Interesting essay
Déjà Flu
--
Ubi dubium ibi libertas
Love
says...
>
>http://www.alternet.org/belief/143912/the_top_one_reason_religion_is_harmful_?
page=entire
His thesis is reductive, juvenile and mistaken so the rest
is pelican doodoo.
--
Love
May Shai-Hulud clear the path before you.
Love
>
>http://www.alternet.org/belief/143912/the_top_one_reason_religion_is_harmful_?page=entire
http://www.alternet.org/belief/143844/is_blind_faith_in_god_and_the_bible_a_modern_invention/
Déjà Flu
> In article <cMednQdrQP1cRGDX...@posted.toastnet>, cha...@gmail.com
> says...
>> http://www.alternet.org/belief/143912/the_top_one_reason_religion_is_harmful_?
> page=entire
>
> His thesis is reductive, juvenile and mistaken so the rest
> is pelican doodoo.
Interesting opinion.
It seemed to reduce to the mutual influences of religion
and politics and from thence the influence on individual
choice. Perhaps I read it wrong.
Déjà Flu
> In article <cMednQdrQP1cRGDX...@posted.toastnet>, cha...@gmail.com says...
>> http://www.alternet.org/belief/143912/the_top_one_reason_religion_is_harmful_?page=entire
You may have read it, but I don't think you considered it.
> http://www.alternet.org/belief/143844/is_blind_faith_in_god_and_the_bible_a_modern_invention/
Yeah. We all know Karen, for sure.
Maybe you should reconsider your previous answer
in light of this one. Or are you simply asserting
(as many do) that we should do it because we've
always done it? A very popular position, I might add.
In Thai a big yawn is, "Hao Nawn" (sleep howl - thats
where the word "howl" came from, really).
gnite.
Love
>
>Love wrote:
>> In article <cMednQdrQP1cRGDX...@posted.toastnet>, cha...@gmail.com says...
>>> http://www.alternet.org/belief/143912/the_top_one_reason_religion_is_harmful_?page=entire
>
>You may have read it, but I don't think you considered it.
Nothing new for consideration there. It doesn't even catch up
to the religious flame wars of usenet.
>> http://www.alternet.org/belief/143844/is_blind_faith_in_god_and_the_bible_a_modern_invention/
>
>Yeah. We all know Karen, for sure.
>Maybe you should reconsider your previous answer
>in light of this one. Or are you simply asserting
>(as many do) that we should do it because we've
>always done it? A very popular position, I might add.
I would assert that we are always doing it even when we think
we are making the decision to not do it. It's intrinsic to
human nature to follow a narrative of some kind, and to hold
some ideas as more foundational than others. We do these
things not as a matter of philosophical decision, but as a
matter of course, like breathing.
The author of the first article treats religion only one way:
as if it's a kind of propositional entity that has as its
propositional foundations untestables and unproveables. This
is a very narrow and prejudicial view: she's choosing the
definition that is easiest to attack given her own chosen
narrative and foundational ideas. She's not arguing against
religion; she's arguing for her own. She also conflates
church with religion. This allows her to be devious with her
arguments, picking those examples that accord with her ideas
rather than having to first do a well-considered survey of
what is actually going on. It's as if I argued that since
the American government is corrupt democracy itself is
hopelessly flawed.
"Religion" is a word like "evolution": it refers to something
that we recognise in its unfolding. It's an extremely
general term despite the many who want to stand by "no true
Scotsman" arguments to try to make it what they want it to
be for the sake of asserting their own religion or denying
that of others. Reducing it to "belief in untestables" is
absurd and intellectually immature. It's like reducing
evolution to "survival of the strongest" or something.
But ya know, it doesn't really take that much thought to
dismiss Christina's essay. She provides it herself early
on:
"I don't have ten arguments for why religion is harmful.
I don't even have 57,842 arguments.
I have one."
bonfils
news:58062$4afe6aba$4038ecbe$28...@PRIMUS.CA:
> The author of the first article treats religion only one way:
> as if it's a kind of propositional entity that has as its
> propositional foundations untestables and unproveables.
And are you even thinking of claiming it isn't?
I have one word for you: God. If that isn't an untestable unproveable, I
don't know what is.
Oh yeah, there are religions that don't require God, you say? Not any major
ones - except (some readings of) Buddhism. But, you know, the four noble
truths aren't exactly the apex of falsifiability, either.
That horse is dead. Put the whip down.
--
bonfils
http://kim.bonfils.com
Love
>
>pho...@address.for.spam (Love) wrote in
>news:58062$4afe6aba$4038ecbe$28...@PRIMUS.CA:
>
>> The author of the first article treats religion only one way:
>> as if it's a kind of propositional entity that has as its
>> propositional foundations untestables and unproveables.
>
>And are you even thinking of claiming it isn't?
No, I am very strongly asserting that it isn't.
>I have one word for you: God. If that isn't an untestable unproveable, I
>don't know what is.
Cherry-picking what to argue about will get you nowhere,
especially when it's irrelevant.
>Oh yeah, there are religions that don't require God, you say? Not any major
>ones - except (some readings of) Buddhism. But, you know, the four noble
>truths aren't exactly the apex of falsifiability, either.
Falsifiability shmalsifiability.
Religion is not science and doesn't have to live up or
down to the standards of science any more than fiction
novels have to live up or down to the standards of
history and archeology.
Don't put your cigarettes in my toilet and I won't shit
in your ashtray...it's that kind of thing.
bonfils
news:51ea7$4affa159$4038ecbe$31...@PRIMUS.CA:
> In article <hdn7v2$p84$1...@aioe.org>, k...@bonfils.my.underwear.com
> says...
>>
>>pho...@address.for.spam (Love) wrote in
>>news:58062$4afe6aba$4038ecbe$28...@PRIMUS.CA:
>>
>>> The author of the first article treats religion only one way:
>>> as if it's a kind of propositional entity that has as its
>>> propositional foundations untestables and unproveables.
>>
>>And are you even thinking of claiming it isn't?
>
> No, I am very strongly asserting that it isn't.
Ah. "Asserting" - that's like raising your voice because you don't have
arguments to back up your claim?
>>I have one word for you: God. If that isn't an untestable unproveable,
>>I don't know what is.
>
> Cherry-picking what to argue about will get you nowhere,
Oh, sorry. Obviously, that's *your* job...
> especially when it's irrelevant.
... and that.
>>Oh yeah, there are religions that don't require God, you say? Not any
>>major ones - except (some readings of) Buddhism. But, you know, the
>>four noble truths aren't exactly the apex of falsifiability, either.
>
> Falsifiability shmalsifiability.
>
> Religion is not science and doesn't have to live up or
> down to the standards of science any more than fiction
> novels have to live up or down to the standards of
> history and archeology.
Which makes it *not* a "propositional entity that has as its
propositional foundations untestables and unproveables", how?
> Don't put your cigarettes in my toilet and I won't shit
> in your ashtray...it's that kind of thing.
Oh, don't give me the frakkin' *respect* argument!
In fact, it's not so much religion as such that pisses me off. It's the
constant repetition of the PC absurdity that not only should we *allow*
people to be religious - we should *respect* the self-imposed psychosis
they call "faith".
You don't earn my respect by believing in bullshit and fairytales.
Though you might just earn it by shutting the fuck up about it.
--
bonfils
http://kim.bonfils.com
daletx
Interesting that you would think equating religion and fiction would
make *your* case, in this instance. ;-)
DT
Hidden Draggin
OH MY GAWD...Dar-El vs. Bonfils....NOW on Pay per View!!
(If you haven't noticed gang, I am mostly done arguing on such
subjects. I just loves you all no matter what you believe...here
have a wet-nap to wipe off all the syrup I am gushing.)
--
Hidden Draggin - Gilbert Hansford
Don't join dangerous cults, practice safe sects!
http://twitter.com/hiddendraggin
http://hiddendraggin.posterous.com/
indiosd...@yahoo.canada
A proper religion shouldn't want your respect. I sometimes think the PC
absurdity-respect thing does religion more harm than good. In the 1990s
the Anglican archbishop of Singapore was visiting Vancouver, saw the totem
poles in our Stanley Park, and said, "Demons!" The scandalized local
clergy corrected him: "Our proud cultural heritage, which we must
respect!" But he stood his ground (Demons!) and exorcised them.
I suspect the exorcist has more _real_ respect and understanding than the
the superficial PC respect of the cultural-heritage celebrator.
Luke
Wally Chapman
<smeep>
> OH MY GAWD...Dar-El vs. Bonfils....NOW on Pay per View!!
> (If you haven't noticed gang, I am mostly done arguing on such
> subjects. I just loves you all no matter what you believe...here
> have a wet-nap to wipe off all the syrup I am gushing.)
Syrup? I thought that was.... well.... never mind.
Wally
Wilson
> bonfils <k...@bonfils.my.underwear.com> wrote:
Heh! Seriously Luke, I like the way you put that. One man's
self-imposed psychosis is another's faith and northstar guiding light.
The inability to respect the beliefs of another shows the limits of our
own perception.
--
Wilson
bonfils
news:Lu2dnXKMxOsRrZ3W...@supernews.com:
> indiosd...@yahoo.canada wrote:
>> A proper religion shouldn't want your respect. I sometimes think the
>> PC absurdity-respect thing does religion more harm than good. In the
>> 1990s the Anglican archbishop of Singapore was visiting Vancouver,
>> saw the totem poles in our Stanley Park, and said, "Demons!" The
>> scandalized local clergy corrected him: "Our proud cultural
>> heritage, which we must respect!" But he stood his ground (Demons!)
>> and exorcised them.
>>
>> I suspect the exorcist has more _real_ respect and understanding than
>> the the superficial PC respect of the cultural-heritage celebrator.
>>
>> Luke
>
>
> Heh! Seriously Luke, I like the way you put that. One man's
> self-imposed psychosis is another's faith and northstar guiding light.
> The inability to respect the beliefs of another shows the limits of
> our own perception.
>
Hm. Perhaps.
First, I'm not sure I'm in favour of anyone "respecting" anything, but
apart from that...
