It all really depends on the congregation. My Mormon friends tend to treat the fact that they do "bad things" much more seriously than friends of other faiths, and they've implied there are some pretty severe social consequences for it. In the mostly non-religious Pacific Northwest where I currently live, this is incredibly noticeable, because no other church does this.
However, I've also spent a little time in the Southern states (Mississippi and Georgia mostly) - and found a lot of "mainstream" christian denominations behaving the same way while I was there.
Also, even Mormon friends of mine who have left the church to go off and smoke and drink and have premarital sex or whatever tend to get welcomed back into the church when they want to come back. This usually happens once they find someone they want to get married to, and after that I tend to lose touch with them, so I'm not sure how it goes afterwards.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/bx23551862212177/fulltext.pdf">The article you linked to provides some fairly convincing evidence of localized electromagnetic fields affecting bee behavior, as compared with inactive cell phones (in standby mode) to control for the assertion that this is just because scientists are jamming phones into hives and observing the bees get pissed about it.
What I'm not seeing is how this problem should be exclusive to cell phones. The proposed mechanism is strong emf fields, but radios, walkie-talkies, TV transmissions, etc. should also be affecting bees if this were the case. Of course, it's entirely possible that it wasn't until cell phones became commonplace that the effects of emf on bees became noticeable.
With these data, were I a policymaker, I'd be convinced to fund more research in the area, but it doesn't immediately strike me as the smoking gun for "Ah hah! This is the reason bees are dying!"
You seem to have lost track of what's being argued along the way.
The whole point of this line of argument is comparing religious beliefs - which are either untestable, or have already been proven false - and scientific beliefs, which are often believed before they're "proven" (bad word to use if you're familiar with the scientific method, but good enough to communicate the idea) - so that a great deal of effort goes into refining and testing them to see if they really are true.
If you're not comparing them... What exactly do you think we're talking about?
Explain how any of this is comparable to religion, where every instance of quantifiable claims made by religions has been proven false, leaving only the claims we have no ability to test.
Well, that's just plain inaccurate. The accurate way of stating why religious people pray for something is that they believe that expressing a wish will increase the chances of it happening -- not that it will guarantee that it will happen.
[/quote]
Thing is, prayer has been studied pretty extensively, and there's no evidence that it will [i]actually[/i] increase the chances of anything happening.
The specific examples he gave aren't missing evidence where evidence should be present?
Sun at the center of the Solar System, easily verifiable.
Shape of the earth: Not a perfect sphere, there's been an awful lot of work in this area.
Time slows down as speed increases: Have you used a GPS system recently?
There are plenty of subjects in theoretical physics that aren't fully understood at this point, but the theories are being constantly tested, questioned, and revised as new information is gained. It's not really comparable to religion.
I'm an Engineering student, and don't actually care much for philosophy or politics. Libertarians have a few nice points to their political philosophy, but some pretty glaring flaws too - especially at the extremes. Naturally, you could say the same thing about any political party. In either case, I never brought up politics, and wasn't even approaching it from that angle.
My entire exposure to the self-made man ideal is from a gender studies course (it sounded like, and was, an easy A. Terrible place to meet women though, as legions of young college students already figured out) - where Michael Kimmel's book Manhood in America was part of the required reading.
From the intro to that book; "The Self-Made Man of American mythology was born anxious and insecure, uncoupled from the more stable anchors of landownership or workplace autonomy. Now manhood had to be proved. This "self-maker, self-improving, is always a construction in progress," writes cultural historian Garry Wills. "He must ever be tinkering, improving, adjusting; starting over, fearful his product will get out of date, or rot in the storehouse." This book is a history of the Self-Made Man-ambitious and anxious, creatively resourceful and chronically restive, the builder of culture and among the casualties of his own handiwork, a man who is, as the great French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1832, "restless in the midst of abundance."
The way I define the term 'self-made man' seem to be entirely different from the way you define the term, and from my perspective it has nothing to do with avoiding taxes, or disregarding your fellow citizens, it refers to a cultural ideal of someone who takes ownership of their own life, succeeds through hard work and innate intellectual ability rather than inherited wealth or similar means. It's also a very similar ideal to the "Real individual" the AC was talking about earlier in the thread, which is the entire reason I brought it up.
