in the cable and DSL world are the public utilities commissions, whereas price fixing in consumer goods is handled by other organizations. So they can't just drop this and start doing something else.
The word 'pus' is Greek for foot, and the plural in Greek is 'podes', so it would be octopodes -- except the name of the animal is not 'eight-feet', it's 'eight-foot', so it's one 'eight-foot' or 'octopus' and many 'eight-foots' or 'octopuses'.
The best way to figure out how to do something is to try to do it, fail, figure out how to get around the failure, and proceed to your next failure. Don't be too critical; these 'failures' are just hurdles or roadblocks. It's just like when you were learning to read.
How do you eat a cow? In bite size pieces. Instead of asking "How do I make an emulator?" ask yourself "What parts make up an emulator?" Keep breaking down the parts into smaller and smaller parts until you have a part that you are able to create.
As long as there have been Kings and rulers, there have been monopolies, taxes, price controls and tariffs, public storage of grain in temples, public works projects such as roads and pyramids -- government interference in the market. The only places where mostly free 'markets' existed were between kingdoms, in the form of long distance caravan trading and shipping. And even then that was controlled by regional bosses and outposts of the kingdoms. The holy texts that admonish us to practice charity and alms-giving are taking about the wealthy and powerful in society helping the poor.
There were no free markets in Feudal Europe. It wasn't until the middle ages and the enlightenment that the concept of a free market, where two rational consumers were free to negotiate a price and trade with whomever they wanted, was developed. Before then there wasn't really free trade -- there was distribution patterns based on tradition. If you were a serf, you had to give a certain amount to your lord -- you couldn't just travel to the next town and sell grain on the street. Whatever was left over fed your kids. Slowly, over time, as Europe grew wealthier, and peasants were allowed to travel, it slowly became ok to trade or sell your goods to someone else.
If you read what the proponents of the free market were saying in Europe, one of the biggest hurdles they have to overcome was that prices *must* be static. God had set up a world with a specific order, and if you go mucking around changing things like the price of pigs or apples, you were upsetting the very foundation of the world. If you had a market where anybody could charge anything they wanted, why, that would be utter chaos! If the price of apples changes today, maybe tomorrow things fall up instead of down! The next thing you know the sky would come crashing into the Earth, because you were upsetting the natural order.
The idea that we came out of a 'state of nature' where people were practicing ancient free markets is pure libertarian fantasy.
"Yes, but you see, the ability to [practice charity]... is dependant upon a healthy free market economy"
If that were true, then how come the world's major religions ( Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism ) asked people to practice charity hundreds or thousands of years before the development of modern free markets?
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It *was* only illegal to deface currency if the intent was fraudulent -- I guess trying to cast a nickel into two dimes, or making a $1 look like a $10.
Time to start melting Canadian cents for all your copper-reclaimation needs -- 98% copper until 1996.
"I'm not so sure. There are plenty of religious crazies in the world, but then you have atheists like Dawkins who believe that religious instruction is a form of child abuse. If he was made supreme dictator tomorrow, how long do you think it would be before the governement started removing kids from homes or even putting religious people into camps?"
I think your reasoning goes off-track here. People who are serious about atheism don't become dictators. There were a few dictators are power-hungry and want people to obey them. I think it's best explained by the fact that they were power-hungry psychopaths, not that they didn't like people believing in God.
Nobody *makes* dictators; dictators make themselves. They work their way up and arrange events in order to step into power and make it seem like everyone supports them -- usually by killing people who don't.
So nobody is going to stand up and appoint Dawkins, or any other atheist, a dictator. I don't think Dawkins would accept the position of dictator if it were offered. If he was really interested in ruling people and telling them what to do, he would be in politics. But he's not -- he's a scientists, doing research and teaching classes. He is talking, discussing, and debating people -- something that a dictator-to-be would have no time for.
There really are no crazy atheists. All of the 'atheist' communist dictators who mass-murdered people were motivated by their need for power, not their religious beliefs. They were just like any other secular or religious psychopath dictator, like Hitler or Hussein. Hussein was secular until he found that becoming publicly religious would help his image and power. But neither his secularism nor his Islam had anything to do with his insanity.
Dicators just wanted power; religious belief had little to do with it. The fact that a Buddhist monk or Russian priest would not renounce their religion just gave Stalin a good excuse to send them to a death camp.
I argue that it was a coincidence. I think that Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao were power-hungry politicos who wanted to rule people. If they had been born in the middle ages, they would have killed people in the name of the King. If they had rode the crest of a Fascist revolution, they would have killed people in the name of the dear leader.
What I am claiming is that there are motivations behind mass killings, just like there are motivations behind murder. One guy kills someone because his wife cheated on him, another guy kills someone because he's a psychopath and has no sense empathy or right and wrong. Similarly, there are motivations behind mass killings. Some people want to rule everyone. Other people want total religious conformity.
