Peterkin

What? You don't think a curmudgeon can love a dog? Or perhaps that a confirmed atheist arrived at that conclusion without having considered readily available alternatives?

I'm very sorry for your loss and know exactly how you feel, having been there more than once. It should be a great consolation that you'll meet again in heaven - because I'm sure you are a good person. The prospect of being reunited with loved ones is perhaps the most persuasive argument for an afterlife, much more so than reward and punishment.

It's not because they're contented (that would be cattle, anyway), it's because they are herded in a direction of the shepherd's choosing, not their own. I very much doubt the prospect of eternal hellfire gives people peace. Doesn't seem to take it away, either, since the people who believe in it think it's for the unbelievers, not themselves, regardless of how deceitfully, cruelly and rapaciously they act. In the NT, those who didn't come up to snuff were 'cast out' while the good ones dwelt in the house of the Lord forever, but then the church fathers dredged up a couple of OT prophets who threatened final judgment and eternal torment for those Jehovah disliked. Many ancient religions have some kind of afterlife, more or less pleasant according to one's behaviour or station in life. The idea doesn't seem to have modified their behaviour any more than it does ours. So, ultimately, it makes no difference whatever.

Evil is that which humans recognize as any deliberate act or intention that destroys people and their communities. Can't. He's a drive-by-shooter, not a warrior. He'll blitz every forum he can join under different handles with the same predetermined list of biblical topics, paste walls'o'text everywhere and then he'll disappear.

It fell out of favour for several reasons. 1. Most people didn't like it. It had been shoved on them by rulers who wanted more soldiers, and the marriages were generally business transactions. 1a) For one man to support a household of several wives and their children was an enormous burden. Only the rich could afford it. 1b). He was tired enough from working all day - now, he's got to satisfy three or four women at night? 1c) He has to hear them complaining about one another, about the crowding in his too-small house, how he doesn't bring home enough grain and olive oil, about how he's neglecting each one's children in favour of the others. 1d) Three or four women in one household can manage their affairs just fine, so long as there is no man whose favour matters to complicate things. 1e) Women tend to value their offspring above all things else. If they have to compete for the rights and prosperity of their children, they can get downright ugly. (Check the bible if you don't believe me.) 2. It was a nightmare for civil servants to keep track of who was married to whom and descended from whom and related to what other families and who had claims on the inheritance of which grandparent. 3. Young persons have a proclivity for falling in love one to one. Once that happens, they tend to crave the undivided attention and devotion of the object of their affection. Very few can be attracted to several at the same time, or bear with equanimity their partner treating others the same way as themselves. This can lead to domestic discord. Kings elsewhere also had many wives and concubines, most sent to them as tribute by conquered nations. In some cultures, when the king died, the concubines and sometimes the wives and horses too, were buried with them. They owned people. That's not polygamy; that's despotism. It was also discontinued because people didn't like it.

Nope. All of 'em. There is nothing hypothetical about any of the gods people have worshipped. The bones of their sacrificial victims testify. Jehovah is the biggest hypocrite of all, according to his self-styled biographers. Of course, he was conceived in the likeness of a bigger, meaner, more powerful Abraham, so what can you expect but a loving father who kills his son to appease himself? He is said to have created man in his own image and fashioned woman from a mere sparerib. (This is the version Christians prefer. But the first version, the one that's most likely to have come from Chaldea of Genesis has him making lots of both, just as he made lots of other animals. They left it in, I suppose due to editor's oversight and later nobody dared to mess with the holy text.) But then, look at two fun-house mirrors showing two deformed images. Which reflects which? Priesthoods in different hierarchical societies invent the gods that best exemplify their own rulers, then add some embellishments and magnify. Then they set the ruler's requirements into a code of religious tenets - divine laws to be obeyed on pain of the most horrendous punishments they could devise. Then imposed them on the people and forbade the teaching - or even suggestion - of any alternative ways of thinking. That's all right. I can't think what it could possibly produce anyway Big time!

