Funny events in anti-woke world

Seanchaidh

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definitions and descriptions of gods tend to be quite varied and even sometimes fluid, so it is usually silly to treat broad declarative statements about their possibility or actuality-- as entities that are basically undefined-- as possibly being known or unknown or even well-formulated. What is more interesting is examining the serious flaws in popular and mainstream theological reasoning and working out precisely how they go wrong and therefore what precisely the arguments they propose actually prove-- which is usually some definitional matter about something that absolutely does not have to exist in any meaningful way or may not even be possible. Oftentimes these arguments demonstrate problems with thinking about concepts in certain ways (looking at you, Descartes) or the limits of what you can do with logical reasoning (and you, Anselm).

On Descartes, briefly: he proposes in his fifth Meditation an argument that depends on the concept of perfection. He arbitrarily decides both that 'perfect' is a thing that something can be without any sort of reference to what it is being perfect as, and that existence itself is a perfection (it is supposed to be "more perfect" than nonexistence which, if we're going to entertain the idea at all, seems backward to me given that perfection is supposed to be an ideal: it is vastly easier for things that don't exist to be 'perfect' in some way than those that do-- consider geometric shapes). An intelligible concept of perfection is contained in ideas like 'a perfect cube' or 'a perfect sine wave' or 'a perfect replica of the Ship of Theseus' or 'a perfectly optimized build order for delivering three zealots to your opponent's ramp at the earliest time possible in a game of Starcraft™ on Lost Temple'. But what could it possibly mean for something to just be perfect-- not with respect to any other idea or thing, but just perfect in itself. And what if that concept of perfection could necessitate certain things about the real world?

Descartes, who was very intelligent and also very important in the history of philosophy, proposed a shockingly stupid argument that rests on that premise: we can conceive of a 'supremely perfect being'. That being would be yet more perfect if it existed-- existence is a perfection. So therefore that supremely perfect being must exist, since if it didn't that would be a contradiction-- we would not actually be conceiving of the supremely perfect being unless it existed. And that's God! This should strike any reasonable person as obvious chicanery, though it may not at first glance be obvious why. But I think I've adequately exposed the (or at least one of the) mistake(s) being made. But what might be even more important than the peculiar mistake being made is the simple intuition that we cannot come to firm conclusions about whether particular things exist based only on what we can conceive-- at least not in the way Descartes intended.

Anselm, earlier, did more or less the same thing that Descartes did with 'perfection' but with the idea of 'greater than', the crucial premise being that 'existence is greater than non-existence'. Both of these ontological arguments have a very similar logical short-circuit. An interesting one, no doubt. But also a shockingly stupid one. In fact I think I'm prepared to propose that the stupidest argument exists: it's one of these two. And therefore it is quite plausible that existence is a stupidity.
 
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tstorm823

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Maybe a better analogy would be Stephen Miller (or someone similar) talking about the Bush administration
Probably a better analogy, but the general point still stands. The comments are not "this is how we use race to win elections", but rather "this is how they used race to win elections, we don't do any of that", where the "they" was before his time of relevance, and he was saying nothing he couldn't have read 10 years prior in the New York Times.
 

Silvanus

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There's a real philosophical question about whether a man-made entity can predate the word to describe it, but more important than that, you're systematically rationalizing away any avenue of criticism. I can't tell you what the word means, cause that's just what some people now want you to think. I can't show you the word has always meant that, because it doesn't matter what it used to mean. Shall I go down every definition google presents?
You've gone down precisely one avenue so far, which is etymology. Even there you've been tremendously narrow: religiō in Latin could refer to conscientiousness or duty towards a broad range of things, including mundane things, and did not require either the supernatural nor obligation and practices. And that word itself didn't spring from nowhere: it itself derives from component terms etymologically meaning something similar to "connect/ read again or over".

