Systems of governance are ultimately a reflection of their society. In this particular case - that of budgetary issues & massive debt - we're talking about a society with masses of people unable to keep balanced personal budgets; generally at the forefront when it comes to rates of living on a debt, consumptionism, etc.
And revolutions tend to not promote the "best" people, but the most ruthless ones.
Fishbowl Effect. After we have finally had our fun with memes and made a fer.com dollars, the endless years of hyperconnectedness are going to drag on with not even a religious apocalypse to distract us...
Life / internet: pretty much the same crap, over and over, forever.
So, on the same some it is still lost how we have more or less phonetic record of the usage of names, from works in non-Hebrew alphabets... and how it is about friggin' "biblical material"
Oh, I take you fully accept Greek, Aztek or Chinese mythology, because it was collected? "Higher standard"? Bwuahahahaha, you make the Demiurge proud (and why he preferred to persecute dystheists or gnostics...why maltheism could meet the same fat), or whatever is the deity praised in the Bible, the ultimate sinner and damager.
You don't have to actually ride on a bicycle all the time, in rough spots; bikes can be... carried (like if there's a need to go through rivers or down gullies; shouldn't be much worse with a bike than when considering only the supplies you'd already carry). Even when the terrain is unsuitable for riding for some time, using it as a cart can save you lots of effort.
Bringing essentially automatisms (of various kinds) is interesting... it leads to arguing for religious faith in animals.
Of course, those are just more low-level modes of our brains (very non-monolithic - split-brain patients appear almost virtually unchanged; there's even one very localized brain trauma which results in people becoming completely blind... without them realizing it). If we didn't do such mental shortcuts & best-effort guesses, we would be paralyzed by daily events.
Well, it does lead to interesting questions about "religious belief"... oversensitive alertness, universality of perceiving surrounding agents as autonomous, and - again - making mental shortcuts would be some very adaptive traits, leaving their mark in the course of our evolution; and greatly helping emergence of religions (themselves also being adaptive, at the least in social settings)
And actually, the name was Joshua... (the existence not being particularly clear; Romans were crazy with keeping records... but not too much luck in this case, for some reason)
You can easily laid out to most people why some groups of scientists dedicated to particular field are a reliable source. Good luck doing that with all the gods, messiahs, prophets, mediums, etc., to anywhere comparable rigor and honesty.
It's still a dilution of differences; it's trivially straightforward to use reason in accepting conclusions coming from scientists working in particular fields, and to understand the logical validity of the process leading to their acceptance. An approach which must be pushes more of course, in many places, but it doesn't have much to do with limits of average human mind, how they functioned throughout our evolution (just to mention few, relevant here angles: by a lot of "best effort" guessing, and a bit too generalized perception of independent agents everywhere around)
Which brings us to the other side of the coin... which looks almost like somebody needs some practices to look better than they are (go through a list of cognitive biases if you have any doubt). Gee, like that would something new...
(plus, seeing the "problems" at our level, that of individuals, might be itself erroneous in a way; it's largely irrelevant in grand scheme of things)
PS. You don't have to tell me about "jailbait"...by some chance I have precious very little reasons to respect it, on more "primal" level... not making things easy at all [1]
Heck, if I shave I often get asked for ID when buying alcohol. That's a difference of a decade in apparent and actual age... and even second-schoolers seem to agree (but I have a cut-off at high school - mostly because that's what's certainly legal at my place, and for good reasons - and a late one at that; even then, I demand "absolute clarity of intentions"; oh, also, here highschool overlays with one year of your college)
...whih pretty much means not using it at all. Oh well, I'll be sorry one day;)
[1] (consequently, I end up as "too young" for my peers...)
Historically acceptable... but not really anymore "being largely a taboo in successful & influential" societies (with quite open rationalizations, too - relegates woman to things / waste of their possibilities / oppression / etc.) - at the least, it seems to correlate with very prosperous times and places which lead in all positive societal factors.
A sample of 4600 is few times higher than enough for a conclusion with very high confidence, if you actually dig statistics, about the overall population...
Way more than enough, for an actual experiment (oh look up the words "the cause is unquestionably to be found in that neglect of the experimental study of the problem of Species which supervened on the general acceptance of the Darwinian doctrines" and their typical sources)
Surely if you can readily notice untrustworthy ones, you can distinguish one from the other... (rather easy in this case; oh, and even better: apparently the paper came out of one few remaining "strongly religious" places in the EU - Catholic one, at that [1])
Plus... "I don't believe"? So it's still a matter of belief? How old (vs. ancient "belief approach"[2]) is real understanding of inheritance? And may I remind what silliness we believed for a long time about biological world... real biology essentially started mere ~150 years ago. Before that we just observed singular cases without them making much sense; small snippets without having the perspective of connections between them, how they form a system. Afterwards it all started to fall into place.