Stalin really wasn't interested in the Communist revolution, where everybody shared everything; he just wanted everyone to do what he said. He was diagnosed as paranoid by the leading Russian psychologist of his time, who Stalin had killed later that night. If anyone showed the slightest hint of disagreement or disloyalty, Stalin had them killed. He would have been perfectly happy as a fascist dictator or a general. His Atheism ( or even perhaps closet Russian Orthodoxy ) really had nothing to do with why he killed people.
Similarly, there were priests and even townsfolk in the Inquisition who got a kick out of burning people alive. It didn't improve their standing or give them more power really, like Stalin was after; they just got the pleasure of doing the Lord's work and watching unbelievers suffer.
So my argument is that it isn't really Atheists or Atheism that kills people. Stalin, Mao, etc. were opportunistic psychopaths who embraced the philosophy of the day to gain power. However, people who hold deep religious beliefs also seem to want to kill a lot of people, but for reasons other than gaining political power. So I think, in the historical examples, you *can* decouple the atheism from the mass killings.
"Here's the deal. Either Jesus Christ is God, or He's not. If someone teaches that He is not God, according to Christian teaching, and because of the law of non-contradiction, Jesus cannot simultaneously be God and "not God" in the same time and relationship. Since Judaism, Islam, and Christianity teach different things about Jesus, man's relationship to God and how it may be possible to reconcile to God, logically either all three beliefs are wrong, or one is right and the others cannot be right."
... ad infinitum, because God, or Ultimate Reality, has nothing to do with logic.
I would say that that puts you in the tradition of the Greek mystery cults, who believed that there was a hidden Logos, or logic, behind the every day physical world. Sort of like the matrix. You're constricting the definition of God based on a law. You've put an all-powerful God in the position of having to be logically consistent -- which means that logic is 'above' God, if he has to obey it. A lot of radical Monotheists such as Rabbi Maimonides, most Muslims, and Hindus* say that God exists outside of logic and thought, along with time and space.
It's the old paradox of a God who can make a rock so big that he can't lift it. Of course, a rational thinker must conclude that an all-powerful God does not have to obey the laws of logic. What more powerful being or force invented these rules that God must follow? We would expect an all-powerful God to be able to break the laws of logic and do all sorts of paradoxical things.
* A lot of people are confused when they hear about Hindus being monotheists. Aren't they the ones with lots of Gods? Yes -- in fact, the exact number from Hindu scripture is 33 million. But, just like you, me, and everything that exists, the Gods are part of the grand illusion of existence called Samsara, the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. However, there is what is usually translated as the Godhead, the Supreme Reality, which exists outside of time, space, and thought, which is not illusory. This Godhead has no form, no attributes or qualities. A Hindu priest or theologian might say that Christ both is and is not God, and neither is nor is not God, and yet both is-and-is-not-God-but-neither-is-nor-is-not-God but *not* is-and-is-not-God-but-neither-is-nor-is-not-God
You wrote an insightful post.
I think someone could make the same kind of argument about the Inquisition and the killings of Native Americans in the New World -- even though all those people gave lip service to God and the church, really it was about exercising political power, and getting rid of a bunch of people whose land you wanted.
I'm not splitting hairs. You are missing my point.
I am simply claiming that more Christians have murdered people *for their religious beliefs* than Atheists have murdered people *for their religious beliefs*.
Now it's true, there have been a lot of murderous Atheist fucks such as Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, but most of their mass killings weren't for religious beliefs, but for political opposition, power, etc. They *did* kill people for their religious beliefs, but not as many as Christians have killed.
Remember, the OP said that the only thing keeping Atheists from killing was fear of getting caught and guilt, while Christians are kept in line by fear of eternal damnation. If that really were true, we should see scores of Atheists shooting up schools and malls, and Atheist governments marching throngs of people into infernos, because those Atheists have no god that they fear. But that's not what has happened. Far and away, the large number of killings are done by people with religious motivations, killing people who didn't have the same beliefs as they did.
So, apparently, the fear of eternal damnation is not as strong a deterrent as guilt and societal punishment.
"Comparing mass-murder high scores makes for a nice pissing contest, but not for particularly enlightening discussion."
I'm glad you think killing innocent people has all the moral weight of urinating.
" A more interesting question to ask would be, what is it that allows people to feel morally justified engaging in mass-murder? I'd say the risk factor for becoming a mass-murderer is being absolutely sure that you're right and "they" are wrong. "
I doubt it. How do we measure the number of people who are absolutely convinced that they are right and the rest of the world is populated by idiots, and go along on their merry way, never killing a single idiot they come across? Hell, I'm one of those people who thinks they are always right, and I've never killed anyone, let alone mass killings.
