did Jesus have to play the same drama of enduring torture and sacrificing his life on each of these planets? If this is the way God works, it would have to be the same everywhere, right? — Athena

No. After Eden God said, "No more of that free will shit for sentient beings; from here on out, it's strict divine determinism all the way." And so it was. On each new planet the two sentient beings, XX and XY, always did what they were told, never disobeyed, so Jesus and his Blessed ever-virgin mother were able to devote their eternal attention to taking care of the perpetually wayward, devious, deviant, and deplorable basket of free willed homo sapiens, who, despite it all, still amused God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost more than the radiant, obedient children elsewhere in the universe. The Blessed Virgin Mary was not amused. She often said to the Triumvirate, "These sons of bitches are not getting punished nearly as much as they deserve." For which comments God smirked, Jesus signed, and the Holy Ghost turned bright red with wrath.

I have been where you are. If praying helps, then pray. Fuck the philosophers who think it is inconsistent.

@wayfarer It is Pygmalion's situation: Pygmalion was a sculptor and king of Cyprus who carved an ivory statue of a maiden and fell in love with it.

It is no wonder that we fall in love with computers: they appear to perform autonomously; they are fast and we like speed; they appear to interact with us; they perform useful tasks; and more! So we assign traits to them such as "intelligent" because they can be made to appear "intelligent" and "engaging". Of course they are no such thing. They are containers and processors of data and programming.

What is obscene about our use of the terms we apply to computers is that we then take those terms and apply them to ourselves. We become data processors programmed to perform particular tasks, responding to inputs with output. It is Pygmalion describing himself as an exquisitely carved ivory statue.

Clearly western civilization extends beyond the anglosphere to include the languages and history of all Europe and the Americas, Australia and New Zealand, and some additional territories. The anglosphere is not the paragon of western civilization; it's a piece of western civilization, going back in time before classical Greece.

Why do you think western civ. would be limited to the Anglosphere? What about the French? Germans? The Italians? The Russians? The Greeks? The Spanish? Etc.

When do you think western civ began? 4,000 BC? 2,000 BC? 500 AD? 1500 AD? 1956?

It's an interesting question; clearly the several world civilizations have deep roots. Why do we have 360º in a circle; 60 minutes in an hour; 60 seconds in a minute? Where did that come from? What about the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE), mother of most European languages and more besides? PIE turned into both Sanskrit and Greek, Latin and Norwegian, Russian and Keltic, and more besides.

Regarding clothes making the man, here's a piece from the late Roman empire showing a German wearing trousers, the romans wearing something more like a kilt. The Barbarians and the Romans were pretty much equally good warriors--the Germans were good at fighting both on horseback and on foot. For horseback righting they had the advantage of stirrups and saddles. Plus trousers. The depiction below is a fragment that shows the German in defeat, but they were as often as not the victors.



Whether the trousers were made out of cloth or leather, the artwork didn't say. Like, there was no Latin script on the work indicating the fabric content in the mind of the artist, like 100% raw linen, or deer skin, or wool, or whatever. Damned inconsiderate, if you ask me.

I do think having a penis would make peeing easier. — Athena

Yet another way in which God favored males.

That was fun reading but a little of topic. — Athena

Maybe I was over-sharing a bit there (blushes slightly). Vestis facit hominem they said in old Latium, Clothes make the man. Whether it's fine Italian suits and shoes, handbags by Gucci, gowns by Dior, or denim, sweatshirts, and boots, our chosen costumes both reflect and amplify who we think we are.

PS when men watch football their testosterone level rises and they become more aggressive. — Athena

So what happens to women's hormone levels when they watch football? (There are class and occupational differences in men who prefer baseball to football. If I remember correctly, it's a somewhat inverse relationship: men with the most physically demanding jobs tend to prefer baseball while men with the more cerebral jobs tend to prefer football.

The big concern about colored people taking over is overlooking what female domination could do to us — Athena

As a White Anglo Saxon Protestant male I have to hope that both of those possibilities are nothing more than wild rumors. Better add a humor emoji. :naughty: :rofl:

One of the 'mysteries of the orgasm' is how Tumblr made money. I viewed only a tiny fraction of their content; they have... more than 5 million accounts. Less than 500,000 are porn. But very few of the sites I viewed carried advertising of any kind, and most account holders had not purchased a theme from Tumblr. So, how are they making money?

It's obvious when one watches YouTube how they generate money: they run first class video ads for auto companies, for instance. I never saw anything remotely like that on non-adult Tumblr sites (like NPR, for example).

(The porn industry makes more money than Major League Baseball, The NFL and The NBA combined. — Jake

The arts establishments in quite a few cities can claim the same thing. Like, "All of the arts organizations in X city bring in more income than the major league sport franchises located here." Best-seats-in-the-house tickets for high-brow concerts in Minneapolis or St. Paul, generally run around $60 to $80 and those seats are usually all occupied. Small theater productions might be $40. Given a lot of venues running year round, it's not hard to imagine that they beat out major league teams which play seasonally, and then in any given city not very often.