Do you really think that any thought humans are able to think up - lack
of any reedeming features notwithstanding - automatically requires
"respect"? Or can belief systems become so outrageuos that it's at least
okay to criticize them?
--
bonfils
http://kim.bonfils.com
bonfils
> In article <hdoq2r$bn2$1...@aioe.org>,
> bonfils <k...@bonfils.my.underwear.com> wrote:
>>You don't earn my respect by believing in bullshit and fairytales.
>>Though you might just earn it by shutting the fuck up about it.
> A proper religion shouldn't want your respect.
Religions don't, I guess.
But I've noticed that lots and lots of religious *people* demand respect
for their religion.
> I sometimes think the
> PC absurdity-respect thing does religion more harm than good.
Absolutely.
It may be good for the above-mentioned respect-seeking believers.
But it does piss off non-believers no end when you're asked to respect
something *because* it makes no sense (and actually even *more* than
things that do).
> In the
> 1990s the Anglican archbishop of Singapore was visiting Vancouver, saw
> the totem poles in our Stanley Park, and said, "Demons!" The
> scandalized local clergy corrected him: "Our proud cultural heritage,
> which we must respect!" But he stood his ground (Demons!) and
> exorcised them.
>
> I suspect the exorcist has more _real_ respect and understanding than
> the the superficial PC respect of the cultural-heritage celebrator.
He had a different incomprehension than me, that's for sure. (Or are you
saying that they really *were* demons?)
--
bonfils
http://kim.bonfils.com
indiosd...@yahoo.canada
This comes up a lot at work. Historians of religion are supposed to be
neutral about the religions they're studying. But if 19th-century
Americans are coming up with truly bizarre/illogical arguments to use the
bible to justify slavery, is it not okay to call bullshit on them? And if
we are allowed to call bullshit on slaveowning Christians, then why can't
we call bullshit on proud indigenouos peoples who believe howling at an
eclipse will prevent the end of the world?
I don't "respect" any religion per se--although I'm careful to be polite
in the classroom--but I do respect certain religious teachings, certain
religious practicioners, and (in a tentative abstract way) certain gods.
The Mongols respected all sorts of religions, not because they were PC
(they really, really weren't), but because they saw no point in needlessly
pissing off those religions' deities. Rather the opposite of the
motivation for PC-respect.
Luke
Ned Ludd
<indiosd...@yahoo.canada> wrote in message
news:hdp5th$dsc$1...@morgoth.sfu.ca...
That's it. It's when the religion leads to crazy actions (which
almost all religions inevitably do). We talked before about the
Mormons baptizing dead 'souls' of people in other religions into
their Mormon religion, and the revulsion this raises in people from
those other religions. Then of course there is the strappado - a
device used for centuries to torture a heretic by pulling his shoulder
joints out of their sockets - to SAVE HIS SOUL, of course.
We were out with some dear friends Friday night, who are in their
30's, and they mentioned that their 5-year-old had asked if Santa
was real. And the father couldn't bring himself to say 'no'. The
mother was less uncertain. And I just lost it. I don't remember
exactly what I said, but we were in the back seat, and when I
finished speaking, our younger friends in the front seats just
looked at each other with their mouths agape. I think I equated
belief in Santa with belief in God, but in very direct and sarcastic
terms.
Anyway, the evening went well despite that. They are Baha'i, but
are regular normal people from Wisconsin - the woman's father
decided years ago that it was time to abandon all previous religions
and choose one that accepts all prior major religious leaders as
'prophets' of their church.
The argument against telling a 5-year-old that there isn't a Santa
is that he will then go to school and inform his peers of that juicy
tidbit, and pretty soon you will be dealing with irate parents of
other kids calling you on the phone at night.
The wife also mentioned that her son had asked her about cow pies.
(They had been on a ranch recently.) And she told him that they were
'poop'. For some reason the son couldn't process this and continued
asking questions. In exasperation she finally said, "It's just shit!"
This term probably contains less information content than 'poop'
to the child (because it is used much less), but we all had a laugh
at the idea of the young boy going to school and informing his
classmates that there is no Santa Claus, and oh by the way, "Poop
is shit."
How much ignorance do you tolerate in another person? (And I
concede that my idea of your ignorance might itself be extremely
ignorant.) Well, I think you tolerate that ignorance right up
to the point where that person starts beating you over the head
with it - and then you just call a spade a spade.
Ned
indiosd...@yahoo.canada
bonfils <k...@bonfils.my.underwear.com> wrote:
>indiosd...@yahoo.canada wrote in news:hdp5th$dsc$1...@morgoth.sfu.ca:
>
>> In article <hdoq2r$bn2$1...@aioe.org>,
>> bonfils <k...@bonfils.my.underwear.com> wrote:
>
>>>You don't earn my respect by believing in bullshit and fairytales.
>>>Though you might just earn it by shutting the fuck up about it.
>
>> A proper religion shouldn't want your respect.
>
>Religions don't, I guess.
>
>But I've noticed that lots and lots of religious *people* demand respect
>for their religion.
I hurl a bah! at them. If their religion doesn't command (rather than
demand) respect, they should just leave you alone.
>> I sometimes think the
>> PC absurdity-respect thing does religion more harm than good.
>
>Absolutely.
>It may be good for the above-mentioned respect-seeking believers.
>But it does piss off non-believers no end when you're asked to respect
>something *because* it makes no sense (and actually even *more* than
>things that do).
I think it's bad for respect-seeking believers because it makes them lazy.
It's a religion / religions deserve respect / you should respect it / QED.
Well, no.
>> In the
>> 1990s the Anglican archbishop of Singapore was visiting Vancouver, saw
>> the totem poles in our Stanley Park, and said, "Demons!" The
>> scandalized local clergy corrected him: "Our proud cultural heritage,
>> which we must respect!" But he stood his ground (Demons!) and
>> exorcised them.
>>
>> I suspect the exorcist has more _real_ respect and understanding than
>> the the superficial PC respect of the cultural-heritage celebrator.
>
>He had a different incomprehension than me, that's for sure. (Or are you
>saying that they really *were* demons?)
I'm saying his belief that they were evil demons is fundamentally more
respectful than the locals' belief that they must be respected because
they are our indigenous belief systems.
I think we are in agreement, for opposite reasons. :)
Luke
Lee Rudolph
> That's it. It's when the religion leads to crazy actions (which
>almost all religions inevitably do). We talked before about the
>Mormons baptizing dead 'souls' of people in other religions into
>their Mormon religion, and the revulsion this raises in people from
>those other religions. Then of course there is the strappado - a
>device used for centuries to torture a heretic by pulling his shoulder
>joints out of their sockets
Not to conflated with the strapono.
Lee Rudolph
Wilson
To me, respect is not beating others over the head because they believe
something different. It's certainly okay as far as I can see to tell
them what you believe if they ask, or if they seem open to the
information. It doesn't mean I have to bow down before any of their
idols, or refrain from speaking my own truth even when it contradicts
what they believe. It's just giving them the space to be who they want
to be. And I expect the same in return.
--
Wilson
http://puddinheadwilson.tumblr.com/
Kirsten
>
> The argument against telling a 5-year-old that there isn't a Santa
> is that he will then go to school and inform his peers of that juicy
> tidbit, and pretty soon you will be dealing with irate parents of
> other kids calling you on the phone at night.
>
I think I sussed out there wasn't really a Father Christmas by about age
2. But I still loved pretending there was one, complete with leaving out
a pie and a glass of whiskey for him that was then consumed by morning.
I'm absolutely sure there is no need to lie to children about such things.
Just between you and me, on a cold clear Christmas Eve night, I still
occasionally look up in hope of seeing flying reindeer whipped by a fat
man in a red suit. I'm just hoping that in these suspicious, combat air
patrolled times that his transponder is working.
Best wishes
Kirsten
Kirsten
>> In fact, it's not so much religion as such that pisses me off. It's
>> the constant repetition of the PC absurdity that not only should we
>> *allow* people to be religious - we should *respect* the self-imposed
>> psychosis they call "faith".
>>
>> You don't earn my respect by believing in bullshit and fairytales.
>> Though you might just earn it by shutting the fuck up about it.
>
> OH MY GAWD...Dar-El vs. Bonfils....NOW on Pay per View!!
> (If you haven't noticed gang, I am mostly done arguing on such
> subjects. I just loves you all no matter what you believe...here
> have a wet-nap to wipe off all the syrup I am gushing.)
>
I don't think Bonfils was actually beating up Daryl, so much as talking
to the collective "you" (i.e. to all those people who profess religion).
Best wishes
Kirsten
bonfils
> In article <hdpcun$3d8$1...@aioe.org>,
> bonfils <k...@bonfils.my.underwear.com> wrote:
>>indiosd...@yahoo.canada wrote in news:hdp5th$dsc$1...@morgoth.sfu.ca:
>>> I suspect the exorcist has more _real_ respect and understanding
>>> than the the superficial PC respect of the cultural-heritage
>>> celebrator.
>>
>>He had a different incomprehension than me, that's for sure. (Or are
>>you saying that they really *were* demons?)
>
> I'm saying his belief that they were evil demons is fundamentally more
> respectful than the locals' belief that they must be respected because
> they are our indigenous belief systems.
>
> I think we are in agreement, for opposite reasons. :)
In one way or the other, yeah...
I'm just worried: Does this imply that my hurling insults at Daryl actually
means that I respect his views...?
--
bonfils
http://kim.bonfils.com
brian mitchell
>Interesting that you would think equating religion and fiction would
>make *your* case, in this instance. ;-)
Very appropriately, in my view, because religion is all about
relationship, which is almost certainly better approached as an art
than as a science. Unlike with science, each person with a serious
interest in religion, as opposed to cultural superstition, has to find
an individual truth --their own god, if you like.
FOR A SINGLE TEAR
I
Know of beauty
That no-one has ever
Known.
How could that be possible
When I may seem
So new in infinite time?
It is because God belongs to only you.
Did you hear that?
Did you hear what Hafiz just said?
God belongs to only you.