Also, here you have just a look at cold demographics. Even "genetically inherited" is a sign of misunderstanding IMHO. It's irrelevant what's the full nature of the trait, how it is precisely passed in for homo sapiens sapiens (oh, and it's not also in us - the trait is relatively widespread in nature, easy to find... what's that if not "natural"?)
We are creatures of not only genes, also memes (for one); and really hardly aware how our minds work (just go through the list of cognitive biases (a bit sad how easily we think of ourselves as decent, "freedom" loving, etc. - how easily our deep need for Just World gets derailed:/ ); remember how split brain patients appear virtually unchanged; how there's one localized brain trauma which results virtually only ("only" as far as extent of symptoms) in people becoming completely blind... without them realizing it), we merely like to convince ourselves into many myths about them (and the world - say, popular harmful BS lies / myth of "we're so important, gods love us, more of us live now than have ever lived!" & ignoring 100+ billion dead homo sapiens sapiens...at least we will be similarly ignored very quickly, so there's some "balance"...); even about reliability of our memory (how, when getting older, we tend to start believing myths about the greatness of our youth - not the least because it makes us feel better when faced with "frustrating" reality of how much better in fact it is "now", for most cases of "now" - that is not merely a general core of anti-liberalism - also, in this case, "there were hardly any gays when I was young, it's the ferment of current society")
Even "homosexuality is inherited" is thinking about it in a wrong way - vs. simply greater fertility of females might be inheritable (male homosexuality being a small side effect... but evolution is indifferent)
[1]Though some would say it strangely fits;p (a buddy of mine, in a monastery... is quite certain that at least around 1/3rd of the brethren are gay, so way above the average)
[2] plus, beliefs don't have to get in the way (NVM people dismissing anything which upsets their ancient answers to questions, shows how shallow their belief is) Look what the Vatican thinks about evolution (and just them means "majority of Christianity"); heck... Mendel, catholic monk, the father of moderns genetics, greatly advancing our understanding of biological world initiated by Darwin.
(@sig) Depends what kind of Lord. Sith, by chance?
(and hey, dubious results aren't very cited, for one...so there are ways to tell what the community thinks about them, even when not blessed with resources allowing to address such)
I actually suspect this might turn out to be an important factor in... serious space colonization (if we'll ever do it), out of all things. No, it almost certainly won't be in the silly, grandiose, almost idyllic styles from virtually all of scifi (which are there just to make the work of writers easier & the consumption more palatable; due to limited imagination); those works are not about any of the wild, unfamiliar from Earthy experiences approaches, very likely required by our Universe.
It will be most likely in circumstances... pretty much requiring (& not at all dissimilar to) approaches from few monasteries, religious orders. Just hijack their drive to "spread the glorious works of deity" (that would include human life), work around few anachronisms of "life is sacred"[1], and off we go...
1. Hence... it must be first and foremost spread in the unimaginably gargantuan space the deity has prepared! - which would be greatly helped by the "evil in vitro" (transport of miniaturized people in deep hibernation is handy also without the doubtful "big jumps between inner systems") and making all local adult wombs available. Even if in a different way - still very humble approach to offspring (as in: not necessarily ever seeing your own, or giving birth to "unrelated" children) and of being a very small and transient part of something much greater.
Latin, assembly? What does that make (often numerous) dialects of ancient Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, Avestan (in practice surely also folk old Persian... eek, Iranian! ),...even if I would list all known, it would be incomplete.
What, the context of trying to give an answer which would give safety from danger? Isn't that not very godlike? Who's the authority here, Caesar or god?
religion is, you guessed it, the "cathedral" of top down closed ideas
Well, not really. Sure, many might claim that, their followers convinced in that... but there are crazy amounts of syncretism around.
When applying some rigor, it's not very clear if local flavors of Christianity are closer to Christianity from X century [1] or to pagan practices from the same time (in either case, vast majority of present "Christians" would be branded - and treated - as very strong heretics by "Christians" living just few short centuries ago)
1. The time of "National Baptism" myth from my place - while the Pagan Reaction from XI century is of course forgotten; when the Christian ruler had to escape, priests & churches were annihilated as readily as it was done few decades earlier to old temples & "holy" men, and the "order" was restored few years later thanks to warriors borrowed from the Holy Roman Emperor (but don't tell that to the true faithful, they often don't like Germans, they get confused...[2]). After a quick look at basic historical demographics, number of priests & parishes, and recorded sermons condemning widespread pagan practices from as late as XVII-XVIII century (recorded = widespread enough to be noticed by higher clergy in the cities), the official PR regarding Christianization starts to look even more suspect.
