Peterkin

Doesn't sound PC to me! As for the statistical difference between old people and young on their attitude to inclusive/civil public discourse, it's not quite as simple as that looks. What it really means is that people who are old now were young and middle-aged when they advocated for or pushed back against the modification of language to reflect a wider acceptance of differences - and that generation is still divided along the same line - while people who are young adults now have grown up with the changed norm and take it for granted. They don't make offensive ethnic jokes or call damaged war veterans 'cripple', simply because in their formative years, that was no longer an approved attitude. But some of the reactionary old have still not gotten over losing.

That would be nice.

That one: among others. as child-friendly celebrations of Jesus the redeemer. The first to encourage obedient behaviour and the spirit of giving; the second, initiated to subsume pagan fertility festivals into the Christian cult of sacrifice, but little children aren't supposed to know that about rabbits. More euphemism, same purpose.

As I explained before, that's not what the instruction was for. But, okay. You win: I won't repeat it again.

Cats do. Robins do. Wolves do. Whales do. Children don't raise themselves; don't learn the practical skills to feed, defend and house themselves, or the social skills to fit into a society, without instruction. Why in the world do you suggest that no human children were taught anything before Galileo?

It might also be of some value to note the incidence of particular kinds of extreme behaviour in relation to their socio-economic/cultural context. Such statistics might shed light on general root causes, which might be more fruitful to address than devising a final solution to individual instances. Bold to indicate that I'm not making unsubstantiated claims; just speculating. I am, however, sniffing a similarity to rat behaviour. (PDF)

https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=Effective+criminal+rehabilitation&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=young+offender+rehabilitation&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart https://www.trendwyoming.org/articles/proven-ways-to-reduce-recidivism/ Like this? Should I make the assumption instead that everyone convicted of a misdemeanour is also guilty of serious crime that wasn't prosecuted? Or maybe that there are no innocent people - only criminals who haven't been caught? Or maybe that they were the wrong colour, walking down the wrong street. Or had the same name as somebody the police were looking for. Or it seemed like their least bad option. Or lots of reasons --- The Law is not infallible. https://www.law.ac.uk/about/press-releases/wrongful-convictions/ Sounds like a good opportunity for rehabilitation. https://www.apa.org/research/action/aftercare that' of course is what The Vat and I have been about in crime prevention. Improve social services at the lowest economic strata, and there won't be so many criminals. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047235220300623 More 'claims', more scraps of evidence. No TV shows, I'm afraid.

I wouldn't bet. Certainly not without more factual information regarding what happens to people 1. in prison 2.upon release from prison 3. on probation and 4. on community service. Especially in the case of non-custodial sentences, one must presume the offense was not violent and didn't pose a threat to anyone's safety and it seems unlikely that someone finishing that kind of sentence would suddenly turn homicidal. Did he murder anyone? That's a more interesting comment on the society than on the character of "criminals". It's always worth checking what kinds of crime are committed in what situations, as well as what normal behaviours are classed as criminal and what crimes are classed as business acumen. As for the wife-killer, that's a class by itself. Intense personal hatred is a thing apart from ordinary criminality for fun and profit or as a fall-back occupation for the unemployed. No institution can fix that in an isolated individual - it has to be resolved, if it can be resolved, between the two antagonists.

Even more reform attempts, I think, are undermined by a thirst for revenge. You know the kind of attitude: Soft on crime. Coddling evildoers. Oh, sure, he invades your home and you send him to summer camp? They don't deserve pity; they deserve hanging! And that attitude quickly (not to say self-servingly) translates to underfunding of rehabilitation programs and privatizing prisons, so that saving money or making money take priority over rehabilitation. Some programs do work - have always worked. https://web.connectnetwork.com/rehabilitation-for-inmates/ But nothing works if the program doesn't receive enough support. There has to be a societal commitment, starting with government policy, including law enforcement, jurisprudence, a correctional facilities planned and structured around rehabilitation rather than punishment or mere containment, and community involvement. Maybe some people are not fixable. I'd like to see an honest effort at trying to fix them before i came to that conclusion. Even more, i would like to see an honest effort at not breaking them in the first place.

84% of the world's population is still filling in the gaps with superstition. It's no longer about an explanation for lightning, volcanoes, eclipses and meteorites, all of which science has explained completely. Now, it's about refusing to accept death - even though science has explained that, too. Might it not always have been more about mortality than it ever was about explanations for the causes of natural phenomena? Science progresses, yet gods keep their faithful and people never want to die. I think those three facts are related. In fact, it seems obvious to me.

Disagree. It probably as you already have said is a possibility, a reason why they created the supernatural in their minds. I equate religion with supernatural. If a need for the supernatural is due to lack of access to scientific knowledge, why do all the people today, with all their access to so much scientific knowledge, including many who are immersed in scientific knowledge, still need the supernatural?