It is the only reasonable payment
For a single
Tear.
[Hafiz, tr Daniel Ladinsky]
Tang Huyen
Love wrote:
> kim@bonfils:
>
> >Oh yeah, there are religions that don't require
> >God, you say? Not any major ones - except
> >(some readings of) Buddhism. But, you know,
> >the four noble truths aren't exactly the apex of
> >falsifiability, either.
>
> Falsifiability shmalsifiability.
>
> Religion is not science and doesn't have to live
> up or down to the standards of science any more
> than fiction novels have to live up or down to the
> standards of history and archeology.
>
> Don't put your cigarettes in my toilet and I won't
> shit in your ashtray...it's that kind of thing.
Spiritual experiences are going to be personal
and anecdotal at best, and subjectively, at least
to me (though I don't pretend to climb past the
bare bottom), the higher they go, the airier,
looser, fluffier and fuzzier they get. Actually
that is what Buddhist scriptures say also, as
against those of theistic religions, where the
higher the attainments are, the firmer and surer
they get. In Buddhism, the higher they go, the
less mooring they have and the more baseless
they become. When they get wholly baseless,
it means full awakening, because awakening
has no reference, except that such a proposition
is self-contradictory, because if something is
baseless and has no reference, how are you
going to base yourself on it and take it as
reference to do anything, like making a
judgement? Buddhist propositions are
self-defeating, and for good measure, so that
people don't attach to them. If they do their job,
they also get obliterated at the same time. Poor
them.
In Buddhism, the effectiveness of a method
(dharma) has nothing to do with its factual truth.
The contemplation of the unclean is one instance
where the object of contemplation is unreal: one
contemplates for example the whole world as a
skeleton. Of course the whole world is not a
skeleton, but one contemplates it as a skeleton, in
order to cut lust. Now it may or may not work,
and it is well-known that people can kill themselves
in this kind of (apparently morbid) contemplation,
but it does work for some people, that is, it helps
them end their suffering.
So to contemplate the tears that one has shed in
past lives may or may not help one end one's
suffering, but even if it works, it needs not muster
any factual truth to it. If it works, it works. When
it works, it *merely* works, and needs not imply
anything about its factual truth, beyond its working.
Some exercises, like the totalisations (which
include the Four Divine Abodes, friendliness,
compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity), are
pure fictions and big imaginations that attempt to
encompass the whole universe. In the totalisation
of air (or earth, or fire, or water, or green, or red,
or a skeleton, etc.), one imagines that the whole
universe is air and nothing but air, in the
totalisation of equanimity one imagines that the
whole universe is equanimity and nothing but
equanimity. One thinks up something abstract
(like the above, but there are more) and spreads it
to the whole universe. It is only a subjective feeling,
and the universe remains untouched by it.
However Nirvana is similar in that it is only a
change of the way one deals with the world, not a
change in the world itself; the change is only a
change in manner, not a change in matter. The
difference resides in the fact that the totalisations
are pure impositions on the world whilst Nirvana is
total openness to the world without any imposition.
Other than that they are subjective attitudes and
nothing more. But in that openness the world
becomes different, as the absence of imposition
allows the world to light up on its own and
transform itself from the Kingdom of Nature to the
Kingdom of Grace, in place and for free.
That said, today the Boston Globe has an article
about the relationship between religion and
economics, "Satan, the great motivator. The
curious economic effects of religion", by
Michael Fitzgerald.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/
2009/11/15/the_curious_economic_effects_of_religion/
?page=full
<<On a larger scale, religious denominations
affect economics by creating bonds of trust and
shared commitment among small groups, both
necessary qualities for lending and trade. In the
Middle Ages, studies show, monk-run estates
outperformed those that used serfs, thanks to
religiously inspired cooperation and frugality.
The Quakers of 18th-century Britain, renowned
for their scrupulous honesty, came to dominate
British finance. Ultra-orthodox Jews similarly
dominate New York�s diamond trade because of
levels of trust based on religion. Modern religious
kibbutzim on average outperform their secular
rivals, in part because of trust built through
engaging in communal religious rituals.>>
<<The two [Robert Barro, a renowned economist
at Harvard, and his wife, Rachel McCleary, a
researcher at Harvard�s Taubman Center]
collected data from 59 countries where a majority
of the population followed one of the four major
religions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or
Buddhism. They ran this data - which covered
slices of years from 1981 to 2000, measuring
things like levels of belief in God, afterlife beliefs,
and worship attendance - through statistical
models. Their results show a strong correlation
between economic growth and certain shifts in
beliefs, though only in developing countries. Most
strikingly, if belief in hell jumps up sharply while
actual church attendance stays flat, it correlates
with economic growth. Belief in heaven also has
a similar effect, though less pronounced. Mere
belief in God has no effect one way or the other.
Meanwhile, if church attendance actually rises, it
slows growth in developing economies.>>
<<Belief�s influence on our economic behavior
might even reflect biology. The special motivational
power of hell, for instance, may lie deep in the
human psyche. Ara Norenzayan, a psychologist at
the University of British Columbia, and his graduate
student Azim Shariff set up an experiment that
would make it easy for people to cheat on a difficult
math test. They found that people who believed in
an omniscient, vengeful God typically chose
short-term suffering - that is, facing the test without
the crutch of cheating - over possible eternal
suffering. �Those who believed in a punishing God
cheated less,� Norenzayan said in an e-mail. He
considers his findings to be consistent with Barro
and McCleary�s research.>>
Tang Huyen
Wally Chapman
<smeep>
> The Mongols respected all sorts of religions, not because they were PC
> (they really, really weren't), but because they saw no point in needlessly
> pissing off those religions' deities. Rather the opposite of the
> motivation for PC-respect.
Yup. All anthropologists know when to rub blue mud in their navels.
Wally
chingang
And are you back from Nivana, Mr Bodhisattva? You sure you know what
it looks like from those postcards. Suffering isn't the same for
everyone. How can one speak for all? Buddhism is individualism taken
to the extreme and supposes alot in the process. What is
enlightenment? Don't give me poetic limmericks, brain teasers or
attainment. Just let it be. Let it lie where it fell. How can a
Buddhist claim anything other than self-indulgence disguised as
altruism? Go work in the fields and labor until your body has fatiqued
and then preach the gospel according to your hard labor and effort to
exist instead of taking time like poets who muse, while the peasants
toil. Are you any better off today than you were before you were born?
How would anybody know? The IMAGINATION! What did the big Buddha say
about imaginations? What do the great philosophers say about
imaginations? Surely they had to use theirs to construct elaborate
theories on their own thinking? So it all rests with our imaginations.
Dream of a good life and imagine its here. Who says you can't?
Oh the Say So Guys don't say so? What makes it so? They make it so.
Men agree with other men and they see this as truth but its only
accordance. How do we get out of these long over-used ruts that people
keep professing to be the Way?
Eat your rice, evacuate your bowels and sweep the floor, who needs
more? Now, are you satisfied? Mild contentment is the greatest of
satisfaction, have you not heard?
Beerlet Dhiblang
> pho...@address.for.spam (Love) wrote innews:58062$4afe6aba$4038ecbe$28...@PRIMUS.CA:
>
> > The author of the first article treats religion only one way:
> > as if it's a kind of propositional entity that has as its
> > propositional foundations untestables and unproveables.
>
> And are you even thinking of claiming it isn't?
>
> I have one word for you: God. If that isn't an untestable unproveable, I
> don't know what is.
>
> Oh yeah, there are religions that don't require God, you say? Not any major
> ones - except (some readings of) Buddhism. But, you know, the four noble
> truths aren't exactly the apex of falsifiability, either.
>
> That horse is dead. Put the whip down.
It's dead horses all the way down.
/l
Love
>
>pho...@address.for.spam (Love) wrote in
>news:51ea7$4affa159$4038ecbe$31...@PRIMUS.CA:
>
>> In article <hdn7v2$p84$1...@aioe.org>, k...@bonfils.my.underwear.com
>> says...
>>>
>>>pho...@address.for.spam (Love) wrote in
>>>news:58062$4afe6aba$4038ecbe$28...@PRIMUS.CA:
>>>
>>>> The author of the first article treats religion only one way:
>>>> as if it's a kind of propositional entity that has as its
>>>> propositional foundations untestables and unproveables.
>>>
>>>And are you even thinking of claiming it isn't?
>>
>> No, I am very strongly asserting that it isn't.
>
>Ah. "Asserting" - that's like raising your voice because you don't have
>arguments to back up your claim?
NO, THIS IS LIKE THAT!!!
I was merely making sure you had a target clearer than
a "claim".
>>>I have one word for you: God. If that isn't an untestable unproveable,
>>>I don't know what is.
>> Cherry-picking what to argue about will get you nowhere,
>Oh, sorry. Obviously, that's *your* job...
No, it's yours! :P
>>>Oh yeah, there are religions that don't require God, you say? Not any
>>>major ones - except (some readings of) Buddhism. But, you know, the
>>>four noble truths aren't exactly the apex of falsifiability, either.
>>
>> Falsifiability shmalsifiability.
>>
>> Religion is not science and doesn't have to live up or
>> down to the standards of science any more than fiction
>> novels have to live up or down to the standards of
>> history and archeology.
>
>Which makes it *not* a "propositional entity that has as its
>propositional foundations untestables and unproveables", how?
I have to reverse the question and ask you what makes
you think that it IS that kind of entity? Or put
another way, why do you see religion-in-general only
in the same way that religious fundamentalists see it?
Sure, propositions are made within the practice of
religion, but that's a pretty trivial fact given that
many other fields of endeavour do that too. What we're
debating here is whether religion is in the business of
establishing propositions in the same way that science
(or perhaps logic) is. Because if it is then perhaps
it should be held to the same standards of proof for
the propositions that it makes, or dismissed as invalid.
As far as unproveables are concerned I would say that
unless you are after propositional truth it doesn't
matter, so long as you keep your unproveables in context.
For example, the debate over whether the Bard of Avon
actually existed may never be settled with strong proof
but that in no way prevents me from enjoying the works
that exist under the name of William Shakespeare and
using that name to refer others to those works with.
