To abstract or not to abstract

[iNow]

And if dragons were real, I could ride my unicorn beside them until we land in Narnia. 

16 minutes ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

Supposing there was a region on earth at its origin of a form as a perfect garden; you might not need tools; tools might breach the natural order, in that case.

 

[Bartholomew Jones]

5 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed, you're just not making a very good case...

Not to you.

1 hour ago, iNow said:

And if dragons were real, I could ride my unicorn beside them until we land in Narnia. 

Its like equating native American herbal medicine with magic potions.  What you say is senseless.

[iNow]

You’re speaking of a time when a perfect fictional garden might have existed, one that was so magical it didn’t require tools or tending, and you have the audacity to suggest I’m saying senseless things? 

Fascinating 

[Bartholomew Jones]

Deleting accidental duplication.

1 hour ago, iNow said:

You’re speaking of a time when a perfect fictional garden might have existed, one that was so magical it didn’t require tools or tending, and you have the audacity to suggest I’m saying senseless things? 

Fascinating 

You're forcing assumptions again.  And actually the account, which I haven't referred to, appoints man to tend that garden.

9 minutes ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

 

 

10 minutes ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

you have the audacity to suggest

Reckless?  Yes.  Audacious?  No.

Edited December 26, 2020 by Bartholomew Jones

[joigus]

3 hours ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

tools might breach the natural order,

Back to lemurs, then. As all primates use tools.

[Bartholomew Jones]

If the original order was such that man was one man with his wife, in a garden as mentioned, they would pull away some overgrowth when needed and put it in a place nearby optimized for the garden.  The local ecology would be better for their labor, next crop.  And the surface volume of earth would be increased due to (hypothesized) conversion of radiant energy to plant substance, accommodating increasing populations.

3 hours ago, joigus said:

Back to lemurs, then. As all primates use tools.

Prior post intended as comment here.

Say what you want.  It's uniform with nature.

Edited December 27, 2020 by Bartholomew Jones

[zapatos]

10 hours ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

It's better; namely more pleasant.  The result is more like one glass jar of real maple syrup, rather that crafty plastic bottles of corn syrup with caramel color agent,

In the old days when we used "natural discovery", the way we would "vaccinate" people for small pox would be to purposely infect black people with cowpox, then cut open their skin lesions, scrape out the pus, and put the pus on a scrape on the person to be inoculated. Of course if the black person had syphilis or something, the person being inoculated might find they have other new problems.

Now that we use science, we develop a vaccine for a pandemic in less than one year and start giving out the inoculations by the millions, knowing its efficacy ahead of time.

Your ideas leave me speechless.

[Bartholomew Jones]

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

In the old days when we used "natural discovery", the way we would "vaccinate" people for small pox would be to purposely infect black people with cowpox, then cut open their skin lesions, scrape out the pus, and put the pus on a scrape on the person to be inoculated. Of course if the black person had syphilis or something, the person being inoculated might find they have other new problems.

Now that we use science, we develop a vaccine for a pandemic in less than one year and start giving out the inoculations by the millions, knowing its efficacy ahead of time.

Your ideas leave me speechless.

No, there was no "we," among practitioners.  They were independent; at most, members of guilds.  Not surprising, there were plenty of quacks among them.

On the "pandemic," it's ironic that, China, who at first let the virus run its course, has numbers of deaths approaching 5,000, whereas the U.S. who immediately began quarantining, has number of deaths approaching 350,000; which confirms what I was certain of--quarantining promotes viral contagion due to reduction of diversity of organisms in an enclosure.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1093256/novel-coronavirus-2019ncov-deaths-worldwide-by-country/

Edited December 27, 2020 by Bartholomew Jones
Add citation

[iNow]

31 minutes ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

On the "pandemic," it's ironic that, China, who at first let the virus run its course, has numbers of deaths approaching 5,000, whereas the U.S. who immediately began quarantining, has number of deaths approaching 350,000; which confirms what I was certain of--quarantining promotes viral contagion due to reduction of diversity of organisms in an enclosure.

Or China is lying about their numbers. Or just wore masks because they’re not as stupid as the average Trump voter. 

You think people staying away from each other makes the virus spread more quickly. 

There’s a word for that. It’s dumb. 

