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Phi for All

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Everything posted by Phi for All

  1. This is certainly misinformation being pushed on us by you. There are two FB posts mentioned in this Wikipedia article, and one is allegedly fake. The translation doesn't mention "Russians" (but you know that better than I do), but instead it calls out the "inhumans" (or the perpetrators of observed attrocities). It can't be "murder", because this is a war, no matter what Putin says. Russia has been using foreign troops known for their inhumane approach to warfare. Given the overall hatchet-job look of that Wiki (more scandals space than bio space), I'd say this is more Russian propaganda. What makes it even more insulting is trying to hide obvious genocide (bombing maternity hospitals and train stations full of fleeing families) with your manufactured version. Fuck you, Putin!
  2. ! Moderator Note You need to stop putting words in other people's mouths. It's a bad faith argument tactic, it's intellectually dishonest, and it makes it very difficult to discuss science with you in an amicable manner. If you can't use actual quotes from other members, perhaps focusing on your own arguments would be best.
  3. koti has been suspended for 3 days for bad faith posts encouraging personal attacks.
  4. mistermack has been suspended for two weeks for continuing to violate our rule against disparaging whole groups of people.
  5. ! Moderator Note If we could discuss complicated issues with you within the rules, it would be best. Since you continue to thumb your nose at our rule against disparaging groups, we're going to carry on without your input for a couple of weeks.
  6. Yes, the oppressors would prefer it if their victims would just shoot themselves, too, to save money. How much does being a disinformant pay?
  7. You make so many bad assumptions while praising your own "logic"! Nobody said "worthless reading". The comments are only "unnecessary" because you disagree with them and refuse to consider them. The comments aren't "offensive" since they're attacking your idea and your writing style, NOT YOU PERSONALLY. One of the situations we face a lot here is robot posters. As I mentioned, you have an overly verbose style that tends to clutter up what you're trying to convey, and we're instantly suspicious. You've made up a lot of terms which you don't bother to explain, and it makes reading your ideas a bit of a slog. You make claims about software that needs to be developed but it's clear you're assuming it hasn't been already. Coupled with your assumptions that nobody had done what you're suggesting, you've developed this idea that we need to test something until it gives us the results we're hoping for, and that's really questionable methodology.
  8. Let's not send the wrong message. It's not a wall of text that represents a lengthy commitment to learning. It's a wall of leafy green word salad that's difficult to chew because it has very few recognizable scientific definitions in it. And many of the words don't really go together, or were perhaps abused by a thesaurus, like "indelible dogma".
  9. It looks like, when we can take your assertions one at a time instead of dealing with a shit-flooded zone, they're much easier to deconstruct.
  10. Can we have a brief overview, please? If you only had two fairly short sentences to describe your idea as clearly as you can, or if I gave you twenty seconds to give me your best elevator pitch, what would you tell me? Edit to add: There's a 5 post limit on your first day to weed out robot spammers, so thanks in advance for coming back tomorrow.
  11. What's happened to your objectivity? Of course many of them had a basis in rational thought. The creators of Gobekli Tepe constructed a place of pilgrimage that must have required an unprecedented amount of cooperation and skill for Stone Age humans 12,000 years ago. They used the knowledge they had at the time to explain their world in the form of stone pillars and megaliths carved with wild animals. Every damn bit of what they were doing AT THE TIME was rooted in rational thought.
  12. That sounds like "brainwashing". Ritual has nothing intrinsic to do with untruths. Ritual is just a ceremonial form of conduct, usually repeating the same words/movements in unison or along with a speaker. They're usually special words and movements, words everybody wants to get right, sacred words that aren't supposed to change based on individuals (not sacred in a religious sense). Weddings, swearing-in ceremonies, pledges of allegiance, vows & oaths, clubs, leagues, lots of non-religious folks use ritual to mark the importance of an event. Memorizing the words and saying them together ideally creates unity and brotherhood. Like any tool, ritual can be misused. Any form of teaching can be misused. Doesn't mean the tool is evil.
  13. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60736185 I'm waiting for your hands to start waving this away. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/understanding-russian-oligarchs Clearly these are people you admire as leaders?
  14. The purchase of the Sibneft oil and gas company through the rigged Russian government auction in 1995 is a great example of rape and robbery of assets that were once owned by socialist soviets. Or do you contend that someone who can snatch a company like that for $250M and sell it 10 years later BACK to the state for $13B is just a good businessman? Are you proud of the accomplishments of the Russian oligarchs who preyed on their own? Does that make them enviable wolves taking their just share from the sheep?
  15. I can argue the rationality of ritual fairly well. For people who can't read, ritual repetition is one of the best ways to learn. It's how most of our oral stories were passed down. You see early religious individuals trying to "control" their group, but it probably just started out as teaching what they though was right, in the right way. You repeat the chant, and if you get it wrong you get corrected. Most teaching progressed like this, and still does.
  16. So a rich murderer is better than a poor murderer? I would argue that Abramovich is not only a bigger robber and murderer, but he has the wealth to also be a source of corruption, something the poor lack. You're ignoring the scale of his corruption because there's only one of him, but look how he raped Russians of assets from the former Soviet Union. Do you admire him for this?