The Nicomachean Ethic was, again, required reading for a completely different class - I do feel, in retrospect, that I have misinterpreted that passage, but maintain the point I was trying to make is consistent with his writings.
Very recent domestic terrorists in the UK have performed this exact same activity to achieve disastrous results. It's not like the states where some assholes flew a plane into a building 10 years ago, innocent-looking packages are still a real and justified concern.
As the performing parties, it's geocachers who need to be aware of this fact, and take caution to avoid unnecessary suspicion of their activities.
"From the point of view of self-sufficiency the same result seems to follow; for the final good is thought to be self-sufficient. Now by self-sufficient we do not mean that which is sufficient for a man by himself, for one who lives a solitary life, but also for parents, children, wife, and in general for his friends and fellow citizens, since man is born for citizenship. But some limit must be set to this; for if we extend our requirement to ancestors and descendants and friends' friends we are in for an infinite series. Let us examine this question, however, on another occasion; the self-sufficient we now define as that which when isolated makes life desirable and lacking in nothing; and such we think happiness to be; and further we think it most desirable of all things, without being counted as one good thing among others -- if it were so counted it would clearly be made more desirable by the addition of even the least of goods; for that which is added becomes an excess of goods, and of goods the greater is always more desirable. Happiness, then, is something final and self-sufficient, and is the end of action."
Is the most directly relevant quote I ever found, and you can clearly see the parallels between the modern ideal of the self-made man, and the Aristotelian ideal of a completely self-sufficient man. Once again, I recommend a read through the entire book, it's not something that can be easily summed up on a post on a message board.
Keep a checklist of every quality the AC at the top of this conversation mentioned by your side when you're reading, you'll likely be be able to find almost every single one of them written about in great detail.
The specific social and economic conditions of the times change through the years, but the essential nature of mankind really hasn't.
Common misconception. The Earliest writing I'm aware of touting the ideal self-made man was by Aristotle in 350 B.C, In The Nicomachean Ethic. Give it a read sometime, lots of it is interesting and timeless wisdom.
I'd be willing to bet a sufficiently dedicated historian could find an even older piece espousing that same philosophy.
The 'real individual' you describe seems to be just another set of dogmatically programmed beliefs. It's very similar to the "self-made man" archetype that has been touted as the ideal person to be for several thousand years.
Granted, this is an ideal intended for educated upper-class individuals to strive for, rather than the "type-cast automatons" you denigrate, but it has nevertheless been instilled in you by the very same forces you rail against.
People do things that are completely illegal all the time. Cite the actual legislative action that rendered the law I cited null and void rather than relaying hearsay.
No, but the 'determined enough' crowd are able to defeat any economical security system we have in place. To be 100% sure it'd mean strip searches with body cavity bonus on every person going through the checkpoint. Hell, it'd probably even be possible to defeat that!
You get a large amount of safety for a small amount of security, but the safety doesn't necessarily go up much more when you crank up the security.
For the same reasons bags are searched and people are patted down at concerts, sports games, etc. Even if there's no sinister plot, people are going to be uncomfortably close to each other for a long period of time, and might well be drinking. Prevent them from carrying weapons in there and the rate of violence goes down.
The difference is when going to a concert, the security officials can go through lines about 10x faster because they're not there for theater, they're there for the minimum effective security check.
Slashdot Mirror
It all really depends on the congregation. My Mormon friends tend to treat the fact that they do "bad things" much more seriously than friends of other faiths, and they've implied there are some pretty severe social consequences for it. In the mostly non-religious Pacific Northwest where I currently live, this is incredibly noticeable, because no other church does this.
However, I've also spent a little time in the Southern states (Mississippi and Georgia mostly) - and found a lot of "mainstream" christian denominations behaving the same way while I was there.