I'm all for people disagreeing with me, absolutely convinced that they are right and I am wrong. Just as long as they don't kill me. I think the problem only comes in when the actual killing starts, which you claim is as relevant as pissing.
"Once you have that attitude in mind, it's easy to come up with justifications for eliminating them."
Again, you're not telling us how many people have held that attitude and have never killed anyone. I suspect we can't know the number.
"Jews also believe Jesus was a prophet of God but do not believe he was the son of God."
;)
Do you have a source for this? Every Jew I've talked to, including Rabbis, say that Jesus was just a regular old Jew. He may have said a lot of great things, but hey, anybody can quote Hillel
"How many people died under the rule of Stalin & Mao?"
That's exactly the statistic I'm looking for in my question.
"And, AFAIK, radical atheists have never been in control of an agressive country, but I could easily imagine a bunch of asshat atheists trying to wipe out believers."
Communism specifically calls for atheism. Marx believed that religion was the opiate of the masses, empty promises of a happy afterlife if you bust your ass for factory owners here on Earth. Religious was what allowed the Bourgeois to exploit the proletariat. According to Marx, in order to bring about communist revolution, you have to get rid of religion. So you can say that radial atheists, who wanted to destroy all religion, were in control of Soviet Russia, China, North Korea, etc.
"Christianity, or religion in general does NOT have a monopoly on violent asshats."
That's true, but they own the scoreboard far and away. That's why I asked my second question -- how many atheists killed people specifically for their religious beliefs? Stalin had a lot of people liquidated, but most weren't killed for their religious beliefs. However, *everyone* killed in the Inquisition was killed by Christians, specifically for their religious beliefs.
Bottom line, I'd prefer an atheist over a Christian when it comes down to who will let me believe and practice what I want.
And the obligatory reply is, who has been responsible for more mass murder? Christians or Atheists?
And who killed more people specifically because of their religious beliefs -- not political, paranoid, or power-hungry reasons -- Christians or Atheists?
OK, but why is it tht Europeans are happy living in town or row-houses, while American families feel that they need McMansions?
Europeans could stop taking 6 weeks of vacation and work a little more to get bigger houses, you know. Maybe it doesn't have to do with evolution, but rather their 'preferences'?
Well, it had more to do with guys who had large herds of docile, domesticated animals having guns, rather than guys who had only guns.
I have a degree in anthropology. I probably read about 50 theories as to why humans walked upright. These theories kind of come and go like fads. They all have their strengths and weaknesses.
I think the problem is that we have a bias towards a single cause. The 'soft' sciences that developed at the turn of the 20th century always wanted to be mathematical like physics. But I think something like human evolution had multiple influences and feedback loops, instead of a single cause. There are a lot of benefits and hazards to walking upright. One of the problems of walking upright is that we can't have as much jaw muscle wrapped around the back of our heads. Our jaws shrunk and are teeth are frankly good for nothing, as far as eating. This means that we depended on fire to cook and pre-digest our food for us -- both plants *and* meat. So now we need agile hands in order to spin wood into fire, and knock rocks into sharp blades. But now that we don't have to devote so much dentition and muscle to ripping and chewing, now we can have agile tongues, and resonant, bowl-shaped mouths that can produce a variety of tones and pauses. Which came first? Did developments in speech lead to wimpier mouths? Did the development of hands lead to wimpier mouths which gave rise to better speech? Did walking upright free our front feet to become hands?
I think instead of pointing to one single thing that caused us to take our modern form, there were many factors or influences, all feeding into each other, reinforcing each other, that gave rise to modern form.
">> it's about understanding a human's place in the ecosystem and coming to terms with our natural history
why can't you think about that without blowing some beautiful wild animals brains out?"
You can think about it all you want, but until you actually do it and take responsibility for it, it's just an abstraction with no reality. You are alienated from it. Like raising a child or traveling overseas -- you can theorize all you want, but there's no reality to it until you jump into it. You're just engaging in fantasy. It's like saying you feel sorry for poor people but you don't actually give to charity or try to help people out. It's all in your mind, no reality.
">> Certainly there are some people who are bloodthirsty, but that doesn't mean that everyone who hunts is.
Of course it does. Anyone with half a brain and who isn't bloodthirsty would prefer the continuation of natural beauty from the animal continuing to live. Or do you find a field full of corpses attractive?"
You do realize that prey animals need to be hunted in order to be healthy, right? Prey animals produce more offspring than the environment can support. It's natural selection.
