If you'd like a read to cleanse your brain of Royal Elegance, here's a title that will blow away the frippery of Meghan and Harry: Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, Bruce Bagemihl. This accounting of our primate relatives' debauchery will leave jaded New Yorkers slack-jawed.

And it's not just apes: Male homosexual black swans pair up, build a nest, then steal eggs from heterosexual swans and proceed to hatch and rear the chicks.

Your post is 2 months old, so you may already have recovered, but if not -- help is at hand.

Do you think war and fighting are the same, or different? — tim wood

I agree that the beginning of a fight is when one decides to fight -- which may precede the first blow by a significant time gap. (The decision to do something -- file for divorce, get a dog, kill somebody, write a book, clean the attic and basement -- often precedes the concrete action by a gap in time that may be years in length.)

War, as they say, is diplomacy carried out by other means. Sometimes individuals avoid fighting by diplomacy -- talking their way out of a hostile situation. Some people assiduously avoid situations which might end up being violent. What applies to individuals sort of applies to states, as well.

Hitler began preparing for war over a multiyear period -- building heavy armaments, airplanes, ships, and subs, etc. The German people were being gradually prepared for a war of expansion for a decade. Observers certainly noticed what was going on--it didn't take deeply embedded spies to see what was happening. There were several test cases -- the Anschluss and the acquisition of the Sudetenland -- that were allowed to pass. His international adversaries (UK, France, USSR, USA, et al) looked, saw, and decided not to act with military force at that time.

But the US, despite its isolationist faction, did begin preparation to fight Hitler and Japan before Pearl Harbor. Our national mobilization didn't strictly begin on December 8, 1941. So again, as you note, the decision to fight preceded the first blow.

It seems clearer to me now (having read a slew of WWII histories) that the UK and France should have attacked Germany in 1937 or 38. Germany wasn't ready for war yet, and the two allied nations were more ready. Further, the US should also have declared war in 1937-38, with its allies, not two+ years later. The result would almost certainly have been a shorter war, far fewer deaths, no holocaust, etc. All 20/20 hind sight on my part, but there were thoughtful people by the mid 1930s who saw where things were heading.

I have taken an anti-war/pacifist stance on fighting at various times, but in the case of 1930s Germany, a clear and present menace was at hand. There was no clear and present danger in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. If there was a country behind 9/11, it was probably more Saudi Arabia and it's export of Wahhabi Islam than anybody else. We didn't need to invade them, we could have blockaded their ports (which would have been an act of war -- a blow, not a gesture).

1) understanding of the situation 2) acceptance of the risks, and 3) commitment to the goal. — tim wood

Fine fine fine. There are various ways of putting it, but we should include rejection of the risks and not committing to the goal. Fighting is often more destructive that the goal is worth.

I don't think emoting or emotional attachment should be mistaken for meaning. — Andrew4Handel

Quite true.

"Making meaning" is a serious matter.

↪Bitter Crank ↪unenlightenedIt seems clear that "fight" is a very broad term, especially if it includes war as a species of fighting. Is there anything in common that might link them in a genus that's more than just a word? — tim wood

Question: can a pacifist legitimately engage in street fights, fist fights with his or her neighbor, all out screaming and rock throwing at the police, etc. AND be against war? I don't think so. A war, lots of interpersonal conflict, and a gang fight all have a kernel of similarity.

When the (US football) crowd sings "Fight on, fight on for victory" to a John Philip Sousa tune, or when the rally leader yells in the megaphone we must fight racism, or when somebody at a bar decides they want to physically beat you up, or when the Senate decides to declare war, and so on and so forth, obviously the term means different things.

One way to define "fight" is: commence an aggressive physical attack. This excludes what happens on the football field, or at a political rally. This usage includes bar fights, gang fights, brawls, organized riots, invasions, and the like. For those on the front line, commencing an attack in war is probably a lot like a gang fight, or a fight where two people agree to fight something out. There is a degree of organization about it.

So it is that "fight" as I use the term includes a moment where one can decide whether anything important is at stake. (One may not have a very long time to think about it, however -- maybe a minute).

"Fight" can be defined for organizational change, too. When people organize a union, or organize the ouster of the boss, or the redirection of a program, it can have the intentionality and intensity of a physical fight without any violent actions. The critical ingredient is that organizational force is being applied to subjects who are unwilling to cooperate. (If the subject is willing to cooperate, then it is called 'negotiation'.)

ln organization 'fighting' one also has the opportunity to consider what is at stake, what can be gained, what can be lost. For most people, the stakes in organizational fighting (no violence) may be much higher than the stakes in a fist fight. Attempting to organize a union and failing can lead to very negative results for working class people.

