The Church, Religion, Faith, Miracles, all that, claim to have been given a free pass, but it's certainly not accepted everywhere. There are plenty of people, including not a few believers, whose scathing criticisms of their own religion are scorching.

Jews, Christians, and Moslems are all monotheists but they are not monolithic. They come in all sorts of variations, better and/or worse. You seem to think of religion as an irresistible steam roller. True, there are some folk who would like to run the steam roller over their enemies. They tend to be fundamentalists (in whatever faith tradition they are in). Think conservative Baptists or the Taliban.

The majority are not ideological steam rollers.

If you do not agree with my generous assessment, you will be burnt at the stake.

I bet there are christians now plotting to keep Christianity as the dominant belief. — Wheatley

Absolutely. And many others are also plotting to promote their various views. Good on some, a plague on others.

bronze age myths — Wheatley

Bronze and Iron Age myths. Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam arose during the Roman era, even if they were built on older mythologies. This is an old issue, but mythologies serve many functions, some o them quite useful. We 21st centurions also have mythologies. Some of our myths are invisible to us because we think they are true.

No matter what people believe, or do not believe, people tend to conform, and promote conformity to whatever is the dominant scheme of belief.

How do you know that "soul is subsumed under identity and individuality?" I don't know that. — Wheatley

There was a Gallop poll 6 years ago that proves it. Just joking.

Baker or some bitter crank are commenting on language use, and the observation is based on the experience of observing how people talk. There are more scientific approaches one can use--Word Frequency studies is one. Here is the Google Ngram for "soul" - the ngram is a count of words appearing in print.



Peak "soul was in the 1800s, probably as a result of the first and second Great Awakenings (Christian renewal and outreach). Then it dropped to a modern low in the latter part of the 20th century; now it is considerably more common. But the Ngram doesn't tell us what people mean/meant when they used the word "soul". For that, one has to read and talk.

Back to the twenty first century, we are seeing more people break away from religion, and from my point of view, there is less religious talk. And instead of talking about souls, many of us are talking about our lives (at school or at work, for example). — Wheatley

The break-away from religion (here I mean denomination, parish, formal worship) has been going on for the last 70 years. The 1960s were watershed years for Christian religious organizations in the US (and elsewhere, earlier). "Spiritual" -- whatever the hell that means -- seems to be the term du jour for millions of people.

My guess is that, 200 years ago, 400, 800 ... people were mostly talking about various aspects of their lives. Take a look at Samuel Pepys diary (17th century). As a man on the make, man about town, busy busy busy, he included religious activity, but most of the time it was secular talk. The peasants were not discussing theology much -- just a guess. The crops, the children, the neighbors, their landlord, the thatching which needed to be replaced, aches, pains, etc.

Interesting fact, it isn't the soul that is resurrected (should there be such a thing) but the physical body. As it says in the Creed: "I believe in the resurrection of the body".

I think your observation is correct, more or less. The term "spirit" and "spiritual" are sufficiently vague that they could just as well be replaced by identity, individuality, or personhood. Still, a residual belief in an afterlife is pretty common, and "something" is thought by many to continue on indefinitely. At least that's how I read the 21st century.

But I'm not sure if we should really believe it. When we believe so strongly in the better circumstance of the 'less fortunate' we turn it into expectation and eventual reality. — kudos

I'm not sure whether you said what you meant to say. Clarify, please.

Though some may disagree, as far as I'm concerned there is clear Judeo-Christian ideological baggage in this idea of being endowed by a Creator with unalienable rights and liberties. — kudos

Thomas Jefferson was not a theist; at best he was a deist. And of course there is Judeo-Christian baggage attached to the idea of "creator". Western civilization (and American culture) are loaded with Judeo-Christian baggage--much of it well-worth preserving. (You capitalized 'Creator'; are you carrying Judeo-Christian baggage?)

Jefferson could have referenced 'nature' as the source of our equality; or some philosopher, or something else--executive fiat, maybe. Rhetorically, 'creator' is still the best choice, given past and current contexts.

Just because Jefferson used a term associated with religion is no reason to quibble. The man who talked about god-endowed equality also was a slave owner who, in the end, did not free his slaves. But contradictions don't invalidate the ideas of the man. Nobody is free of hypocrisy or contradictions.

