Gian

The difference is that ethnicity is an unchangeable characteristic, whereas being a communist is a personal decision. I shouldn't think even Senator McCarthy would have had an issue with "communist" children.

The dislike of Jews was a dislike of their adherence to their religion, and their non-acceptance of Christianity. It's like some people dislike communists because of, well, their communism. I believe that in the 1950s in the US, people could lose their jobs and have all sorts of other penalties if there was the slightest hint of communist sympathy. Or it's like people who dislike Trump supporters, because of Trump supporters' support for Mr Trump and general mindset. Neither of those dislikes is racism, is it? Cheerz GIAN🙂XXX

Sounds like you need to make some friends mate🙂 Disliking, say, communism is not racism is it? The dislike of Jews and Judaism was not racism, there was no such thing before the 19thC. As I've stated elsewhere, if, in the middle ages, Jews converted to Christanity -which they frequently did- the Christian Churches had no further problem with them. Why would they? That approach would not of course have counted for anything in National Socialist Germany, where it really was about race, nor it would seem with some others in this discussion thread. Given that they all purport to believe in evidence-based rational analysis, I'm left in a state of shock. Cheerz GIAN🙂XXX

Mr TheVat I can't find the Chomsky quote but he's said it in interview several times. Surveys are unnecessary; just go and get to know unskilled construction workers (I was one of them once) or any unskilled workers with as little "education" as possible. I'm not saying they're geniuses, but by comparison, University students are pathetically easily led. The following film The Great Awakening (2023) is mostly fear-mongering and "conspiracy theories about conspiracy theories," but I do agree with what is said at 00:26:18 "'You would think it would be people with lower IQ's that would be susceptible to this [illogical mass ideology] but it seems to be the other way around. Are you seeing this?' "'I have seen this. And it does seem to be predicted by educational status and IQ.'" https://youtu.be/1fDWZjvNUC8?si=aDiHxnYRH7rNxyu- Cheerz GIAN🙂XXX Mr StringJunky Why would "Zionists" need to "invent" antisemitism? Why would they need to uproot themselves, trek across the world from North America, Europe and Russia to Palestine if they weren't already experiencing serious threats and racism? I shouldn't think you'd uproot yourself and relocate to New Zealand unless you had a very very good reason. I sure wouldn't. Cheerz GIANxxx

There should be many different ways of vacating a tower block, especially insanely large ones. If Grenfell tower victims had been able to jump into a safety net or equivalent many more might have survived. As for being expensive, you can't put a value on human life, and the landlords of the World Trade Center aren't exactly short of a bob or 2 GIAN🙂XXX That's 684000 human beings, not numbers. If we can reduce that number by just 1 human being it's worth it. And if you were that 1 human being I'm sure you'd agree Cheerz GIAN🙂XXX

The slave trade was not about treating an ethnic group as subhuman, ethnicity had not been invented at that time. It was simply based on the idea that some people are less important than others, and some people more so. The idea of "all men are created equal" is a very recent one. It was more about social and economic class. When the Titanic was sinking, it just went without saying that First Class passengers got into the lifeboats first, Second clas second, and as for the Third class well they themselves did not expect to get into the lifeboats at all, simply becasue they were Third Class. I gather that black African kings, kingdoms and black slave traders sold black slaves to European slavers, and made a helluva lot of money doing so, so it's nowhere near the later definition of racism. "I asked you earlier on this thread for examples of religious speakers being "cancelled" and got no response. I've never come across this and doubt it is really a thing." Religious speakers can be cancelled, but usually (not always) by other religious people and institutions. The Rev Calvin Robinson in the UK was dismissed from GB.News, a vulgar right-wing news channel, effectively for being too right-wing even for GB.News. His ordination to the priesthood was blocked by the Church of England for the same reason. However, clergy are generally not cancelled by academic institutions in the UK (I don't know about the US) I guess because they tend to adopt more balanced stances. If "the cancelled" have one thing in common it's that they are usually secularists. Sure there's always been controversial speakers and ideas, but pre-c2000 I don't recall people actually losing their jobs because of it. My point is that "new wave" cancellation culture seems to have originated in the early 2000s. On the issue of mindless prejudice, I recall an especially nasty attack on Roman Catholicism by the loathsome Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens at an Intelligence Squared debate in 2009, in which they deployed the same methods against Catholicism as the National Socialists did against judaism; unsubstantiated groundless bigotry. They easily won the debate and were salivatingly pleased with themselves, but I thought at the time they were going to rue the day they did so. They foolishly believed, or more likely never considered, that if you encourage bigotry in one area, is never stops there. Predictably, Stephen Fry was on TV a few months ago bleating about the rise in antisemitism. The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science A few months ago I cancelled my membership of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, because in the online general discussion forum I was shocked to receive alot of unreasoning antisemitic and anti-zionist bigotry and sheer freaking racism. Even more shocking was the fact that the moderators were completely unconcerned by it. So much for "Reason & Science" Cheerz GIAN🙂XXX