Looking at the present: only the absolute sketch of Abrahamic mythology followed; many local saints (or Marian devotion) are relatively direct continuations of pagan deities (heck, one mistreated physical puppet / doll was supposed to be Judas from some point); all Church celebrations dominated by ex-pagan customs (and some locally big ones aren't even particularly observed in other Catholic places - but similar celebrations were a hit of local paganism); churches, chapels or crosses being placed even now according to the old rules for "holy places"; Catholic sacred groves and springs (I kid you not); quite clearly praying to the dead, saints or statues (a lot of new opportunities lately;GTranslate works ok); still trying to hijack clearly very old celebrations (summer solstice, most notably... still; and failing for almost a millenium)
2. The 1410 Grunwald battle is even better - basically, "we" managed to beat knighthood from most of Christian Europe which was amassed under the banner of one Crusading Order... Largely thanks to one close alliance (which generally would last centuries afterwards; creating "Commonwealth") with heathen Lithuania; its Duke becoming our king some years before, after some formalities (baptism, etc.) relatively late in his life, 3 days later marrying the reigning 12-year old king (that was her title, to recognize her as an independent monarch). Even better: notable contribution to the victory came from our local Muslims! (Tatars)
But of course (still) cherishing such victory in one of greatest battles of Middle Ages doesn't quite fully register (except for "we were fighting and won with ze Germans, Germans are bad") and we're the "bulwark of Christianity"... well, held very dear by the Vatican (and no wonder, one of few remaining places in Europe with very strong Catholic majority, officially)
All of which is is by no means unique / there's no reason for it to be.
Catholicism itself is enough to talk about majority of Christians. Throw in Eastern Orthodox plus very large part of the rest... and those which you mention are a noise.
Slashdot Mirror
Systems of governance are ultimately a reflection of their society. In this particular case - that of budgetary issues & massive debt - we're talking about a society with masses of people unable to keep balanced personal budgets; generally at the forefront when it comes to rates of living on a debt, consumptionism, etc.
And revolutions tend to not promote the "best" people, but the most ruthless ones.
That would run counter to pretty much every evolutionary reinforced social & mating desires in human females...
Fishbowl Effect. After we have finally had our fun with memes and made a fer .com dollars, the endless years of hyperconnectedness are going to drag on with not even a religious apocalypse to distract us...
Life / internet: pretty much the same crap, over and over, forever.
So, on the same some it is still lost how we have more or less phonetic record of the usage of names, from works in non-Hebrew alphabets... and how it is about friggin' "biblical material"
Oh, I take you fully accept Greek, Aztek or Chinese mythology, because it was collected? "Higher standard"? Bwuahahahaha, you make the Demiurge proud (and why he preferred to persecute dystheists or gnostics...why maltheism could meet the same fat), or whatever is the deity praised in the Bible, the ultimate sinner and damager.
Belorussian KGB of course makes the usage in the headline even more moronic - FSB would do fine, clarification at the beginning of TFS left as is.
It's almost like some are not aware even of how Aramaic and Greek are the languages on the table here, not Hebrew.
...on Earth.
You don't have to actually ride on a bicycle all the time, in rough spots; bikes can be... carried (like if there's a need to go through rivers or down gullies; shouldn't be much worse with a bike than when considering only the supplies you'd already carry). Even when the terrain is unsuitable for riding for some time, using it as a cart can save you lots of effort.
Bringing essentially automatisms (of various kinds) is interesting... it leads to arguing for religious faith in animals.
Of course, those are just more low-level modes of our brains (very non-monolithic - split-brain patients appear almost virtually unchanged; there's even one very localized brain trauma which results in people becoming completely blind... without them realizing it). If we didn't do such mental shortcuts & best-effort guesses, we would be paralyzed by daily events.
Well, it does lead to interesting questions about "religious belief"... oversensitive alertness, universality of perceiving surrounding agents as autonomous, and - again - making mental shortcuts would be some very adaptive traits, leaving their mark in the course of our evolution; and greatly helping emergence of religions (themselves also being adaptive, at the least in social settings)
And actually, the name was Joshua... (the existence not being particularly clear; Romans were crazy with keeping records... but not too much luck in this case, for some reason)
"Most importantly: Science Delivers ... Faith is an idea with no evidence to back it up no matter how adept the 'experts'"
You can easily laid out to most people why some groups of scientists dedicated to particular field are a reliable source. Good luck doing that with all the gods, messiahs, prophets, mediums, etc., to anywhere comparable rigor and honesty.