The FACTS OF LIFE:

Individuals may be considered "equal" as a political stance, but in practical terms, they are not. Each person lands somewhere on continua of mental, emotional, physical, and social features (like wealth, or location). Different features lead to varying results. Some people will have much better experiences in life than others. Different political and social systems allow for more, or less, flexibility in individuals' pursuit of goals.

Progressive, liberal thinking disapproves of larger differences in outcomes, especially when associated with ethnicity, gender, or race. Thinking that is less progressive or liberal tends to be more tolerant of differing outcomes.

One may want an egalitarian society where there is equality of opportunity and outcomes for everyone, but how the hell do we socially engineer this desired good? I used to think that such an achievement was possible in American society, but I've abandoned that idea.

For one thing, the roots of inequality (across the board) are quite deep and have enduring consequences. To quote Jesus out of context, "I tell you, that to every one who has will more be given; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. — Luke 19:26".

Industrial, capitalist societies are highly productive machines, and one of their products is inequality -- by design. The economic system is designed to concentrate wealth, and when wealth is piled up in one place, poverty (absolute or relative) will be piled up in other places.

Hence, enduring inequality.

Work sucks! That's why they have to pay people to do it.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. Henry David Thoreau

Why is that?

Most men are wage slaves. Karl Marx

We are entirely dependent on working for a wage to gain the ability to live. The terms of labor are often highly unsatisfactory.

So... not only are we born without consent, but we are born into a world where we will be forced to work if we want to live.

Workers of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains and a world to gain.

I heard this in a radio discussion this morning. A neurologist or psychologist said that the primary purpose of the brain is running the body--everything from heart rate and temperature regulation to vomiting bad food to not falling off a bike. It does manage our philosophical discussions, but that's a bonus. The main thing is keeping us alive. We don't measure that extremely important function in IQ tests (we measure it by longevity).

resources in the brain that turn mental tasks to automatisms — Vince

Like habits and "muscle learning'. I haven't thought about how to keep my bike upright for a long time; I just do. Muscles, of course, don't learn but the brain controlling the muscles does. When I type I don't have to look at the screen to know I hit the wrong key. I feel it in my fingers. You probably experience something similar when you perform music -- you can feel the wrong note, even if you can hear it too.

Your experience with music, birdsong, and pitch is typical of so much of the brain -- HOW the brain does this stuff is hidden from view. We don't know exactly how the brain does most of the stuff it does. If one knows a piece of music very well (from listening or performing), one can often recognize it within the first 2 or 3 measures or even 1 or 2 seconds of sound. HOW the brain tracks down a song based on a sliver sized sample is just not subject to observation.

There are blind people who can--to a limited extent--echo-navigate. Some have gotten quite good at this. Animal studies have shown that--laying dignity aside--people can put their face to the dirt and sniff out a trail on the ground -- not nearly as well as a dog, but we can follow an odor trail (not a rabbit, but maybe drops of chocolate or vanilla).

Such abilities as identifying where a wine originated, what varieties of this season's tea harvest adds up to the standard Lipton's Tea flavor, or something as homely as knowing when the bread dough has been kneaded long enough just don't show up on IQ tests, or the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) for that matter.

I personally believe that the modern nervous system is so attuned to Internet technologies/services, that any prolonged disruption would result in withdrawal and (ultimately) utter, utter chaos. IMO at least. — Bret Bernhoft

More like the Internet is attuned to the old nervous system, as was the telephone, telegraph, photograph, music, or--go back a few thousand years--writing, even language.

Disruptions to community can be difficult. The internet is now part of our community's communication system, as is television, telephones, radios, film, et al. I'd hate to lose them.

As one ages, usually past the 20s, there is cognitive decline — Vince

Granted: there certainly are people who peak early (or not) and whose decline -- at middle age -- is clearly visible. And I'm not thinking of people with TBI or early-onset Alzheimers. Just ordinary people whose intellectual skills don't hold up over time. But there are also those people whose varied cognitive skills don't decline.