It's been aided by social media and other communications technology, but the act of doing so is man-made, social media and tech not being a person. So Dawky and several of his unpleasant "new atheist" friends definitely did encourage it with their vile bile about religion in the early 2000s. (Incidentally, there was no "new atheism" during the Cold War, which is in itself quite telling, but that's another story.) What has happened I think is one of Richard Dawkins' "memes." Someone somewhere thought of cancelling someone because they can't actually mount a counter-argument, and now everyone's doing it. "'Antisemitism is 1800y old. Racism was invented in the 19th century.' Citation needed." Here's a citation for you. Hannah Arendt, who was jewish and living in pre-war National Socialist Germany, states in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) that racist ideology developed in the 19th century as a way of justifying imperial conquest. It was aided by scientific racism, or Social Darwinism. Racist ideas disseminated in the 19th century on scientific hypotheses were combined with unilineal theories of social progress, which asserted the superiority of the European civilization over the rest of the world. The term "survival of the fittest" is a term coined by Herbert Spencer in 1864, and is associated with ideas of competition, which were named Social Darwinism in the 1940s. This was of course later applied to Jews by the National Socialists. The antismeitism prior to the 19th century as proposed by the Christian Churches began I would say with St John Chrysostom in the 4th Century AD. However it must be emphasised that The Catholic Church's resentment was down to judaism as a religion and jews as its followers, there being no concept of "race" at that time. Jews frequently converted to Christianity in the middle ages, after which the Church had no further problem with them. This is of course radically different to what happened to the jews in the 20th century. Prof Noam Chomsky on "new atheists" Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens: “Well I think that they [Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens] are religious fanatics. They happen to believe in the state religion which is much more dangerous than other religions for the most part. “So they both of them happen to be defenders of the state religion namely the religion that says we have to support the violence and atrocities of our own state because it's being done for all sorts of wonderful reasons…. That’s just another religion like the religion that markets know best. “I mean it doesn't happen to be a religion that you pray to every once a week, but it's just another religion and it's very destructive.” NOAM CHOMSKY Speaking at the University of Toronto Scarborough April 2011 https://youtu.be/ql7wgqmtSv4?si=A_3dNCRXfvn28GcI

It happened where I live in the UK; in 2017 a residential tower block called Grenfell Tower which was a mere 24 storeys went up in flames, and people couldn't escape from the upper floors above the fire, so 72 lives were lost. What about a frame at the foot of the building with several layers of flexible material like a multilayered trampoline. Could a fall from the top of the WTC 1300ft be broken at the ground by a succession of layers? I know it sounds a bit far-fetched, but as things are there seems no way of rapidly evacuating those insanely high skyscrapers you have in America. I've not been able to establish what if any evacuation mechanisms there are inside the new World Trade Center building "You know, one of these days, you're gonna kill 10,000 in one of these firetraps, and I'm gonna keep eating smoke and bringing out bodies until somebody asks us how to build them." STEVE MCQUEEN as Chief Fire Officer O'Halloran. The Towering Inferno. 1974

