I'm a lower case "new atheist" because I became an atheist in middle age and worked on it for quite a while. Unpleasant atheists? Indeed there are. I had not heard of, and did not read, any of the New Atheists back when I was busy uprooting the sacred tree in the garden of good and evil.

I don't argue with believers; first, as a former believer I know where they are coming from. It isn't all bad; it isn't all good either. Two, if they think they are missionaries to the heathen or apostate damned, they will derive more fulfillment and a sense of justification from haranguing and arguing with you than one may wish to give them.

IF, and only IF you enjoy arguing with believers, and derive a commensurate satisfaction from attempting to undermine their sense sanctified entitlement, then you can productively argue with them. Otherwise, tell them to take a flying fuck at Ezekiel's wheel (Ezekiel 1:16).

"Heathen" is a Germanic word (Dutch, German, Old English) but the concept derives from the Middle Eastern 'received' religions -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. People who don't believe (from the perspective of those who do believe) are "heathens".

Lately, people want to associate everything / anything with white supremacy. Braunschweiger, Bach, and Bier. "Oh, oh--having a beer & bratwurst while listening to Bach -- must be a white supremacist.

Totally agree.

But also, the dictum is used in the service of censorship, so I think some opposition to it might be necessary. — NOS4A2

I'm all in favor of resisting the censors and their wishes to silence people. You can find much better examples of censorship vs. freedom of speech than defending the rather weak, alleged "right" to yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theater. How about banned books? The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, Grapes of Wrath, or To Kill a Mockingbird... How about bans on teaching evolution (not in 1924, but in the present year)? The right to discuss organizing a union among fellow workers?

I think science assumes free will is real. — Gregory

Really? Why do you think that? Is 'free will' even a suitable topic for science?

matter is the prime mover — Gregory

What about matter would make it possible for the laws of nature to change arbitrarily? Matter seems to be pretty reliable.

↪Bitter Crank I'm concerned about the consequences. If value is measured in terms of money then everything is on sale. All you need to do is agree on a price. If I'm not mistaken even God is on sale now. — TheMadFool

Something as specific as "money" or "currency" isn't the problem. It's a whole economic system that is the problem. Capitalism (which has been developing for the last 4 or 5 centuries) is that system. Apart from capitalism, hunter-gatherers were organized into field hands and started cultivating grain and living together in fixed places around 10,000 - 12,000 years ago. Land became a thing to possess, produce from the land became a thing to tax for the benefit of the organizing state, and so on and so forth.

If we want to escape the whole money, economic exploitation, and burdens of living in a mass society, we will have to return to a hunting-gathering culture where possessions are minimalist, place is not fixed, and society consists of maybe 20 people. It was a good way of life -- it lasted at least 100,000 years, and in the process didn't have much effect on either the planet or it's flora and fauna--including the hunter-gatherers.

Unfortunately, the boat that takes us back to living the simplicity of hunter-gatherers left the dock thousands of years ago. We're stuck in a world where everything is for sale. We can't escape it, but we don't have to be utterly debased by it either. It's one thing to buy a $50 book so that you can learn from it, and something else to buy a $100 book which will convey status, sitting on your coffee table. It's one thing to buy a good pair of shoes so your feet don't hurt; it's something else to buy expensive shoes to walk all over other people. And so on.

Just live as simply and authentically as you are able.

Yes, we can resist our inclinations and go against them but it's an uphill battle. Moreover this is strong evidence that we didn't choose our preferences at all. — TheMadFool

If we can resist our inclinations, even only some times, isn't that a demonstration of us having at least some free will?

I don't know for sure what I chose or didn't choose, which brings up an issue relevant to the free will discussion: can we determine with certainty whether a given act (choice, decision, action, etc.) was the result of "free will" or "determination"? If we can't distinguish between the two, how can we even begin to discuss the question?

"What to do with a mentally ill commander in chief?"

Involuntary commitment; locked cell on a locked floor; thorazine, electro-shock therapy ("Here, let me set the voltage on that dial!"); long term custodial care. And perhaps there would be an unfortunate accident, so round-the-clock security (no Secret Service; just regular hospital psychopaths).

Something along those lines; make One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest look like enlightened care.

Are you finding that the law is crimping your style?