Okay. I'm saying he has predicted the outcome, according to what voters are concerned about, based on a reasonably functioning system of counting. He does not seem to have factored in election tampering, but tacitly admitted - changing to electoral college - that the voters are no longer the deciding factor. The decreasing margins between winner and loser (as in 2000) indicate the acceleration of tampering. There is no way to apply the same criteria to the level that interference reaches after an unprecedented event like the mob invading the Capitol and a self-proclaimed army threatening civil war.

The thing about gods is: by definition, they are above morality. A lot of them are bastards or the female equivalent, but that's okay, because they have eternal sacred immunity.

But He loves you!!! He just takes tough love to the ultimate level.

Fear of post-mortem punishment (and hope of post-mortem reward) only control the gullible meek, who were never a danger to to social fabric. The dangerous ones who preach it know they've made that shit up, so it doesn't prevent them doing whatever they like, while they can use it to elicit violence from believers who would behave better if they feared the wrath of fellow man.

And some who are determined to and do engage in the most extreme of antisocial behaviours wear archbishop's miters. They preach the fear of hellfire, yet are not themselves deterred by it. The consequences of antisocial behaviour are administered by the society. If the sociopath is persuasive enough, the antisocial behaviour is shared by the majority of his compatriots. Thus, they organize the society in a rigid hierarchy, with the few in command wielding power through fear of punishment, both on earth and beyond. A community that does not live in fear is better able to co-operate, share and prosper.

That, too, is in the past. Biden's victory happened in spite of Republican states having committed every kind of chicanery they could get away with - more egregious at each cycle. This has been general knowledge for decades. Had the votes been accurately counted, Biden would have won by a much wider margin. This time, the MAGA faction is pulling out all the obstacles to keeping potential Democratic voters out of the polling booth and disqualifying their votes if they do cast one. And they're already gearing up to contest every district Trump loses. (If that doesn't work, there's always violence....) They're calling for a jihad on a slip of a pop singer, because she objected to being falsely depicted in their advertising. Expect nothing sane from these people!

This method of prediction appears to me outmoded: pre-Trump, pre-Covid, from a time when mainstream media reported factual news and votes were accurately represented at the ballot counting. Nostalgic, almost.

I also recommend (not only to my British friends) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chavs:_The_Demonization_of_the_Working_Class and https://hazelhenderson.com/the-politics-of-the-solar-age/

Jesus fled that big revivalist tent decades ago and has been too ashamed to look back. Why did you bother to ask that question?

Decentralize, distribute, diversify. No eco-conscious government would subsidize fossil fuel production or turning prairies into oil fields, right? No responsible government would allow the producers of fossil fuel to despoil oceans and wilderness, right? The Grid was never a good idea. It's wasteful, expensive, unreliable and vulnerable. So. Take energy production away from the cartels and put it under the direct control of the people who use the energy. Every town, farm, factory and urban neighbourhood should have its independent generating equipment - usually a combination of two or more available sources. Tide and wind on shorelines, hydro and solar along riverbanks, solar, wind and geothermal in northern latitudes - whatever is most convenient and causes the least disruption to the environment. Similarly, every individual dwelling should be as energy-independent as possible, with emergency access to the communal reserves. Many clever devices are already in use; improvements are coming along every day. They should get a lot more air-time on broadcast media, so that people become aware of and familiar with them. Communities could benefit greatly from financial help to make a transition from dependency on corporate suppliers to local energy production. The new jobs might also prevent some bright young people leaving rural communities for the cities. But a great deal of improvement could be made in the cities, too. Every big office building and apartment block could produce its own electricity. Most could be retrofitted for heating and cooling. (Let's face it: weather conditions are not about to turn better!) That would be a start.

It may have relative value according to scarcity, but the value of life necessities is intrinsic to both the substance and to the life it sustains. So artistry - art as a human activity - has intrinsic social value, but any one particular example has an arbitrary value according who wants it. Which of ten equally talented and skilled students of Boudin commands a high price today and which nine are forgotten?

Not anymore. (Pity; I notice mistakes I should have fixed while it was open.) I see it was posted, and repeated apparently all the times I hit the button, inside the single box. I guessed it was a momentary glitch. About to find out.