>> Don't put your cigarettes in my toilet and I won't shit
>> in your ashtray...it's that kind of thing.
>
>Oh, don't give me the frakkin' *respect* argument!
That's not what I was doing but now that we're on that
topic...
>In fact, it's not so much religion as such that pisses me off. It's the
>constant repetition of the PC absurdity that not only should we *allow*
>people to be religious - we should *respect* the self-imposed psychosis
>they call "faith".
Yeah, there's a line somewhere defining the difference
between respecting people and respecting whatever they
choose to revere just because they try to say "disrespect
that and you disrespect us". I don't know where the line
is but I'm sure that the latter is overused so much that
we're way over it a lot of the time.
It cuts the other way, too, of course. Sometimes we don't
want people to express their respect for anything that we
can't all respect. Keeping Christmas Assembly from
happening in a school with 99 Christians for every "other"
is a possible example.
>You don't earn my respect by believing in bullshit and fairytales.
>Though you might just earn it by shutting the fuck up about it.
Heh! That one deserves a name of some kind. Have you
got a maxim named after you yet?
Beerlet Dhiblang
> bonfils wrote:
> > pho...@address.for.spam (Love) wrote in
> >news:51ea7$4affa159$4038ecbe$31...@PRIMUS.CA:
>
That's where I've left it much the same.
/l
Love
ned...@ix.netcom.com says...
Quick Wikipedia check:
Hmm, it appears that Kim might have some religion after all...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Strappado_-_Model_Jassi.jpg
Beerlet Dhiblang
> Love wrote:
> > In article <cMednQdrQP1cRGDXnZ2dnUVZ_qOdn...@posted.toastnet>, cha...@gmail.com
> > says...
> >>http://www.alternet.org/belief/143912/the_top_one_reason_religion_is_...
> > page=entire
>
> > His thesis is reductive, juvenile and mistaken so the rest
> > is pelican doodoo.
>
> Interesting opinion.
>
> It seemed to reduce to the mutual influences of religion
> and politics and from thence the influence on individual
> choice. Perhaps I read it wrong.
These arguments come down to secular frustrations. Identifying what it
is about "belief" that is vexsome often falters on antitheist
preconceptions & prejudice. Belief in something that doesn't avail
itself to scrutiny is not a crime.
The antitheist misunderstanding falters in failing to recognize that
religious beliefs and faith are stand-ins for something else.
To set materialist tests of valid perception on a pedestal seduces us
with the same charms as metaphysical dogmas. It's setting sentient
mind above some absolute (if potentially inaccessible) real
experience. In failing to recognize emptiness and openness the
materialist puts the ghost right back into the machine much the same
as the dogmatic spiritualist. Elevating the intellectual contentions
on evidence above the deeper truth of emptiness and experience
(including the mind of votaries, disbelievers or flags in the wind)
puts the same ghost into the machine regardless, we're still stuck in
an anthropic principle.
An atheist universalism is required to see the bigger context beyond
antitheism or theism. Interestingly the various creed's gnostic sects
and the Tao hint at it but Buddhism alone teaches it so essentially.
Gnostic openness comes close but gets caught in a metaphysical
culdesac, the anti-theists always miss this point that there really is
something finely beatific in the gnostic openness of the finest
votaries.
The Tao takes god off the menu but gets stuck in its own plazas and
roundabouts, but with the full explications of emptiness does Buddhism
go trekking into the territory surrounding, the dirt beneath & the air
above.
Instead of being stuck in the avenues of anthropic principle there're
the bigger fields is observer mind.
Time-space is in us.
/l
Love
True however my research indicates that an INflated strapono
can be an accessory to strappado, under the right conditions.
Love
says...
That's a classic liberal way of looking at it.
And well said too.
Love
It gets real sticky because oftimes people use the action
of disrespecting another's religion only as a device to
deny ordinary respect to the other and somehow reduce or
marginalise that other. The ethos of respecting the
religion of the other really exists to prevent using the
religion of the other as a reason (or excuse) to treat
the other with disrespect. The stickiness is that this
prevents us from being able to express disrespect for
a religion without giving someone else an excuse to take
offence and perhaps put a jihad on us.
Love
Frak, I aim for my views to be disturbing or even
intimidating, not just worth respecting...
Love
kir...@dontspamplz.com says...
I automatically substituted "one" for "you" and never
thought twice about it. I'll try to be more mindful
of opportunities for entertaining conflict in the
future.
Love
dodeca...@yahoo.com says...
>
>On Nov 14, 4:37=A0pm, bonfils <k...@bonfils.my.underwear.com> wrote:
>> pho...@address.for.spam (Love) wrote innews:58062$4afe6aba$4038ecbe$28005=
>@PRIMUS.CA:
>>
>> > The author of the first article treats religion only one way:
>> > as if it's a kind of propositional entity that has as its
>> > propositional foundations untestables and unproveables.
>>
>> And are you even thinking of claiming it isn't?
>>
>> I have one word for you: God. If that isn't an untestable unproveable, I
>> don't know what is.
>>
>or
>> ones - except (some readings of) Buddhism. But, you know, the four noble
>> truths aren't exactly the apex of falsifiability, either.
>>
>> That horse is dead. Put the whip down.
>
>It's dead horses all the way down.
Yeah but they're metaphysical horses which means that
it's metaphysical horseshit all the way down too.
Love
says...
Well Brian, your view is certainly in accord with mine
(and that is a lovely poem) but I'm afraid you'll have
to pay if you want an argument.
Love
says...
>
>indiosd...@yahoo.canada wrote:
>> bonfils <k...@bonfils.my.underwear.com> wrote:
>>> Love wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Religion is not science and doesn't have to live up or
>>>> down to the standards of science any more than fiction
>>>> novels have to live up or down to the standards of
>>>> history and archeology.
>>>
>>> Which makes it *not* a "propositional entity that has as its
>>> propositional foundations untestables and unproveables", how?
>>>
>>>> Don't put your cigarettes in my toilet and I won't shit
>>>> in your ashtray...it's that kind of thing.
>>>
>>> Oh, don't give me the frakkin' *respect* argument!
>>>
>>> the constant repetition of the PC absurdity that not only should we
>>> *allow* people to be religious - we should *respect* the
>>> self-imposed psychosis they call "faith".
>>>
>>> You don't earn my respect by believing in bullshit and fairytales.
>>> Though you might just earn it by shutting the fuck up about it.
>>
>> PC absurdity-respect thing does religion more harm than good. In the
>> 1990s the Anglican archbishop of Singapore was visiting Vancouver,
>> saw the totem poles in our Stanley Park, and said, "Demons!" The
>> scandalized local clergy corrected him: "Our proud cultural
>> heritage, which we must respect!" But he stood his ground (Demons!)
>> and exorcised them.
>>
>> the the superficial PC respect of the cultural-heritage celebrator.
>>
>
>
>Heh! Seriously Luke, I like the way you put that. One man's
>self-imposed psychosis is another's faith and northstar guiding light.
>The inability to respect the beliefs of another shows the limits of our
>own perception.
There's that too.
Love
dodeca...@yahoo.com says...>> > In article <cMednQdrQP1cRGDXnZ2dnUVZ_qOdn...@posted.toastnet>, cha...@g=
>mail.com
>> > says...
>> >>http://www.alternet.org/belief/143912/the_top_one_reason_religion_is_..=
>.
>> > page=3Dentire
What you said, plus a complaint that I missed Mr. Flu's
reply to me somehow.
Had I seen that reply I would have noted that the author
made the following assertions:
"But even the most stubborn political ideology will eventually
crumble in the face of it, you know, not working."
"So with religion, even if God's rules and promises aren't
working out, followers still follow them"
The author fails to recognise that religions, even
religions practising absolute belief, DO "crumble" in
the face of "not working". The mere existence of the
gay marriage debate is evidence of this. At one time
this wouldn't even have been debateable.
Likewise, adherents of political ideologies still
follow their ideologies even while those ideologies
crumble around them. Capitalism, for example.
Lee Rudolph
Different joint, different socket.
Lee Rudolph
Tang Huyen
chingang wrote:
> And are you back from Nivana, Mr Bodhisattva? You sure you know what
> it looks like from those postcards. Suffering isn't the same for
> everyone. How can one speak for all? Buddhism is individualism taken
> to the extreme and supposes alot in the process. What is
> enlightenment? Don't give me poetic limmericks, brain teasers or
> attainment. Just let it be. Let it lie where it fell. How can a
> Buddhist claim anything other than self-indulgence disguised as
> altruism? Go work in the fields and labor until your body has fatiqued
> and then preach the gospel according to your hard labor and effort to
> exist instead of taking time like poets who muse, while the peasants
> toil. Are you any better off today than you were before you were born?
> How would anybody know? The IMAGINATION! What did the big Buddha say
> about imaginations? What do the great philosophers say about
> imaginations? Surely they had to use theirs to construct elaborate
> theories on their own thinking? So it all rests with our imaginations.
> Dream of a good life and imagine its here. Who says you can't?
> Oh the Say So Guys don't say so? What makes it so? They make it so.
> Men agree with other men and they see this as truth but its only
> accordance. How do we get out of these long over-used ruts that people
> keep professing to be the Way?
> Eat your rice, evacuate your bowels and sweep the floor, who needs
> more? Now, are you satisfied? Mild contentment is the greatest of
> satisfaction, have you not heard?
<<What is enlightenment?>>
<<Just let it be. Let it lie where it fell.>>
You answer your own question very well. I have
no experience of awakening, and only speculate
about it, and if I understand it aright, it is simply
a state (not a reality, not a substance) where one
takes everything "as is" and leaves everything "as
is". It is an attitude of non-resistance and
non-interference. The Buddha says: "Nirvana is
peaceful". One dumbly takes everything as it
comes and leaves everything as it leaves, intact,
without referring anything to anything. That
would be profound peace, if I was to experience
it.
Tang Huyen
Charles E Hardwidge
news:ZemdneREBNoZo5zW...@supernews.com...