Law or analogy, yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater remains a bad idea. Unless, of course, the theater is packed with Republicans, then it might be classed as a public service.

Wouldn't it depend on whose children you are talking to and under what circumstances? Like, telling the neighbor's children that their mother is a whore might result in harmonious neighborly relationships. You can probably tell your own children whatever you want. If you are a teacher, there are all sorts of things you ought and ought not say, if you want to keep your job.

There are some laws against making indecent proposals to children. Should there be? I read in a book that people are stupid, so there probably have to be laws to deal with stupid people.

Why is it illegal to yell fire in a crowded theater (when there's no fire).`? — Coben

A little historical information will help. There have been very bad fires in theaters, night clubs, and the like, resulting in very large losses of life. When someone smells smoke, sees the flames, etc. and sounds the alarm, people will all bolt for the door. No singledoorway can accommodate more than 3 or 4 people at a time. If 500 people try to get through a doorway at once, they will compact, trample and kill some people, and become an interlocked mass. If there is smoke and fire and many people, it is practically guaranteed that a good many will die where they are standing.

Similar disasters have happened at soccer and rugby matches, when for some reason people stampeded for the exits which were not wide enough to allow a mass of people to move through. In those cases, the deaths were from being crushed under foot and suffocating.

Sometimes doors have been criminally locked or bolted shut, and then the loss of life was even worse.

So, walking into a theater where there is no fire and yelling "FIRE!" is likely to lead to a stampede which will probably result in at least a few deaths, for which the person yelling "FIRE!" would be responsible.

The recent El Paso shooter confirmed his intended targets were "Hispanics", and his actions followed hate speech from the POTUS directed against them. The connection cannot be proven, of course. — Pattern-chaser

I agree with you that speech can incite others to act. It isn't as simple as me saying "Kill Bill" and you rushing out and shooting Bill in the head. The El Paso murderer claimed that he intended to kill hispanics, and he did. I'll take him at his word that he did what he wished and intended to do. Whether or not the El Paso murderer committed his crimes because he listened to one, two, several, or more speeches by Trump can not be proven, as you say. DT has attacked several groups repeatedly, and a lot of people get shot, so it's a bit difficult to disentangle one shooting from another.

Trump hasn't said anything as directive as King Henry II, "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?" which inspired the murder of Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170. It's also not quite as inflammatory as "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2. And it wasn't the King who said it. It was the character "Dick". Henry wouldn't have been helped by killing all the lawyers. Most kings and hip POTUS must needs all the legal help they can get.

I was once told that butterflies fold their wings vertically while moths keep them horizontal. The winged critter on my hand had its wings folded vertically. So... — TheMadFool

It was probably a butterfly. My knowledge of entomology could be written on only one of your butterfly's white wings. Insects = 6 legs, spiders = 8. That's it.

Have you not previously noticed those small winged white things flying around at night? Moths?

Insects need more than nectar; they also need some minerals which they find on moist rocks, at the edge of very little puddles, and on your hand.

I felt a sadness for this beautiful butterfly and also a very close connection to it. Was I also like it, in the wrong place at the wrong time and all my life a futile nothingness, empty and pointless? — TheMadFool

We are all one, somebody said. And "Futility of futilities. All is futility." Ecclesiastes. (More familiar, older wording: vanity of vanities.)

Sic transit gloria mundi. (thus passes the glory of the world)

Thus, ALL objects in the universe are in motion relative to something else. All is motion. — TheMadFool

Observation tells us that the galaxies are moving away from each other because the universe is expanding. The galaxies are spinning, the planets are orbiting their stars, and are spinning on their axes. Then, on this planet, there is continental drift -- and you won't sit still either.

These are all good suggestions. I am in favor of all of them (with the possible exception of space infrastructure--meaning population habitat).

I believe/think/hope that a sustainable economy IS possible, is do-able, is absolutely necessary IF we are going to survive. We already know what sustainable food options are--it is vegetarian. The really difficult task involves an abrupt transition from fossil fuel/fossil chemical energy intensive economy to a much less energy intensive, economy.