Here in Ohio, there are so many deer, feeding off corn in the summer, and then there are too many and they slowly starve to death in the winter. We have taken away their natural predators such as wolves and mountain lions, so now it is more important than ever that we hunt them. In the case where there are not enough deer taken by hunters, the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources has to go out and kill enough so that they don't totally strip bark off of trees in their desperate search for food. In fact, about five years ago, we had a deer overpopulation in Sharon woods park here in Columbus. The department of parks had to shoot female deer with birth control so they wouldn't destroy the park. Most rural counties can't afford the expensive deer birth control and can't tag every female deer in the county, so hunting has to happen.
Your field full of corpses is strawman is disgusting. I'm taking about hunting and eating. In many parts of the country, hunting makes up a large part of a family's food throughout the year. They take a few deer, put them in the freezer, and eat from it all year long. If they had to give up hunting and buy their meat from a store, they wouldn't be able to afford it. The fact that you can't separate a horror-movie psychopath from a responsible hunter shows how closed-minded you are. Your sick fantasies of rotting corpses shows how little you know and how disconnected you are from the reality of hunting.
"I am taking more responsibility, by ensuring the animal get killed by professionals in a regulated humane way."
What exactly do you do to take more responsibility other than just buy meat? You are aware of the outright torture that goes on in factory farming, I would assume? Do you buy free range meat?
You're missing the point. It's not about enjoying killing; it's about understanding a human's place in the ecosystem and coming to terms with our natural history as predators. Like grandparent said, if you're a meat eater, you are taking responsibility for your actions and gaining a greater understanding of life, death, and nature when you hunt and eat. Far more than just wandering up to the cash register at McDonalds and ordering a burger while talking on your cell phone.
Certainly there are some people who are bloodthirsty, but that doesn't mean that everyone who hunts is. I agree with grandparent -- if you eat meat and have never hunted, you are not taking responsibility for your actions by letting someone else do your dirty work.
"I dig that attitude."
Partner, in these parts, we Mod Parents Up.
"But shouldn't these guys be investing their time and resources into industries where price fixing is a REAL PROBLEM that affects the consumer?"
I think they guys who would be investigating shenanigans in the cable and DSL world are the public utilities commissions, whereas price fixing in consumer goods is handled by other organizations. So they can't just drop this and start doing something else.
"I regret having to inform you that your name is in the database."
He regrets having to inform us, not that they were hacked.
The word 'pus' is Greek for foot, and the plural in Greek is 'podes', so it would be octopodes -- except the name of the animal is not 'eight-feet', it's 'eight-foot', so it's one 'eight-foot' or 'octopus' and many 'eight-foots' or 'octopuses'.
Yes and no ;)
Prove it.
You'll get a Nobel prize and a place in history for telling us exactly how.
The best way to figure out how to do something is to try to do it, fail, figure out how to get around the failure, and proceed to your next failure. Don't be too critical; these 'failures' are just hurdles or roadblocks. It's just like when you were learning to read.
How do you eat a cow? In bite size pieces. Instead of asking "How do I make an emulator?" ask yourself "What parts make up an emulator?" Keep breaking down the parts into smaller and smaller parts until you have a part that you are able to create.
As long as there have been Kings and rulers, there have been monopolies, taxes, price controls and tariffs, public storage of grain in temples, public works projects such as roads and pyramids -- government interference in the market. The only places where mostly free 'markets' existed were between kingdoms, in the form of long distance caravan trading and shipping. And even then that was controlled by regional bosses and outposts of the kingdoms. The holy texts that admonish us to practice charity and alms-giving are taking about the wealthy and powerful in society helping the poor.
There were no free markets in Feudal Europe. It wasn't until the middle ages and the enlightenment that the concept of a free market, where two rational consumers were free to negotiate a price and trade with whomever they wanted, was developed. Before then there wasn't really free trade -- there was distribution patterns based on tradition. If you were a serf, you had to give a certain amount to your lord -- you couldn't just travel to the next town and sell grain on the street. Whatever was left over fed your kids. Slowly, over time, as Europe grew wealthier, and peasants were allowed to travel, it slowly became ok to trade or sell your goods to someone else.
If you read what the proponents of the free market were saying in Europe, one of the biggest hurdles they have to overcome was that prices *must* be static. God had set up a world with a specific order, and if you go mucking around changing things like the price of pigs or apples, you were upsetting the very foundation of the world. If you had a market where anybody could charge anything they wanted, why, that would be utter chaos! If the price of apples changes today, maybe tomorrow things fall up instead of down! The next thing you know the sky would come crashing into the Earth, because you were upsetting the natural order.
The idea that we came out of a 'state of nature' where people were practicing ancient free markets is pure libertarian fantasy.
"Yes, but you see, the ability to [practice charity]... is dependant upon a healthy free market economy"
If that were true, then how come the world's major religions ( Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism ) asked people to practice charity hundreds or thousands of years before the development of modern free markets?