>
> <<Just let it be. Let it lie where it fell.>>
>
> You answer your own question very well. I have
> no experience of awakening, and only speculate
> about it, and if I understand it aright, it is simply
> a state (not a reality, not a substance) where one
> takes everything "as is" and leaves everything "as
> is". It is an attitude of non-resistance and
> non-interference. The Buddha says: "Nirvana is
> peaceful". One dumbly takes everything as it
> comes and leaves everything as it leaves, intact,
> without referring anything to anything. That
> would be profound peace, if I was to experience
> it.
I've read a summary of the Unabomber's manifesto again. A great deal of the
argument is reasonable even if one may disagree with some details and
the methods he used to promote it.
The world can look hard and bleak from some perspectives but power and money
are ephemeral. Indeed, I'd cite the recent troubles of the music industry
and changing markets as evidence.
As the great sage Freddie Mercury said: "Don't try so hard".
--
Charles E Hardwidge
Beerlet Dhiblang
> In article <3ce1a0f4-0f43-407a-8d36-0dd731327...@a31g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>,
> dodecapus...@yahoo.com says...
Monotheistic and ethical religions are, more than not, social and
political ideologies. Many problems appear to spring forth from the
problem that their central tenets are untestable, but that problem is
misleading.
Believing in *anything* comes down to whether any principle held as an
absolute is either an abstraction or contrivance of something else.
Ideals of absolute justice and equality, for example, are just as
problematic in execution as their being some cosmological advocate for
the same, nontheistic mores and ethics are human constructs just the
same as those purportedly sanctioned by a god.
That the endorsement by god seems to render erstwhile reasonable
people immune to counterargument is more a function of societies &
personality types, not religion. The same types came to occupy the
murderously pious ranks of fascist and communist regimes in the 20th
C.
There's no cure for human nature.
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
wrote:
> "Tang Huyen" <tanghuyen{dele...@gmail.com[remove]> wrote in message
And "Who wants to live forever?"
/l
Ned Ludd
"Love" <pho...@address.for.spam> wrote in message
news:38639$4b010703$4038ecbe$59...@PRIMUS.CA...
>
>>>> In the
>>>> 1990s the Anglican archbishop of Singapore was visiting Vancouver,
>>>> saw the totem poles in our Stanley Park, and said, "Demons!" The
>>>> scandalized local clergy corrected him: "Our proud cultural heritage,
>>>> which we must respect!" But he stood his ground (Demons!) and
>>>> exorcised them.
>>>>
>>>> I suspect the exorcist has more _real_ respect and understanding than
>>>> the the superficial PC respect of the cultural-heritage celebrator.
>>>
>>> He had a different incomprehension than me, that's for sure. (Or are you
>>> saying that they really *were* demons?)
>>
>> I'm saying his belief that they were evil demons is fundamentally more
>> respectful than the locals' belief that they must be respected because
>> they are our indigenous belief systems.
>> I think we are in agreement, for opposite reasons. :)
>
> It gets real sticky because oftimes people use the action
> of disrespecting another's religion only as a device to
> deny ordinary respect to the other and somehow reduce or
> marginalise that other. The ethos of respecting the
> religion of the other really exists to prevent using the
> religion of the other as a reason (or excuse) to treat
> the other with disrespect. The stickiness is that this
> prevents us from being able to express disrespect for
> a religion without giving someone else an excuse to take
> offence and perhaps put a jihad on us.
>
That's just crap. Putting a little "Hand's Off" label on
stupid, violent and disgusting practices just because they
are a person's 'religion' is a recipe for disaster much more
certain than your fear that someone is going to 'jihad' you.
(If so, just jihad him back, with nukes.)
Let's say your neighbor wakes you up a sunrise every day
with a screaming chant that he - the great Jahboogah - is the
most powerful person in the universe, and he repeats this five
times a day a mid-morning, noon, evening, and night before
going to bed. Say he also kills chickens in a ritual dance
where he slowly tears them to pieces and eventually decapitates
them. Say he also kills small and large mammals at his barbeque
pit by slitting their throats and letting them bleed to death.
I think you are fully justified in calling him a savage idiot
and taking out a police complaint against him. BUT, let's say
he then claims that all this stupid, violent and disgusting
crap is his RELIGION.
Fuck him. Burn his house down! String him up on the maple
tree in his back yard!
The Anglican archbishop that 'demonized' the totem poles
in Vancouver should have been tarred and feathered and ridden
out of town on a rail.
Ned
Keynes
To place awakening into the irrelevance of a psychological
property still affirms the previous unawakened view of
'what the world actually is'. It's an impossible contortion.
One can't serve two masters - both bondage and release.
Matter-only folks call buddhism just a psychology, saying
"Let me lose my bad self, and keep my good self, then all will
be well for me." But it is the self-ish notion of good and bad
that will forever confine such people in bondage to self under
circumstances that can't be controlled by any means. One can't
control the world, and even less can anyone control a self.
We don't know what we think until we think it.
We don't know what we say until we say it.
We don't know what we do until we do it.
But modern popular superstition denies this categorically.
Without any proof. It's a religion.
What -is- the self in the world? Nobody actually knows,
but all the popular views are samsara, separation, faring on in
discontent, seeking one knows not what and never finding relief.
There can be no relief in that direction. The harder one tries, the
more struggle, meaning the less success. Isn't this obvious?
World views are all mistaken. We can't comprehend either
a beginning or no-beginning of the world, the only two rational
propositions. Rational mind is plainly limited, and the more it
proliferates and branches and delves, the more limits constrict
experience, shape it, and poison it. The more of this and that,
the farther one roams from plain old reality that's always right
in our face, complete in itself, needing no reasonable explanation.
Take it on it's own terms or miss it entirely.
Abstraction creates entities out of nothing, things unobserved
and unobservable like 'truth, justice, and the american way',
'nirvana-samsara', 'cause and effect', 'gain and loss', 'life and death',
and all the woo-woo pantheon of the desperately thoughtful but
blind-unobservant. Spooks and irrelevancies haunt the realm
of samsara. But many claim to see them and worship them.
How primitive. How pitiful.
There is no rational certainty to cling to, no haven of perfect
protection. Fortunately no one has ever needed such a thing.
It's all just a bad dream. Wake up, and it all vanishes since
it has never been from the first.
DharmaTroll
> It's all just a bad dream. Wake up, and it all vanishes since
> it has never been from the first.
Um, that's actually "The Wizard of Oz", not Buddhism.
Don't forget to click your heels three times, Nutter-Dude.
--DharmaTroll
Keynes
wrote:
It's all way over your pointy little meat head, isn't it?
Nothing to say but, "NO NO NO!"
How 'reasonable' can you get?
Wilson
> "Love" <pho...@address.for.spam> wrote
He was just expressing his opinion Ned. No chickens were harmed!
--
Wilson
http://puddinheadwilson.tumblr.com/
possum
wrote:
i find it difficult to believe you haven't.
possum
Déjà Flu
Think I should send him a pic of Tangette?
--
Ubi dubium ibi libertas
Déjà Flu
> That said, today the Boston Globe has an article
> about the relationship between religion and
> economics, "Satan, the great motivator. The
> curious economic effects of religion", by
> Michael Fitzgerald.
"Michael Fitzgerald is a freelance writer in Millis.
He researched this while a Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellow."
He's a shill for the Templeton Foundation and the
"research" isn't even worthy of the name "research".
It's an unpublished, unreviewed, sewage leak. It's
same very sneaky, very subtle, propaganda that ID is
notorious for.
Look at this stuff:
"Similarly, literacy seems clearly connected with economic
development, and mass literacy is a Protestant invention,
says Robert D. Woodberry, a sociologist at University of Texas
at Austin. He has mapped how missionaries spread literacy,
technology, and civic institutions, and finds that those correlate
strongly with economic growth. He argues in part that this helps
explain why the once-poor but largely Protestant United States
surpassed rich, Catholic Mexico after 1800."
"Rich, Catholic, Mexico" never existed. The Catholic Church
destroyed all of Mexican "civilization", took the wealth
to Spain and left it as they found it - a dust-bowl with
a population dependent on a new priesthood and a new
language - Spanish - yet in total ignorance. "Economic growth"
is double-speak for exploitation - Woodberry needs to go back
to school.
Today, these "missionaries" are spreading ignorance and
dependence, disease and death in Africa, Asia and (still)
South America.
If you want a real hoot, check out another twit who conflates
biology with archeology and uses his conflation to make
all kinds of apologies for religion:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/weekinreview/12wade.html?_r=1
The number of unsupported assertions in that essay is huge,
yet people will read it and take it as gospel.
This is the "Intelligent Ignorance" - fitting itself into the
gap between science and common thought, via public media -
that I was talking about. It may be deliberate, it may not,
but it is surely destructive.
Déjà Flu
> pho...@address.for.spam (Love) wrote in
> news:51ea7$4affa159$4038ecbe$31...@PRIMUS.CA:
>
>> says...
>>> pho...@address.for.spam (Love) wrote in
>>> news:58062$4afe6aba$4038ecbe$28...@PRIMUS.CA:
>>>
>>>> as if it's a kind of propositional entity that has as its
>>>> propositional foundations untestables and unproveables.
>>> And are you even thinking of claiming it isn't?
>> No, I am very strongly asserting that it isn't.
>
> Ah. "Asserting" - that's like raising your voice because you don't have
> arguments to back up your claim?
>
>>> I have one word for you: God. If that isn't an untestable unproveable,
>>> I don't know what is.
>> Cherry-picking what to argue about will get you nowhere,
>
> Oh, sorry. Obviously, that's *your* job...
>
>> especially when it's irrelevant.
>
> ... and that.
>
>>> Oh yeah, there are religions that don't require God, you say? Not any
>>> major ones - except (some readings of) Buddhism. But, you know, the
>>> four noble truths aren't exactly the apex of falsifiability, either.
>> Falsifiability shmalsifiability.
>>
>> Religion is not science and doesn't have to live up or
>> down to the standards of science any more than fiction
>> novels have to live up or down to the standards of
>> history and archeology.