The "World Made By Hand" series by James Howard Kunstler illustrates through fiction what life might be like in a catastrophic transition: do-able, but not at all nice. One can imagine that in a planned transition (over a short enough period of time to merit the term 'abrupt') it would be do-able, difficult, but not horrible. The unanswered question is how can any country (like the EU, the US, China, etc.) bring about a planned transition soon when the entire world economy is bent in continuing in the opposite direction of MORE, NOW.

It isn't the technology: It's the deeply entrenched elites (Koch Industries, et al) that are the primary obstacle.

It probably can. It's just insane to try to force it to by killing people. — Echarmion

I'm not in favor of killing 3 or 4 billion people either. So what's your do-able suggestion, aside from 3 or 4 billion people leaving the planet aboad space ships?

This thread is about how humanity can keep growing. — Echarmion

Actually, this thread is about CAN HUMANITY STOP GROWING?

The resources of the cosmos are more or less inexhaustible. All we need to do is get off this rock. — Echarmion

So true, but just a teensy bit easier said than done. So far, a dozen people have stepped on the moon, and the moon is only 250,000 miles away, and troubled by nothing worse than a vacuum.

Regarding Hubbert's graph...

The recent surge in US production of oil is the result of squeezing out more oil by using increased energy inputs (fracking). Even when the end of the graph is reached, let's say, 2050, there will still be substantial quantities of oil in the ground. BUT, as I understand it anyway, the energy required to extract the oil will exceed the value of the oil extracted. At that point, it simply doesn't make sense to drill a new well or go back to an old well.

I'm pessimistic and I'm sticking to it. IF we insist on pumping every last barrel of oil out of the ground, and shoveling out the last ton of coal, and burning it then we extend the energy supply on one end and decrease the supply of bearable climate on the other end. Meanwhile, population continues to grow, and I see no reason to suppose that we will manage to overcome changed environmental conditions by developing wheat, for instance, that can stand hot wet weather, or corn that can stand hot dry weather in the next thirty years. Fungal diseases, insects, soil depletion, floods, rising ocean levels, drought, etc. all weigh against an optimistic approach.

The argument that science & technology have improved our agriculture etc. yet now it is over is rather dubious too. — ssu

It is over for some people, and it will be over for more. I don't expect that our disaster will play out in one final cataclysm in Act V, scene 10 affecting everybody between South Africa and Finland, or between Tiera del Fuego and Nome (unless we get hit by a big meteorite).

Per your handle, I would suggest that a lot of the gain in the last 60 or 80 years in life expectancy has been from the development of antibiotics. Pre-penicillin and other antibiotics, infection and infectious diseases were the leading causes of death. Various vaccinations also contributed.

Prior to the antibiotic discoveries, minor--never mind major--injuries could and did lead to death. A minor infected wound could turn into septicemia and from there it was Shall We Gather at the River out at the cemetery. A sinus infection could (and sometimes did) turn into a really bad dying.

In much of the world, infections like malaria and tuberculosis become multi-drug resistant and prove fatal. Gonorrhea is a good example of a fairly common infection in the industrialized world that is becoming quite resistant to the available antibiotics. Some strains are now as untreatable as they were before penicillin. (Gonorrhea is normally not fatal, but anyone who has had it (I have) can tell you it is definitely not fun.)

Various nosocomial infections like Staphylococcus aureus are edging over the line to become untreatable, and it can be fatal.

I've got 200,000 years of human progress on the side of my argument. You've got 200 years of failed doom and gloom predictions going back to Malthus and spectacularly exemplified by Erlich." — fishfry

There wasn't much "progress" during our 200,000 years of hunting and gathering. Innovations were few and far between because hunting and gathering worked pretty well for the small populations of people at the time. They hunted, gathered, wandered, sheltered, and carried on without wrecking the environment.

Round about 10,000 years ago -- either as a state-sponsored conspiracy (some anthropologists have suggested) or as a remarkable and wonderful innovation (as most anthropologists think) we became agriculturists, settled down, and here we are.

While no one can argue with you that Malthus's and Ehrlich's predictions have failed to become fact, it is also the case that no one can refute the fact that Doom has been avoided by an extraordinary, almost incomprehensible extraction of energy resources from the earth, which is not repeatable. Once we have used up the stored carbon that is easily accessible (we are on track), there won't be more. And, of course, extracting the carbon from the ground means adding it to the atmosphere, which has, we find, rather inconvenient limitations on how much it can absorb without highly inconvenient consequences for our esteemed selves.