Also, even Mormon friends of mine who have left the church to go off and smoke and drink and have premarital sex or whatever tend to get welcomed back into the church when they want to come back. This usually happens once they find someone they want to get married to, and after that I tend to lose touch with them, so I'm not sure how it goes afterwards.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/bx23551862212177/fulltext.pdf">The article you linked to provides some fairly convincing evidence of localized electromagnetic fields affecting bee behavior, as compared with inactive cell phones (in standby mode) to control for the assertion that this is just because scientists are jamming phones into hives and observing the bees get pissed about it.
What I'm not seeing is how this problem should be exclusive to cell phones. The proposed mechanism is strong emf fields, but radios, walkie-talkies, TV transmissions, etc. should also be affecting bees if this were the case. Of course, it's entirely possible that it wasn't until cell phones became commonplace that the effects of emf on bees became noticeable.
With these data, were I a policymaker, I'd be convinced to fund more research in the area, but it doesn't immediately strike me as the smoking gun for "Ah hah! This is the reason bees are dying!"
You seem to have lost track of what's being argued along the way.
The whole point of this line of argument is comparing religious beliefs - which are either untestable, or have already been proven false - and scientific beliefs, which are often believed before they're "proven" (bad word to use if you're familiar with the scientific method, but good enough to communicate the idea) - so that a great deal of effort goes into refining and testing them to see if they really are true.
If you're not comparing them... What exactly do you think we're talking about?
What the hell are you talking about?
Explain how any of this is comparable to religion, where every instance of quantifiable claims made by religions has been proven false, leaving only the claims we have no ability to test.
Leave it to me to just ignore the preview
[quote]
Well, that's just plain inaccurate. The accurate way of stating why religious people pray for something is that they believe that expressing a wish will increase the chances of it happening -- not that it will guarantee that it will happen.
[/quote]
Thing is, prayer has been studied pretty extensively, and there's no evidence that it will [i]actually[/i] increase the chances of anything happening.
The specific examples he gave aren't missing evidence where evidence should be present?
Sun at the center of the Solar System, easily verifiable.
Shape of the earth: Not a perfect sphere, there's been an awful lot of work in this area.
Time slows down as speed increases: Have you used a GPS system recently?
There are plenty of subjects in theoretical physics that aren't fully understood at this point, but the theories are being constantly tested, questioned, and revised as new information is gained. It's not really comparable to religion.
Nope.
I'm an Engineering student, and don't actually care much for philosophy or politics. Libertarians have a few nice points to their political philosophy, but some pretty glaring flaws too - especially at the extremes. Naturally, you could say the same thing about any political party. In either case, I never brought up politics, and wasn't even approaching it from that angle.
My entire exposure to the self-made man ideal is from a gender studies course (it sounded like, and was, an easy A. Terrible place to meet women though, as legions of young college students already figured out) - where Michael Kimmel's book Manhood in America was part of the required reading.
From the intro to that book; "The Self-Made Man of American mythology was born anxious and insecure, uncoupled from the more stable anchors of landownership or workplace autonomy. Now manhood had to be proved. This "self-maker, self-improving, is always a construction in progress," writes cultural historian Garry Wills. "He must ever be tinkering, improving, adjusting; starting over, fearful his product will get out of date, or rot in the storehouse." This book is a history of the Self-Made Man-ambitious and anxious, creatively resourceful and chronically restive, the builder of culture and among the casualties of his own handiwork, a man who is, as the great French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1832, "restless in the midst of abundance."
The way I define the term 'self-made man' seem to be entirely different from the way you define the term, and from my perspective it has nothing to do with avoiding taxes, or disregarding your fellow citizens, it refers to a cultural ideal of someone who takes ownership of their own life, succeeds through hard work and innate intellectual ability rather than inherited wealth or similar means. It's also a very similar ideal to the "Real individual" the AC was talking about earlier in the thread, which is the entire reason I brought it up.
The Nicomachean Ethic was, again, required reading for a completely different class - I do feel, in retrospect, that I have misinterpreted that passage, but maintain the point I was trying to make is consistent with his writings.