Trumps trade war is aggressive, has physical consequences, is organizational, but not a physical fight (we hope). It's a fight.

Sleeplessness is nature's way of helping us relive every unfortunate moment we ever had.

Narcolepsy, anyone?

When to fight, or if...

What is at stake: Honor? Essential resources? Existence?
How much do we stand to lose (or gain)?
Do we have the means to fight the attacker?
Can we achieve a satisfactory victory?
What is the probable cost of fighting?

We stood to lose much more than we could gain in Iraq, even if the level of expertise directing our occupation had been adequate. Did France gain or lose by capitulating early on in WWII? What if France and England had attacked Germany after the Anschluss in March of 1938? If the US had entered WWII in September, 1939 instead of December, 1941, wouldn't there have been a much lower loss of life all round? Should the US have intervened in the Pacific on the side of the British Empire before the last stages of Japanese expansion in SE Asia?

People are well advised to avoid physical fights over minor issues. It just isn't worth it in 99 out of 100 cases. Interpersonal fights result in significant injury quite often, with no real gain of value--unless one holds one's personal 'honor' very dear. Is it worth losing teeth, damaging eyeballs, breaking bones--all that--to prove one's honor? What about to defend someone else's honor?

It is a good thing to be able to defend one's self in a fair, small fight. Defending one's self in neighborhood combat with thugs who specialize in violence is a losing battle with nothing to gain. Time to seek a more civil environment.

Interpersonal conflict in the workplace (all verbal or civil actions -- arguments, memos, meetings, strikes, boycotts, etc.) can have very significant consequences for the individual and the organization. The conflict may or may not be worthwhile. One has to measure what's at stake, what is to be gained or lost, and for whom in this kind of fighting too.

I've never heard the joke that way, but I have very little beaver-lore to go on.

↪Baden Last off point comment, I promise, but what's worse than a live squirrel on your piano?

A dead beaver on your organ. — Hanover

This is a timeless joke. Very good. Baden probably doesn't like it. Too sexist.

Trump has an unfortunate habit of free associating in front of the media, large crowds, etc. Normally this sort of speech is performed in front of one's psychoanalyst.

Don't expect any improvement. Donald is an old duck with lots of oil in his feathers and criticism just beads up and rolls off. Nothing sticks.

Why is a poisonously unhealthy beverage like Coca Cola the most popular soft drink in the world? — Baden

Other than a sizable dose of sugar, [about the same as orange juice] what is poisonous in a can of Coca Cola? What's not to like about it? Did you see the Australian movie, "The Coca Cola Kid?" Coca Cola will be preserved as an American Heritage Beverage after the Revolution. If you don't like it now, you will like it after the Revolution. A properly done hamburger, fries, and a coke has a eucharistic quality to it.

early stage dementia — Posty McPostface

Early stage?

A solution to the problem of meaning is getting dicier by the minute.

Welcome to the forum!

I'm a 71 year old gay white man; I've worked in education and social service, and have followed the discussions around various liberation, equality, and civil rights groups since the 1960s. Some of the discussions have become incoherent to me--the transgender one, for one. I've heard an on-going discussion about race; I don't think it has every stopped entirely. It also hasn't been well informed, a good share of the time.

For instance, most people (white or black) are not aware of how discrimination against black people was structured from the 1930s forward. During the depression the Roosevelt set out to organize a vast housing project -- now known as the FHA. Whatever Roosevelt had himself intended, southern congressmen demanded that blacks receive minimum assistance for private housing. For blacks, money could be used to build 'communities of apartment blocks'--the projects.

A massive amount of urban renewal was conducted by the FHA, especially after WWII. The FHA financed most of the housing in new suburbs, and blacks were explicitly excluded. The very good quality suburban housing would hold up well and become a source of equity for millions of white families. For blacks, renting of course led to zero equity.

The 1930s scheme remained in force until around 1980, and no compensatory program was ever proposed. Nor were housing policies actually changed very much. The result was the permanent poverty to which most blacks were consigned.

All this was never a secret, but except for a couple of years in the 1980s when redlining (discrimination by banks) was an issue, most journalists didn't cover it. So most people never knew much about the details.

