Yes the title is also the title of a song. No it has nothing to do with it.
While, officially, I was born and baptized as Orthodox Christian, I’m mostly an agnostic really, or maybe a pantheist if I’m feeling vaguely spiritual (I am not). Or a deist, or maybe just confused. Was I always like this? Yes and no. How did I get here? Boring story really, but hey why not tell it anyway.
The orthodox baptism, in case you were wondering, is a primitive ritual where a baby is striped in public and completely submerged in a cauldron of water, after being held for an hour in front of a priest reciting vague nonsense. Child abuse if you ask me. Some babies occasionally die during the proceeding. I always thought a baptism should be at an age where you are capable of committing to the faith… But that is not the local way, and we have no later age ceremony like a confirmation.
Some people who are not religious, especially certain strains of atheism, are very much anti-religion and militantly so. I am not and never was such a person. Some speak of the evils of religion, but those are just the evils of human kind. It takes lack of rational thought and commitment to ideology to declare religion as responsible for everything bad, as some do. So I did not become non-religious because religion is the debil [sic].
As a kid, I thought of myself as a Christian probably even had some faith in it, although it was never a very strong or an important part of my life. Just something in the background. Until some point when it wasn’t even that. I lost my religion, so to speak. It was nothing spectacular, no life changing event, no question of Life The Universe and Everything, certainly not some righteous anger at some God who allows bad thing to happen to good people.
That is not to say I am a fan of the Orthodox Church. One can debate orthodox theology at length, compare it to others and so forth, with good and bad. The church though it is but a collection of humans and the flesh is weak and corrupt and so are many priests. There is plenty to dislike, like the priest driving a USD100k Mercedes CLS telling poor pensioners who barely get by to donate money to the church. Or the priests who used every dirty trick in the book to get their hands on parishioners land to build real-estate projects. Or the ones who sexually abused orphans (quite fewer than the Catholics though.) I am certainly not a fan of the massive amount of tax money going to the church to build pointless cathedrals while high ranking people in the church cover themselves in gold. With this, off course, come many priests who are poor and use their life and resources to help those who cannot help themselves. Those who offer solace to the old and ill, and peace of mind. The institution is rotten, not everyone in it. But it is rotten. This is the problem, I feel, with a highly centralized and hierarchical church. Why do you need 10 layers of hierarchy from the Patriarch (so unwoke) to the local priest? Especially since this does not rally gel with many elements of orthodox theology?
One of the rallying cries of a group of urban hipsters protesting government money for the cathedral was “you feel more faith in an old wooden church than in a gold plated cathedral” and it is, in a way, true. I always felt closer to religion in the 350 year old wooden church in my grandma’s village than in many a cathedral. I have visited plenty and they do inspire some awe but not faith.
But I digress. To the Point! How did I lose it? I was, as I said, raised orthodox, like a majority of Romanians, but in a not to religious family. My parents did not attend church regularly, except Easter service and the usual weddings, baptisms, funerals and other such tragedies of life. They did take me twice a year, as a kid, for confession and communion, for whatever that was worth. My interaction with priests, church, religion came mostly from that.
I did have a period of time when you could say I was somewhat religious. In the sense that, after confession, a priest chastised me for not praying every night before bed. So after that, I started reciting a prayer each night. Next confession, I was happy to report yes, I do pray every night, thank you very much. But – there are always butts in church – then the priest asked me if I also say a morning prayer. I was thinking wait a goddamn minute. This guy is kind of pushing it. I mean seriously? Once a day should be enough. So I ignored that, and continued with my evening prayer. After some time I didn’t really believe in it, but was doing it mechanically, out of habit.
This went on for a while until one night when I went to bed and realized I hadn’t said my prayer. My reaction was goddamnit (I know no blaspheming), I have to do this now. And I didn’t feel like it. And that got me thinking. Why do I have to do this? Do I believe any of it? The answer was a resounding no. So I stopped. Funny enough, the first few night I fled vaguely uncomfortable, as I had broken a habit.
Prayer, at that point, was nothing but a daily activity. Like brushing my teeth before bed, but with less benefit. I am happy to say I still brush my teeth. And also floss, though maybe not as often. Then again flossing may or may not be bullshit, according to some studies.
After the prayer, I applied the same thing to confession, communion, and church. And other aspects of life. There was no introspection. No great realization of the follies of religion. No philosophical investigations. It just faded away. Day by day. Before, I was just going through the motions. A prayer, confession, communion. But it meant nothing to me. Not anymore. So I just stopped. So yeah that is it.
In a way, I feel that if I could believe, faith could bring some benefits. Some peace of mind, some sense of community maybe. Certainly ease my fear of the big nothing at the end of things. But I cannot. Certainly not in any organized religion. Maybe I am missing something, have a void unfilled due to this. But it is what it is, in the end. And if there is a God, hoping he just cares one was not a complete asshole in life more than the faith thing.
My religion is Firsting, and I aint ever losing that.
I’ll say it:
I find your schtick amusing, and when you break character (as you have recently re: Afghanistan) your comments are definitely worthwhile.
^^^That.
I suspect its just you and me, Moje.
He makes me laugh. Do that, and I can forgive almost anything.
I am not amused by the schtick and prefer the forays into substantive commentary.
But I will go no further than to make that statement.
I second this!
Other people have schticks I don’t find amusing, but I ignore them. It’s not as if taking the time and effort to comment is going to change anything.
People here have schticks?
You don’t think everyone here is authentic to their meatspace personality do you?
*munches on steak*
People here have schticks?
Well, some have shtones.
*puts 9mm holes in A zone of star charts*
AM I BEING DETAINED??!!
Like UCS…
don’t like the schtick but don’t bother me either
This is me. I am more put off by the people put off by his schtick.
I wouldn’t mind a slashdot type filter than adds an hour to your posting time if it is the first post and contains the word first.
Then we can start going with moderation and meta-moderation and fall into a spiral of reinforcing behavior that turns us into a a giant left wing echo chamber!
/. was one of the places I lamented when they went downhill quickly.
Add me to that group. Enjoy both.
x4
Wrong.
I like the guy and like how well he takes the hate thrown at him. But what do i know?
So you’re saying he’s a lot like Winston?
I’m a fan of the schtick and his serious takes.
You can put me on that list.
I think it’s funny mainly because of how much it bothers people.
Ditto on the substantive comments.
You’re supposed to walk softly and carry a big schtick.
I find it amusing as well.
Is this like the silent majority here? No-one knew everyone was opposed to wokeness/covidians/etc until someone spoke up! Wow, I’m not alone!
Add me to the amused by the schtick (or maybe the fact that it seems to piss people off – hey, I never said I was a good person) and appreciative of the substantive comments.
Back in the long long ago when we could change our handles at will I used to enjoy a good bit of schtick. If anything it has nostalgia value. I like the schtick.
#metoo
There’s a schtick? ::confused::
Thanks, Pie.
I think that happens in every tribe. At some point, the traditions are set, nobody knows why, they just go through with them. Following tradition is a marker of tribal conformity, and that’s not all bad. Sometimes tradition is arrived at by trial and error, and it’s tradition because it works. Then again, sometimes tradition is just what somebody in power wanted to do, nobody said “naw, bruh,” and so it stuck.
Following tradition is a marker of tribal conformity, and that’s not all bad – I see the benefits and drawbacks but it just isn’t for me…
It’s an interesting thing to me because some traditions developed back in the day that when you mixed this nut with this other nut, and dried it out in this manner, it became safe to eat. Skip one of those steps, and it’s still toxic.
Laviticus is basically “wash yer balls and don’t eat seafood, it gave me such bad gas last time”
So, I don’t come from a religious background at all, but could it be that an important part of it in regards to the philosophy of it, is that is something that the parishioner needs to bring themselves? In that, the bones of the thought process are there, but only the practitioner can put flesh on those bones.
Just a thought.
This may be pertinent. https://unherd.com/2021/08/why-the-west-will-collapse/
Good article!
I’m not particularly religious, but I agree with the premise of the article that the Christian heritage of the west is probably essential to its success and qualities today. Walking away from it leaves a hollow core that will not support the structure anymore.