  17. I think you're completely wrong here, because there were a LOT of folks who had Jada's reaction. And as far as "just doing his job" goes, I'll ask you to think about this. What if Will had stood up just the way he did, walked up on stage just the way he did, but instead of acting like an animal and striking a fellow human, imagine if he used his words instead, and said, "Shame on your hypocrisy, joking about a black woman's medical condition! If you can't be an ally, Chris Rock, then keep my wife's name out of your fucking mouth!"? Rock would have had the choice then to acknowledge him or treat him like another heckler. Either way, this situation would have a better framework for discussion. Without the slap, it's more about whether comedians should be encouraged to make fun of medical conditions or not. Without the slap, it's just Chris Rock trying to justify why he in particular would joke about a black woman's hair in the first place.
  18. Staff split his first comment off of a larger thread about a different subject, so mistermack didn't "start" this thread. The post was deemed off-topic for the other subject and threatened to take it off course, but mistermack seemed like he wanted to make the point that poor people get everything handed to them and rich people get all the blame, so this post was set as the OP for it's own thread. I think it gives people the opportunity to respond specifically to assertions made that would likely derail the main conversation. I'd like to use splits more often, especially when the comments seem like they're made specifically to drag a good talk into the mud. It gives us a chance to really drill down and find out where someone is coming from.
  19. OK, forget it. My arguments specifically about the foundations of religion can't seem to get through your desire to bash all current religion. I'm tired of trying to work past this obvious strawman. I hope this isn't intentional. NO! That's not at all what happened. I listed some of the noble reasons a religion might start (you know, foundational stuff), and you listed the bad things many have become. I don't know how to explain the difference to you anymore, and I'm frankly tired of your insistence on dragging my posts through the dismissive filters you've installed surrounding the subject. It's a mark of integrity that you can understand something and acknowledge it without embracing it or accepting it as right. I don't embrace religious beliefs, but I certainly don't think they started out corrupted. That happens over time to most human institutions.
  20. I'm trying to be extremely specific and thoughtful in my wording, and you're trying to dial your arguments back to the point of overgeneralized meaninglessness, so no, I don't agree. I'm arguing that the foundations of most religions are rational, and you seem to be arguing that it can't be true because of what they've become. I'm trying to defend the site owner's decision to encourage posting about the rational foundations of religion, so I focused on just that, the foundations. I think you're forgetting that it wasn't myth to the people who created the foundations of the religion. You have a modern perspective that lets you see myth = bad, but Zoroaster brought a whole bunch of people together in the belief that, if you believed in the wisdom and benevolence of Ahura Mazda and fight to uphold his principles of happiness for all, good will conquer evil. It wasn't myth then, and those foundations influenced the best parts of most other religions that came after.
  21. You said they were wrong/false earlier. Whichever you really believe, I think you're being irrational now. None of these were foundational goals. They had no science to reject wrt Bronze Age mysticism. They put all the wisdom they could muster, at that time, into their beliefs, and if they prospered after getting others to believe similarly, it was proof to them they had it right. If a religion tells a Bronze Age person about a god who created everything yet wasn't created himself, and believes ultimately in giving humans a choice between good and evil to test their worthiness and make them responsible for their choices so they can bring happiness to the world, it's foundations aren't to blame for what is done with that religion later.
  22. I keep seeing various violations mentioned by various folk, but I see no patterns I recognize. The video quoted by mistermack is obviously pro-Putin disinformation, but that same reporter was accused of misleading viewers about something innocuous Putin said that she claimed was a "rape joke" about Ukraine. OTOH, YouTube blocked WION last month for violating it's restrictions on denying or trivializing well-documented violent events. They are part of the more infamous Zee Media Corporation, which has pushed fake news stories on multiple occasions and been caught out. The little I've read about them suggest they run a lot of stories denigrating other countries, almost like they're being paid to. Nepal thinks Zee Media is paid by China to make them look bad, and have banned them from cable and satellite programming there.
  23. Which ones, the ones that emphasized working with nature to ensure easier living, or the ones that established fair trade practices, or the ones that emphasized bonds of friendship and family and nation, or the ones that attempted to show the difference between good and evil to bronze age humans?
  24. If you click the Enlargement of NATO link in your own link, it points out that Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine, and Georgia are aspiring members specifically because they "formally expressed their membership aspirations". It seems like you're taking your "facts" from Putin. You seem to be arguing that an alliance that was formed to defend democracies against a tyrannical Russia is a justifiable threat to Putin, when the treaty basically states that "we'll come to your aid if Putin attacks you". Are you arguing that Putin should be able to invade whoever he wants to? I think your position is just getting uglier and uglier to defend. Right? The bully whines about the fact that you have so many friends willing to help you because you're a good person. What a shocker!
  25. This is true. This is false. Most things have a rational foundation at the start. That's why they get started, because they're needed and they make sense. Explaining various phenomena as best you can with the knowledge at your disposal is rational behavior. Religion is no different to begin with. We wanted life to have certain rules and consistencies, so we made them up and we made them important enough so everybody would follow them. The foundations were rooted in the kind of reason we were capable of at the time, and included philosophies we knew would help humans survive closer proximity to each other in denser populations. You may not like what modern religions have become, but their foundations at least were rational.
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