But etymology is not definition. The etymology of religiō wasn't even how the Romans used it! And today, we use it in reference to a broad range of belief systems held by billions of people going back further than the word ever existed, and we include believers who don't go to Church or obligate themselves practically-- which is most believers.

- the belief in and worship of a superhuman power or powers, especially a God or gods.
- a particular system of faith and worship.
- a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
- the service and worship of God or the supernatural
- a range of social-cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements
- a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

How many definitions will it take to convince you that religion is defined by practice as much as belief?
Absolutely amazing: you've provided a string of definitions.... most of which don't require obligations or specific practices.
 
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tstorm823

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Absolutely amazing: you've provided a string of definitions.... most of which don't require obligations or specific practices.
I underlined the words that are actions, rather than just belief, in every single definition. You can't really be so stubborn as to insist "hmmm, it says service, not practice, therefore tstorm823 is wrong."
 

Silvanus

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I underlined the words that are actions, rather than just belief, in every single definition. You can't really be so stubborn as to insist "hmmm, it says service, not practice, therefore tstorm823 is wrong."
And overlooked how several of those definitions don't make it a requirement, but just listed it alongside other possible indicators (such as #5); and how several of them used terms that don't imply practical obligations or actions (such as #1 and #2).
 
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XsjadoBlayde

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They're on one again.

2024-06-18-15-54-14-358.jpg

Isis unexpected Ukraine ally just to reclaim stolen valour.



This mostly a capitalism fueled issue, but being uncritical of it is most certainly anti-woke in the unbastardised meaning of the term.




K for dessert, only a lil nibble cause this kunt still openly skirting rules on his show which is still running even though he claimed multiple times on air it was his last day before martyrdom and just gets his audience to send money to "his dad's" business instead.

 
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tstorm823

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And overlooked how several of those definitions don't make it a requirement, but just listed it alongside other possible indicators (such as #5); and how several of them used terms that don't imply practical obligations or actions (such as #1 and #2).
Worship isn't an action now?
 

Phoenixmgs

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Do you genuinely not see how this is circular reasoning? If we follow your approach here, then nothing is an issue in society so long as a law exists to address it. Nobody is in need of medicine, or food, or shelter; discrimination, inequality and crime do not impact anyone... because laws exist that address them, and those laws determine who needs them!
Again, I said from the start I'm not debating what is needy and not needy because that's a whole long thing and needing a lot of sources/research and we probably won't agree anyway.

1. You keep insisting that these are just reversals of pre-pandemic policies. They aren't. I've posted examples of changes the Republicans are making to policies that have been around since the 60s.

2. Even for policies being rolled back to pre-pandemic levels, there's a massive difference in people's finances between 2019 and currently. Food prices have gone up between 20% and 100% basically across the board. There isn't any food that currently costs the same in 2024 as it did in 2019. Given that, rolling back policies to 2019 levels is clearly going to impact food insecure lower income families who have been depending on the pandemic expansion of some of these policies.

3. There definitely were issues with kids getting food pre-pandemic. Just because you weren't personally affected and aware doesn't mean there were no issues.

4. Yes, school closures harmed kids. The global pandemic harmed society as a whole. Millions of people dying, supply lines going to hell, strain on an over-run healthcare system, etc. What would probably have been more harmful to kids is if their parents and grandparents got sick and died because of a disease their kids brought home from school. In my point of view a year of staying home from school for kids was probably worth it if it meant potentially hundreds of thousands of additional people got to survive covid. Lesser of 2 evils and all that.
I haven't seen you post a single change to the NSLP that republicans have changed or have wanted to change.

The federal poverty level changes (increases) every year. Literally no one is saying the specific criteria for how free/reduced school lunches was determined in 2019 should be how they are determined today.

I didn't say there wasn't but also no one has shown why kids that don't qualify for free or reduced (which is close to free anyway) lunches are needy.

Kids barely transmitted covid because it barely affected them and studies about covid tranmissions and schools being closed or open showed very little difference. You do realize like literally every other country in the world had kids going to school right? The US did 17th worse in the world (according to wikipedia) in deaths per million. How was keeping kids home saving lives?
 