Well it doesn't happen very often, but it happened on 9/11 What do you mean by base-jumping chute? 🙂

You can start off with science basics with children as soon as they start primary school. You can also start them off with the basics of theology. Schools should also start primary school children with Latin and classical Greek, which help to extend IQ. All the 5yo's I've ever met have their own developed opinions before they even start school. Cheerz GIAN 🙂XXX

And do you want to go back to a time when people were burned at the stake for their opinions? And at least Joan of Arc was given a hearing, and both sides were able to express their opinion and hear the other's. There was no "We feel physically intimidated by being in the same building as Joan of Arc so we're not even going to let her speak" which is similar to what happened at Manchester "University" recently.

Cancel Culture has certainly not always been there or not on the scale it is now; I don't recall anyone before about 2005 losing his job because of opinion. Debate was always sacred at university and the phrase "He's entitled to his opinion" was widely used and went without saying. Richard Dawkins has been cancelled for simply expressing a point of view several times, and even if his ideas are stupid, cancelling him is even more so. The whole point of argument and debate is to overthrow not elevate nonsense; it's difficult to debate it without mentioning it. In order for you to decide that cowboys and aliens is nonsense, the concept had to be there for you to disagree with it. I repeat, if you don't teach the children to discern that Cowboys and aliens is bs, someone else will. And as for Creationism, that is already very much there in the public consciousness. So if you don't give the children proper critical skills they're sunk. Why do you think all these conspiracy theories are so popular? Why do you think people are so susceptible to any old bs on the internet? It's because children are not being taught proper critical analysis. What they're being pumped full of are other people's agendas. And inevitably - you can see this for yourself - Noam Chomsky is so right that the people most "educated" are those who are most willing to accept damned stupid ideas. The reason is that more "education" in our society = more brainwashing You won't find many construction workers on a building site who believe in Q-anon. cheerz GIAN😊XXX PS On your point about teaching creationsim and religion alongside science, one can state that it is true the Earth was formed about 4.5billion y ago, while also stating it is true that Sherlock Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street. They're both true.

Apologies Hun, I meant no disrespect ❤GIAN

The word Dawky used in "2002" was "disrespect." I'm not aware that disrespecting racists or anyone else's opinions actually changed those opinions. What Dawk should have said was something like "We need to sharpen our arguments and counter-argue religion even more strongly." There is no argument inside "disrespect" of other people's perspectives, any more than there there's a valid argument inside some men's disrespect of women. Disrespect is an act of violence, not reason. So yes, Dawky was actively encouraging cancel culture, and if he doesn't like it now he's only himself to blame. Plus of course, Dawky's critique of religion is especially useless, becasue he's critiquing something which really is not there. What constitutes religion is something else entirely from what he's concocted in his ridiculous God Delusion book, for the sole purpose of having something he can then not believe in. Extraordinary. And putting creationist beliefs to children alongside science is an exceptionally good idea. Argument with counterargument is the most important thing children need to learn, they enjoy argument and they're always very good at it. In other words, if you've been able to work out Creationsim is nonsense, shouldn't you want to give children the equipment they need to do the same? Becasue if schoolteachers don't... someone else will won't they? If creationsism were taught alonside science in school, you'd probably find there'd be alot less creationsim and not more of it. Cheerz GIAN😊XXX

Indoor skydiving apparrently works by means of a "vertical windtunnel" blasting air upwards at about 150mph, so novice skydivers can gain experience of floating. Could vertical windtunnels be installed on a much larger scale around very tall buildings to be uncovered and switched on in the event of a rapid evacuation? Would it be possible for people to have jumped from the top of the World Trade Centre at 1368 ft to be caught safely in a vertical windtunnel at the bottom? Cheerz GIAN🙂XXX