As one grows up to become an adult so does their brain and their intelligence, but not their IQ. — Vince

Aren't these statements ignoring 'plasticity' - the ability of the brain to become more complex (more connections among neurons) over time? And if the brain is fully developed by the mid 20s, that surely doesn't necessitate immediate decline thereafter. No plateau?

While some do, others do not think of intelligence as a "fixed quantity". One might think of it as more a dynamic quantity, determined by current environment, interest, motivation, previously acquired skills, practice, and so on. Just guessing, someone going through a bad divorce, terrible job, major illness or injury, and so forth would probably test out with a lower IQ than they would before or after these distressing circumstances. Conversely, someone whose life is full, happy, stimulating, and so on would measure out better than they otherwise would.

There are individual scores, and then there are millions of scores. Maybe we focus too much on 1 score out of a million (which if it is ours, is VERY important).

Using your formulation, I would become less intelligent as I got older, even if my mental acuity stayed the same. — T Clark

Some people do manage to become stupider as they age, but many people seem to get brighter. My guess is that the people who get brighter with age were smart to begin with, but were submerged in work (childrearing, factory, office, barns and fields). After they get rid of the children (who grow up and leave home, one hopes), maybe get rid of the boring / nagging / needy spouse (through natural causes, of course), and retire, they can finally blossom intellectually.

Given a few hours, a psychologist can measure several axes of intelligence and come up with a pretty good summary of intellectual capacity. Similarly, several axes of personality can be measured. That's not what's done, though, in most cases--people get paper-and-pencil tests which are a very rough measure.

A psych prof once said "Want to" is more important than "IQ". That seems to be generally true. Highly motivated people accomplish more than lazy slobs, no matter what their intelligence is.

a concrete measure of intelligence cannot be achieved given the abstract nature of the concept of "intelligence" — Vince

Exactly. But I can't clarify what intelligence is, either.

Some people are clearly not intelligent, whatever that is, and other people are. It seems to be somewhat flexible. People who claim to never having read a book after they graduated from college (or high school) have almost certainly become significantly more stupid. On the other hand, high school / college drop outs who have been reading non-fiction voraciously are likely becoming more intelligent. I've known some formidable uneducated minds.

Some people are socially intelligent (they are born knowing how to work a crowd). I'm a social moron. Other people are gifted in spacial and mechanical matters. They may be inarticulate, but they understand a lot of stuff that is beyond many a college professor. There are teenagers who know how to make big money legally in business, or can write advanced programming. Not me.

If I'm good at anything, it's the big picture--and a few fiddly skills that aren't worth much.

Go read books Bitter Crank old chap! — TheMadFool

In the last 10 years I've read more and better books than I had previously read in 20 years. Time, at last. And Amazon + the iPad.

I like books that clearly explain how things came to be. So, How The Mountains Grew: A New Geological History of North America by John Dvorak is an excellent history of the planet from dust ball to what you walk around on now. A different area of explanation came from Barons of the Sea: and their race to build the world's fastest clipper ships by Steven Ujifusa. This was about the British/American/China trade in tea -- and illegal opium. Great fortunes were made in this trade, among them Warren Delano's--grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Speed in shipping mattered then, as now. One wanted to be the first into port with the narcotic (China) or tea (New York and London).

This is all much more meaningful now than when I was in college. Geology 101 was a great course, but I hadn't seen much geology myself--beyond a low hills and river valleys. The most significant geological feature where I grew up was loess, dirt blown off the receding glaciers. I hadn't seen a Great Lake, an ocean, a mountains, or a canyon yet. Continental drift was a fairly new concept in 1965.

The next book is Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Fischer. The 'four seeds' were Puritans (East Anglia), Quakers (North midlands), Cavaliers (southern England) and the Scotch-Irish (borderlands and Ulster). From a Puritan POV, the Cavaliers and Scotch Irish were a liability, creating the slave-holding South and the troublesome Appalachians. The feeling about liabilities was and remains mostly mutual.

The New England Puritans (liberal Yankees) and the Cavalier/Scotch Irish (southerners and Reagan Republicans) are still with us. I come from the upper-midwestern Yankee Land.