Dirty Hipsters

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Kids barely transmitted covid because it barely affected them and studies about covid tranmissions and schools being closed or open showed very little difference. You do realize like literally every other country in the world had kids going to school right? The US did 17th worse in the world (according to wikipedia) in deaths per million. How was keeping kids home saving lives?
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Our literature review presents evidence for significantly lower susceptibility to infection for children aged under 10 years compared to adults given the same exposure, for elevated susceptibility to infection in adults aged over 60y compared to younger/middle aged adults, and for the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection associated with sleeping close to an infected individual. Published serological studies also suggest that younger adults (particularly those aged under 35y) often have high cumulative rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the community. Additionally, there is some evidence of robust spread of SARS-CoV-2 in secondary/high schools, and there appears to be more limited spread in primary schools. Some countries with relatively large class sizes in primary schools (e.g. Chile and Israel) reported sizeable outbreaks in some of those schools
Opening secondary/high schools is likely to contribute to the spread of SARS-CoV-2, and, if implemented, it should require both lower levels of community transmission and greater safeguards to reduce transmission.
A second source of bias in the estimated susceptibility of children vs. adults is the possibility of the following scenario: a child is infected first in a household and transmits to an adult, but because the child has no or few symptoms, the child is not tested initially, and the adult is considered the household index. Then, if the original (actual household index) infection in the child is not subsequently detected by RT-PCR, this would bias the secondary attack rate (SAR) in pediatric contacts downward. On the other hand, if that original infection in the child is subsequently detected, it would be classified as a secondary infection in a study, biasing the SAR in children upward. A third source of bias, likely downward, in the estimated susceptibility of children vs. adults is related to detection of secondary cases. It is known that duration of SARS-CoV-2 shedding increases with age in adults (1921); children may have shorter duration of viral shedding in respiratory samples compared to adults, potentially leading to a lower likelihood of detection of infection by RT-PCR compared to adults.
Do you know any parents with kids? They're sick literally all the time, because their kids constantly get sick at school. Children spread disease like crazy. Yes, COVID affected kids under 10 less than anyone else, but that doesn't mean that kids wouldn't have been bringing COVID home with them and infecting others, especially kids over the age of 10.
 
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Silvanus

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Worship isn't an action now?
Well not in the sense that it must involve practical or physical expression, no, not necessarily. Personal 'worship' can simply involve reverence or holding respect.

If we take your approach, and appeal to etymology, worship comes from weorð + scipe-- literally, the condition of being worthy. Of course, as we both now know, etymology is not definition. Oxford has the definition as 'The feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity'. So it could be expression... or it could be the feeling.
 

Silvanus

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Again, I said from the start I'm not debating what is needy and not needy because that's a whole long thing and needing a lot of sources/research and we probably won't agree anyway.
Then you can't make an argument that relies on your own narrow definition. If you won't discuss it, and nobody else here accepts it, then that's not providing a basis to argue anything else.
 

tstorm823

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Oxford has the definition as 'The feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity'. So it could be expression... or it could be the feeling.
So if we take an ambiguity in a specific definition of religion with the word worship, and then take an ambiguity in a specific definition of worship, we can conclude it was always only about belief?
 

Trunkage

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Do you know any parents with kids? They're sick literally all the time, because their kids constantly get sick at school. Children spread disease like crazy. Yes, COVID affected kids under 10 less than anyone else, but that doesn't mean that kids wouldn't have been bringing COVID home with them and infecting others, especially kids over the age of 10.
At my work, we had multiple kids have to go to hospital over Covid. None died. They all had to be put on respirators and stay between 2 to 4 weeks. We only look after 100 kids

But I live in Australia, were we took flattening the curve seriously so these children could get access to a respirator. Most of the 7 million deaths happened because they didn't care about flatten the curve or sanitation and we're flooded
 

Satinavian

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So if we take an ambiguity in a specific definition of religion with the word worship, and then take an ambiguity in a specific definition of worship, we can conclude it was always only about belief?
Some religions are ondeed only about believe. Some others are primarily about acts and most are about both.
 