So many people profess a religious upbringing and training and not only ignore that part of their youth but corrupt themselves with socialistic beliefs and crime.
Morality and religion are not the same. I don’t believe in electricity but it believes in me, unless the bulb is burned out
/Non-believer
I was a Sunday school teacher during my teen-age years. I even considered a career in the church.
Now…./also a non-believer
Flossing is most assuredly not bullshit.
the science is mixed on that one
Ahem
this is why the Taliban win
Why do you need 10 layers of hierarchy from the Patriarch (so unwoke) to the local priest?
Is the Orthodox Church really that layered? Most organizational theorists cite that the Roman Catholic Church operates on a much flatter basis than most govt or corporate structures.
It is an interesting question.
The distinct differences I pick up on between Orthodox and Catholic are:
1) Orthodox = Mystical versus Catholic = Procedural
2) Orthodox = Cultural and National Division versus Catholic = Rome Above All
I’ve found myself fascinated with ancient church history and the earliest schisms and dogmatic disputes. For example, there is a whole “Catholic” tradition outside the Roman Catholic and the various Eastern (non-orthodox) churches. I think if we are raised Protestant we don’t really focus on much beyond the Reformation and tend to be pretty fuzzy on even the Catholic/Orthodox split.
I was raised Baptist. Their historical tradition is pretty weak.
Not 100% sure about the number at least 5 though
As a lower middle class Catholic kid, my doubt started with no meat on Fridays during lent. We can’t have Hamburger Helper for dinner this Friday, but we can do crab cakes. Spend more on an enjoyable dinner for Jesus…I don’t know, I was lost in the messaging.
You are lucky. orthodox lent is not animal products, including fish and molluscs and crustaceans. no eggs or dairy. Some are not even sure on honey, though usually honey is for lent.
At the time the tradition was formed, it was the fish that was the cheaper, less prestigious food.
It was relatively recently that beef was plentiful enough to be affordable, given the logistical requirements.
Right, but there has been no change to the tradition.
My little mind was really blown when I saw what the bible had to say about shellfish.
Acts 10:9-15?
Kill and eat!
One of the most delightful stories in Hughes’ Fatal Shore (history of Australia) was the POMmies eating salted cod from England while the young Australians were eating the local fresh seafood.
Not even close. The best story was the guy that tried to escape by skinning and wearing the skin of a kangaroo to sneak past guards who shot him because they thought he really was a kangaroo.
We must have different definitions of “delightful”.
Fridays were tuna noodle casserole, mac and cheese, or fish sticks in my Catholic house.
This was our house too, so I am being a little unfair. The fancier seafood dishes we had were probably consumed on Ash Wednesday/Friday and on Good Friday.
Meatless spaghetti too, booooo.
The wife and I have always gone to Mass every weekend, and at one point we were both faith formation teachers (that’s Sunday school but on Monday nights). Then someone close to us had a stillborn baby, and that shook us. Once COVID lockdowns started, we stopped going. We’ve been back a few times but we just aren’t into it anymore.
I do think there was something to be gained all those years. There was a sense of hope and community, and we were more charitable with our time.
I’m still a Christian although I’m losing interest in my (Presbyterian) church. Between their embrace of covid crap and the last two woke pastors, it now looks like yet another institution the left took over and destroyed.
One of my clients is an Episcopalian seminary and they put out a journal 3 times a year. They are ÜBERwoke.
This intersectionality is bullshit. The ideas compete with one another, and it’s like they don’t even get that.
“We want the church to be relevant” is the death rattle of a sect.
The relevance of a church is rooted in it’s moral authority, and chasing trends erodes that fast.
Cognitive dissonance is just part of the belief system now.
Sounds like a lesbian book club – as long as the book isn’t the Bible.
Ah, a Frozen Chosen
https://babylonbee.com/news/the-babylon-bee-guide-to-denominations
“Cavalry Chapel — Obscure cult that worships soldiers on horseback.”
LMAO
/Evangelical Non-denominational — Undercover Baptists.
Heh.
NW, whahappen, l0b0t, and I had an interesting conversation about theology the other night on Zoom. I love late-night theology discussions on Zoom with Glibs.
In case you were wondering, JW is one rung below you.
Indeed. I’m an atheist with no dog in the fight. I just absolutely love the history of different theologies and I’m quite interested in how others found their path to their chosen cosmology.
I’ve mentioned before, online atheism so disgusted me with the treatment of believers that I have studiously avoided Dawkins and the like for years. I still dig on Chris Hitchens though.
BOOM! Roasted!
I was the former and am now the latter.
We’re struggling to find a decent church community. Hell, even attending the local Church of Christ got us a taste of covid panic last week.
IMO, two chickens are coming home to roost.
1) 125 years of “count the chairs” is coming undone as our culture shifts from secular pluralist to postmodern govotheist*. Turns out there are a lot of people in the pews for the social club atmosphere and a generic feeling of spirituality.
2) the feminine focus of the church is starting to catch up with them, as women are both more sympathetic to the wokeness and covid shit as well as being less well equipped to aggressively stand against it when they disagree (because feminine Christian circles push kindness as the highest virtue, among other things). Ironically, the weakness of the men in the church is probably the single biggest piece of evidence in favor of this. Men have not been properly equipped to battle for the church because the mentality since the second great awakening has been “its a win just to get those scoundrels in the door”.
*monotheists who believe that government is the one true god
I’ve been watching as the (mostly lesbian) women have destroyed the local Methodist church that dates back to 1772. Between them and COVID, it’s almost completely dead, even the very moderately conservative pastor just picked up and split.
Mrs. Dean has clients/contacts in the local Jehovah’s Witness congregations. They are without fail solid people whose church provides a solid community for them, which I think has much to do with the fact that they are solid people (there’s a feedback loop there, I believe). There is much to be said for that, IMO.
I have a large family of clients that are all devout JWs. Can confirm.
One of my ol’ high school buddies _was_ a Jehovah’s Witness.
He stopped the day he had to ask permission from the local JW council for his wife to get a blood transfusion if there was a problem with her surgery.
Apparently – according to him – we had a bet going where I said (in high school) that he was going to leave the JW church.
Im reading a book by Tozer on the tendency toward mindless religious activity with the vague hope that doing religious things will result in the desire and faith.
Of course, this is ass backwards, and the eastern church hasn’t benefitted from having this conversation painfully thoroughly like the western church did. Granted, the west fucked it up, too. The protestants basically ignore large parts of the scriptures related to the actual evidence of salvation and the catholics read in a bunch of nonsense as well, but at least the conversation was had and the arguments exist to fix the problem.
It all comes back to measurability. People are focused on what they can see and quantify, which is butts in seats and people doing religious actions. Of course, when you have a church of 1500 people, you don’t get to know more than 5 or 10% of them well enough to know if they have faith or just some sort of generational guilt/self-help desire motivating their attendance.
Like I said, ass backwards.
And if there is a God, hoping he just cares one was not a complete asshole in life more than the faith thing.
That god is called “self”. I’ve heard many self-identified agnostics recite this same thing, and I wish they’d stop kidding themselves. A god that holds people to such a pathetically low standard is not worthy of worship. It’s a very human way of measuring goodness. Of course it is, it’s atheists imagining a god that will affirm their choices.
painfully *and thoroughly
. I’ve heard many self-identified agnostics recite this same thing – maybe but it is better than damnation if you do not follow the exact proper sect
Better only if it’s true. The honest thing to say is “I don’t believe a god exists. Period. End of story.”
Inventing some nicer god that doesn’t do that icky divine justice thing makes for a really shitty pseudo-theology.
I am not inventing anything. I am saying I am unsure god exists but if it does I hope it ain’t an asshole. I get divine justice for evil acts not for not going to church.
also all gods/theology are invented if you wanna get down to bare bones
Yes, thank you. Let’s at least discuss on the right playing field. “your God doesn’t exist, and even if he does, he’s garbage compared to my strawman God” gets a bit Motte and Bailey for me.
When have I said anything about your god? or my god for that matter?
“Why would I care if you worship, one god or a 1000?”