It's still a dilution of differences; it's trivially straightforward to use reason in accepting conclusions coming from scientists working in particular fields, and to understand the logical validity of the process leading to their acceptance. An approach which must be pushes more of course, in many places, but it doesn't have much to do with limits of average human mind, how they functioned throughout our evolution (just to mention few, relevant here angles: by a lot of "best effort" guessing, and a bit too generalized perception of independent agents everywhere around)
Which brings us to the other side of the coin... which looks almost like somebody needs some practices to look better than they are (go through a list of cognitive biases if you have any doubt). Gee, like that would something new...
(plus, seeing the "problems" at our level, that of individuals, might be itself erroneous in a way; it's largely irrelevant in grand scheme of things)
PS. You don't have to tell me about "jailbait"...by some chance I have precious very little reasons to respect it, on more "primal" level... not making things easy at all [1]
...whih pretty much means not using it at all. Oh well, I'll be sorry one day ;)
Heck, if I shave I often get asked for ID when buying alcohol. That's a difference of a decade in apparent and actual age... and even second-schoolers seem to agree (but I have a cut-off at high school - mostly because that's what's certainly legal at my place, and for good reasons - and a late one at that; even then, I demand "absolute clarity of intentions"; oh, also, here highschool overlays with one year of your college)
[1] (consequently, I end up as "too young" for my peers...)
Historically acceptable... but not really anymore "being largely a taboo in successful & influential" societies (with quite open rationalizations, too - relegates woman to things / waste of their possibilities / oppression / etc.) - at the least, it seems to correlate with very prosperous times and places which lead in all positive societal factors.
A sample of 4600 is few times higher than enough for a conclusion with very high confidence, if you actually dig statistics, about the overall population...
Way more than enough, for an actual experiment (oh look up the words "the cause is unquestionably to be found in that neglect of the experimental study of the problem of Species which supervened on the general acceptance of the Darwinian doctrines" and their typical sources)
Surely if you can readily notice untrustworthy ones, you can distinguish one from the other... (rather easy in this case; oh, and even better: apparently the paper came out of one few remaining "strongly religious" places in the EU - Catholic one, at that [1])
:/ ); remember how split brain patients appear virtually unchanged; how there's one localized brain trauma which results virtually only ("only" as far as extent of symptoms) in people becoming completely blind... without them realizing it), we merely like to convince ourselves into many myths about them (and the world - say, popular harmful BS lies / myth of "we're so important, gods love us, more of us live now than have ever lived!" & ignoring 100+ billion dead homo sapiens sapiens ...at least we will be similarly ignored very quickly, so there's some "balance"...); even about reliability of our memory (how, when getting older, we tend to start believing myths about the greatness of our youth - not the least because it makes us feel better when faced with "frustrating" reality of how much better in fact it is "now", for most cases of "now" - that is not merely a general core of anti-liberalism - also, in this case, "there were hardly any gays when I was young, it's the ferment of current society")
;p (a buddy of mine, in a monastery... is quite certain that at least around 1/3rd of the brethren are gay, so way above the average)
Plus... "I don't believe"? So it's still a matter of belief? How old (vs. ancient "belief approach"[2]) is real understanding of inheritance? And may I remind what silliness we believed for a long time about biological world... real biology essentially started mere ~150 years ago. Before that we just observed singular cases without them making much sense; small snippets without having the perspective of connections between them, how they form a system. Afterwards it all started to fall into place.
Also, here you have just a look at cold demographics. Even "genetically inherited" is a sign of misunderstanding IMHO. It's irrelevant what's the full nature of the trait, how it is precisely passed in for homo sapiens sapiens (oh, and it's not also in us - the trait is relatively widespread in nature, easy to find... what's that if not "natural"?)
We are creatures of not only genes, also memes (for one); and really hardly aware how our minds work (just go through the list of cognitive biases (a bit sad how easily we think of ourselves as decent, "freedom" loving, etc. - how easily our deep need for Just World gets derailed
Even "homosexuality is inherited" is thinking about it in a wrong way - vs. simply greater fertility of females might be inheritable (male homosexuality being a small side effect... but evolution is indifferent)
[1]Though some would say it strangely fits
[2] plus, beliefs don't have to get in the way (NVM people dismissing anything which upsets their ancient answers to questions, shows how shallow their belief is) Look what the Vatican thinks about evolution (and just them means "majority of Christianity"); heck... Mendel, catholic monk, the father of moderns genetics, greatly advancing our understanding of biological world initiated by Darwin.