The level of stupidity I inhabited when I started college was very deep. I think, believe, hope, and claim I've come a long way since then.

The fastest growing websites are all porn-related. — TheMadFool

After driving internet innovation for 20 to 30 years, being ubiquitous from the get go, and making money all these years, how are they still the fastest growing thing on line? I would think they might have plateaued somewhere along the line. Are they growing faster than YouTube? FaceBook? Amazon? Google?

I'm too cheap to buy memberships to [gay] hard core sites, but paywall sites are the wellspring. I stick to the stuff that has been circulating for years on sites like BlogSpot or Tumblr; some of the photos were first published in the early 70s, on paper!

My understanding is that it isn't expensive to produce porn. Actors and crew get paid, but not a lot, and they probably don't get much in residuals. So, are the profits in sales of content? Subscriptions to sites? Pay-per-view? Exports? Advertising on the sites for motor oil and lawn-care equipment? Viagra (fake or real)? Nitrate inhalants?

I would suffer traumatic brain injury if the internet crashed. Really. One of the reasons my mind appears to still be functioning is that Google search, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube, and a few thousand web pages provide me with mental content. It's always there 24/7. When I'm talking to relatives and others on the phone I can fact check; look up diseases and drug side effects; find recipes they (or I) forgot parts of; check etymology; get words and phrases translated; read scattered articles from NYT, Guardian, Boston Globe, LA Times, WSJ, and the Washington Post--and porn, of course: Architecture porn, dog porn, science porn, rock and roll porn, slum porn, porn porn... And I can shop for stuff--80% of which I could probably live without.

I would be a vastly better student today than I was in the 1960s. Well, maybe. I wasted a lot of time back then and there is nothing better than the Internet for massive time wastage. But still, there is such a wealth of good information (music, history, science, philosophy fora, etc.).

but what if the entire internet shut down — Benj96

in third-rate sci-fi novels, when something happens to disrupt society, people promptly turn to looting, riot, vigilante reprisals for current, recent, or long-past slights; murder, and cannibalism.

Probably something like that. If you are plump and tender, you'd just better hope the Internet keeps functioning.

I have always been astonished by old men who tell me they still feel 25. — Tom Storm

They probably don't feel physically like age 25. When I say I feel young, I mean mentally, but what do I mean by that?

Active curiosity
good memory
ability to concentrate
better intellectual skills - less overall stupidity
much more perspective

Sex drive at 75? Mercifully lessened. It's something of a relief to have that persistent urge quiet (most of the time anyway).

if you were born 2000 onwards then you're more than likely going to reach 100. — I like sushi

Global warming might start trimming the population at all ages. Not just the heat, but social disruption.

what percent — Bitter Crank

No idea. — I like sushi

It's a very small number--well below 1%. "according to the U.S. Census Special Report on Centenarians, in 2010, there were 53,364 centenarians in the United States. 80% of centenarians are female.

"A gentleman is simply a patient wolf." — Tom Storm

Excellence in good quote finding.

Do Gentlemen quote themselves?

Like @T Clark, I am not a gentleman. I try not to be simply awful and often succeed, but with less success than the putative Gentlemen achieves. Should a man aim to be a gentleman? They were "the lowest rank of the landed gentry", a step above the peasants. Aim higher, perhaps, for class supremacy?

Most of us came from peasant stock--go back a little ways--and most of us also came from the later working class, and/or are still. Not that peasants and workers are by nature slobs. I think of deep slovenliness as a feature of the better-off and way too-well-off classes. They can afford retainers to literally and figuratively clean things up for them.

This ad from the plastics industry was in today's Washington Post

The link is full of good advice. Thanks.

Bottled water was uncommon 40 years ago. Bottling companies created a new product market. Where once there were a few Perrier bottles on the shelf, there are now long shelves of bottle water. Fairly often the water in the bottles is simply tap water.

Stop drinking bottled water!

One of the reasons for the high level of obesity in the US is the amount of soft drinks people consume, most of it in 1-use bottles. There is nothing one needs in a Coke or Pepsi. Drink it as an occasional treat once in a while -- not as a staple in your diet.

My use of plastic film bothers me, but I haven't made much progress in switching to something more eco friendly. Wax paper works for some things, but tears very easily.