The porn industry (which is overwhelmingly straight) in the US doesn't just supply Americans with their visual needs: It supplies the world. And most of their production is located in southern California. It's Gods own work, because orgasms are proof the God loves us and wants us to be happy. So...

So tells us about the meaning that is going on here in this little Christian pagan party.

It is emphatically not possible for a state to withdraw from the Union of states. That was settled during the Civil War - 1860-1865.

There are some who would like to split California into two or three states because some believe that northern California and southern California have quite separate interests. They may have quite different interests, but those differences are probably to California's advantage, in the same way that rural agricultural counties in a given state have little in common with large industrial cities. But states with combination rural agriculture/urban industrial economies tend to be financially more stable than all agricultural states, or all industrial states. The two different kinds of economy compliment each other.

There is no obvious road to splitting states either. A territory could be broken into several states, but there is no provision for states to divide or merge. If California really wanted to split, it would probably require a constitutional amendment which would need to be passed by congress and 3/4 of the states.

Were California to secede, everything else being the same, it would be the 6th largest economy. I think Hell would freeze over before California was allowed to leave. Not going to happen.

According to a book I have been reading, Marriage and Family in the Middle Ages, the Roman system of Pater Families began to be deconstructed by the Roman Emperors themselves. Step by step, marriage was redefined toward egalitarian arrangements where both partners had rights and protections, and where the man most definitely did not own the woman. But prior to these changes, the woman was officially under the control of either father or husband. Unofficially, of course, things were somewhat different. For one thing, many men ardently and faithfully loved their wives and children. Most Roman marriages were solid. (The rich and the royals... ugh, not so much.)

By the time Christianity was in a position to define marriage through the state, pagan change in the marriage had already accomplished a lot towards the kind of marriage we would inherit.

Big dicks have surprisingly not always been in fashion. The up-market classical Greeks who ordered and paid for great sculpture thought big penises belonged on donkeys and horses; a small penis was more appropriate for a marble statue. (Of course no man has control over whether he has a big, medium, small, or tragically tiny dick.) And, for a bit of insider information for you, not all men who have very large penises are happy with them. They are aware that other guys (Freud missed the boat on this one -- it is males who have penis envy, not females) stare at their crotch if their large organ is visible, and keeping it out of sight means tucking it uncomfortably out of sight. Further, in gay sex, at least, the owner of a big organ sometimes finds that their partner is more interested in their dick than their whole person. Now from the perspective of the partner, a very big dick can be just too big to deal with.

There is a inchoate relationship between sex and violence. They just happen to arise together from the kind of all-out arousal caused by battle, and is more frequent with the existence of honor systems and property values. Raping a woman renders her worthless to others who subscribe to intense honor systems. If the woman is also property, so much the better to destroy the property's value.

I'm pretty sure you are aware that the German barbarians were responsible for giving men trousers in place of togas. That worked out well. Then the Jews gave us 501 button fly blue denim Levis and Dupont gave us zippers. Life has been better ever since. High heels were also a male innovation; the high heel helped the foot maintain it's best position in a stirrup (an innovation of pre-historic Asian Steppe people). Men quickly realized that high heels complimented their calves (or is it calfs?). It seems to me it was in the 20th century that the high heel became common for women.

I'm not much a clothes horse; I like denim trousers, red or light gray sweat shirts, brightly colored button up shirts, open collar/no tie, and not-too-flashy running shoes, nice leather boots, or oxfords. I occasionally wear a suit, but prefer not. Traditional plaids and tweeds are my preferred patterns. 100% cotton broadcloth or flannel. Linen and seersucker are good in the summer. Lambswool sweaters for the fall and winter. A leather vest or jacket is good.

In my youth I was known to mix plaid, florals, stripes, and solids. Fortunately I got over that phase fairly soon.

Let us assume that all transexualism is a delusional state, the question would then be whether there is greater harm in allowing these folks to live out their delusions or in forcing them to accept that they are broken. — Hanover

I am quite content to let transexuals live out their delusions. I too live out some delusions; maybe you do too. Society itself may be something of a delusion, and it is at least worthwhile maintaining it in good condition.

Quite seriously, even the most hard-headed, fact-minded realists maintain delusions of various kinds. It's a necessity for beings of our kind. There are limits, however, to how far we need to go in accepting other peoples' delusions as facts. I liked Jack when he was Jack, and when he became Joanne she was still pretty much the same likable person. Or maybe Jack was a jerk, and so is Joanne. Either way, I'm not going to take Joanne's estrogen away from her.

If you believe that given outside circumstances and given inner mental states don’t fully determine a course of action, are you less likely to feel empathetic for a poor decision? If you believe one’s character is a choice, are you more or less likely to feel empathy for them than if you would believe that one is not metaphysically responsible for one’s character? — Noah Te Stroete

Lurking in this paragraph is an interesting question about whether we are responsible for our character. Good question. Character is almost by definition something people are responsible for, as the sum of all their various voluntary acts. So, people whose characters are suitable for liars, thieves, knaves, and scoundrels are as responsible as people who are candidates for beatification.