(@sig) Depends what kind of Lord. Sith, by chance?
...so there are ways to tell what the community thinks about them, even when not blessed with resources allowing to address such)
(and hey, dubious results aren't very cited, for one
I actually suspect this might turn out to be an important factor in... serious space colonization (if we'll ever do it), out of all things. No, it almost certainly won't be in the silly, grandiose, almost idyllic styles from virtually all of scifi (which are there just to make the work of writers easier & the consumption more palatable; due to limited imagination); those works are not about any of the wild, unfamiliar from Earthy experiences approaches, very likely required by our Universe.
It will be most likely in circumstances... pretty much requiring (& not at all dissimilar to) approaches from few monasteries, religious orders. Just hijack their drive to "spread the glorious works of deity" (that would include human life), work around few anachronisms of "life is sacred"[1], and off we go...
1. Hence... it must be first and foremost spread in the unimaginably gargantuan space the deity has prepared! - which would be greatly helped by the "evil in vitro" (transport of miniaturized people in deep hibernation is handy also without the doubtful "big jumps between inner systems") and making all local adult wombs available. Even if in a different way - still very humble approach to offspring (as in: not necessarily ever seeing your own, or giving birth to "unrelated" children) and of being a very small and transient part of something much greater.
Latin, assembly? What does that make (often numerous) dialects of ancient Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, Avestan (in practice surely also folk old Persian ... eek, Iranian! ), ...even if I would list all known, it would be incomplete.
What, the context of trying to give an answer which would give safety from danger? Isn't that not very godlike? Who's the authority here, Caesar or god?
Wonderful, you yourself highlighted "authoritative" :)
religion is, you guessed it, the "cathedral" of top down closed ideas
Well, not really. Sure, many might claim that, their followers convinced in that... but there are crazy amounts of syncretism around.
When applying some rigor, it's not very clear if local flavors of Christianity are closer to Christianity from X century [1] or to pagan practices from the same time (in either case, vast majority of present "Christians" would be branded - and treated - as very strong heretics by "Christians" living just few short centuries ago)
1. The time of "National Baptism" myth from my place - while the Pagan Reaction from XI century is of course forgotten; when the Christian ruler had to escape, priests & churches were annihilated as readily as it was done few decades earlier to old temples & "holy" men, and the "order" was restored few years later thanks to warriors borrowed from the Holy Roman Emperor (but don't tell that to the true faithful, they often don't like Germans, they get confused...[2]). After a quick look at basic historical demographics, number of priests & parishes, and recorded sermons condemning widespread pagan practices from as late as XVII-XVIII century (recorded = widespread enough to be noticed by higher clergy in the cities), the official PR regarding Christianization starts to look even more suspect.
Looking at the present: only the absolute sketch of Abrahamic mythology followed; many local saints (or Marian devotion) are relatively direct continuations of pagan deities (heck, one mistreated physical puppet / doll was supposed to be Judas from some point); all Church celebrations dominated by ex-pagan customs (and some locally big ones aren't even particularly observed in other Catholic places - but similar celebrations were a hit of local paganism); churches, chapels or crosses being placed even now according to the old rules for "holy places"; Catholic sacred groves and springs (I kid you not); quite clearly praying to the dead, saints or statues (a lot of new opportunities lately;GTranslate works ok); still trying to hijack clearly very old celebrations (summer solstice, most notably... still; and failing for almost a millenium)
2. The 1410 Grunwald battle is even better - basically, "we" managed to beat knighthood from most of Christian Europe which was amassed under the banner of one Crusading Order... Largely thanks to one close alliance (which generally would last centuries afterwards; creating "Commonwealth") with heathen Lithuania; its Duke becoming our king some years before, after some formalities (baptism, etc.) relatively late in his life, 3 days later marrying the reigning 12-year old king (that was her title, to recognize her as an independent monarch). Even better: notable contribution to the victory came from our local Muslims! (Tatars)
But of course (still) cherishing such victory in one of greatest battles of Middle Ages doesn't quite fully register (except for "we were fighting and won with ze Germans, Germans are bad") and we're the "bulwark of Christianity"... well, held very dear by the Vatican (and no wonder, one of few remaining places in Europe with very strong Catholic majority, officially)
All of which is is by no means unique / there's no reason for it to be.
Catholicism itself is enough to talk about majority of Christians. Throw in Eastern Orthodox plus very large part of the rest... and those which you mention are a noise.
Religions maintaining "original sense of purpose" are generally known as "extinct" - evolution works here, too; the fittest flourish.
"Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's"