Hormone disruption is a problem of not-entirely-understood dimensions. Some plastics disrupt hormones, as do other types of chemicals such as some herbicides, pesticides, and other chemical types. Then there are the hormones deposited in rivers from excretions of birth control and therapeutic hormone Rx.

I doubt if one can avoid ingesting micro plastics which seem to be ubiquitous. We can, though, help reduce the amount of micro/nano plastics being produced

1) Buy cotton clothing. Synthetic fabrics (like polyester) shed particles from their point of production onward. Tiny bits of cotton fiber (as well as linen, silk and wool fibers) rot, so they do not have long lifespans.

2) Use metal, ceramic, or glass containers for cooking and food storage (especially microwave heating).

3) Wear leather shoes. Synthetic soles and uppers shed a variety of microfiber and nanoparticles.

4) Use cloth or paper shopping bags.

duplicate deleted

I might have misunderstood. Perhaps the spatulas were used to scoop baby poop off the diaper and into a lab vessel.

Well, one still should use a quality spatula for such important research.

From the linked article...

When it comes to babies, a considerable amount of plastic appears to be both going in one end and out the other, according to new research that involved spatulas, diapers, and poop. In particular, the average concentration of one pervasive type of microplastic in baby stool was a whopping ten times higher than that in adult stool in a small pilot study published this week. — Justine Calma

See, that's the problem: cheap goods. Spatula City™ carries nothing but the finest rubber goods, totally free of poisonous synthetic hydrocarbons. Low-IQ parents buy spatulas from just any place--a Dollar Store, for god's sake--and let their vulnerable infants gum them to discourage annoying crying. A quality spatula from Spatula City™ is safe for Baby to gum, chew on, eat with, or use as a sex toy when they are a bit older.

Spatula City™ carries a complete line of glass bottles, rubber nipples, wooden rattles and teething rings. And of course, a spatula for every purpose.

You're joking. a little. yes, there are bacteria which can be induced to eat plastic, but
a. are they salt-water bacteria?
b. can they start on solid plastic items (bottles, plastic parts, etc)?
c. how long does it take the bacteria to eat 1 kilogram of plastic?
d. any plastic? There are dozen of varieties.
e. what are the breakdown products?

Selfish, ignorant, violent... — Cidat

These sorts of traits are not sufficiently bad to merit the "evil" label.

How about... pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth?

If humans were inherently evil, then living under optimal conditions wouldn't help. We might have perfect parents, a perfect community, and still end up in prison doing life without possibility of parole.

If humans are not inherently evil, then living under optimal conditions would yield excellent results all or most of the time.

What humans seem to be (more than inherently evil or inherently good) is "prone to error" -- that is, occasionally engaged in bad behavior (lust, gluttony, sloth, etc). Not invariably, but often enough. Does occasional bad behavior make us evil?

but it's not looking good for the culprits either. — James Riley

Very good point.

Hunter / gatherer methods worked for what... 200,000 years?

Agricultural-based societies did OK for what... 10,000 years?

industrial-based societies are only what... 300 years old, and we are facing the very real possibility of global catastrophe--for us and for many other creatures.

There are some obvious reasons— mostly money. The fossil fuel industry is massive, and they lobby, bribe, and propagandize very well. — Xtrix

Absolutely.

But the task of converting a world economy to a low-greenhouse gas regime is massive to the nth degree, even if the fossil fuel industry went out of business. We don't want to crash the world economy in the process. On the other hand, the world economy is a major part of the problem, especially the big part that is highly developed.

None-the-less, were we capable of doing it, we should bite the bullet and get on with the transition--whatever the difficulties.

Are we capable of it converting the world economy? All the public statements notwithstanding, the efforts have been phlegmatic, even as the dangers of global warming has become more apparent.

Take transportation as a piece of the problem. There are roughly 1 billion fossil-fueled cars on the world's roads. The stupid solution is to build another billion cars running on electricity, and continue to maintain and build roads. People like private autos, sure. But there is also the tremendously large industry involved in autos, quite apart from fossil fuels.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

In some (many?) cases ideology came first. An example:

There is this elderly woman I have known for a long time who refuses to get vaccinated for Covid-19. She is not an anti-vaxxer. Actually, she's proactive about her health, and offers usually sound advice to others. So, why does this woman who gets an annual flu shot and got the new Shingrex vaccine for shingles not getting the Covid-19 shot?