That's well and nice, but you seem to be arguing with someone else. Someone who actually argued in favor of any of that stuff you just debunked.
Very recent domestic terrorists in the UK have performed this exact same activity to achieve disastrous results. It's not like the states where some assholes flew a plane into a building 10 years ago, innocent-looking packages are still a real and justified concern.
As the performing parties, it's geocachers who need to be aware of this fact, and take caution to avoid unnecessary suspicion of their activities.
Stop using fixed length fonts.
From Book 1, Chapter 7:
"From the point of view of self-sufficiency the same result seems to follow; for the final good is thought to be self-sufficient. Now by self-sufficient we do not mean that which is sufficient for a man by himself, for one who lives a solitary life, but also for parents, children, wife, and in general for his friends and fellow citizens, since man is born for citizenship. But some limit must be set to this; for if we extend our requirement to ancestors and descendants and friends' friends we are in for an infinite series. Let us examine this question, however, on another occasion; the self-sufficient we now define as that which when isolated makes life desirable and lacking in nothing; and such we think happiness to be; and further we think it most desirable of all things, without being counted as one good thing among others -- if it were so counted it would clearly be made more desirable by the addition of even the least of goods; for that which is added becomes an excess of goods, and of goods the greater is always more desirable. Happiness, then, is something final and self-sufficient, and is the end of action."
Is the most directly relevant quote I ever found, and you can clearly see the parallels between the modern ideal of the self-made man, and the Aristotelian ideal of a completely self-sufficient man. Once again, I recommend a read through the entire book, it's not something that can be easily summed up on a post on a message board.
Keep a checklist of every quality the AC at the top of this conversation mentioned by your side when you're reading, you'll likely be be able to find almost every single one of them written about in great detail.
The specific social and economic conditions of the times change through the years, but the essential nature of mankind really hasn't.
Common misconception. The Earliest writing I'm aware of touting the ideal self-made man was by Aristotle in 350 B.C, In The Nicomachean Ethic. Give it a read sometime, lots of it is interesting and timeless wisdom.
I'd be willing to bet a sufficiently dedicated historian could find an even older piece espousing that same philosophy.
The 'real individual' you describe seems to be just another set of dogmatically programmed beliefs. It's very similar to the "self-made man" archetype that has been touted as the ideal person to be for several thousand years.
Granted, this is an ideal intended for educated upper-class individuals to strive for, rather than the "type-cast automatons" you denigrate, but it has nevertheless been instilled in you by the very same forces you rail against.
People do things that are completely illegal all the time. Cite the actual legislative action that rendered the law I cited null and void rather than relaying hearsay.
You seem to be delusional. Seek professional help.
The interface changed, he's "not a tech person" and couldn't figure it out for a day.
I'm willing to believe it's the truth, that he's an idiot, but it's not a valid excuse for anything.
No, but the 'determined enough' crowd are able to defeat any economical security system we have in place. To be 100% sure it'd mean strip searches with body cavity bonus on every person going through the checkpoint. Hell, it'd probably even be possible to defeat that!
You get a large amount of safety for a small amount of security, but the safety doesn't necessarily go up much more when you crank up the security.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_%C2%A7_86a
Now fuck off.
The reason constitutional protections exist is because we have certain inalienable rights
You're arguing semantics for no reason, and nonsensical because of it.
I honestly can't tell if this is someone being serious, or a Troll. Poe's law strikes again!
For the same reasons bags are searched and people are patted down at concerts, sports games, etc. Even if there's no sinister plot, people are going to be uncomfortably close to each other for a long period of time, and might well be drinking. Prevent them from carrying weapons in there and the rate of violence goes down.
The difference is when going to a concert, the security officials can go through lines about 10x faster because they're not there for theater, they're there for the minimum effective security check.
Kids need to be prepared for the inevitable zombie apocalypse.
This is ridiculous.
Looking good takes a great deal of work. Summary writer is just whining because they're ugly, and don't want to put in the work to be beautiful.
I'm not going to hire an Engineer who can't be arsed to learn math, and I'm not going to date a girl who can't be arsed to stay in shape.