I didn't say that. Fear of many things has always been with us, and magical thinking has always been, as it still is, one of the ways we cope with fear. I said early men were probably not as afraid of the unexplained cause of natural phenomena as modern people assume. Their immediate, pressing fears were of hunger, fire, flood, cold, predators and each other. The mythologies I've read strongly suggest that the main purpose of those of stories was not the explanation of weather or volcanoes: though both appear in the stories, their nature is not deeply investigated. The main purpose of creation myths is group identity, solidarity, an expression of man's emotional relationship with his world, and some forms of magical control over the things they couldn't fight. As civilizations grew, so did the intricacy of magic and the regimentation of myth to the service of power-structure, social order, law-making and so forth. The early myths are different from the modern ones in significant ways - and the supernatural contents of a religions is not - afaics - related to the state of science and technology. That's right. It is on their shoulders that we so unappreciatively stand and crow about our accomplishments. And that keeps having nothing to do with religion! All those modern billions who have plenty of science to draw upon, and who do draw upon science, daily and hourly, even for the dissemination of their faith, who still profess reliance on some god (Two of the most popular of whom seem to me far less credible than Raven or Kaang, which is why I compared the modern and ancient gods earlier). Intellect, emotion and spiritual yearning (or awe) have always coexisted, regardless of how advanced each one was in its history at any given time. Indeed, science has served religion, just as it has served agriculture, war, crime, medicine, politics, industry, entertainment and communication. Religion has served society in various other ways. It could be a reason. But it's not obvious, and I have no basis - based on the mythology itself - to believe that it's the primary reason. That's a popular assumption which I think has been imperfectly evaluated for probability. Stay clear of buses. Mars needs boots.

Nothing obvious about it. Long-held misconceptions are being overturned every year, as the scientific investigative tools keep improving and new finds come to light. I don't pretend to keep up with the literature, but neither do I buy the popular assumptions regarding our ancestors - who must have been so much stupider and more frightened than we are. (I'm not sure it's possible to be stupider and more frightened than we are.) And I get prickly when the real pioneers of science are derided, just because they may also have had superstitions - much like modern man. That must be founded on bedrock fact, since you keep asserting it. I hope your hopes come true.

hmph! You still get a feast day Don't spend it all with Jordan Peterson.

Your journey - any ex-religionist's particular journey - parallels that of civilizations, usually their own. Your personal observations got mixed in, but I wasn't addressing them directly; at least half the time, I was addressing beecee's take on primitive cults. Anyway, I'll offer one last personal remark: I was brought up in a loosely Christian environment; family of Protestants and Catholics who didn't attend church regularly and didn't question the basics of their faith - God and Jesus were just sort of in the background. We did Christmas, Easter eggs, St. Nicholas' and other relatives' saint days. (I don't have one, BTW; was named after a pagan who never achieved beatitude) As a child, I enjoyed both kinds of service - as theater, without comprehension. Didn't care for some of the Bible stories but liked the pictures. Then I started reading the Bible and a lot of its content stuck in my craw. It all unravelled after that, pretty fast. Nothing to do with science or the birth of the universe - just the internal implausibility and contradiction of their own stories; the self-proclaimed character of their god. Much later, I became interested in all the other stories - still am. Something non-factual can still be interesting, and the facts around its fabrication, even more so.

It's catch-your-own sushi.

It's not a contest for me. But it is for many, many people - and not an equal contest for most of them. Same way He does now: in their imagination. That's the essence of magical thinking. I was recounting the evolution of deity in human cultures. Not for argument's sake, but because I like anthropology. Of course, that doesn't rule out obtuseness. One can be interested in many sciences without obsessing over that first fraction of a second. There was a question about atheism and theism. I was addressing that - not advocating for any philosophy of life. I'm not sure we ask the same life's big questions. For the ones I've asked, I have some partial answers, and that's probably the best i can do. I accept that nobody gets to know everything they've ever been curious about - life isn't long enough, human knowledge isn't wide enough and we're not smart enough. Probably. I'd like to say, certainly, but of course, I'll never find out. No matter how many mashed potato hills I construct, they're not coming for me. I don't remember. In mud, most likely. Yes. Because it's all the social life I have these Covid days. I'm not debating anyone. In that instance, I was pointing out one difference between religious and secular thought. I was referring to the belief cited - the hypothetical second person - not anything you yourself believe now or may have believed at any time in the past. It was in no wise meant to be personal. However, what I thought was a discussion about the evolution of religions and the concept of deity seems to have become personal. So I withdraw any comments that were taken that way and won't make any more. Is that agreeable?