>
> Which makes it *not* a "propositional entity that has as its
> propositional foundations untestables and unproveables", how?
>
>> Don't put your cigarettes in my toilet and I won't shit
>> in your ashtray...it's that kind of thing.
>
> Oh, don't give me the frakkin' *respect* argument!
>
> In fact, it's not so much religion as such that pisses me off. It's the
> constant repetition of the PC absurdity that not only should we *allow*
> people to be religious - we should *respect* the self-imposed psychosis
> they call "faith".
>
> You don't earn my respect by believing in bullshit and fairytales.
> Though you might just earn it by shutting the fuck up about it.
Rock On!
Oh, and make 'em keep books and pay taxes like all other businesses...
Ned Ludd
"Wilson" <Wil...@nowhere.net> wrote in message
news:pvGdnZEdosn2QpzW...@supernews.com...
Oh yes, of course, you are correct, Wilson. He should just have
been ridden out of town on a rail, without the tar and feathers.
Ned
Déjà Flu
I'm holdin' out for Ratslinger...
possum
yes! definitely! i just said as much in an e-mail before i saw
this! lol.
tang! you have a second god-kitteh. she is such a sweetie.
possum
ps i could send a photo of little tang. it's uncanny how alike they
are, same colouring, semi-feral and fluffy ... : )
Déjà Flu
...
>> Think I should send him a pic of Tangette?
> yes! definitely! i just said as much in an e-mail before i saw
> this! lol.
> tang! you have a second god-kitteh. she is such a sweetie.
> ps i could send a photo of little tang. it's uncanny how alike they
> are, same colouring, semi-feral and fluffy ... : )
done.
sent Little Tang's green-eyed piccie along, too.
Les Kitteh's Tang! Uber-fluffers!
:)
zenworm
'Affectionate immortality' has been achieved,
when name jumps the species barrier.
ZN :D
absolute permanent perfection overflowing without action
possum
there were any number of dead giveaways in the article - eg
"The Quakers of 18th-century Britain, renowned
for their scrupulous honesty, came to dominate
British finance." no. they came to dominate british chocolate
making.
and the non-cheating, god fearing believers - how is belief measured
objectively?
do the examinees tick a questionnaire - 1. hardly believe at
all....... 5. believe strongly etc, or answer a set of questions as
measurements? but how does one objectively get around the
subjectivity of belief, or that the examinees' answers may well be the
answers of deludeds...how scientific is that.
it's a good job it was on 'these boards', where, of course, we are all
discerning, particularly about the links we make. i agree with your
point about public media, filling in gaps between science (or any
specialized subject) and common thought. it can be destructive. i
sent a link from the express and star newspaper on another thread -
it's not a newspaper i choose to read, nor one i would recommend,
being 'proprietor agenda' driven. local and regional news has all
but been wiped out in terms of fulfilling a public service of
providing unbiased news reporting, or investigative journalism.
i think tang provides these articles to provoke thought, and at least
presents them 'blankly', without commentary, for people to comment as
they will, or make what links they choose. i am not as enlightened as
tang, and indicated my opinion in the link i sent to DT, who is even
more opinionated than i am, on a porpoise. of course, that context
was political not religious, but being theologically challenged, and a
sometimes political animal like you fu, i work things out on that
level. i see links between religion and politics. i run the risk of
being destructive, because i don't know everything that's under the
ice-berg, but can one be paralyzed into inaction and silenced by
unknown risks and live a life?
politics and alliances are in a major state of flux, and i have to do
stuff, even if i crash. so i challenged dear DT, regardless, i used
the express and star rag, regardless, and all i've got to go on is my
special relationship with ducks, and my extensive and personal head-
banging experience of junior bureaucracy. truthfully, that's not all,
but it's enough for me right now...lol!
herbzet
possum wrote:
> i find it difficult to believe you haven't.
Tangster is a tricky guy. I wouldn't necessarily
believe everything he says.
--
hz
indiosd...@yahoo.canada
bonfils <k...@bonfils.my.underwear.com> wrote:
>indiosd...@yahoo.canada wrote in news:hdpe1a$nbo$1...@morgoth.sfu.ca:
>
>> In article <hdpcun$3d8$1...@aioe.org>,
>> bonfils <k...@bonfils.my.underwear.com> wrote:
>>>indiosd...@yahoo.canada wrote in news:hdp5th$dsc$1...@morgoth.sfu.ca:
>
>>>> I suspect the exorcist has more _real_ respect and understanding
>>>> than the the superficial PC respect of the cultural-heritage
>>>> celebrator.
>>>
>>>He had a different incomprehension than me, that's for sure. (Or are
>>>you saying that they really *were* demons?)
>>
>> I'm saying his belief that they were evil demons is fundamentally more
>> respectful than the locals' belief that they must be respected because
>> they are our indigenous belief systems.
>>
>> I think we are in agreement, for opposite reasons. :)
>
>
>I'm just worried: Does this imply that my hurling insults at Daryl actually
>means that I respect his views...?
Maybe you respect something underlying them enough to consider them
insult-worthy, not sure...
Luke
Love
dodeca...@yahoo.com says...
>
>On Nov 16, 4:13=A0am, pho...@address.for.spam (Love) wrote:
>> In article <3ce1a0f4-0f43-407a-8d36-0dd731327...@a31g2000yqn.googlegroups=
>.com>,
>> dodecapus...@yahoo.com says...
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> >On Nov 13, 11:18=3DA0pm, D=3DE9j=3DE0 Flu <cha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> Love wrote:
>.@g=3D
>> >mail.com
>> >> > says...
>> >> >>http://www.alternet.org/belief/143912/the_top_one_reason_religion_is=
>_..=3D
>> >.
>> >> > page=3D3Dentire
>>
>> "So with religion, even if God's rules and promises aren't
>>
>> The author fails to recognise that religions, even
>> religions practising absolute belief, DO "crumble" in
>> gay marriage debate is evidence of this. =A0At one time
>> this wouldn't even have been debateable.
>>
>> Likewise, adherents of political ideologies still
>> follow their ideologies even while those ideologies
>
>Monotheistic and ethical religions are, more than not, social and
>political ideologies. Many problems appear to spring forth from the
>problem that their central tenets are untestable, but that problem is
>misleading.
>
>Believing in *anything* comes down to whether any principle held as an
>absolute is either an abstraction or contrivance of something else.
>Ideals of absolute justice and equality, for example, are just as
>problematic in execution as their being some cosmological advocate for
>the same, nontheistic mores and ethics are human constructs just the
>same as those purportedly sanctioned by a god.
>
>That the endorsement by god seems to render erstwhile reasonable
>people immune to counterargument is more a function of societies &
>personality types, not religion. The same types came to occupy the
>murderously pious ranks of fascist and communist regimes in the 20th
>C.
>
>There's no cure for human nature.
Well, not without also being a cure for humans.
Love
And it's exactly what happens sometimes. And not just with
religion but also its stepsister culture.
>much more
>certain than your fear that someone is going to 'jihad' you.
>(If so, just jihad him back, with nukes.)
*My* fear?
You haven't seen "Team America" yet?
> Let's say your neighbor wakes you up a sunrise every day
>with a screaming chant that he - the great Jahboogah - is the
>most powerful person in the universe, and he repeats this five
>times a day a mid-morning, noon, evening, and night before
>going to bed. Say he also kills chickens in a ritual dance
>where he slowly tears them to pieces and eventually decapitates
>them. Say he also kills small and large mammals at his barbeque
>pit by slitting their throats and letting them bleed to death.
>
> I think you are fully justified in calling him a savage idiot
>and taking out a police complaint against him. BUT, let's say
>he then claims that all this stupid, violent and disgusting
>crap is his RELIGION.
I don't know about Wisconsin but here the police will stop him.
(if the Humane Society doesn't do it first) No principle of
that sort is held to be absolute and merely claiming religious
privilege isn't enough. In the end his lawyer's bill will be
all the deterrent he needs.
> Fuck him. Burn his house down! String him up on the maple
>tree in his back yard!
And then claim my religion made me do it!
> The Anglican archbishop that 'demonized' the totem poles
>in Vancouver should have been tarred and feathered and ridden
>out of town on a rail.
Well I disagree there. We need colourful fools to make the
rest of us look reasonable.
Lee Rudolph
>bonfils wrote:
...
>> You don't earn my respect by believing in bullshit and fairytales.
>> Though you might just earn it by shutting the fuck up about it.
>
>Rock On!
>
>Oh, and make 'em keep books and pay taxes like all other businesses...
Why keep books when you keep The Book?
Lee Rudolph
Lee Rudolph
> Oh yes, of course, you are correct, Wilson. He should just have
>been ridden out of town on a rail, without the tar and feathers.
Why a rail? Why not a totem pole?
Lee Rudolph (clearly, he was one of Chas.'s "low men" already)
Beerlet Dhiblang
> In article <32df9dc6-2e0a-4efc-920d-a646eed08...@o10g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
Still waiting for that giant cosmic shit-hammer.....
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
> In article <LNadnW9AxqXe6JzWnZ2dnUVZ_h-dn...@earthlink.com>, nedl...@ix.netcom.com says...
And you of all people really need that... :-)
No, seriously, I like your way of thinking...
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
Tax Religion!!!
Except mine.
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
> Fuck him. Burn his house down! String him up on the maple
> tree in his back yard!
Although I commend the expansion of the absfg repertoire to *rape and
murder* you did forget the cannibalism. And masturbation.
> The Anglican archbishop that 'demonized' the totem poles
> in Vancouver should have been tarred and feathered and ridden
> out of town on a rail.
And a John Holmes referent too!!!!!
/l
Beerlet Dhiblang
Every time the archbishop opens his mouth a kitteh dies.
/l
herbzet
Ned Ludd
"Love" <pho...@address.for.spam> wrote in message
We aim to please.
I was thinking about starting a list. A list titled "The Stupid
Things We Do When We Do Religion". Because certain things,
within the great Mandala of our stupidness, are tolerable (or at
least very low on the scale of intolerability), and other things
aren't.