Paraphrasing Jefferson, from memory
My agnosticism is based mostly in
wait for it…
wait for it…
postmodernism
Trashy, you might find this article interesting:
https://unherd.com/2021/08/the-church-is-on-the-brink-of-revolt/
From the dead thread, RCD sez: If I were Prez, there would be a line of generals and admirals outside my office today. They would be coming in, in 2 minute intervals, to pick up their pink slips. I would make it as public and humiliating as I could.
Yeah, that’s pretty much along Steyn’s line of thinking. You notice how that is pretty much unthinkable to the DC establishment. You would think the party of Truman would remember his confrontation with MacArthur. There is no accountability, no buck stopping here. Everyone in DC is looking for someone else to blame – mostly the other party and the last guy in the office. But actually criticize the military for a job badly done? Not going to happen, after all, the military might expose exactly what they were told to do.
I work from the assumption that the agencies have dirt on every pol.
We should call that the Hoover legacy.
I have been friends with several local elected officials but it never went much further than that. There were always boundaries and I did not understand that until one of my other friends, much more savvy in such matters, explained it to me.
“You dont have anything they want. You are the world’s most boring person so no one has any dirt on you, no leverage. You have never asked them for anything so you dont owe them anything. They just hang out with you now and then when they get tired of people lined up with their hands out.”
My answer – “Whew, what a relief. I think I will keep things that way.”
And every General is a made man with the elites. There are no more Pattons, Grants, or Shermans. They’d top out at Lt. Col. now.
Happy I never topped out
Eisenhower, Marshall, and several other notable flag officers during the second big one, found themselves stuck at Major/LTC for a good portion of their careers, IIRC. Many of them were demoted down from their brevet ranks during the drawdown from the first big one
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/federal-district-court-rules-two-hawaii-gun-control-laws-violate-the-second-amendment/
Huh.
TBF, those were some super shitty laws.
Dammit, I hate the work proxy.
What were the laws?
Thank you.
Issuing carry permits that expire in 10 days. Pretty funny way to fuck with people.
And forcing new gun owners to present their guns at the local police station – because what could go wrong walking into the cop shop with a gun?
Thomas Magnum never had these problems.
Purchase permit.
Let me guess, the waiting period is two weeks.
…and all purchase permits are issued the Monday before Thanksgiving.
Unfortunately, the court still accepts the premise that the right to keep and bear arms can be infringed if the government can demonstrate some sort of public safety concern.
The Court also left the door open to allowing “long-standing” firearms restrictions, which is a loophole that can accommodate multiple Mack trucks, side by side.
There are no institutions that aren’t devoted to expansion of the Total State. The Constitution is a dead letter, the federal government controls the states via its funding of them, Congress has abdicated its responsibility to the Executive, the Court is devoted primarily to not making any waves to preserve its “legitimacy”, and the Executive is populated by millions of unaccountable mandarins and apparatchiks who are immune to the desires of the subjects they rule.
How else are you going to transport the necessary BATFE troops?
The Constitution is a dead letter… [utterly righteous rant truncated]
Well, as if not believing in god wasn’t depressing enough.
Do I need to purchase a permit to exercise my first amendment rights? No? Then fuck anyone who says I need a permit to exercise my second amendment rights.
As I’ve said before, a permit is a prohibition wrapped in a bureaucracy.
They are prima facie infringements.
It’s coming
I stopped listening to REM with Green, so this one doesn’t affect me much.
But now I want to listen to Fables.
Green Grow the Rushes Ho
“I always thought a baptism should be at an age where you are capable of committing to the faith”
This is the way.
This is the most common procedure among evangelical churches.
But if an unbaptized baby dies, how will it get to heaven?
For the most part, babies haven’t done their turn in the monocle mines, and don’t deserve to get to heaven.
Fair point.
reincarnation
It is funny that a denomination named after a specific act considers that act symbolic at best.
That and the “Hey cool, we are gonna have communion this week.”
It is a public profession of faith. Most churches will allow you to join without getting dunked.
What, you have a problem with Limbo?
How low can you go?
“certainly not some righteous anger at some God who allows bad thing to happen to good people.”
I forget the line exactly, but CS Lewis said something like (referring to when he was an atheist): “I didn’t believe God existed and was angry at him for not existing.”
I will say that my long, slow apostasy has not made me a happier person. But I couldn’t be authentic in attending any church ever again; it would just mean the fear of death has won out and I prefer not to be a prisoner to any fear.
Um, excuse me, but if’n you’re Orthodox, you’re still Catholic, just not Roman Catholic, that split happened before the Schism, when they started worshipping Luthor or The King of Engaland.
Nope. Catholic is the word for “other Christians” among Orthodox Christians. Russians always call it “Catholic Christmas” whenever they discuss the holiday. I’m tired of telling them that it is protestant Christmas, too.
They are Orthodox because they believe they are holding onto the traditional ideas of the Catholic church. Just like Orthodox Jews are Jews holding onto the traditions. Popular vernacular doesn’t change reality.
Popular vernacular is important when civilized Europeans discourse with uncultured Americans
Who has successfully stood against the onslaught of wokeism over the last 20 years?
Religious Muslims – who just won a war against a superpower.
And former communists who already lived through that shit – many of whom are now returning to nationalism and religion to prevent wokeism from spreading.
Not atheists, conservatives, or libertarians.
I think it comes down to whether you have a bone-deep commitment to objective truth and reality. If you do, then leftism’s insistence that everything is all in your head (which seems to be what leftism boils down to these days) won’t get any traction. If you are infected with post-modernism, then you are vulnerable to going down the slippery slope of moral relativism, “hard” multi-culturalism, and ultimately lunatic leftism.
Wokeism is a first-world problem borne of boredom and general lack of hardship. Everybody else is too busy surviving and/or trying to get ahead.
yes the difference between the 72 genders is less important when actually starving
72 genders versus 72 virgins is kind of how I see Kabul.
I suppose we’ve never really studied the problems of sustained prosperity because we haven’t had it long enough previously to see what happens.
Back to the John Glubb “Fate of Empires” thing. Empires get rich, then decadent, then crumble.
That is probably the case with the elites, but I’m thinking more about the public.
Technology has made more of us more prosperous than ever. But the later stages of the Roman Republic, Arab Arab, British, and Ottoman Empire all saw a lot of people enjoying a level of prosperity not normally seen elsewhere in the world.
What has been on my mind lately, irrespective of my religion, is something I’ve never really done too much of until I started watching true crime TV while cross stitching, which is wonder why God would allow such evil things to happen to innocent people. Then I saw all the Afghans trying to hang onto our planes as we left, begging us not to leave them behind for the Taliban. My religion tells me we each have our burdens to bear, but why for which people for what reason?
So I’m coming to wonder if this life is purgatory, and death our release from it.
This world is the realm of Man (TM). God may intervene or not, take of that as will. But the curse and the blessing of Man (TM) is to have free will, and be allowed to be judged by the actions one chooses.
Facile answer I suppose is because God allows us to have free will. Doing good has no meaning if we have no choice in the matter.
I debated replying to this for a while, because this is a subject that lots of folks take personally. But I consider everyone on this site to be my friends, and if you can’t discuss this among friends, then who the hell can you discuss it with?
As to my comment: This (the quoted part) is where everything fell apart for me, when I was a very young man. Granted I had essentially no religious upbringing; the Old Man was an atheist, Mom was at most a kind of squishy Jefferson-style Deist. The only religious instruction I got from them was “you’ll figure it out for yourself when you’re old enough.” One of the best things our folks did for my siblings and I was to mostly leave us alone to figure out how to shape our lives, while setting sterling examples themselves.
Anyway: I did – after reading several versions of the Bible as well as most of the Qu’ran and several works on comparative religions, including The Golden Bough, which remains one of my desk-side references – I came out of the far end a (non-evangelic) atheist.
A part of that process was this: I grew curious, I tried to reconcile, logically, the idea of humans having free will with an omniscient and omnipresent God, and I just couldn’t.
If God is omniscient, knowing before I was born everything I will think and do in advance – which is what omniscience means – then I am just a robot, following pre-programmed instructions, and nothing I think or do has any moral import. Saint or mass murderer, I’m just following what the omniscient God made me to be.