We can discuss race relations until the cows come home (I think we have). Conversation isn't the missing ingredient. What are missing are the means to bring populations who have experienced long-term economic discrimination into prosperity. This is going to be quite difficult to accomplish -- assuming there was a general consensus that we should. What are the barriers?

1. The US is not longer the single dominant economy that it was in 1950. We will probably never experience another boom as long or as intense as the post WWII boom.
2. Income and wealth have become increasingly concentrated among a few percent of the population. The super wealthy are in a position to either promote or scuttle any redistributive justice effort.
3. Building the suburbs was in most respects an ecological disaster and an economic success that can't be repeated (in any practical sense).
4. The structure of the economy has changed hugely since 1945, with large categories of workers being declassed as "unnecessary" thanks to automation, computerization, and shifting production work off-shore. The supply of well-paying low-skill jobs has pretty much disappeared, and even white collar jobs are being affected.
5. Even good education can not guarantee success at this point, because of economic and technical changes. (Education is certainly worth while, but it doesn't have quite same efficacy it once had.)

So, bringing disadvantaged people into meaningful and rewarding employment, decent housing, excellent communities, and so on is going to be extremely difficult to engineer.

What applies to disadvantaged blacks also applies to disadvantaged whites. 1973 was the end of the post-war boom. The 1973 Israeli-Arab war resulted in the Arab oil boycott which sent a shockwave through the world economy. The Arab freeze on oil sales didn't cause the next 40 years of gradual but pretty much continuous economic decline. Several factors drove the decline. The result is that most white working class people have lost most of the economic share they once held. The same is true of the more affluent "middle class" -- people who are better employed, better paid working class people.

I hate the thought that the present economic structure is going to be permanent, with 5% at the top, 20% in the middle, 50% slowly sinking working class, and 25% lumpen proletariat who can't get much poorer. But I suspect that that is what's going to happen.

We should all be talking about it. It's time for revolution. Set up a guillotine in Central Park and let's start liquidating the richest 5%. (Well, they can avoid the guillotine by handing over ALL their wealth.)

As Tolstoy observed in Anna Karenina, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." It's difficult to predict which child rearing style will work out for the best. I don't think we know what will guarantee happy and unhappy families.

I still think people are born with inborn traits which dominate over the long run. For most people, this helps undo the ill-effects of whatever bad parenting they had. Not always, of course. Another factor in determining outcomes is what children do when they are not at home. A lot of bad behavior begins when children find the wrong crowd to hang around with.

Being the New York Times — schopenhauer1

A joke ribbing the NYT's biases: The world is going to end tomorrow.

Wall street Journal's headline: World ends tomorrow; markets will be closed.

New York Times' headline: World ends tomorrow; women and minorities will be disproportionately affected.

government deincentivizes having children — schopenhauer1

Granted that the US is one of the few industrialized that doesn't incentivize having children (or so I've been led to believe) but the Industrialized nations that do have incentives have less-than-replacement birthrates as well.

There is also corporate policy and the state of the economy at play in reproductive decisions. I would be reluctant (were I straight, 25, and married) to father a child at this point were I substantial indebted, had a less-than-adequate income, had a small apartment and unable to afford better, and so on.

Standards have changed; my parents had 5 of their children during the Great Depression. It was tough, of course. They were broke, lived in substandard housing (even by the standards of 1930s small town), and didn't have bright prospects. (Did they want 7 children in all? No, but the options for fertility control were very limited back then.)

Upward mobility has always been easier with fewer children. No children makes it much easier.

The male/female parity issue seems to be critical. Large numbers of women feel free to decline having children for understandable reasons -- they want -- usually need -- to work. Pregnancy and motherhood is highly inconvenient if one wants to build a career. Assigning the bulk of child care to others is very expensive. Many couples find that good daycare takes the income of one of the two earners.

It would be much easier to bear children if quality and inexpensive (subsidized) day care were available. But, in most cases, it isn't.

Personally, I would think that raising children would be a better job than a lot of the dull work that people end up doing in offices, never mind factories or farms. It's a choice I don't have to consider.

What bothers me about the article though (and many about population growth) is that it focuses on the idea of labor shortages, as if future children are a future resource to be culled and grown as a crop to be used as the next workers. Governments hope that people's individual attitudes are positive about children so they can have more economic output in their GDP and economic indicators — schopenhauer1

Governments and corporations are worried about where the next generation of workers and consumers will come from, true enough. But most of the concerns expressed by the people in the poll were about personal issues or their personal finances.