That makes the object more widely admired - if it's presented to the right public at the right time. Not much point in painting the most magnificent nude in the world if a prudish society immediately burns it, along with the painter. It may also give the object a much longer cultural life: the best products tend to be appreciated by generations with different fashions and tastes. If staying-power is intrinsic worth, okay, but it still depends on the audience response. In modern times, when technical expertise is largely mechanical, and images of great skill and beauty can be mass produced - and there is no intrinsic value to any one of ten thousand identically perfect images. So, now what the public values in art is novelty, which can sometimes be pretty awful, and yet command a high price. So do fashionable names. A forgery that requires an expert with sophisticated equipment to tell apart from the original is worthless, simply because it was done by the famous hand. These valuations are quite arbitrary and changeable. Artistry itself has genuine psychological, social and cultural worth, but individual products are valued - or not - for a great range of reasons. I happen to admire south-western native crafts to Renaissance painting, but both are a valuable record of human endeavour. That makes the object more widely admired - if it's presented to the right public at the right time. Not much point in painting the most magnificent nude in the world if a prudish society immediately burns it, along with the painter. It may also give the object a much longer cultural life: the best products tend to be appreciated by generations with different fashions and tastes. If staying-power is intrinsic worth, okay, but it still depends on the audience response. In modern times, when technical expertise is largely mechanical, and images of great skill and beauty can be mass produced - and there is no intrinsic value to any one of ten thousand identically perfect images. So, now what the public values in art is novelty, which can sometimes be pretty awful, and yet command a high price. So do fashionable names. A forgery that requires an expert with sophisticated equipment to tell apart from the original is worthless, simply because it was done by the famous hand. These valuations are quite arbitrary and changeable. Artistry itself has genuine psychological, social and cultural worth, but individual products are valued - or not - for a great range of reasons. I happen to admire south-western native crafts to Renaissance painting, but both are a valuable record of human endeavour. That makes the object more widely admired - if it's presented to the right public at the right time. Not much point in painting the most magnificent nude in the world if a prudish society immediately burns it, along with the painter. It may also give the object a much longer cultural life: the best products tend to be appreciated by generations with different fashions and tastes. If staying-power is intrinsic worth, okay, but it still depends on the audience response. In modern times, when technical expertise is largely mechanical, and images of great skill and beauty can be mass produced - and there is no intrinsic value to any one of ten thousand identically perfect images. So, now what the public values in art is novelty, which can sometimes be pretty awful, and yet command a high price. So do fashionable names. A forgery that requires an expert with sophisticated equipment to tell apart from the original is worthless, simply because it was done by the famous hand. These valuations are quite arbitrary and changeable. Artistry itself has genuine psychological, social and cultural worth, but individual products are valued - or not - for a great range of reasons. I happen to admire south-western native crafts to Renaissance painting, but both are a valuable record of human endeavour. That makes the object more widely admired - if it's presented to the right public at the right time. Not much point in painting the most magnificent nude in the world if a prudish society immediately burns it, along with the painter. It may also give the object a much longer cultural life: the best products tend to be appreciated by generations with different fashions and tastes. If staying-power is intrinsic worth, okay, but it still depends on the audience response. In modern times, when technical expertise is largely mechanical, and images of great skill and beauty can be mass produced - and there is no intrinsic value to any one of ten thousand identically perfect images. So, now what the public values in art is novelty, which can sometimes be pretty awful, and yet command a high price. So do fashionable names. A forgery that requires an expert with sophisticated equipment to tell apart from the original is worthless, simply because it was done by the famous hand. These valuations are quite arbitrary and changeable. Artistry itself has genuine psychological, social and cultural worth, but individual products are valued - or not - for a great range of reasons. I happen to admire south-western native crafts to Renaissance painting, but both are a valuable record of human endeavour. That makes the object more widely admired - if it's presented to the right public at the right time. Not much point in painting the most magnificent nude in the world if a prudish society immediately burns it, along with the painter. It may also give the object a much longer cultural life: the best products tend to be appreciated by generations with different fashions and tastes. If staying-power is intrinsic worth, okay, but it still depends on the audience response. In modern times, when technical expertise is largely mechanical, and images of great skill and beauty can be mass produced - and there is no intrinsic value to any one of ten thousand identically perfect images. So, now what the public values in art is novelty, which can sometimes be pretty awful, and yet command a high price. So do fashionable names. A forgery that requires an expert with sophisticated equipment to tell apart from the original is worthless, simply because it was done by the famous hand. These valuations are quite arbitrary and changeable. Artistry itself has genuine psychological, social and cultural worth, but individual products are valued - or not - for a great range of reasons. I happen to admire south-western native crafts to Renaissance painting, but both are a valuable record of human endeavour. That makes the object more widely admired - if it's presented to the right public at the right time. Not much point in painting the most magnificent nude in the world if a prudish society immediately burns it, along with the painter. It may also give the object a much longer cultural life: the best products tend to be appreciated by generations with different fashions and tastes. If staying-power is intrinsic worth, okay, but it still depends on the audience response. In modern times, when technical expertise is largely mechanical, and images of great skill and beauty can be mass produced - and there is no intrinsic value to any one of ten thousand identically perfect images. So, now what the public values in art is novelty, which can sometimes be pretty awful, and yet command a high price. So do fashionable names. A forgery that requires an expert with sophisticated equipment to tell apart from the original is worthless, simply because it was done by the famous hand. These valuations are quite arbitrary and changeable. Artistry itself has genuine psychological, social and cultural worth, but individual products are valued - or not - for a great range of reasons. I happen to admire south-western native crafts to Renaissance painting, but both are a valuable record of human endeavour. I can't seem to post this.