If I have free will, then I should be able to do things that God didn’t anticipate. I would be able to surprise God, or even trick God. In that case, God can be neither omniscient nor omnipotent.
So how does one square that circle?
Further, if God is omniscient and omnipotent, why does he need an intercessor to impart justice and mercy?
I get your line of reasoning. I am not willing to let go of a belief in a deity.
I’m not asking you to. Just because I don’t share your faith doesn’t mean that I don’t understand that it has value for you. And, I mind my own business.
I’m just asking about the apparent contradiction in logic.
No, I understand you’re not asking me to. I’m just saying this is my Scylla and Charybdis.
Yeah, that’s a pretty good metaphor. It’s something I’ve always found to be an interesting problem.
Is it, though? If there is a God, and he made us, he gave us the dual nature that is in constant tension, right? Free will means that each of us decides which side of our nature will be ascendent. This doesn’t suggest that the outcome is predetermined, so the idea of fooling or surprising God doesn’t appear to be part of the equation.
It strikes me that faith is a pretty good tool kit for keeping the chaos at bay.
But what the fuck do I know?
Not sure what you mean by this; speaking for myself alone (which is all anyone can do) I only recognize my “nature” as having one side – me.
But if God is omniscient – all knowing – and omnipotent – all powerful – then, by definition, all outcomes are predetermined. The only way humans can have free will is if God is limited.
I’m not totally sure myself, but it appears that my capacity for evil as well as my capacity for good are baked in. The challenge then is to take the path and make the choices that suppress the evil while expressing the good. These, of course, become definitional, too, which is why a faith foundation can help so much (and I say this as a guy with a rickety foundation).
Whether my success or failure was predetermined is impossible to know. I know that I try to conduct myself as if it isn’t. And as far as the existence of God, I can’t possibly know in this life, so again I try to live my life like he does.
These are interesting questions that we will never answer.
This is a thought experiment I have had:
I am god. You are god. I didn’t say A god. I said “god”, no article.
That is to say, we create characters with personalities and preferences. We create the world around them and certain circumstances. There comes a point when that character’s personality will assert itself and I will say, “If I have him do this, that is out of character and inconsistent with what I have set up.” So I will either go with the circumstance I had set up and let that play out consistent with the character’s personality, or I will change the circumstance so that the character’s personality can be consistent.
In that respect, am I omniscient/omnipotent? Or am I adjusting myself to what will be most consistent with the personality I created?
Likely so. Doesn’t mean we can’t have fun swatting them back and forth at each other.
In the context of the little universe you’ve created, sure; I have fun with that in my own writing, joking that to those characters I am God, and can disposition them as I please – As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods, They kill us for their sport.
It’s a good question…
Time Bandits covered this…
While omniscience and omnipotence are prerequisites for predeterminism, predeterminism is not the only possible product of these properties. Being all powerful in no way entails or requires directing the course of events, it merely means that one could. As an example, a slave owner has total power over their slave, yet can choose to treat them well or poor, to give them wide latitude or narrow. The possession of power does not require the exercise of it. Likewise being all knowing does not mean that everything that happens happened according to your desire. I know what happened to me yesterday, that doesn’t mean everything that happened transpired the way I wanted it to. Now, putting these two together does complicate things, as a god that is all-knowing and all-powerful will know beforehand the effects of all his actions and has the power to change his actions to fine tune things to get the exact results he wants. But this in no way precludes the possibility of just letting it all go, that everyone is given the choice of their own actions. And it does not preclude a middle ground, choosing to affect some actions but not others, partial predestination, as it were. Things are further complicated I concede if this god is the only god, and therefor the creator, for after all being the creator requires the greatest choice of action, creation itself. In that respect I guess it could be said that the big picture view the god predetermines everything, in the sense that he determines if everything exists or not, but it still in no way prevents the diverging paths within reality from happening on their own. The god could be fine with how it all turns out, and decide to create the universe, giving the participants their own free will to make their own choices, even interfering here and there, and still not have determined everything that happened, merely made the choice that it can happen versus cannot. I might not be explaining it well, but it makes perfect sense to me as a possibility without logical contradictions.
If I might engage, Animal, there is only a contradiction because of our perception, particularly of the illusion of time, which is something we take to be a “constant.”
If time is not as we conceive of it, then the contradiction disappears.
. . . why does he need an intercessor to impart justice and mercy?
Everybody needs an interpreter in a foreign country where they don’t speak the language. ?
You can’t.
Ultimately, some things are beyond understanding or proof. Our conception of the universe is limited to the scope of our puny minds.
*insert non-deterministic quantum physics here*
So how does one square that circle?
God exists outside of space and time. God knows “now” what you “will do” because, in crude human terms, it has already happened to Him.
The analogy that quiets the issue in my head is a DVR’d football game. When I re-watch a football game on DVR, I know what’s “going to” happen. However, that in no way takes away the free will of the players. Then, the only circle I need to square is God unchangingly existing in two times at once.
If our understanding of the universe is correct, and time is merely another dimensional component of the universe, then it’s plausible that a being who created the universe and can inhabit the entirety of the spatial dimensions can also inhabit the entirety of the temporal dimension.
The DVR analogy doesn’t work. In that case, you are just viewing a recording of past events. In the case of an all-knowing God, he has knowledge of future events, and sets those events in motion knowing the outcome. Because of that – and because that God is all-powerful – I can have no free will, as everything I will ever do or think is predetermined.
It actually works well from the perspective of someone watching to recording for the first time. Part of General Relativity is that when things happened is relative to the observer.
PBS SpaceTime has a number of shows on the difference/nondifference between past and future.
Actually, when I first began to understand relativity, particularly with respect to an observer’s timeframe, is when I stopped fretting about whether God “knows” the future. The formulation I’ve lived with since I was a teenager is “God knows everything that can be known and can do anything that can be done.” The ancient philosophical concepts of omniscience and omnipotence (which have been “imported” into Christianity and several other world religions, and do not, for me, comprise a part of the actual “knowledge base” of these same religions) had no concept at all of an observer’s frame of reference AFAIK.
The DVR analogy doesn’t work.
Crude attempt at a linear analogy applied to a non-linear situation.
You’re going to need to flesh out how the then follows from the if. I mean, it would hard for people to do something that I can’t anticipate, and even I don’t claim omniscience.
Of course, the main problem with most formulation of the 3 O Problem is that people don’t have a clear understanding or agreement on what omniscience means, and even less so omnipotence.
Most people take it as an article of faith that logic works, and something that is logically impossible is actually impossible. Which means you’re already defining away any possibility of the supernatural or omnipotence in the first place. Thus the arguments are all varying flavors of begging the question.
People exercising free will often do things that other people can anticipate. Doesn’t mean they weren’t exercising free will.
But this isn’t anticipation. This is knowledge.
You know, Calvin didn’t find this problematic.
NW explained Calvinism to me quite neatly, but I’ll be damned if I can parse the nuances at the moment.
And that’s probably the stumbling block; I do not accept the possibility of anything supernatural or omnipotent, for lack of evidence.
Absence of evidence, etc.
Any evidence of the supernatural can always be explained away in natural terms, if nothing else than as trickery or hallucination. There can never actually be any proof of omnipotence.
It’s all a nicely sealed loop.
My favorite theological argument:
questions like this is why most Orthodox Christians drink heavily … I mean not the main reason but it is out there
Yes, free will. Free will of the powerful to impose his will on the powerless. That’s what I’m getting at. The only free will the powerless have in that situation is how they react to it.
I’m not trying to be defensive. This is just what I’ve been thinking about and right now I’m thinking out loud.
The Book of Job is I think the ultimate contemplation on that.
In Sunday school once, the topic was Job. After some discussion of how stalwart and faithful Job was, I finally raised my hand and said, “Yanno. I understand all the standard answers to Job’s predicament, but consider this. If we are taking the story as true, what that means is that God and the devil made a bet, and God allowed the devil to do the most rottenest things to poor Job. So really, God is a jerk for doing that.” I would have said asshole, but it was Sunday school.
To my shock, my mother said, “I’ve always thought that, too!”