Re the three I mentioned above, tearing a chicken apart while
dancing with it and eventually decapitating it (which is done
in the religion Santeria - a form of Roman Catholicism practiced
in the Caribbean and parts of the US), seems pretty stupid. But
we kill chickens in worse (or just as bad) ways in some of our
domestic chicken farms.
Ritually killing mammals as offerings to God has been done
through all recorded time, and is still done today. And seems
pretty stupid. But I wasn't there 4,000 years ago, and maybe
this had some ancillary benefit. We also killed our first born
children in various past civilizations. This pretty thoroughly
smacks of stupidity, but, hey, first-born boys can be a real
pain in the ass (I'm a first-born only), and maybe even this
practice had some social benefit.
The call to prayer, which is done widely on the planet five
times a day seems primarily annoying to me, but if they built
the minaret next door to me I would be forced to declare it
stupid.
So, the list of "The Stupid Things We Do When We Do Religion"
is starting to fill up, but adjustments may be needed as we
discuss and evaluate. I would very much like to establish some
unequivocal endpoints, however - A few things that we can all
agree are absolutely stupid (for the high end), and virtually
innocuous (for the low end).
Like, maybe, the Spanish Inquisition as a candidate for the
high end. But someone might say, "Wait a minute! - It got rid
of all those stinking Albigenses!" And of course we would then
have to thrash out how bad the Albigenses actually stunk.
So we need something absolutely stupid. Something inherently
stupid, ie. internally self-contradictorily ignorant.
OK, how about this? Let's say there were a religion that had
a law that you couldn't jog on Tuesdays. But let's say that many
adherents of that religion, for whatever reason, WANTED to jog
on Tuesdays.
You might think that they should just change the law and allow
people to jog on Tuesdays. But no. What if the clergy of that
religion actually responded by making ANOTHER law, that if
the high priest of their religion laid a string around the city (or
a part of the city) where people wanted to jog on Tuesdays, and
inspected the string once a week to make sure it was in place,
then people within that string could jog on Tuesdays.
Wouldn't this be the LIMITING case for stupidity?? Ie. Because
the response to a stupid law that people don't want to (or can't)
obey, is to make an even MORE stupid law to allow them to do
what they want (or need) to do. It is, imo, an example of inherent,
prima facie stupidity.
Well, this actually exists. It exits in Judaism, and it's called
an 'Eruv'. Eruv's exist in many of the major cities of the world,
specifically, Manhattan, London, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Perth,
Sydney, Gibraltar, Antwerp.
You see, Jews can't work on the Sabbath. There are 39 things
that orthodox Jews can't do on Saturdays. All of them involve
'work'. BUT, telling a Manhattan Jewish shopkeeper that he can't
work on Saturdays would be tantamount to telling him to cut off
his left arm. Ergo, the Eruv.
The Eruv can be formed of pre-existing things like walls, fences,
powerlines, etc., but if no natural thing exists to connect the Eruv
in a continuous line, then the Rabbi can lay a string or wire to
create the continuous connection. But he must then inspect it
once a week to make sure it is in place.
Here is the Google map of the Eruvs in Manhattan:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8
Have I got my entry #1 for the list of "The Stupid Things We Do
When We Do Religion"?
Ned
Ned Ludd
"Ned Ludd" <ned...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:-sidnes9rux8Xp_W...@earthlink.com...
> Here is the Google map of the Eruvs in Manhattan:
> http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8
>
Sorry for that bad link, here is the Google map of the Eruvs
in Manhattan:
Ned
Beerlet Dhiblang
> In article <32df9dc6-2e0a-4efc-920d-a646eed08...@o10g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
Well, my inner patrician overlord would say that since we have to give
"them" the security of faith and belief let's give 'em the nicest ones
possible.
( I'm not me and I endorse this message ... )
/l
bonfils
@PRIMUS.CA:
> In article <hdoq2r$bn2$1...@aioe.org>, k...@bonfils.my.underwear.com says...
>>Ah. "Asserting" - that's like raising your voice because you don't have
>>arguments to back up your claim?
>
> NO, THIS IS LIKE THAT!!!
>
> I was merely making sure you had a target clearer than
> a "claim".
One man's assertion is another man's claim, I guess...
>>> Religion is not science and doesn't have to live up or
>>> down to the standards of science any more than fiction
>>> novels have to live up or down to the standards of
>>> history and archeology.
>>
>>Which makes it *not* a "propositional entity that has as its
>>propositional foundations untestables and unproveables", how?
>
> I have to reverse the question and ask you what makes
> you think that it IS that kind of entity? Or put
> another way, why do you see religion-in-general only
> in the same way that religious fundamentalists see it?
Obviously, it's much easier to discuss fundamentalists, because they make
no excuses about viewing their dogma as factual.
But - even non-fundamentalists still say they "believe" that certain stuff
is "true". Instead of believing in every single word of the scriptures,
they believe in some core elements of their religion.
If they didn't *believe* in any of this, you'd hardly see them as belonging
to the religion in question.
And doesn't "believe" imply the idea that said core elements are factually
*true* - not just inspirational fiction or personal opinion (open for
discussion), but *true*?
> Sure, propositions are made within the practice of
> religion, but that's a pretty trivial fact given that
> many other fields of endeavour do that too. What we're
> debating here is whether religion is in the business of
> establishing propositions in the same way that science
> (or perhaps logic) is. Because if it is then perhaps
> it should be held to the same standards of proof for
> the propositions that it makes, or dismissed as invalid.
I'd say that (f'rinstance) "Jesus died on the cross for your sins" is a
proposition. And as such, it's either true, false or unverifiable (I'd call
it highly unlikely, as I wasn't even born at the time).
> As far as unproveables are concerned I would say that
> unless you are after propositional truth it doesn't
> matter, so long as you keep your unproveables in context.
> For example, the debate over whether the Bard of Avon
> actually existed may never be settled with strong proof
> but that in no way prevents me from enjoying the works
> that exist under the name of William Shakespeare and
> using that name to refer others to those works with.
Still - if you claimed to have daily conversations with Falstaff, I'd worry
about your sanity.
But when you choose to have conversation with certain *other* imaginary
friends, it's suddenly a very respectable sign of your "faith". I think
that's the double standard that bothers me the most.
>>Oh, don't give me the frakkin' *respect* argument!
>
> That's not what I was doing but now that we're on that
> topic...
>
>>In fact, it's not so much religion as such that pisses me off. It's the
>>constant repetition of the PC absurdity that not only should we *allow*
>>people to be religious - we should *respect* the self-imposed psychosis
>>they call "faith".
>
> Yeah, there's a line somewhere defining the difference
> between respecting people and respecting whatever they
> choose to revere just because they try to say "disrespect
> that and you disrespect us". I don't know where the line
> is but I'm sure that the latter is overused so much that
> we're way over it a lot of the time.
>
> It cuts the other way, too, of course. Sometimes we don't
> want people to express their respect for anything that we
> can't all respect. Keeping Christmas Assembly from
> happening in a school with 99 Christians for every "other"
> is a possible example.
Some Danish companies cancelled the traditional (alcohol- and pork-fueled)
Christmas lunch parties out of "respect" for their Muslim employees. To my
joy, some Muslims protested - as they thought these heathen rituals were a
brilliant way to get to know their co-workers.
>>You don't earn my respect by believing in bullshit and fairytales.
>>Though you might just earn it by shutting the fuck up about it.
>
> Heh! That one deserves a name of some kind. Have you
> got a maxim named after you yet?
A friend of mine attributed the maxim "Life is too short for softcore" to
me.
But hey, I'm game for another one.
--
bonfils
http://kim.bonfils.com
bonfils
news:7329a$4b01023b$4038ecbe$25...@PRIMUS.CA:
> Quick Wikipedia check:
>
> Hmm, it appears that Kim might have some religion after all...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Strappado_-_Model_Jassi.jpg
Um...?
Nice pic, but where do I and/or religion come in (no pun intended)?
--
bonfils
http://kim.bonfils.com
Benjamin
Looks like last weeks burlesque show and party didn't make it though.
Which explains a lot.
Ben
Ned Ludd
"Benjamin" <eggplan...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:201a1$4b02e07d$4038ecbe$25...@PRIMUS.CA...
>
>> Sorry for that bad link, here is the Google map of the Eruvs
>> in Manhattan:
>> http://tinyurl.com/yzbkvde
>> Ned
>
> Woohoo. Thank Jesus I'm inside the Eruv right now.
> Looks like last weeks burlesque show and party didn't make it though.
> Which explains a lot.
> Ben
>
Actually, I didn't spend much time analyzing the map. (I did
run across an article noting the extension of the Eruv to Houston
street some time ago, which the map shows.)
Hmm... Hey, what's that gerrymander off of Houston up Mercer
and over to 6th on Bleecker?? What the hell do the Jews have
against the "Coles Sports and Recreation Center"??
OH, and those bastards jiggered it again up in Harlem, to
exclude the Cotton Club!! (Dog-legging down Broadway and over
on Tiemann Place to Riverside Drive.) This is an outrage!
And Riverside Park is OUT, but Joan of Arc Park is IN. 'Splain
THAT one to me, Lucy.
And there's another two-block horse-shoe around and excluding
the Hotel Riverside Studios. ?
Ah, the mind of God...
Ned
Benjamin
In my experience it's usually a bunch of reformed jew saying, "We don't
want your fucking Eruv around our house!"
But who knows...
B
Hidden Draggin
>
> We aim to please.
>
> I was thinking about starting a list. A list titled "The Stupid
> Things We Do When We Do Religion". Because certain things,
> within the great Mandala of our stupidness, are tolerable (or at
> least very low on the scale of intolerability), and other things
> aren't.
>
> Re the three I mentioned above, tearing a chicken apart while
> dancing with it and eventually decapitating it (which is done
> in the religion Santeria - a form of Roman Catholicism practiced
> in the Caribbean and parts of the US), seems pretty stupid. But
> we kill chickens in worse (or just as bad) ways in some of our
> domestic chicken farms.