[zapatos]

33 minutes ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

No, there was no "we," among practitioners.  They were independent; at most, members of guilds. 

Quick. Give me the name of one of the guilds.

[Bartholomew Jones]

31 minutes ago, iNow said:

Or China is lying about their numbers. Or just wore masks because they’re not as stupid as the average Trump voter. 

So now I'm accused when using long-lived anecdotes as though they're heresy, but because yours are trendy, but short-lived, you're excused.

13 hours ago, iNow said:

Didn't Jesus say something about the importance of humility and not judging other people?

People love to refer to a "verse" of these accounts completely out of the context, even of what was immediately being spoken.  It's a quite popular thing to do whether you believe the accounts or not.  The account when Jesus BEGINS, "judge not lest you be judged," does actually, proceed.  To saying, "how can you say, 'brother let me remove the speck from your eye,' when there's a plank in your own eye?"  Then in does actually, proceed again.  Then it concludes, "then you shall see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."  So yes, a mature Christian, according to the account, is obligated to judge others, fearfully.

Edited December 27, 2020 by Bartholomew Jones

[iNow]

Ah. Ok. Really glad you cleared that all up for us. Yep. 

[Markus Hanke]

10 hours ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

Not to anyone here.

Fixed that for you.

[MigL]

I love and respect all you guys, but I would have thought you'd have learned by now.
You can argue about scientific theory, facts, data, observations, etc., as these are things that are falsifiable.
It is a totally different argument when you need to rely on evidence; Bartholomew Jones doesn't.

Beliefs, like Religious beliefs, don't need evidence, so no-one will ever be convinced their beliefs are wrong.
BartholomewJones will carry on believing as he does, no matter what evidence is presented to him.
And we will go on relying on the scientific method, and evidence based thinking.

this whole discussion is, then, pointless, as neither side will learn anything from the other.

And we wi

[joigus]

2 minutes ago, MigL said:

Beliefs, like Religious beliefs, don't need evidence, so no-one will ever be convinced their beliefs are wrong.
BartholomewJones will carry on believing as he does, no matter what evidence is presented to him.
And we will go on relying on the scientific method, and evidence based thinking.

You're quite right, MigL, but, for some reason, religious types (some of them) are in the habit of approaching communities of scientifically-minded people and pestering them with their non-arguments --they know how annoying they are, let's face it. You or I wouldn't dream of entering a church or a mosque and start forcing everybody there to listen about the wonders of the big bang theory, or evolution.

It's a different thing when you're entertaining them, so to speak.

Somewhere inside of me there's a faint hope that a thinking person lives inside that brain, buried under many layers of millennia-old of spoon-fed myth. And that person is desperately crying out to be shown an exit. Maybe it's just one in a thousand. The rest, sometimes I think they're like special ops infiltrating enemy territory.

[Halc]

1 hour ago, MigL said:

Beliefs, like Religious beliefs, don't need evidence, so no-one will ever be convinced their beliefs are wrong.

I was.  I was educated for 13 years in a protestant parochial school and was taught that science doesn't conflict with their beliefs. The school placed top in the state in academic contests. Yes, they taught evolution and how it wasn't in conflict with my religion, and although my parents were in denial of it, I wasn't.

Later on the church (only partly my denomination) decided to treat science as the enemy, forcing me to choose sides.  It forced me to lay aside my assumptions on both sides and actually work it out myself. It was amazing how the pieces fell into place that never quite fit before. I've been in pursuit of such bias-challenging assessments ever since, resulting in my beliefs always being changed and refined. That has started to settle down now that I seem to find minimal self-contradiction in my current stance, but I recognize beliefs for what they are and would never presume to assert that my position is 'the correct one'.

Edited December 27, 2020 by Halc

[iNow]

43 minutes ago, MigL said:

Beliefs, like Religious beliefs, don't need evidence, so no-one will ever be convinced their beliefs are wrong.

I’m sympathetic to the point you’re making, but you are wrong.

These exchanges DO lead to changes in thinking. They’re obviously not effective in achieving that 100% of the time, but they are effective at least some of the time. 