So? How is an indifferent/absent creator preferable to an indifferent long-ago explosion? Why do people find the idea of intelligent design (even though the creator doesn't care) more attractive than the idea of physics, which also doesn't care? Scary to you is not obviously scary to someone who lives in the open and has never known anything else. Why animals and early people feared lightning was not lack of knowledge behind it, it's knowledge of what comes after it: fire. That's a real and practical fear, not a superstitious one. What they need a god for is not to explain it but to protect them from it. Volcanic eruptions are local; people who lived near active volcanoes did make a fetish of them; nobody who didn't live near one knew anything about them. AFIK, no explanation has been given by religion, beyond "that's another way the gods can kill you if you don't do as I say." Solar eclipses don't come around to the same area for a long time - very few primitives will have seen more than one in his lifetime. People might have been scared when they saw one, but it was over in 7 minutes and nothing happened to them. People made up stories about it - and that's all they are: stories. They don't promote a Big Giant Head kind of god. The same Somebody who has it in for you. Coyote? A kelpie? Old Man River? Any supernatural entity may be harmful or helpful to humans. No. It doesn't have to be omnipotent or a creator. The supernatural being in charge of the particular phenomenon was sufficient. You have a problem with too much rain or not enough rain? You talk to the rain spirit, do the ritual, kill a pigeon. You want to have a baby? Talk to the ghost of Midwife at her grave and offer her some oranges. Gods didn't get so uppity until civilization, and then they just kept growing and growing - because of all the wars, and because, after each war, the gods of defeated nations were added to the pantheon of of an empire, and when there were overlapping spheres of influence (everybody had their own god of the underworld, god of corn, etc.) the big imperial ones subsumed the vassal nations' gods. By the time the Roman Empire imagined itself ruling the whole world, it's adopted Jewish deity had been promoted to Lord of Creation.... and incidentally pushed so far out of reach that the faithful turned to local saints for help - just as they had to local deities, back when they were pagan. I have no idea. Or interest, really. I've never thought the origin and extent of the universe were any of my business. I suspect most primitive people felt this way and most modern people feel this way, but of course I can't prove it. The difference is, we're okay with not having an authoritative answer from on high; we're okay with trying to figure it out, one little clue and setback at a time. And we don't demand that you fall on your knees, burn witches, slit the throats of rams or promise never to have carnal knowledge of stinky girls. No. It does not apply to theists. Their whole shtick is knowing absolutely and exclusively. I'm sure there are. Can you quote them in context? There are people who know all kinds of crazy and smart things. And everyone who listens to them has a reason for believing one rather than another. The critical word there is highlighted. If you demand a reason for the universe to exist, and moreover demand that this reason should make sense in a human-centric comprehension, you're stuck with a small range of options. It's a whole lot easier to make up a human-type reason if you first make up a human-type creator. But then, since your information is limited, your god starts showing contradictions, conceptual errors.... Who said there has to be a reason, and why did you believe him? You shouldn't. You should only pay attention to literate, civilized slave-owners who stoned people to death for being gay. As a wise man recently said: Why should I give a rat's ass which of two improbable things doesn't give a rat's ass about me?

Kicking the can down the road, or up one level, still doesn't get you an answer. If nothing existed before nature but supernature, what made supernature? The only honest answer is : We don't know. But there are plenty of dishonest answers from people who claim to know, absolutelye and exclusively, and then demand something from you - money, a dress-code, sacrifice, obedience, your life or an enemy's... something that's a lot harder to give than some glib answer like Goddonit. Anyway, the Biblical, Talmudic, Vedic, etc. description of origins don't include much of the universe - mostly just earth and immediate environs at the center of a black glass bubble painted with stars. I can see switching from that limited certainty to cosmology with all its gaps might give you momentary pause, but I can't see it as a difficult choice - especially if you do even the most superficial comparison among creation stories. It doesn't support of contradict anything. How is an indifferent/absent creator preferable to an indifferent long-ago explosion? Thunder and lightning were commonplace for people living in nature, having evolved in nature. City folk seem much more impressed by weather. meteor hits are rarely survivable - which may be why we have so few reference them in folklore. Comfort and solace, yes; I've never disputed those as functions of religion. I can only think of one reason why ancient man would be more afraid of natural phenomena than other animals living in the same environment: his imagination. Bad shit happens; therefore Somebody's out to get me. If I can get that Somebody on my side, say by offering up the heart of my rival, perhaps Somebody will protect me and smite the other football team instead. Sure, it's about magic, bribing and harnessing magic. It's not about understanding why.