She's very conservative; she's a Democrat-hating right-winger. She bought the original Trump spin on Covid 19, and has not been able to take it seriously because of her ideological investment. Along with her politics are very conservative Baptist beliefs about authority, the proper role of women (obedient wife, mother) and so on.

She doesn't express articulate arguments when challenged -- she gets angry. She feels like people who disagree with her are attacking her.

Of course, she had help from the types of charlatans listed. She has recently started reading the Epoch Times, which Wikipedia describes as "The Epoch Times is a far-right international multi-language newspaper and media company affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement"

Whoever that theorist is — I like sushi

It's not a theory I accept or find of much use.

The process of getting from wild plants that bore edible seeds (like the various grasses)--corn, wheat, rye, oats, rice, sorghum, millet, etc.; all the new-world foods--tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and tobacco (all nightshade family plants); kidney and lima beans; cacao; peanuts, and all the plants developed in Europe, Asia, and Africa, ALL required a lot of long, careful, insightful attention. Some foods grew on trees ready to eat (nuts), but most had to be bred up from what must have been rather unpromising plants. Hunter-gatherers, requiring skilled observation to survive, likely knew about these plants before they started to domesticate them.

Settling down required some level of agriculture, and some level of agriculture required stability. No body switched from a breakfast of venison with wild nuts and berries to oatmeal, yoghurt, and toast overnight. More like centuries or millennia were required to learn how to grow plentiful grain, mill it, and make bread and beer. How they accomplished all this is just not known. And what all they did while they were developing domesticated crops isn't known either.

The first iteration of Jericho was built around 11,000 years ago. Is that the beginning of settled life? Almost certainly not. Before we built with stone, we built with wood, material which rots away under ordinary circumstances. Stone tools were poor for making planks out of a big tree, but smaller trees and branches could be harvested for simpler construction.

My guess is that they hunted, gathered, built shelter, and cultivated--gradually shifting away from the former and toward the latter. All of this required community -- cooperation -- along with preserving memories, methods, and material culture. Eventually they arrived at a stage where they could grow the food they needed, and began other agricultural / material cultural tasks, depending on their location.

We do not know why hunter-gatherer people, who had been doing reasonably well hunting game and gathering roots, nuts, and berries, decided to pursue the much more difficult approach of agriculture. Presumably this conversion from spear to plow was gradual.

One theorist (maybe in Against the Grain--not sure) proposed that agriculture was not intended to make life better for the farmer; it was intended to make life better for those who controlled the farmer. Capturing labor for economic exploitation would have had to wait until agriculture was developed well enough to produce a surplus for the new exploiters. Getting from the first bowl of oatmeal (so to speak) to the first grain collection bins may have taken several millennia.

The prosecution of the case against agriculture is a search for The Fall. Ah, it was settling down, living in one place, and working the land that corrupted us. Before agriculture, we were free and virtuous.

Some people suspect other serpents in the garden.

I've also considered fire as a potential culprit. — James Riley

Whether it was grain, fire, forbidden fruit, or something else -- many people think we were once innocent. For some, the entire population of the Western Hemisphere were innocent until the Europeans came along and fucked everyone and everything over.

A question: Do human beings have much choice about developing elaborate responses to the conditions in which they live? If we were to start all over again--15,000 or 20,000 years ago--we'd probably do the same thing over again. Does that make us bad actors?

China announces no more foreign coal plant building — Xtrix

That doesn't mean the plants will stop burning coal. And of course China is not suspending its own coal plant building program. it is, as you noted, somewhat good news. It might be vanishingly slight good news. Time will tell.

Very good point about school-of-music recitals.

Other sources are small community orchestras and church-sponsored performances of secular music. Costs have risen for everyone over the last 20 or 30 years and there are fewer outright free concerts than there used to be. Still, the cost of a community orchestra concert can be quite affordable.