So everybody else gathered themselves to say that it was a testament to Job’s faithfulness, to which I said, “Yes, yes, I SAID I know all that. Are you saying it’s an allegory and thus, not literal, or are you saying the story’s true and God’s a jerk?”
Nobody else knew quite what to say to that.
If I were trying to be a faithful man I’d see it like this: It’s true and God is a jerk, that’s why he split part of Himself off and got nailed to a tree. That lovable jerk.
Oh it’s even better. If God is truly omniscient, then he knew he wouldn’t lose the bet to Satan and that Job would be steadfast. Which means it wasn’t even a bet and God let Satan torment Job for no reason. That’s a little worse than a jerk.
Oh no.
And that’s without even accounting for the loss of the persons of Job’s household – as though they weren’t people, just his possessions/accoutrements.
That has occurred to me too. It’s a little too painful to contemplate.
After really studying it, I’m amazed that Job (who is never described as an Israelite) is part of the canon. It’s damn near subversive.
Now, alternatively, if you assume God is NOT omniscient, the story takes on a very different character. Then, God has faith in Job and the wager is an honest one.
See my understanding of omniscience and omnipotence above. The narrative in Job’s never really fazed me. It also wouldn’t bother me if it was nothing more than a story composed out of whole cloth with zero historicity whatsoever. For one thing, the view of The Tempter in Job is radically different than elsewhere in the collected documents of what some of us now call the Old and New Testaments.
The existence of a nonomniscient God must certainly create other problems.
The payoff at the end also becomes Job’s steadfastness earns his communion with God, for God reveals himself to Job and resets their relationship. Job is no longer just a man of faith, for he has been in the presence of God. That’s a pretty fair payoff for the suffering he endures.
As to non-omniscience of God, what real problems does that present to man? If anything it means we have more relevance and our lives have meaning (without being predestined). It still allows that God created the universe (something quite beyond our imaginations) – He set up the laws of physics he just doesn’t know how/when it plays out at the end. But it does keep the system honest – he doesn’t tinker to suit a whim.
I now believe in a nonOmniscient universe-creator
I don’t disagree, but the only way to keep the powerful from preying upon the weak would be to remove their free will to choose to do so. Perhaps the entire true meaning and purpose is simply beyond comprehension of the human mind. Kind of like a cat trying to understand calculus.
I can accept that, but it doesn’t keep me from contemplating all these things.
Adjacent: I posted this.
Oh, for sure, I think about these things all the time. And I often feel like a cat trying to understand calculus.
Pshaw… my cats can calculate the ballistic trajectory of a treat thrown at them with remarkable precision. Of course, they are still confused when the red dot they are chasing appears on the top of their paw after they cover it… make of that what you will.
I was thinking the same thing watching Dr Pimple popper last night.
This poor girl was born with the most hideous birthmarks on her face that would just grow back bigger and darker every time they were removed. Couldnt imagine going through life like that or having a daughter with that problem. Not sure why it happens.
One of the great miracles was La Prieta Rossa Antonio Vivaldi, was music teacher at a girl’s orphanage, and yet never caused a scandal.
When I was in Catholic middle school we had a short response question “Which was the greater tragedy? The Great Schism or the Avignon Papacy / Western Schism?” I argued the latter because it showed once that the ascendancy of the papacy is a political farce, governed by man. The teacher disagreed. I stopped going to church after confirmation.
Last week, I got into a theological discussion with a little old lady at the Congregational Church in Bennington, VT. She was talking about how in the 1920’s, there was even a KKK presence in Bennington! I said “in the 1920s, the klan was everywhere.” She replied “Yes, but you’d have though we’d be better than that.”
The Klan hates Catholics, thus we are the One True Religion (who believes in Jesus). QED.
Damn – how old is that lady?
She dodged trial at Salem.
https://babylonbee.com/news/gladly-believe-god-just-show-evidence-opinions-identical-mine
The Bee from 5 years ago, probably even more accurate today.
Our current (Catholic) parish priest is from The Philippines (as was the former). Man, they’ve got their own bent all about Mary worship. I’m all for starting a Catholic cult that just performs the Mass and talks about shit actually in the bible. What glibertarian woman wants to be the first of my 5 brides?
“just performs the Mass”
In what language?
Latin, obviously. No sane person wants lingua franca Mass anymore. As an aspiring basedboy I will only attend Latin Mass.
“Why are you using the language of the people that nailed up the Son of Man?”
Because like Obi-Wan Kenobi, nailing Jesus made him more powerful than the Romans could have possibly imagined.
Aramaic.
And none of that Greekified “Jesus” stuff. His name is Yeshua bin Yusuf.
Joshua ben Josef might be acceptable.
Did you know that according to (((scholars))), angels can speak every mortal language except Aramaic?
In the original Klingon, of course.
The last Catholic mass I went to (mind you, I only go to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, for the music, and even then I’ve only been 3 times), the sermon was straight from the gospel of John, I believe.
The format for Mass is:
-The welcome to church songs and whatnot
-A reading from both the New and Old Testament,
-The blessing of the bread and wine,
-Communion
-Priest’s Homily (preaching more or less)
-The end
(There is music interspersed between each section)
As an aside, Catholic Hymns are really frigging boring. Despite their status as heretics ( (; ), American Protestants gospel music is far superior to Catholic Hymns.
Mass is technically only the blessing of the offerings and communion. The rest is pageantry.
You don’t like modern American Catholic liturgical music?
Don’t forget reciting multiple creeds between parts.
As a Protestant who attended Catholic school, I never understood the obsession with Mary.
Mary worship always struck me as permissible idolatry.
#metoo
Yep.
there’s something about Mary I suppose. though Cameron Diaz was hottest in the mask
*narrows gaze*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APtRoHh2GWw
Since that was a double pun hopefully you were wearing glasses.
Cameron Diaz was hottest in the mask
True story.
There’s just something about Mary.
2 things there (that I’m aware of)
1) intercession of the saints. This issue is one I strongly side with the protestants on. Screams of idolatry to me.
2) the mental gymnastics they do to avoid “original sin” touching Jesus requires some assumptions about how original sin progresses down the family tree and thus requires the “immaculate conception” of Mary. This makes Mary essentially a demi-goddess or at least on par with the paragons of Old Testament lore. I see nothing in the scriptures to support any of this, and I’ll admit to not having studied the Catholic Bible closely enough to know whether it’s addressed there or whether it’s just one of those traditions that popped up post-hoc.
I thought the creation of the saints was a sop to the paganistic traditions of Rome and a way to get converts, much like the way the church absorbed other pagan traditions centered around seasonal festivals.
The Catholic Church did start to purge those saints in recent history. Hence no more St. Christopher or St. Brigid (of the bow – Celtic hero).
Saints are mentioned in the Bible, but the canonization process is very catholic. Protestants interpret the term more like “the godliest people through history.”
There’s some intercession of the saints that happens in the OT. The best example that comes to mind, though, is NT. As Jesus is dying on the cross, He calls out “eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?” [“my God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”]. I forget whether it was due to misinterpretation or due to mishearing, but the crowd thinks he’s calling out to Elijah for help. There’s a lot of context being left out here that adds color to that mistaken belief, but they thought he was asking for Elijah’s help.
The problem with intercession of the saints today is that moments later the curtains in the temple tore, symbolizing the end of the need for an intercessor to communicate with God. Or, more accurately, Jesus became the Great Intercessor, thus eliminating the need for anybody else to fill the role.
Ha!
Yes, that is quite prevalent in the Filipino tradition.
Mexican Catholicism isn’t that much different. And ACB’s weirdo splinter version is even further down the crazy line.
I just awoke from a fevered dream, perhaps fueled by alcohol, and certain salts and/or alkaloids.
Touch screen devices, while handy in the retail area, arent really necessary for consumers. I just looked at my iPad from an angle and saw my fingerprints all over.
Handy for law enforcement.
“Do you want to play a game?”“Am I being detained?”Is it in Latin?
Crap. Supposed to be a reply to CPRM.