That the Trinity test of a plutonium bomb would ignite the atmosphere was not a serious concern among the Los Alamos scientists who constructed it. Someone quipped that maybe it would (check out Richard Rhodes History of the Atomic Bomb), but this idea was dismissed.

There was some ambivalence about the morality of the Manhattan Project among the small circle of people who had an overview of what the project was about, and there was a lot more ambivalence shading into revulsion after Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Medicine is advancing rapidly and allowing consumers to live longer than ever. — Pathogen

The major improvements in longevity have come about through better agriculture (more and better food -- this goes back to the late 19th / early 20th Century. Civil engineering in the form of sewers and pure water systems also can take credit for longevity. The third thing that has made a large difference is public health measures such as vaccination programs.

"The average age" of people has always been kept low by infant and child mortality. If people made it through the first few years of life, they had a good chance of making it to adulthood. Once they were adults, they had a reasonably good chance of making it to their 60s. Some lived Into their 70s, 80s, and even 90s--not a lot, but some. Even today, the number of people 100 and older is really very small.

Medicine has played an important role in the quality of life, certainly, but only in the 20th century, and not until antibiotics went into production during WWII. Advances in medicine, while very helpful to the sick, haven't lengthened life that much. Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, etc. haven't added many years onto the average lifespan. I'm not criticizing cancer specialists in saying this.

All of Erlich's predictions were wrong. He lost all his resource price bets. I'd say the same will happen in the future. Human ingenuity will defeat doom and gloom as it has for thousands of years.

. So says @fishfry

Tell that to the people who died in the pandemic, the famine, the tidal wave, the war, the sinking boat, the earthquake...

What has forestalled the dooms predicted by Malthus or Ehrlich are improvements in agriculture and sanitation -- nothing terribly complex. Both of those have limits: Once improvements that depend on large energy inputs have been fully implemented, more energy inputs won't result in continual increase. There is only so much food value that plants can extract from soil. Once the sewers are built, the drinking water supply secured, and routine public health measures such as hand washing are established, more sewers, more water pipes, and more hand washing won't improve life.

So, we can feed more people and prevent many diseases. The population grows and eventually reaches a number (in the billions) where the supply chain is over-booked, and if anything goes wrong, orderly society starts falling apart.

It requires monumental stupidity for a species to paint itself into such a corner that it depends on some future technology that might never materialize to stave off an existential threat. — RogueAI

Precisely.

Human procreation will increase, but so will its mortality rate. — Purple Pond

At this point, however, births are about double the rate of death. To paraphrase Ebenezer Scrooge, "If more people are going to die, then they had better get on with it."

Environmental constraints/carrying capacity are much more about the population growth of consumers and our industrial support than the raw population numbers. A few more million poor Indians won't matter as much as a few more million Humvee drivers. — fdrake

True enough, except that people usually don't exist as "raw population". The whole Humvee-style economy is a very perverse aberration.

You heard abut the 'isotope powered accident"? I understand the Russians are busy trying to build some sort of atomic powered rocket -- either a very fast high flying rocket, a low flying very fast cruise missile, or a drone torpedo armed with a large thermonuclear weapon. More nonsense. We will, of course, match them. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

We attempted this sort of technology back in the 1950s, early 1960s, at the Idaho Nuclear Laboratories. The project was abandoned as too risky.

As a rule I do not discuss female sexuality, because it is pretty much outside my ken. But... what I have observed (and read) is that women often establish sexual relationships with other women later in life than gay men do with other men. While a "lesbian" identity seems to be very strong for some women, many women in same-sex relationships don't identify strongly as lesbian or homosexual.

Sex seems to work a bit differently for women (so I have heard) than for men, for which there are various evolutionary reasons.

If by "queer" you mean "homosexual," this is not true at all in my experience. Perhaps others with more can shed light on this. — T Clark

In the last 50 years, all the homosexual men I have met were interested in having pretty conventional sex (adjusted for male anatomy) OR were interested in having sex with somebody else. I don't know... human anatomy doesn't really allow for much variation in sexual mechanics. There are shafts, orifices, hands, and brains.