Demographers also take note of the "age mushroom" -- a problem that many countries are facing: A large cap of older people supported on a relatively thin stem of younger working people. It takes a certain number of working people to maintain society in working order and to maintain the culture.

IF the world succeeds and shrinking its population back to a more sustainable total -- 3 billion instead of the soon to be reached 8 billion -- every society will have to deal with the mushroom population distribution.

If people are able, they tend to pursue their own interests in the current time frame rather than thinking about the long term future. As the article noted, where women have parity with men in society, the birthrate generally falls below the replacement level.

We need to shrink the world population if we are going to survive (global warming and all that), so it's just as well that people want to spend more time playing with their cats than having children (a quote from the article). Fur babies are generally more convenient than children and they don't live as long. Plus, once the dog has been toilet trained and has learned a few tricks, its education is pretty much over unless one is engaging one's hound in life-long learning. (Our dog was not interested in life-long learning, however.)

I have no interest in helping others raise their children, personally. Chalk it up to my personal psychology, moral beliefs, or whatever: I do not enjoy being around children. From my perspective the nuclear family hides the child because it fundamentally was a mistake to have a child in the first place. — darthbarracuda

So, how does somebody who doesn't like being around children in the first place manage to have useful ideas about parenting?

The nuclear family has certainly been beaten sufficiently for its crimes, so let's be merciful. The extended family isn't a bed of rose petals either. The nuclear family makes sense in societies with a lot of mobility from place to place. It works well where there are enough resources to make it work. When resources are insufficient, families struggle whether they are a parent-pair or extended and include grandparents and others.

What do you mean "hides the child"? And if we lay antinatalism aside, why is having a child a mistake in the first place?

This non-intervention, hands-off approach to parenting exists because children are treated as aesthetic objects of the parents' ideals. — darthbarracuda

There are good reasons for a hands-off approach to regulating parenting without taking the approach that children are aesthetic objects of the parents' ideals (even though that may sometimes be true).

Which institution in society could intervene in child rearing without causing more harm? The Church? Public Health agencies? Child Welfare agencies? The Public Schools? Homeland Security? The Medical Establishment? University Extension Agents? The Mental Health establishment? Is there any evidence that the personnel in all the social agencies know how to raise children?

IF we want autonomous persons, then people need to be at least reasonably free to conduct their lives (including careers, courtship, parenting, etc.). Some autonomous people will do a better job of running their own lives (and being parents) than other people will.

As much as we may object to the way some people live their lives and raise their children, there has to be a high barrier before social intervention can be invoked -- and in general that seems to be the case. The state can competently identify parents who are neglecting the basic needs of children (food, clothing, shelter...) but not much more than that. Why not? Because even trained individual professionals lack the competence to predict how any given child rearing practice will affect the future happiness of the child.

We know some things: We know that physical contact between babies and parents is essential. It's part of nurturing. We know that reading to children is very desirable, as is having plentiful good, positive conversations with one's children. Is it essential that children go to bed at the same time every day? Some parents insist on it, others don't. How much dirt should children come in contact with, and how? Some parents allow their children to play in the dirt, others don't. Is spanking a child for misbehaving a criminal offense? Some parents think so, others don't.

Even though there is some moral risk in a laissez faire relationship between social agencies and families, there is more moral risk in an interventionist relationship.

The only way to tackle the problem that I can see is to raise your own children in the best way you see fit, and hope that others of like mind will join you, learn from each other etc. — Pseudonym

Which is the way it actually works for most people.

I parent in a very different way to the rest of my society, in fact some of my parenting choices (like not sending my children to school) are so different that they're illegal in some countries and against the European Convention on Human Rights. The last thing I'd want is for the government, or some authority to tell me how to do it. — Pseudonym

I don't know what the stats are; the very limited anecdotal information I have is that home-schooled children are at least not disadvantaged by not being enrolled in public (or private) schools. I am not sure whether most home schooling works all the way to college admission.

Why is home schooling often competitive with typical school education? Because much of the typical school program (K-12) is not about learning basic skills -- it's about forming citizens to fit into society. Mass education for a mass society. Basic intellectual skills can be learned out of school (with deliberate effort). It appears that this model is breaking down because it isn't clear what role a good share of the "mass of students" is going to have in the mass society.