Our challenges also often plant the seeds of doubt which may later grow and sprout. The brain is a wonderful calculator and it will often chew on logical inconsistencies in the background when we’re not even aware of them. It seeks ways for things to make sense and to align. Perhaps the participant isn’t convinced by our replies today, but maybe 3 or 7 or 19 years from now while singing in the shower or tying their shoelaces or chopping wood there will be an epiphany moment and the gears of the clock will suddenly stop grinding and will start clicking cleanly and without slips. That “Aha! Of course!!” eureka moment can come at any time.

And... Even if the participant isn’t convinced, there are often silent readers paying attention from the sidelines weighing their own doubts... thirsting to be convinced one way or the other and relying on what they see in threads like these to help make sense of it all... to see who’s arguments are nonsense and which are convincing... here specifically to quench their desire to be swayed.

Then finally... even if NONE of that were true, it is still vital IMO to stand up and defend what is valid and what is true for its own sake... to challenge fictions and push for rational reasonable thinking wherever we can. We push back on principle to stop the spread of misinformation and that matters for its own sake, even if the person with whom we’re posting shows no willingness to listen.

And I’d wager a sizable amount of coin that you agree with me regarding these points.

x-posted with Halc who made similar points from a more personal perspective 

[John Cuthber]

14 hours ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

The local ecology would be better for their labor,

Well, if it could be made better it wasn't perfect, was it?

Do you recognise that your idea is logically impossible?

12 hours ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

On the "pandemic," it's ironic that, China, who at first let the virus run its course,

In reality, China pretty much brought in martial law to stop the virus.
 

12 hours ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

whereas the U.S. who immediately began quarantining,

No, they didn't.
They were led by a man who said they didn't need to because the virus would disappear in Spring.

Do you understand that saying things which are clearly wrong does not help to convince anyone that you are right about anything?

[swansont]

13 hours ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

On the "pandemic," it's ironic that, China, who at first let the virus run its course, has numbers of deaths approaching 5,000, whereas the U.S. who immediately began quarantining

!

Moderator Note

You forgot to provide evidence of this claim. 

Back this up before you proceed to any conclusions

 

 

[Phi for All]

5 hours ago, iNow said:

We push back on principle to stop the spread of misinformation and that matters for its own sake, even if the person with whom we’re posting shows no willingness to listen.

Thanks for the reminder. When BJ claimed tools were against nature, I just didn't want to deal with that level of ignorance, but he won't be the recipient of any learning from this thread, and it's important not to lend tacit support by saying nothing.

[MigL]

Yeah, I guess you guys are right.
Yusef got me all worked up with his 'predestination' thread.

I was just wondering, if we stopped engaging them, would they go somewhere else to preach ?

[joigus]

19 minutes ago, MigL said:

Yeah, I guess you guys are right.
Yusef got me all worked up with his 'predestination' thread.

We'll always be there for you.

Next time I falter, I'm sure you'll be there for me too.

26 minutes ago, MigL said:

I was just wondering, if we stopped engaging them, would they go somewhere else to preach ?

That's a question for BJ and Yusef.

[iNow]

54 minutes ago, MigL said:

if we stopped engaging them, would they go somewhere else to preach ?

In my own thinking, that’s irrelevant to whether or not I engage. 

[Bartholomew Jones]

13 hours ago, MigL said:

I love and respect all you guys, but I would have thought you'd have learned by now.
You can argue about scientific theory, facts, data, observations, etc., as these are things that are falsifiable.
It is a totally different argument when you need to rely on evidence; Bartholomew Jones doesn't.

Beliefs, like Religious beliefs, don't need evidence, so no-one will ever be convinced their beliefs are wrong.
BartholomewJones will carry on believing as he does, no matter what evidence is presented to him.
And we will go on relying on the scientific method, and evidence based thinking.

this whole discussion is, then, pointless, as neither side will learn anything from the other.

And we wi

And, pray ye, which evidence was offered here, besides links to articles and generally accepted notions of science?

10 hours ago, swansont said:

!

Moderator Note

You forgot to provide evidence of this claim. 

Back this up before you proceed to any conclusions

 

This was cited: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1093256/novel-coronavirus-2019ncov-deaths-worldwide-by-country/

 

[zapatos]

19 minutes ago, Bartholomew Jones said:

And, pray ye, which evidence was offered here, besides links to articles evidence

Fixed that for you.