I was told by a guy in an AA meeting, “you dont have to understand god. Its like electricity, even if you dont know how it works, you know when you flick the switch the lights gonna come on. You dont have to understand god or what he is—just get on your knees and talk to him as if you did it every day.”
Absolutely changed my life and started an upward trajectory from that day on.
I like that.
And congrats on your upward trajectory!
I’m sorry I didn’t comment on this before now. I meant to.
This is really profound, thanks. It’s what I’ve always been taught, but I forget.
What came to mind…
A human designed the electrical circuit. Did a human create god? Who knows?, but at least we can probably agree that different people define/design god in many different ways. I prefer the ascetic route, to sense and experience the divine – whatever that is – and *not* define it.
“You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice…”
Also might be better to think that electricity exists within creation and we merely harness it.
Another interesting twist on that is, try to actually explain electricity. Oh, we can use it, we can generate it – but really try a deep explanation of the physics of it.
Something something, valence electrons, something something, shells, something something, *shoves mount into jacket lapel and keeps mumbling*
mouth*
It gets really fun when you start talking about the flow of holes.
Old joke…
A group of engineers finally designed a machine that could make anything and everything out of the raw materials found on Earth. So they summoned God to tell Him he was no longer needed, since they could now create anything.
God rubbed his chin and said, “Ok then. Make a human.”
The engineers told him that was no problem, collected some dirt, and were about to put it into their machine.
God interrupted, wagging a finger at them, “Sorry, get your own dirt.”
Yeah, as a lifelong electronics enthusiast, I always get a kick out of discussions of “electric potential” and othersuch in texts etc. Basically the authors assign labels to phenomena that we don’t really understand.
I’m just glad we can use it without really grokking it.
I hate large companies. Idiot property management department can’t properly post no parking; will tow signs and their understanding of the law in direct opposite of experience is totally based on “someone told someone who told me what the law is” and won’t just bother Legal to have them do their fucking jobs and figure out what the law is.
https://gothamist.com/news/key-nyc-vaccine-mandate-what-you-need-visit-restaurants-bars-and-gyms
I thought requiring ID was racist?
More evidence of Russophobia: Sputnik V is not on the list.
I noticed that, it’s as good as any of the others and better than Sino.
Since only about 30% of the city’s black population has been vaccinated, it’s definitely racist. Disparate impact and all that.
So what if I got my vaccine out of country…and they don’t have the infrastructure to share and all I have is this beat up little card that says so.
Weirdly, a number of other “popular” vaccines (that are accepted if administered within the U.S.) don’t appear to be acceptable if administered anywhere else besides the U.S., such as Moderna, J&J or Pfizer.
Wut?
FWIW, the talk around the Rockaways (nobody I know voted for Nixon), is of non-compliance and protest. We’ll see…
Jugsy is in Far Rockaway, shield her.
Heh- you’re too tiny.
Does she know of cheap properties to rent or, G/d help me, squat at (adverse possession FTW)?
Wait, I hadn’t thought of that. In order for vaccine cards to work, you would need a matching ID. Otherwise you just borrow a vax card from a friend when you go to dinner. So you need an ID to eat a sandwich, but not to vote for the president. I think these people just reasoned themselves in a circle.
Pffftttttt….
Cults don’t mind cognitive dissonance at all. In fact, holding two contradictory thoughts at the same time is to be celebrated.
Encouraged and practised, even.
… just reasoned themselves in a circle.
Nothing that they can’t jerk themselves out of.
GTFO, I didn’t even know about that.
Absolutely outrageous. And yes, racist. In so far as I don’t blame BIPOC’s for being skeptical of this shit.
NYC’s New COVID Vaccine Passport Simply A ‘Glorified Photo Storage App,’ Critics Say
Perfect.
Because of course it is. Oh, and you left out bars and museums which were added to the Cleans Only list this week.
Dick pics INCOMING!!!
That’s as far as I got before I mentally threw my computer out the window.
We are lost. We deserve everything we get if we let this obscenity continue.
Don’t feel bad.
Up here in The Great White North,
our feckless asshole-in-chiefThe Hair That Walks Like A Man™ stands a decent chance of being re-elected with a majority by campaigning for vaccine passports nation-wide.Holy shit! rhywun is telekinetic!
You know who else required papers to move from one location to another…
Airlines?
University tenure committees?
The M1 “Tanker” that Gun Jesus built many years ago might be my favorite of them all. https://youtu.be/4qaTRwq-IRc
That is really sweet. He took a long time to get around to saying whether it was in 7.62×51 or .30-06. I assumes 7.62×51 and was right.
Just a stranger on the bus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDdOnl0bHO4
I recently started going back to church after a decade-long hiatus. The messages are wonderful and unapologetic and just what my family and I needed. Everyone is friendly. They seem to be the antiwoke. They refuse to wear masks even in LA county. I’ve found my place.
Wait, LA county??
Indeed. Just moved here.
My sympathies, truly.
Thanks. Wasn’t my choice. I flipped a lid when I found out.
https://www.duffelblog.com/p/army-career-manager-emotionally-exhausted-from-screwing-so-many-people
I laughed out loud in the office at this one.
https://www.duffelblog.com/p/army-easter-egg-lost-lieutenant
That’s exactly my story. Great gig with the personal endorsement of a three star to head to the promised land (Texas). Two days before orders were expected…psych!…California. Fuck this.
Hah!
The author has quite a good twitter feed
https://twitter.com/BlondsOvrBaghd
That’s awesome!
It’s also nice to see you back here.
New assignment is less busy and I’m basically convinced it’s time for me to find a new job.
(((I))) have a serious problem in that I’d like to probably be a bit more religious, especially with q-ette around, however any non-Orthodox synagogue is basically a front group for Commie politics nowadays. You can’t go and be a Jew and learn and pray, it’s nothing but SJW horseshit/Israel is Nazi Germany/is a 90% tax rate high enough?/I’m an atheist Jew!/associated bullshit. I could circumvent that I suppose by going balls deep and becoming Ortho, but I think we all know how that’d turn out with my proclivities.
You’d have to hire a shabbos goy to pull up your cupcake pics on the sabbath?
Can’t that just be pre-programmed the day before the Sabbath?
I’d say you do have a quandary.
The only REM album worth owning is Murmur. The rest of ’em are just meh or plain bad.
If we are gonna go old school, go old school. Chronic Town is better.
O
There is plenty to dislike, like the priest driving a USD100k Mercedes CLS telling poor pensioners who barely get by to donate money to the church.
The parish associated with the Catholic grade school I went to had been undergoing a new construction project before and during the time I was at the school. Before I started at the grade school, the parish had built a new, and very nice parish church. During my time at the school, the plan was to build a new rectory, social hall, and school.
My family never went to the parish church, so I heard this second hand. The folks at my school that went to the parish church told me about how the priests, during their Homily, would hector the congregation into donating money for the new construction.
At that point, the parish was working on a new rectory before starting the new social hall and school. The rectory ended up being a very nice building overlooking a reservoir. During the construction of the rectory, the parish bought Cadillacs for the priests to drive. Folks that went to the parish church saw the construction and the cars, and stopped giving. This was a fairly rural part of the Philly area which was economically depressed. Many parishioners were unhappy as the priests were living better than them.
The parish was, despite this drop in giving, able to raise enough money to build a new social hall, which ended up being largely unused. They never built a new school. Many years after I left, the Archdiocese decided to shut the parish school down due to low enrollment.
My parents did not attend church regularly, except Easter service and the usual weddings, baptisms, funerals and other such tragedies of life. They did take me twice a year, as a kid, for confession and communion, for whatever that was worth.
Pie, was this before or after Communism fell? I don’t remember if you’re old enough to remember Communism. I think you were, but I can’t remember.
I have a friend who grew up in Bulgaria and remembers Communism. She and her family were fairly devout Orthodox, and worshipped in secret during the Communist years.
Brochettaward, from the last thread, I saw your reply about the Code Ninjas. I did not read their report or watch any videos. Like I said, I’m a little soured after the Windham, NH audit. Whenever the final report comes out of Arizona, I’ll take a look.