Parents, of course, face a similar problem of preparing their children for a world of unknown future economic and social conditions. This is nothing new, of course, and (fortunately) people are quite adaptable.

If we were going to regulate parenthood, we ought to be prepared to regulate courtship since parenthood frequently begins with wooing (whether or not a wedding follows).

How many times have you seen embarrassing relationships that really ought to have been terminated by the state? I can think of a woman who should definitely have been court ordered both out of an abusive relationship and away from parenthood, as well. She paired up badly and went on to be an abysmal parent of her 5 children from 4 fathers.

This woman's case is the negative example of the good and bad news: Parents are only partially responsible for the outcomes of their children. This woman's two siblings have good careers, married well, and are good and successful parents. This wretched woman is not a welfare client -- she's educated and works as a teacher (the better to screw up more people).

Children come pre-loaded with features that their parents will not, in most cases, be able to turn off. The gay child will stay gay whether the fundamentalist parents like it or not. The intellectually gifted child of two ordinary people is going to stay gifted. The adventurous baby who turns into the adventurous adolescent will probably remain adventurous, even though it scares the daylights out of his parents.

Parents have a limited range of post-natal effects they can have on their children. They can undermine strengths, support good mental health, offer encouragement, help the deficient child adapt, etc. but they can't make a silk purse out of their sow's ear offspring. So, even though many first time parents have not taken a course in animal husbandry, they have all been raised by somebody (for better or worse) and they have observed other people being raised (for better and worse).

Plus, people will offer abundant free advice to new parents about how they should go about raising their children. Some of it will even be good advice.

Maybe 15% of the heterosexual population in the world are just too fucked up and would be well advised to not marry and not have children. Those who would make good spouses and excellent parents should be given financial encouragement.

There are ugly people I would just as soon see banned from the gene pool, and there are certainly people who are so stupid they really ought not reproduce. Surely this is a problem that can be solved by software -- look at Tinder and Facebook. "OMG! Only 2 people looked at your body for as long as 1/2 second all of last year (Tinder)!!! and you have only 8 likes from 3000 followers (Facebook). Better become a recluse."

Edit: Some sentences, hell - some paragraphs - in this post were not 100% serious.

For instance, the negative view of bacteria, only recently coming to light, which means that antibiotics have caused more deaths than the top five diseases in the last century through in-hospital overuse — InternetStranger

Your statement "antibiotics caused more deaths than the top 5 diseases..." sounds like hyperbole. Cite a couple of good sources for that. In his Nobel address, Fleming stated that bacterial resistance to penicillin would definitely occur, especially if too little was used. He didn't anticipate agriculture feeding advanced antibiotics to cattle to keep them from dropping dead in the crowded and unsanitary feed lots.

Prior to 1940-45 infections were the leading cause of death. Viruses, of course, weren't treatable by antibiotics, only bacterial diseases (TB, staph and strep infections, malaria, pneumonia, etc.). The degradation of antibiotics did not occur in-hospital as much as resistant infections arrived at hospitals, and spread among patients.

Most drug resistance is the result of bad dosing by individuals deciding how much antibiotic to take. Most people quit as soon as their symptoms disappear -- not when the disease agent is dead -- the condition required for antibiotic resistance to develop. Antibiotics are sold OTC in many countries. Some diseases, syphilis for example, didn't become resistant because penicillin is so effective on Treponema pallidum.

I reject the notion of the special nature of the modern conception of a science broken loose of a value or of a living world view, as a continuing research across generations. The same is true of anything, any collective activity. — InternetStranger

True: Science isn't "different".

If human activity wasn't multi-generational, we would be operating below the level of our chimpanzee relatives, pan troglodytes. Language, cultural features, writing, complex technology (like agriculture, making copper tools, art...) have to be maintained over generations or they wouldn't exist. They would have to be reinvented and perfected every 30 years or so. Science is not unique in its need for continuity.

If you look at human activity over the last 5,000 years or so, you can see that development in the arts and sciences (encompassing culture) has been halting and sporadic. Progress has been "punctuated" rather than continuous.

If you look at the history of science, the same thing applies--some periods of activity and periods of inactivity. Actually, it was continuity of thinking about disease (lasting for a couple thousand years) that impeded understanding of disease. The ancient Greek ideas about balanced humors in the body were still taken as fact in the 18th century. George Washington was bled so severely (to get rid of harmful humors) that it practically killed him.