I believe the most significant word there is "we". Other species take their environment for granted; though aware of themselves, "How comes I?" does not seem to concern them. All the earliest belief systems - long before organized religion - start with a creation story. This sometimes does and sometimes does not include the origin of land, water and sky, but it invariably includes the origin of the people telling the story. There are usually some tales regarding celestial bodies, landmarks, animals, weather phenomena, trees - which all predate humans, often with no origin story of their own. All these things can be personified, spoken-to and revered. But they are never explained. The spirit-story doesn't delve any deeper into the character of winds than 'Then North Wind was so angry with Antaki that he took back his daughter...' Yet these same people would have a thorough understanding of wind speed, direction, temperature, humidity, seasonal change, etc. that would enable them to plan hunts, fishing trips and migration. They don't need the stories to use weather; they need the stories to answer "Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here?" All kinds of different answers; none of them practical or meant to be taken literally. There seem to be some recurring themes, though, from parts of the world that could not possibly have had contact. Water as a starting point is one. Another is man being made from earth. Animal spirits and deities are very common. And this idea: The significance of language. Those excerpt are from Inuit mythology - a particularly imaginative culture. It's the one most exercises humans. Always looking for reflective surfaces! Whoa! There is really quite a considerable body of evidence for the natural origin of life and it's not matched by the evidence for a supernatural one. And when you consider how coherent the natural explanation is compared to the welter of supernatural ones... well.... Anyway, whether you evolved from an ape or some god fashioned you from mud hardly makes any difference. What's important is having a story to be at the center of. Because mud is better than apes. But then, we apes go back to mud, as well - it's just longer ago.

That would explain why neither has claim to universal truth. We can't really know what ancient man needed gods for - nor the exact route whereby those earliest supernatural beings were imagined and elaborated and adapted before civilization. I have some basis to think it was not primarily for explanations. Those same ancient peoples did use science and technology to solve their practical problems: they improvised, fabricated, invented and improved on tools, dwellings, food production and preservation, quite independently of their spiritual life. That served, and still does serve, a different function. People don't go to church to inquire about things; they go there to pray for things. They want someone more powerful themselves to care for and help them. This ancient temple is already a very sophisticated example of organized religion - far more so than the myths of nomadic peoples or hut-dwellers - and yet appears to explain nothing at all.

I'm an atheist. They wouldn't likely be talking to me. On a more serious note: many extraordinary claims are made on behalf of any number of supernatural entities, by Earth-bound humans, who do not then scruple to turn around and accuse me of making claims to knowledge i can't possibly have.

Exactly. Have they?

I have, more than you might think. What were their exact words? Did they say "Nothing that can be described as divine can possibly exist anywhere in the universe." or "No gods exist."? In the latter case, did you then follow up with a question "What do you include under 'gods'?" See the definition does get stretched out in theoretical arguments. "God" begins as either the specific named character at the center of a particular religion, or as a collective term for all the supernatural controlling entities humans have worshipped, thn is stretched to include supernatural beings that are not objects of worships but were supposed to have powers of some kind, then to vague ideas about communal coherence, any kind of spirit, anima, creative force, natural phenomenon, or maybe something that set of the big bang.... The more it's prodded, the more amorphous godhood becomes. So, when somebody makes a statement like "I know that my Redeeemer liveth." or "There are no gods." that's usually a proclamation of their own belief. Neither has claim to universal truth. It is, though. The Big All-Purpose God of modern Christianity didn't spring fully formed from the head of a guy in bearskin. There have been myths and legends and stories and songs about all manner of supernatural entities from ghosts to angels, from the minuscule pixie who lives in a bluebell to the demon at the heart of a maelstrom. They're not all creative and destructive being of great power; some are benign, some are vindictive, predatory or protective; they bring rain or fire, fertility or death - all kinds of gods and spirits. So it's quite fair to take the one familiar and poorly understood word 'god' or 'fairy' out of the question and raise it up one level: Is there anything supernatural?

I judge more by his actions. Someone, for example, who proclaims his faith in the Christian god, in ultimate judgments and everlasting life - and yet behaves in ways that contravene the tenets of his professed faith, you can tell that he doesn't believe: if he did, he'd be afraid to behave that way. If you look around, there are plenty of pious atheists who tell you the opposite of what they believe. Someone may tell that they don't believe. They don't always explain why they don't believe. And even if they do, they're not always telling the real reason or the whole reason - they might not even know all of their reason. They've constructed an explanation, yes, but it doesn't account for all the impressions, conversations, readings, ideas, reflections, responses and emotions that went into the current mind-set. You can't account for that long complicated thought- process; much of it is subliminal. They may have never been indoctrinated, and so encountered various forms of religion on a purely theoretical level. They may have been steeped in one specific religion from infancy and struggled with their own skepticism and their family's disapproval. They may have been brought up in one religious culture and transplanted to a different culture and struck by the contrast. They may have been believers and something happened to shake their faith, or vice versa. There are many routes even to a minor conviction, and this conviction involves an entire world-view. So when somebody tells you they don't believe in god, you can't know from that statement whether it relates or doesn't relate to the dangers of religion or anything else. The word itself is so variously defined that when someone says "There are no gods" you know very little about what they actually think on the subject of deity, the supernatural and organized religion.