Its a form of sacrifice to the great god Ron-Eld Mac Don-Eld.
We cannot be screwing around being genteel with these chickens
when we need so many nuggets (it is a ritual involving eating the
symbolic testicles of our capitalistic overlords which forestalls
another communist revolution.)
> Ritually killing mammals as offerings to God has been done
> through all recorded time, and is still done today. And seems
> pretty stupid.
Don't you get it? All those burnt offerings are ancient hebrew
BarBQ.
> But I wasn't there 4,000 years ago, and maybe
> this had some ancillary benefit. We also killed our first born
> children in various past civilizations. This pretty thoroughly
> smacks of stupidity, but, hey, first-born boys can be a real
> pain in the ass (I'm a first-born only), and maybe even this
> practice had some social benefit.
Well, we kill them now before they are born. There are billions
of Angry Fetuses who are at this moment forming a zombie
army to launch in 2012. Can you stop a zombie fetus? Sure,
easy...but when there are billions slithering at you like a carpet
over the ground...it gets ugly quick.
>
> The call to prayer, which is done widely on the planet five
> times a day seems primarily annoying to me, but if they built
> the minaret next door to me I would be forced to declare it
> stupid.
Of course, when they were setting it all up, they said, "Wait, we
are taking on the mythos of an established religion....we need to
be holier than they are...five times a day."
BZZZZT...the self-formed committee of concerned
Israeli citizens (that have nothing to do with the intelligence
services at all...no not at all) will be along presently
to kidnap you....they are going to hand you over to the
Santeria folks who have long sharp implements. Do
you think that you would be better with a mustard based
or a tomatoe based sauce?
--
Hidden Draggin - Gilbert Hansford
Don't join dangerous cults, practice safe sects!
http://twitter.com/hiddendraggin
http://hiddendraggin.posterous.com/
Ned Ludd
"Hidden Draggin" <an...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:hduts9$una$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
I find the whole 'chicken' thing fraught with enormous
philosophical baggage. As a living descendant of the dinosaurs,
they carry forth the blood of the terrifying Tyrannosaurus Rex,
the largest and most vicious predator to ever walk the earth;
they even look a little like T-Rex, with their monstrous hind
legs and puny forelegs (looked at after being plucked). Their
taloned hind legs bear the spurs of relentless ancient combat.
There are 24 billion chickens on earth as of 2003 (!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken , that's FOUR chickens
for every human. We have, in effect, taken T-Rex and had him
for dinner. We grow him in little pens and then strangle and
pluck him and broast him for snacks.
What a cosmic joke! I wonder when it will be our turn?
Ned
Lee Rudolph
> I find the whole 'chicken' thing fraught with enormous
>philosophical baggage. As a living descendant of the dinosaurs,
>they carry forth the blood of the terrifying Tyrannosaurus Rex,
>the largest and most vicious predator to ever walk the earth;
>they even look a little like T-Rex, with their monstrous hind
>legs and puny forelegs (looked at after being plucked). Their
>taloned hind legs bear the spurs of relentless ancient combat.
>
> There are 24 billion chickens on earth as of 2003 (!)
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken , that's FOUR chickens
>for every human. We have, in effect, taken T-Rex and had him
>for dinner. We grow him in little pens and then strangle and
>pluck him and broast him for snacks.
>
> What a cosmic joke! I wonder when it will be our turn?
I WAS BORN down SOUTH on a CHICKEN FARM near Mashville, TennessEE,
'Twernt nobody there
But a sky full of Air,
Seventeen billion CHICKENS,
and ME.
And then one day
I said, "Hey, hey, HEY,
Think I'll DROP a little LSD."
It BLEW my MIND.
I got real KIND,
And set my CHICKENS FREEEE!
And there was
Chickens in the PASTURE,
Chickens in the BARN,
Chickens in the CAULIFLOWER,
& Chickens in the CORN;
CHICKENS drivin' CADILLACS to WASHINGTON, D.C.,
WHEN I SET MY CHIIICKENNNS
FREE!
--Gilbert Shelton, Bijou Funnies, Volume 1, Number 1
(and possibly elsewhere)
Lee Rudolph (they were all so *young*)
possum
well he's a bloke, as mike would say...in his 'that covers it all'
tone of voice.
possum
Déjà Flu
Actually, the only part I caught was the ducks. I like ducks.
Both live and pan-roasted with some rosemary, basil, and sesame oil.
and I should prolly pay more zentention or they'll vote me out
of the pub...er...club...oh, wait...I'm already out...
The theomemes are on the verge of replacing the economemes.
I suspect mutation and cross breeding will produce new ones.
They always have.
The Vietnamese children who know what's happening call themselves
the bui' doi - dust of life. The west doesn't yet have an equivalent,
but it will.
We were out today and, as I made a turn, I noticed a kid sitting
at the side of the road, behind us - a black boy with some plastic
bags beside him. Looked like clothing. He didn't look as though
he expected anyone or anything. Maybe just waiting for Godot.
I didn't turn around, but he's still with me. Maybe next time
I'll have the courage to go back. After all, how often do you
have the opportunity to invite such complete uncertainty into
your life?
Déjà Flu
Not that I know of. And if you practice the same kind of
deliberate ignorance that Tang and Keynes preach, you wouldn't
need it anyway. Everything would be as true as everything else.
But there seem to be some feedback loops beginning
to operate where inaccuracies are echoing back and forth
between the net and the public media, making things even
more cloudy. The net makes dubious claims even more accessible,
and helps them multiply more rapidly and appear more authoritative
(see Tang's gurgles on religion+happiness). It's a memetic
sewer (I would have said zoo, but there's no keeper other
than your own reason) and you are the processing plant.
Caveat emptor, as usual.
possum
ducks are the only worthwhile part... : )
> Both live and pan-roasted with some rosemary, basil, and sesame oil.
> and I should prolly pay more zentention or they'll vote me out
> of the pub...er...club...oh, wait...I'm already out...
there's always golf...
>
> The theomemes are on the verge of replacing the economemes.
> I suspect mutation and cross breeding will produce new ones.
> They always have.
it might get very accelerated, now we have t'internet and mobies...
i'll never catch up...
>
> The Vietnamese children who know what's happening call themselves
> the bui' doi - dust of life.
dust of life... that's very poignant, fu...
>The west doesn't yet have an equivalent,
> but it will.
it's probably in the laws of thermodynamics...not that i'd know
really. i still don't understand electricity...and it has been
explained to me several times...
i get a lot of static in my hair, i know that much...
>
> We were out today and, as I made a turn, I noticed a kid sitting
> at the side of the road, behind us - a black boy with some plastic
> bags beside him. Looked like clothing. He didn't look as though
> he expected anyone or anything. Maybe just waiting for Godot.
>
> I didn't turn around, but he's still with me. Maybe next time
> I'll have the courage to go back. After all, how often do you
> have the opportunity to invite such complete uncertainty into
> your life?
i don't know, fu... i only can hear a harmonica in my head that i
can't play...
possum
possum
> herbzet wrote:
oobi doobi doo... - the black chicks sing the live version... cuts
out the words...all god's chill'n got soul...
don't worry... i don't think it means what you think it means... : )
i googled some lyrics for you...i played dick gaughan's 'redwood
cathedral' up and down the M1 today, his version is on it.. and yes, i
got lost twice, and missed my exit on the way back, took the scenic
route, kind of, in the dark...
http://ippc2.orst.edu/coopl/pancho_and.txt
possum
Déjà Flu
Harmonica was the first thing I ever played. I can't say I learned
it, since I play it backwards (bass to the right). In 4th grade
I would sit under this old tree by the school and play tunes
and even gave a school concert. I've had a hundred harmonicas and
I'm down to my last three. I'm almost breathless...
possum
: ) : )
Déjà Flu
> oobi doobi doo... - the black chicks sing the live version... cuts
> out the words...all god's chill'n got soul...
>
> don't worry... i don't think it means what you think it means... : )
I think you know very well what I think you think I think it means...
> i googled some lyrics for you...i played dick gaughan's 'redwood
> cathedral' up and down the M1 today, his version is on it.. and yes, i
> got lost twice, and missed my exit on the way back, took the scenic
> route, kind of, in the dark...
We TOLD you to take the GPS along and you wouldn't listen...
http://ippc2.orst.edu/coopl/pancho_and.txt
I'll try it.
> possum
Like to tease me, don'cha? Nasty little girl, you are...
Go chase Tang around the block for a few laps. He could
use the exercise.
possum
oh noooo....lol!
>
> http://ippc2.orst.edu/coopl/pancho_and.txt
>
> I'll try it.
>
> > possum
>
> Like to tease me, don'cha? Nasty little girl, you are...
> Go chase Tang around the block for a few laps. He could
> use the exercise.
i just did! what's happenin'!?! hee!
Lee Rudolph
>Harmonica was the first thing I ever played. I can't say I learned
>it, since I play it backwards (bass to the right).
You're not playing it backwards, you're playing it upside-down.
Lee Rudolph
Keynes
wrote:
Apparently Fu is left-headed.
Déjà Flu
Even if I was behind it?
How about standing on my head?
(under water doesn't count except in ice-capades)
^@%>---*=#**
"Lee Rudolph" <lrud...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:hdvkrv$cg6$1...@reader1.panix.com...
then get him to stop
standing on his head.
Tang Huyen
"^@%>---*=#**" wrote:
> "Lee Rudolph"
>
> > D�j� Flu:
>
> >>Harmonica was the first thing I ever played.
> >>I can't say I learned it, since I play it
> >>backwards (bass to the right).
>
> > You're not playing it backwards, you're
> > playing it upside-down.
>
> then get him to stop
> standing on his head.
It is the only way he can stand. It's from
the covenant between God and him. It's
all bass ackwards.
Tang Huyen
^@%>---*=#**
"Tang Huyen" <tanghuyen{delete}@gmail.com[remove]> wrote in message
news:Sd2dnWaI1NTgcp7W...@supernews.com...
somebody was just greening him
when he went for harmonica lessons.
the head pillow on the floor should
have been a dead giveaway.