There were scientists (like Scottish anatomist John Hunter, 1728-1793) whose research showed that a lot of medical knowledge was nonsense, but his insights were not immediately followed up. There were another 100 years before Robert Koch published his germ theory in 1875.

Science is like technology, in that insights and discoveries need to be acted upon or they lead nowhere. If the invention of the wheel hadn't been applied to other problems, civilization would have followed a much different course. Science and technology are not the same as the arts and humanities--where insights and discoveries are of a broader nature, and arise from the mulch of human experience. The literary exploration of human emotions, for example, in the 18th and 19th century novel weren't "discoveries" the way that the various elements were discovered. The novel came out of the same human mulch than the Classical Greek drama did. That's why we can understand plays like Antigone or Lysistrata. Art the world round has a common source, though refracted through very different cultures.

A 100 years in the past mobile phones were nonsense. A 100 years in the future mobile phones will be, again, nonsense. — TheMadFool

Actually, the core technology of the cell phone is over 100 years old -- it's radio. Radio coupled with switching equipment. The smart phone is a combination of computer technology (which began to be developed around 70 years ago, and then integrated circuitry, which is a bit more recent.

Dick Tracy (a cartoon detective character) had a wrist radio in the 1950s which HQ used to send him important messages



Using the electromagnetic spectrum is a very basic technology. It won't disappear in 100 years (unless we do).

There has been a propaganda push using the cattle’s (American public) panic knowledge, coloring hate as evil. — DPMartin

The 1% does have some reason to fear the large working class and lumpen proles. It is smart of them to discourage hatred to delay the day they find themselves on the way to the guillotine.

However, I object to referencing Americans (or any other large group) as cattle or sheep. I don't hate people who do that, but I do think it's a cheap way for the writer to sound more discerning than the rank and file. Are you not part of the herd you disparage?

Second, "hate" is a more or less normal emotion to experience, but it has an unfortunate feedback effect: giving free expression to hate tends to feed that emotion and it can get out of hand surprisingly quickly. Feeding righteous, indignant hate too much fuel produces more turmoil in one's head than rationality can manage. A bonfire is fun; a forest fire is not.

Third, people who hate in sync can turn into a lynch mob (literally or figuratively). This tendency isn't limited to rural southern American troglodytes.

Fourth, "hate" tends to be a blunt force instrument. One might hate conservative catholics, fundamentalist Moslems, nazis, and capitalists with unbridled fury, but the wise revolutionary knows that subversion will run amok if it is guided by too much hot hate and insufficient cool reason.

As Jesus said, "I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves". Smart strategy for subversives, I'd say.

Basically we need to be omniscient. — TheMadFool

Yes. In order to prove determinism, we would need an account from the beginning of time down to the present. We don't, we won't, and therefore we can't.

We suppose that when we look at a rock, we can trace its beginning starting with the big bang. Stars formed, burned, exploded, and produced heavier matter that coagulated into disks, then solar systems and planets. Geology takes it from there down to the rock we are sitting on. Biology works the same way -- life arose on the planet one step at a time and thus we are sitting on the rock. All accounted for. The fact that one voted from Clinton and not Trump is rooted in the way all the atoms between the big bang and the voting booth.

Absurd, though it sounds reasonable, because at every step this or that field of energy or particle of matter could have interacted much differently, and we could all be inorganic slime on the surface of a dead planet or dust in a vacuum.

So here we are and energy fields and particles are interacting as much now as ever, except that creatures with even a little sentience are one more factor in making outcomes uncertain. Creatures with more sentience (like the cat) have a larger influence. We are also creatures with more sentience, but we are far short of enough to know with certainty how or whether things could have been different.

My thought is that sentient creatures have some limited capacity to make choices. That's about as far as I can go.

Like as not.

"It bothers me that she's not the least bit curious."

Orgasms are proof that God wants us to be happy.

But, the Lord is beneficial and would not want us to indulge in such promiscuous activities. Heed the Lord! — Posty McPostface

Posty, dear: Do you honestly think that the beneficial Lord, creator of universes, infinite, all knowing, all seeing, every present, all powerful, etc. is actually concerned with the number of times you have sex for any purpose -- productive or otherwise?

How to you square the galaxy-spanning deity with the same god having a detailed interest in your penis-related activities?