Oh, and I have met many transgender and gender fluid people. The latter tend to make more sensible claims, in my opinion. But apparently it's not good form to ask them to explain transgenderism. It's considered "questioning their existence." Which is unphilosophical, but, hey, that's what fora like this one are for. — Artemis

The "gender-fluid" people I've met strike me as fairly confused and irrational about sex, bodies, roles, and so forth. Their confusions are aided and abetted by the times they live in.

I have long felt that bisexuals and trans people were inappropriately included in what was first the "Gay and Lesbian Liberation movement". "Bisexuals" just don't seem like they ever developed an identity as such. Trans-gendered people are not homosexuals, presumably. Then there are the "queers" who are some sort of limp dick nouvelle cuisine. So we now have the GLBTQ movement.

There is a specific political reasons for grafting bisexuals (a '3' on the Kinsey Scale), transgendered, and 'queers' onto the movement, such as it is: Numbers. The conventional politics of gay liberation has required respectable numbers, with "10%" being the desired [and delusional] portion of the population belonging to the gay movement. As Mike McCarthy famously said, "If 10% of men are gay, who is getting my share?"

Partisan politicians get away with the 10% figure because it sufficiently nebulous to disprove. So, 10% it is. (The percentage of people in the US who identify and perform as gays and lesbians is probably below 4%. Transgendered persons constitute less than 1/2 of 1% (based on surveys).

I take your opinion seriously. — T Clark

And I return this respect for the depth of your experience and opinions.

Simple - if a man were to tell me he feels like a woman, considers himself one, and would like to be treated like one, I would respond "ok." What more do we need to know — T Clark

I would agree with treating anyone how they like to be treated. I'm not sure why that entails believing them about their self-id. There are countless examples of self-id that we do not and should not take at face value, so there have to be other criteria to believe it. — Artemis

Back in the early '80s I lived in a building with a guy who believed he was Jesus returned to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven. He was a well-educated, urbane, gay, New Englander in his 30s and was a productive individual. "Jesus" was a great conversational partner. Really interesting on many levels.

Did I think he was Jesus of Nazareth? No. I thought he was either very deluded or enjoyed faking a delusion. I lost track of him back then when I moved, but lo these many years later, it doesn't seem like the Kingdom of Heaven has been inaugurated.

I've known transsexuals, some of them fairly well. Did I think that they were actually a man/woman in the wrong body? No. Did they seem to benefit from taking testosterone or estrogen, and undergoing plastic surgery? Yes. Does that convince me that they were not deluded? No.

Would I be polite to these delusional people? Of course.

But what is the root of this delusion? Not quite sure, but probably deep dissatisfactions. "The times they live in" have made it possible to reach farther out for what they imagine will be more satisfying ways of being in the world. in 1300 a.d. France or in 1845 Virginia, the solution to profound and deep dissatisfactions were structured along different lines than in 1930, 1960, or 1990...

Take Bitter Crank. Here is a guy who has nursed certain delusions about possible better worlds that are possible because of the times he lives in. Imagining that he is living out these delusions has at times been quite comforting. At other times it has generated a lot of internal and external static. He persists in these delusions, nonetheless, even those there is little evidence that his delusional aspirations are possible/probable/feasible etc. I blame the original Jesus for inspiring these delusions in the first place.

There is a mistaken assumption here. Neutron bombs still explode with quite a bit of force--and resulting destruction. The "desirable" feature of the neutron bomb is that it produces a lot of excess neutrons which penetrate vehicles and protective structures of the sort the military might use.

So, setting off a neutron bomb in Toronto would wreck too much property to be useful for solving the housing problem. There are lethal alternatives, but let's not go there.

you will have to get used to that (In so far that I am posting here, I guess.). — thewonder

There are effective means available to thwart your peculiar pronoun proclivities.

"Computer: commence thwarting @thewonder until further notice."

"Greetings, master. I will comply."

On the one hand, it seems fairly clear that the situation is hopeless: GO @Schopenhauer1!!! On the other hand, I hate that -- "There ought to be a way around the problem". But I don't see one. It's extremely unlikely that the share of 7.5 billion people who are young reproductives are going to decide that they should reproduce at less than the population replacement rate of 2.1 children per couple. Holding the population steady isn't enough -- we have to shrink it.