I’ve been an atheist for some 40 years now. Started at roughly age 10 with Cosmos and an embrace of science _and_ history; the latter on my readings of Ancient Greece, Rome, etc. Those “pagan” gods were worshiped with as much fervor as any Medieval Catholic, so who am I to question their beliefs?
I am not, however, a militant atheist. I feel jealous of those who find solace through religion. They also, via my wife’s Catholic side of the family, provide community for many people. When her father died, the local church was filled with people, many who worked the kitchen to provide food. I’ve never seen such a spread.
If – point of a gun – had to choose a religion, it would be something Norse. Why not?
If – point of a gun – had to choose a religion, it would be something Norse.
As pissed off as I am these days, I might go full Wahhabist. I feel an urge to go go all jihadi on our current rulers.
Cult of Venus.
To be more specific, Cult of Venus Calipygian.
As penance recite seven Dat Asses.
I have said this on Zoom before, but I don’t know if I’ve said it here, but I dabbled in Wicca. I would go to the little meetings which, other than being held at IHOP, weren’t much different from the women’s auxiliary meetings at my church. There were some dudes there, though. They were all of some Norse tradition. Each meeting had a topic.
One day, the topic was, “Which gods do you worship and how?” Everybody went around the room. I said my spiel, truncated, of course. (Tangentially: Someone made a snide comment about Mormonism, not knowing I was a Mormon. I found it funny, especially the look on their faces when I said “I’m a Mormon.”) And as everyone talked about their gods and manner of worship, I realized that a) I would have to create my own pantheon, which would require b) research, which I hate, which led me to the realization that c) I already have a pantheon (creator God and Goddess) and d) I like them, and finally e) I’m just too lazy to go to all that trouble when I already like what I’ve got.
I never went to another meeting.
“Those “pagan” gods were worshiped with as much fervor as any Medieval Catholic, so who am I to question their beliefs?”
Much more fervor. There’s some evidence that ancient humans could and did perceive and communicate with their gods directly, in a way that today looks a lot like schizophrenia.
Dr. Julian James’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is a fascinating overview of the subject. It was also the inspiration for Snow Crash.
It was also the inspiration for Snow Crash.
And a key plot driver in the most excellent first season of WestWorld.
I did not know this. Off to torrent WestWorld!
Holy shit yes. Watch it NAO!
I’m a little surprised that LeMat replicas didn’t take off in SASS.
I watched the first season.
I highly commend the effects team, as their work was so seamless as to be invisible.
As for the show, I was bored. I didn’t really care about the woes of the Synths who were not being properly reformatted, and as the safety protocols were working for most of the season, the humans were in no danger. The troubleshooting plot line was the most interesting, and they dropped that halfway through. I spent most of my time analyzing the tech within the established rules of the universe and how to fix the trouble with the synth programming so as to not have the breakdowns and put the cold storage units back in service.
I opted not to watch season two.
^This would be UCS’s schtick
Being honest in my opinion?
The show did bore me and I amused myself by solving the company’s technical issues. Their staffing issues, however, are much worse.
If – point of a gun – had to choose a religion, it would be something Norse. Why not?
Well… the human sacrifices are a little off-putting.
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/08/17/number-of-americans-trapped-in-afghanistan-may-be-even-worse-than-the-biden-team-is-telling-us-n428138
Hooboy. That’s a lot of people to get out from an unfriendly place.
The question is – will the Taliban let the Americans go, use them as hostages, or just execute anyone they capture (depending on who they are, military, civilian, contractor, etc)? I can imagine a mix of all three – depressing as it is to contemplate.
I have no idea how strong the “central Taliban leadership” is. I have a suspicion that these decisions will be made locally, which will likely mean a mix of all three. Leaning toward hostages. Dead people can’t be ransomed, after all.
Good God. Truly a clusterfuck of epic proportions.
So, not counting national security people – who have a reasonably valid excuse for being there – that’s a lot of morons.
So if you are working as a doc, nurse, engineer or such there…you are a moron? ‘Guess nobody from any charitable endeavor should venture outside “safe spaces” ever again.
How about a reporter? No stories there, hmmm?
You should’ve stopped before you got to reporter and I would have considered myself properly chastised. That’s a big fat out you left me.
What are they doing there? Colonizing. Opressing. Pillaging.
Pillaging the American taxpayer most likely.
#saveLordMiles
Lord Miles is in Dubai
Why were so many Americans in Kabul? That’s a small city’s worth! I’d believe 10% of that but oh no. I’d put the chance that none get captured depressingly low.
The Taliban leadership has been telling their thralls to leave westerners alone. They don’t want to give us a reason to stay. How well that works out in bumfuck Helmand, who knows.
Dead head will be in the DC area Saturday. I made a reservation for True Food for 1 pm. Please message me in the forum if you’d like to come.
Is he traveling by foot? I wouldn’t put it past him.
Huh, guess I missed where the Afghan army isn’t the only one that can’t figure out how to actually pay its Joes.
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2021/07/16/national-guard-pleads-for-congress-to-reimburse-half-a-billion-for-capitol-security-mission/
Spoiler: Congress eventually gave everyone their money
Congress eventually gave everyone their money
After all their pissing and moaning about violating the Sacred Temple of Democracy, I should hope so.
Two off topic observations:
Blue Dream is a great bang-for-the-buck strain of MJ.
Caroline Munro – circa 1972 – wowza!
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CmVxjjR-Ok8/T4YxzPKygPI/AAAAAAAAFM8/9O6jyV1lbu8/s640/caroline+munro+peter+cushing+1.jpg
Uh, aren’t both of those a pretty good argument for the existence of God?
This is a holy high. And a holy erection.
There are several Caroline Munros that are “notable.” Wiki says one of them was born in 1966.
Perv. ?
Trivia floating around in my head: Colin Blunstone, of the Zombies, went out with Caroline Munro
He wrote a song about the break-up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53MR4OmI05g
OT: I had a similar sort of arc as you Pie. Brought up religious (Catholic) though my parents were neither believers or practicing, but wanted us in a private school. Took it seriously for a couple of years, thought about priesthood, though in the 4th grade one can’t really say they were thinking about a career. Can’t identify an event that changed it, just a gradual process. Weekly confession – “Well I don’t really feel guilty about that, I don’t think it was wrong, my brother deserved to be punched.” And more seriously, just not being able to accept the metaphysics. Teaching the bible as literal just did not make sense to me; there are contradictions, bad (evil even) behavior on the part of God, etc. So transitioned to atheist around 5-6th grade, if I recall. Was pretty militant about it for a time, but am pretty firmly in the agnostic camp. I doubt the metaphysical reality of a God very strongly, but won’t unequivocally rule it out. And I see great value in religious traditions, especially in the west, as a way of codifying and passing along ancestral knowledge (no woo-woo!) and things we have learned evolutionarily about how to live a good life as a species but didn’t (and still don’t) have the knowledge to precisely isolate and identify in a purely scientific fashion. It treads dangerously close to the paternalistic line of thinking people are too ‘dumb’ (not the right word…) to behave, so we’ll build up this edifice to keep them on the straight and narrow, but it is distinct. More like this is knowledge we have accumulated over millennia, 1e6+ years even and we don’t know how to communicate it, so we build up these traditions and behaviors over generations to preserve that value.
I’m curious, and I’ll preface this with the statement that this is a genuine question and I don’t mean it to be an asshole.
It interests me when atheists say that the results of religion are good but reject the actual religious components. Does that ever give you pause?
I ask primarily because, as somebody who reconverted as an adult from agnosticism, one of the biggest convictions I felt was a profound sense that “there must be something there” because those Christians were living better and doing orders of magnitude more good than the atheists and agnostics I had surrounded myself with. This was true on the personal level, but also on a social level as I observed the groups pushing atheism/secularism most strongly.
In hindsight and from a Christian view, it’s all fairly obvious and predictable to me now. Worship self, become asshole. Half of the old testament is a variant on that theme. I’m curious about the view from the non-believing side of the issue.
Is it the church/religion or just surrounding yourself with good people?
Good people with certain commonalities. Common belief, common goals, common rituals.
Who can be very hard to find without a certain amount of pre-sorting. Which, from a sociology point of view, is one of the things religion does well.