Don't you suppose that Gawd, in His infinite mercy, knowing what life was going to be like most of the time, would provide a compensation like a built in amusement park? What kind of joy-killing monster do you think Gawd is?

No, those who don't approve of casual sex should avoid it. Those who don't approve but do it anyway perhaps should be ashamed. There is no reason why those who do approve of it should feel shame.

The average person has around 11-20 unique sexual partners in his or her lifetime — Maw

meaning they are depriving others. If we are all stingy with sex, nobody will get enough. I've had several hundred and I regret none of them. Though, admittedly, some were better, some were a lot better, than others.

No, I've never had sex outside of committed relationships. — Agustino

Where should we send the cards of condolence?

Is religion's role as the focus of community something that could be taken over by a non-religious entity? — frank

Of course -- religion isn't the only focus of community. An example:

The Degree of Honor Protective Association began in the 1870s as a women's support organization for striking railroad workers and their families. Over time it became a fraternal organization that was the focus of community, particularly in small midwestern towns, but also an insurance company. It was much like the the Eagles or Masons. They held dances, meals, parties, meetings, and so on. The Fraternal side came to an end in the 1950s-1960s. If they had been a religion (it wasn't), it would now be a dead religion. It remains as a small women-run (and profitable) life insurance company. If the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America disappeared, but the insurance companies Aid Association for Lutherans and Lutheran Brotherhood (now merged into Thrivant Financial) were all that remained, we could say "Lutheranism is dead."

There are good reasons why Christianity isn't a dead religion that do not hinge on acceptance of the Creed (like "was crucified, died, and was buried; on the third day he arose from the dead..."). I can not intellectually consent to the Nicene Creed, and not all Christians heartily endorse the Creed. But that doesn't mean that Christianity is, in any sense "dead".

If you label the UK, Germany, or France as the deciding sample of Christianity's health, then sure, it will seem like it is on life support. However, there are about 2 billion plus Christians in the world. There are around 70 million Christians in China and 240 million in the United States. The rumors of Christianity's death have been greatly exaggerated.

What are the signs of Christianity being quite alive?

Numbers alone indicate that the life of the Church is ongoing.
Most Christians adhere to a reasonably common understanding of the Creed, and to the import of the scriptures.
Christians form communities and much (or all) of their lives are lived within that community.
Most Christians identify as Christians (meaning "being Christian" is more significant than a mere demographic category).
Many Christians (maybe half) participate regularly (on a monthly basis) in worship, scripture reading, thinking about what they should do vs. what they want to do in the context of the scripture) and so on.
There are many "hot spots" of Christian religious activity, as well as some "cold spots" (for better and for worse).

The fact that mainline Christians recite the Creed during the liturgy isn't what holds the church together anywhere. What holds the church together is what holds any and every group together: regular contact, identification of similarities, psychological and material benefits derived from, and a need to belong to a community.

Even you--finding the various points of the creed absurd as you do (by the way, Jesus is thought to have died in fact, not just sort of a faked death) could (and may) belong to a Christian community. You probably couldn't get away with belonging to a strict fundamentalist community, but there is room on the edges of Christian communities for the apostate, heretic, and nonbeliever. This is true of other religions too, not because the creeds allow it, but because communities can encompass some number of heretics without harm.

My view is that much of what our brains do is not conscious. I'm not sure that there is even a place in the brain where consciousness exists. Rather, consciousness is a service of the unconscious mind.

By "unconscious" I'm not thinking in Freudian terms. Rather, most of what our brains do is not open to introspection and observation. We can only guess what it is doing (short of evidence, which we have some of).

My conscious mind is more the witness of what I am writing here than the author. I don't know where in my brain composition occurs, or how the ideas composed are sent to the motor area, so that my fingers type out what some other brain area has written. (fMRIs suggest that many broad areas of the brain operate to complete tasks.)

I don't mean to suggest that there is no person. We exist as actual, unique persons, alright, but much of our mental lives are "silent" as far as the conscious mind is concerned.

Why? — darthbarracuda

Because the kind of thinking you displayed, and which apokrisis countered with pragmatism, is just not good for you. Thinking that way will give you hives, hemorrhoids, and halitosis.

My point, rather, was that there is no value to truth qua truth. There is always something else that truth is in the service to that makes it valuable — darthbarracuda

Isn't this true of most abstracted qualities, like goodness, health, beauty, evil, and so on? "Goodness or "beauty" don't exist on their own -- they are features of something. There is no "evil qua evil" either. Some thing might be evil, some person might be evil. But evil doesn't have an independent existence.