Silvanus

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So if we take an ambiguity in a specific definition of religion with the word worship, and then take an ambiguity in a specific definition of worship, we can conclude it was always only about belief?
😂 I admire the effort, but there's no lack of clarity in the word 'Or'. It means it can be one thing, or it can be the other. It categorically does not mean that it must involve one of them. That's not ambiguous.

And it wasn't merely in one definition of religion. Three of the ones you provided were unambiguous in not requiring action or obligation. The remaining three have elements of ambiguity on whether actions are necessary.
 
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tstorm823

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Some religions are ondeed only about believe. Some others are primarily about acts and most are about both.
That is a logically impossible definition. Even just learning of and considering membership in a religion is an action beyond solely belief. We're not doing the old argument about whether faith or actions gets one to heaven, that's a different debate entirely, that different Christian sects have different answers for. This argument is about what a religion actually is and what it means to be religious. A person who believes in a god but has no stated religion, has no religious observances, and is not basing their actions on their belief in a god in any meaningful way is not religious.
Three of the ones you provided were unambiguous in not requiring action or obligation.
Well now you're just simply lying to yourself.

Would you actually say that anyone who believes in a god is categorically "religious" independent of everything else?
 

Dirty Hipsters

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A person who believes in a god but has no stated religion, has no religious observances, and is not basing their actions on their belief in a god in any meaningful way is not religious.
If they believe in a specific god associated with a specific religion then yes, I would consider that person religious. They are likely not acting in a manner that would put them into that deity's good graces, but they are acting that way out of their own choice with the belief in that specific god. It's possible that while they believe in that god they do not seek that god's acceptance, or they believe that their belief in that god is the only thing required for their acceptance.

If they believe in the general idea of a god/creator being, but do not believe in a specific god associated with a specific religion, then I would consider them non-religious.

If someone does not believe in the existence of any god or creator being, then that person is an atheist.

If someone does not have any beliefs one way or the other about whether there is a god/creator being, then they are agnostic. They neither claim belief nor disbelief.
 

tstorm823

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If they believe in a specific god associated with a specific religion then yes, I would consider that person religious.
That just is not now nor has ever been what the word "religious" means, I don't know what else to tell you. It would also leave you notably without the word that distinguishes between people who practice a religion and people who don't. There is an entire category of people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious, do you think they are calling themselves religious but not religious?
 

Dirty Hipsters

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That just is not now nor has ever been what the word "religious" means, I don't know what else to tell you. It would also leave you notably without the word that distinguishes between people who practice a religion and people who don't. There is an entire category of people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious, do you think they are calling themselves religious but not religious?
People who consider themselves "spiritual" typically aren't worshiping a specific god from a defined religion. They do things like spirit worship or ancestor worship.

I would say that there already is a distinction between religious people who practice specific worship as part of their religion and those that don't. There's people for example who define themselves as "practicing" Christians, who go to church regularly and participate in religious worship, and there's also "non-practicing Christians" who believe in the Christian god, but who never go to church, or only attend occasional services on religious holidays.

By your definition a lapsed Catholic who has stopped attending mass would no longer be considered religious and wouldn't even be a Catholic, but that's not how Catholicism works (as I think you well know). You're only no longer a Catholic if you renounce Catholicism. Hell, even excommunication from the church doesn't make you no longer Catholic (according to Pope Pius VI "The excommunicated person, being excluded from the society of the Church, still bears the indelible mark of Baptism and is subject to the jurisdiction of the Church").
 

Elijin

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Wouldn't it be wild if we had regular language use such as 'non-practicing <religion>', establishing the membership and belief in a religion, while acknowledging they don't practice in regular rituals. Huh, weird.