No. Only food, air and water have intrinsic worth. Everything else is evaluated by people according their circumstances and proclivities. Technical ability isn't important. The personal appeal of art is just that - personal. Most grandfathers would not trade the crooked mug their grandchild made at camp for a Vermeer. Also, not everyone likes Vermeer, or Bosch, or Dali, who all had technical ability oozing out of their fingers.... and yet.... someone may prefer the picture of a boat on a lake at sunset by some neighbourhood amateur. The whole business of art is bogus.

Yes. Creative people are generally admired, respected and sought after as mates.

The urge to create art has certainly been with humankind for a long time. Cave painting, rock etching, bone carving, stone monuments, personal ornament, decoration on tools, weapons, vehicles, clothing and housewares, pottery, weaving, wood carving, tattoos, piercings and skin painting, ritual costumes and masks; singing, dancing, musical instruments and storytelling, decorated graves too, have been with us perhaps longer than language. Art is everywhere people have been for over 50,000 years. Today, we overcomplicate the idea of art, categorize, rate and monetize it, enshrine it, hoard it, have professional commentary dictate trends and fashions. But, really, the impulse to create and appreciate are simple, inherent human characteristics. Give a toddler a crayon and let it loose in a room with white walls. Put on some music, and they'll dance while drawing.

There are quotes wherein Einstein refers to God. That's not at all the same thing. I don't believe in any gods and yet quite often exclaim "Oh my god!" when something surprises me, or say "Dammit!" when I drop the cutlery, or "Jesus Christ!" when confronted with a dramatic instance of human stupidity. That's not faith, that's cultural reflex. The words are so deeply and generally embedded in the vernacular. 'God' is a kind of ubiquitous, handy metaphor we can pluck out of the air at any minute. If we all really, truly believed that we're taking his name in vain, wouldn't we be afraid to use it so much? Which are based on a Jewish book, about a Jewish deity - who was not especially likeable, truth be told. In Europe, as in North America, "Christian values" (generally espoused by people who did not live according to the advice Christ had given them) were inescapable - especially if you went around telling people facts about the universe. I was in hospital last February. The chaplain came to see me. She was very nice and laughed at all my jokes. My world-view didn't change one iota. Why do you need some dead smart guy in your tent? Isn't your own faith enough to support it?

You are absolutely correct.

Can't be helped. It was part of a conversation about integrity, profit and broadcasting. My contention being that integrity in reportage is not necessarily inimical to profitable broadcasting, but rather that there is third element in play: control of the message, which supersedes both news integrity and commercial interest.