Same for truth. Truth isn't floating around out there waiting to be discovered. It is only found in something.

People who seek abstractions (truth, beauty, power, evil, speed, etc.) are, I should think, not deluded, masochistic, or megalomaniac but are rather quite misinformed about the qualities or abstractions having material existence.

Jesus says "you shall know the truth and the truth will make you free". Who actually said that, and what they meant is lost now. Anyway, Pontius Pilate sliced across that vague formula with "What is truth?" At another point Jesus claimed to be the truth. John 14:5-6 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life." In this case, Jesus named himself as the body of the truth. Truth is Jesus, and Jesus is truth. Take it or leave it, but at least here truth was something concrete.

The point was that the search for truth is fundamentally conditioned by the psychology of the person. Whether or not truth is valuable cannot be determined apart from the person themselves, and to assert otherwise is to trample over others in power relations. Truth cannot be separated from its source in the power structures of society, nor from the psychological dispositions of its adherents. — darthbarracuda

I don't find this paragraph very compelling. What if the truth in a concrete embodiment of some kind (a fossil from the Cambrian layer of rock is the truth about the age of multi-celled organisms. The oxygenated atmosphere is the truth of the importance of cyanobacteria...) This truth doesn't originate in the power structure of society. Similarly, to deny that the fossil has anything to do with the age of the earth (which every right believing fundamentalist knows is about 6,000 years) doesn't run roughshod over power relations. Creationism is baloney, as far as I am concerned, but I don't think creationism has very much to do with power--as a disembodied noun.

I would assert that Creationism has something to do with the psychological comfort of the community of believers. Any settled belief that we share with others tends to be somewhat comforting -- even the settled belief that Homo sapiens has fucked himself over (and much of the animal kingdom as well) is comforting when held in concert with others. It's an embodied truth.

laurels on their shoulders — darthbarracuda

I thought that laurels were worn on one's head, not one's shoulders. But since The Truth has become annoying, we won't hold you to it.

I do not quite understand how "truth" got you so riled up. I mean there is "truth" (all lower case) in some things. 5x5=25 seems like a truth. "Oxygen is heavier than helium." also seems to be "true" (all lower case).

There may be a hidden Truth (upper case T) in Hilary Clinton's e-mails, but I doubt it. But many people felt there was TRUTH (all upper case) to be discovered there. Most believers think their holy books are TRUE, though some believers will settle for "the Truth". What is true about President Trump? Is the statement, "Donald Trump is our president" true, True, or TRUE?

I can see getting riled up about "seekers of wisdom and TRUTH" (per the song above), but there are more limited "truths" that are practically worth finding.

Is your problem with TRUTH that it may be (sometimes is) hideous? The TRUTH of a terminal cancer diagnosis may be hideous. For some, maybe more in times past, the "truth" that "there is no salvation outside of the Church" is a sorrowful truth. The "truth" that Homo sapiens and many other species are probably screwed (thanks to CO2 levels) is a very sad truth. And so on.

Is the difference between the happy truth that "you shall know the truth and the truth will make you free" and the less happy truth that "sometimes you just have to grab the bull by the tail and face the situation" what has stirred you up?

Just wondering what the truth is about your OP.

Pilate said, "What is truth?"

Here's a song about the cold clear eyes of seekers of truth (from "How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying") The song starts at about 1:48

That's not true. We haven't yet reached a tipping point as far as I'm aware. — Posty McPostface

The "tipping point" won't be like hitting a wall. It will pass pass like the very tip of peak oil -- it will be a non-event. Only in retrospect can we know when the tipping point happened.

So as not to immerse you in hopeless dread (didn't somebody start a thread about that), it is possible that climate change, global warming, our demise, may occur at a slower rate than we anticipated. In which case, if we were, are, and will be working diligently on CO2, methane, and other gas reductions (absolutely, not just relatively) we might make it. On the other hand, not to give you too much of a warm fuzzy, it's possible that climate change will proceed at a much faster rate than we anticipated. In which case, we are screwed.

False dilemma. — Posty McPostface

Nein, mein Herr. It's not a false dilemma. The real dilemma is how to bring those things about quickly -- like yesterday.

The sun works miracles on green bananas. — Posty McPostface

True, but so does ethylene gas or calcium carbide. Let's all use more unnatural methods of doing things.