It was more complicated, to a level that would turn this into a small essay. Long story short, I had a number of atheist/agnostic friends (myself included) do all the right things, complete all the secular rites of adulthood, and all end up in very unhappy, unfulfilled, selfish and self-loathing places all simultaneously. Meanwhile the icky religious folks in my life made stupid naive decision after stupid naive decision because their sky god told them to, and yet they were content, morally strong, better people for it. Didn’t matter whether they came out ahead financially or whether they personally benefitted from their decisions, the peace and contentment exuded from them like an aura. I had to get me some of that.
Like I said, it would take a few more paragraphs to do service to everything that was going on, but the result was me approaching Christianity with a truly open mind for the first time since maybe 5th grade.
Interesting observation. I would almost argue that whether the religious belief is literally true is almost beside the point. Religions, at least worthwhile ones, capture metaphorical and allegorical truth.
Sure, be concise and clear…
It interests me when atheists say that the results of religion are good but reject the actual religious components. Does that ever give you pause?
Yes, of course it does. It means we have some very incomplete knowledge. I think it means we’re also cheating on the religion ledger as much as Dawkins/Hitchens do – only looking at one side of it.
However, even Christians do this too. If you are really going to look at the most vibrant communities of faith, you’re going to convert to Mormonism. There isn’t an evangelical tradition that really holds a candle to their community. Nor does even a strict Catholic community. So if strong communities of faith is the metric, most Christians fall as short as any agnostic/atheist collective.
The hard part, outside a community/tradition of faith is to see a transcendent meaning to life. That is the key operant in binding the community. It’s like military discipline is core to that bonding. There isn’t much for me to release my ego-centrism in order to gain communion with something greater. This is the mistake of people who transfer that essentially religious need onto inappropriate things, like govt.
I will try to be brief (suuuurrr, I’ll start now…)
First, I’m not sure I would say the ‘results of religion are good’ – this implies religion is something outside of being human. I *suspect* religion is ingrained into our biology and the manifestations of ‘organized’ (or otherwise) religions are simply reflections of that underlying biology. It’s not that religion is good or bad, it is simply an innate part of being human. How different cultures manifest that innate nature can end up being bad or good. Posing it as you do suggests, that there are human beings and then there is this religious structure that God has created and that structure contains the codified behaviors that He knows are best for his creation. Then your argument (I think) would be that I am accepting the codified behaviors but rejecting the architect of those behaviors (the metaphysics of the religious viewpoint). If I may presume that’s an accurate representation:
I don’t think I’m rejecting the actual religious components. I accept that religion is a manifest part of being a human being, conditioned by our evolution. Our evolution generated sets of behavior that were beneficial and we had no way to communicate those behaviors, certainly not before we became homo and afterwards, even though we have scientific language and reasoning, we can’t distill millions of years of evolutionary behavior modification and learning into a coherent story. What I reject is that this evolutionary origin of the religious drive in humans is ‘proof’ that an entity called God or Gods, depending on the specific expression of the biology, actually exists as a physical real being separate from the human. I can imagine a universe where the human line died out, yet evolution continued. There would be no God in that universe in my formulation.
Since we are religious beings by our nature, having evolved that way for a reason – it works! – those who manifest those traits will do better for themselves and the social group than those who don’t (your third paragraph) in aggregate provided the manifestation of that religious nature in society has done a good job of reflecting the evolutionary lessons that created it (why I think western religious traditions are successful). But I think that the expression of this underlying reality of our nature does not require the actual existence of a supernatural being and the only evidence I see for that is the fact that human beings seem driven to believe in those. But it’s somewhat circular to say that constitutes proof.
Whether religion being an innate part of our biology constitutes the existence of God in some sense, I can’t say. The act of behaving as if it does has beneficial effects, praying centers you and helps you focus calms you and hence your day will be better. Caring for your neighbor will strengthen the community and help it (and you) survive any lurking dangers or disasters, and so on. But I simply can’t take that as evidence for the actual existence of an entity called God.
Thanks! I appreciate both your and JI’s responses!
Since we are religious beings by our nature, having evolved that way for a reason – it works! – those who manifest those traits will do better for themselves and the social group than those who don’t
This is interesting to me given the insistence by some around these parts (myself included, when I’m feeling black pilled) that freedom and liberty is an abberation and our descent into authoritarianism is a reversion to the mean. It would seem that (from that point of view) religion and the religiosity of people generally results in misery. Granted, the lack of religion and religiosity has resulted in misery, too.
Anyway, just thinking out loud there. Not trying to pull the discussion in any direction.
“religion and the religiosity of people generally results in misery”; No, I wouldn’t say so. Life generally results in misery (ask the fawn being eaten alive by a bear). To the degree that humans have been able to learn on an evolutionary timescale and encode those lessons in the religious traditions, we can fend off that misery and survive, maybe slightly less miserably. As far as we can translate that knowledge we’ve acquired and manifest it our traditions, we might even completely transcend the misery, at least for a moment. I think western religious traditions have done the best job of manifesting those evolutionary lessons and hence the precipitous decrease in misery as they’ve gained domination. I just don’t think they constitute evidence for the actual physical existence of God; whether those can be separated practically… maybe our current state is a bit of evidence that they can’t?
Raised Catholic, I am a Christian believer, but don’t believe in organized religion. Too much graft/corruption in all modern churches for my liking, but I blame man, not God for this.
Update on my friend: She is in the ICU and is about to be sedated and put on a ventilator.
Damn, sorry…
That is, IMO, on topic.
Indeed.
Sorry, Mo.
Agreed. Sorry Mo.
?
Very sorry to hear that. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be the patient and to be told that.
I hope for the best for her.
Oh, shit. I am sorry. I’d hoped for better when you told us she was improving a day or two ago . . .
Yeah. She apparently took a turn for the worse last night.
It’s always been a source of amazement to me how often it’s the night when people suffer adverse health events.
Maybe the ancients weren’t so dumb about being afraid of the dark.
The night exposes oneself to oneself. It’s dark, it’s quiet, you’re alone, you can’t sleep. You start thinking, and often those thoughts are as dark as what’s outside the window.
Damn. Sorry to hear that, Moje.
We’re better than we were even last fall with patients who need the vent. We had one a couple weeks ago who we took off the vent (and off sedation). When he came to, he said “I’ve never felt better!”. Probably because over the last couple of weeks he had caught up on his sleep since, well, he was born. Granted, he was an outlier, but . . . .
Unfortunately, COVID ICU means isolation protocols, so you won’t be able to visit, still.
Sorry.
Sorry to hear. Prayers inbound.
Very sorry to hear that.
Oh no. I am a praying man, and I will do so.
So sorry.
Cripes! That sucks. I really hope things still work out.
I attended a Greek Orthodox weeding. It was … strange, not that mine didn’t have some oddities like the ceremonial paying of the dowry.
Heh.
Cousin-in-law married a Chinese lady, and as part of the pre-nuptials, had to deliver a fatted pig to the lady’s parents. That was interesting.
I hope he delivered a Hogzilla-sized beast.
These euphemisms!
It was huge, on a leash, and decked out in red fabric and gold accoutrements (some of which might have been real gold). I only saw photos.
I don’t recall if the pig was some kinda rental (later to be replaced by its value in cash) or if it ultimately was the actual gift and met a delicious end. Since it was apparently quite docile/tame, Imma say “rental.”
I attended parts of a Vietnamese wedding. Before the big party/dinner there is a section that occurs at the Grooms’ Parents’ house. The couple and part of the wedding party arrived, as well as a barbequed pig on a sheet of plywood. The couple stood behind the groom’s parents while they chanted and bowed to an altar, while the sound of cleavers working came from the kitchen. Then as the *whack*ing continued, there were small speeches and drinking of brandy in the living room.
That needs to be part of the ceremony with the pig in an appropriate suit or dress.
I attended a Serbian Orthodox wedding reception… in Serbia
It was easily the most off-the-hook, bonkers wedding I’ve ever been to. Multiple fistfights, passed-out drunks, got a tad bit nationalistic there towards the end.
I think Anthony Bourdain said “Its not a party until somebody kills a pig.”