People in stable, prosperous industrialized nations tend to have low birth rates - often below the replacement level. That may be good for population alone, but prosperous industrialized nations use up a lot of resources, and immigrants to nations with shrinking populations tend to scale up their standards of living in the destination country. Every individual who becomes resident in the U.S., for instance, consumes much more than they would in Guatemala, Mexico, or Somalia.

Population is one aspect of the global crisis, global warming, pollution, and resource exhaustion being other aspects. At some point (not all that distant) the supply of oil and natural gas will start to diminish, and with it, the basis of the whole industrial agricultural complex of food production.

There are some things that could be done... We [the world] could back off on child survival and maternal health programs. We could cut back on vaccination programs. We could stop food assistance programs. We could not rescue immigrants in the deserts or on the oceans. We could stop life-lengthening treatment for people once they are 75 years old (frees up resources). We could lower the standards of care for illnesses and injuries--letting more people die, in essence.

We [the world] may need to decide that when famine strikes, aid will not be forthcoming, unless progress in the famine area has previously been made in reducing population--not just slowing growth.

First-world countries will have to abandon their high standards of living (which are extremely costly in terms of food, fiber, metals, energy, etc.) and revert to reduced (poorer) lifestyles. This in itself need not be a miserable experience, but it would require some tough adjustments.

We've been living in a fantasy world of continual growth and ever-rising standards of living. The fantasy is becoming downright indecent.

"it's" — god must be atheist

Yes, thank you. It is not surprising that people get confused by its and it's. Most words are made possessive by adding an 's to the word. Not it. it's = its. Why do we make contractions of two words with 4 letters anyway? Just say "it is". But I use it's all the time. It's seemingly easier, faster, cheaper, better.

Now in self-defense, I entered that comment in which you found the error on a tablet which eagerly spells words the way it wants to spell them. I'm blaming the gadgetry.

I am, by the way, a person degreed in English. So, fuck me.

This was considered to be grammatically correct, but it's totally absurd. — thewonder

It's not absurd. The reason underlying the grammatical correctness of using "he" is because in English, "man" is the default general term for "human, mankind, people". If you know that the person in question is female, then it would be incorrect to use "he" rather than "she".

If you want to be grammatical, forget about making up new pronouns:

These are your choices. Get used to it.

English is one of the German languages, Anglo-Saxon. Despite all of the words it has borrowed from other languages, it’s grammar has been stable for a long time. It has become less inflected, which makes that part of the language simpler.

I am amazed, sometimes, at the obscurity of some of the words some authors use.

The “corpus” of Anglo-Saxon words is maybe 10,000 - 15,000 words. After 1066 (William the Conqueror) a batch of French words were added. Lord of the Rings was written in about 80% Anglo-Saxon words, with maybe 20% common French-derived words.

Shakespeare invented quite a few words; a lot of words we used were invented by authors, which is how we got so many Latin and Greek based words. Shakespeare’s language is, of course, “dramatic” stage language. It doesn’t make for easy reading.

“Do you think English is one of the hardest languages to learn as an adult? I am a native speaker of English, but even still, I consider myself to have above average writing/reading literacy skills (it does not show here of course, when I am rushing and usually exhausted typing this) but at times, struggle with such niceties as punctuation and grammar.“... Grre

I do not know whether English is harder than Chinese or Swahili for instance. English shed a lot of stuff that makes some other European languages more complicated, like gender, part-of-speech changing word forms (can’t think of the word for that), and so on. English retains some, but not a lot.

Spelling is probably tough for some people in any language.

You sound like a good teacher. Keep up the good work.

The Guardian noted that a shortage of remotely affordable housing was an underlying frustration of many of the young protestors. Granted that HK does not have large empty parcels on which to build a lot of affordable housing, many feel the HK government could do better than it has in the housing area. True? No?

How about that “renegade province” NE of you? Any thoughts on their future?

they deserve our support. — Baden

I totally agree, but I have not the vaguest idea what I can do that would amount to even the most gossamer support. I fear that Hong Kong's goose is cooked. (New entrée: Take a flock of protesting geese; execute, torch their feathers, draw, quarter, stir-fry in blood. Pass it around the restaurant as a warning to everyone else.)