Yes I am suggesting that Dawky's encouragement to disrespect other's opinions at the 2002 Ted talk has contributed to intolerance. I mean what other effect could it have? "Stop Being damned Respectful" means stop being damned respectful GIAN🙂XXX MOONTANMAN It's silly to critique religion if using a stupid methodology, same way It's stupid to try to critique science by using a skipping rope. It's not critique that's wrong, critique is never wrong. It's the methodology the Dawk uses that's wrong. GIAN🙂XXX

CharonY Of course it's silly, and it's precisely that methodology that Dawky uses to "critique" religion, so he's being equally silly. Cheerz GIAN🙂XXX PS My words were that racism and intolerance seem to have got worse over the last 15y. I did not say I thought they had only appeared in my lifetime. It was all there anyway MOONTANMAN Honey it's not disrespect to disagree GIAN🙂XXX

MOONTANMAN Well because in 2002 he was encouraging people to be disrespectful, and 21y later he's weeping about cancel culture. And the "logic" of his ridiculous book The God Delusion is about as logical as me saying that Dawky and all other scientists are stupid because they believe the Earth is flat. The Flat Earth Society have made scientific experiments which they claim prove the Earth is flat. Therefore as Dawky et al are all scientists, they must of logical necessity believe the Earth is flat. That's how ridiculous he's being in his anti-religious methodology. He's just one of those atheists who needs God in order to have something not to believe in. That's why when I asked a priest friend of my mum and dad about Dawky, he replied "I don't think we're particularly worried by Professor Dawkins." Cheerz GIAN🙂XXX PS I respect you and everyone else here💘💋 PPS Most people I know are atheists Antisemitism is 1800y old. Racism was invented in the 19th century. Both seem to have got worse in my lifetime GIAN🙂XXX

I think it's more a case of what you "feel" should not be dismissed out-of hand. I suspect alot of scientific discovery starts with someone just having a feeling, or hunch about something. But Dawky and people like him were extremely unwise in the so-called "atheist spring" post 9/11 to encourage people to be disrespectful, which is another word for bigoted. What Dawky's too dumb to realise is that if he encourages bigotry in one department eg religion, it never stops there. Given that over the last 15y or so there seems to have been a noticeable increase in racism and in particular antisemitism, Dawky should cut out the rabble rousing. Cheerz GIAN🙂XXX

Discuss Dawky's comments. And I put this in Physics & Astronomy because not being a scientist I respect astrophysicists. I suppose an "Evolutionary Biologist" only describes what's already there. I guess an astrophysicist needs to be able to think laterally, outside the box. That's why Dawky can't get religion and makes such a fool of himself. Cheerz GIAN🙂XXX

Can people here define free speech please, and with a philosophical rationale justify how people should react to opinions they strongly disagree with? I hope no one here agrees with sacking people for their opinions Cheerz GIAN🙂XXX

"Let's stop being so damned respectful! Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness... Lets stop being damned respectful!" RICHARD DAWKINS 2002 "I think it's very sad especially in universities... where you should be free to speak your mind and to listen to something even if it's something you don't like, and it's very tragic that universities seem to have bought into the idea that if you hear something you don't like you should shut them up and refuse to let them speak" RICHARD DAWKINS bleating to Piers Morgan about cancel culture 2023

JC MACSWELL So after 10¹⁴ years, that's it. No more life? GIAN🙂

I read that by about the year AD10¹⁴ the last stars will be dead, so no more light in the universe, and the universe will leave the stelliferous era and enter the dark degenerate era. The universe will have evaporated away altogether by AD10¹⁰⁰ If species are still around in the year 10¹⁴, I assume life will no longer be possible with no more light. If so, will it in theory be possible for spectacularly advanced species to repair, prolong or create new stars and thus prolong the stelliferous era? Not indefinitely of course, but for alot longer? Cheerz DECLAN🙂XXX

MOONTANMAN Thanks! GIAN🙂XXX