I wonder about that.

I wonder whether the brain structure we are born with, the childhood we are given by our families, the environment in which we live... and so on -- all factors over which we may have no control -- so character is not something we are responsible for. Or at least, totally responsible for.

I don't like that; I'd rather receive credit for my good character. I wouldn't like someone saying "You are a good person, but it's not to your credit; you were just lucky."

the history I’ve read holds both the ancient Greeks and Romans as unconfused about their, quite often bi/homosexual, sexuality. — javra

The ancients didn't have a concept for "homosexuality". Their ideas about proper male and female behavior were fairly straight forward. People behaved in various sexual ways without that being an "identity". We can safely assume that some people were homosexual or bisexual, but Greeks and Romans didn't think about "sexual orientation". People just did what they did.

That doesn't mean that the Romans were just fine with whatever somebody happened to do. There were social mores, rules of etiquette, and laws. Adultery, for instance, could get one in a lot of trouble, and the punishment was pretty unpleasant (sometimes involving "the radish" a small ball with hooks attached which was inserted into the anus. Removing it would tear the flesh.)

It's difficult sometimes for us to understand the ancients. For instance, in a bath house in Pompeii there is a depiction of one male goat screwing another male goat. What did that mean to the Romans? It wasn't an advert for homosexual behavior. It was either a joke or it was something else.

The Greeks particularly worshipped Priapus, a fertility God, whose symbol was an erect penis. These Priapic statues were very common inside and outside buildings. In one invasion, the soldiers snapped off all the stone erections they found -- a clear enough message. We won; you lost. We modern people who haven't worshipped fertility gods are not likely to get what the little dildo-ike sculptures meant to the ancient people.

"Homosexuality" was identified as a trait in the latter half of 19th century. Prior to that, people certainly engaged in what would later be called homosexual behavior, but that's not what they called it.

We tell children all the time that "You can be anything you want to be." and of course we have all sorts of ambiguity about sexuality, so it's hardly surprising that people started thinking that they could just switch genders. (Of course the facts are that 99% of people are not going to be anything they want to be. In any generation of 20 years, 5 people max are going to be president. The number of professional athletes that make it big is very, very small. Most little girls learning ballet are never going to be asked to dance for money. Most child-violinists are never going to get to Carnegie Hall, except as paying customers. So basically, forget about it.

Song from the 1920s about gender ambiguity

Right now I am bothered by what looks sexual confusion to me. So many people don't appear to know what they are and what they want to be. I am not opposed to homosexuality but really, some men trying to be women won't succeed any more than I can pass as a teenager. — Athena

I have taken what I view as a down right retrograde position: Transsexuals are suffering from a delusion and gender reassignment specialists are collecting rent on their castles in the sky. I too would enjoy being in my prime again--fit, svelte, and with what was once a robust sex drive. Dream on, Crank -- it ain't going to happen no how.

Granted, there are some people (a very small number) who really are born with ambiguous sexual organs, and some of those have abnormal genetic ambiguousness. Those are not the people driving the trans movement. Just because someone who is unambiguously male or female thinks they would like to be the opposite sex doesn't mean they can be or should be. I would like to be many different things. I would enjoy being the #1 star soprano at the Metropolitan Opera; I would like to be an eagle; I would like to be fluent in 10 languages; I would like to be a lady killer on the dance floor. I'd like to be a great long distance runner. These are just fantasies; pleasant, but not meriting fulfillment.

If a few pioneers had not gone to great lengths to find a surgeon to reupholster themselves in the 1950s (i.e., Christine Jorgensen) I think very few men and women, or boys and girls, would be announcing that they were actually wrongly gendered. They'd just be masculine women, feminine men (but heterosexual) or they'd be gay or lesbian, or they'd be confused. So tough! There was nothing in the original contract guaranteeing that nobody would ever be confused!

I'm quite sympathetic toward transsexuals, just as I am sympathetic, empathetic, towards people who have other kinds of mental problems. I've know a few quite well. I will acknowledge that they seem happier playing their opposite gender role. Are they the opposite gender? No, they are still the same gender, but wearing different clothes, doing their hair differently, and maybe using the toilet differently--most of which they could have done without claiming to have changed gender. Taking female or male hormones does not a man or a woman make. It's just deeper upholstery, and if stopped the process reverses.

We can, we do, and we ought to draw lines for ourselves, and for those for whom we are responsible. There is a lengthy list of things we do, and do not do, that we think are meet, right, and salutary or the opposite. Collectively, we have also drawn lines, visible in social mores, rules of etiquette, and the law. Most of the time our private and public line-drawing is more or less satisfactory.

There are some very personal areas where the rules imposed on others by the collective or a fragment of the collective that are quite problematic. While I don't believe we should be killing leopards for their fur, I don't see a problem of wearing fox, mink, or other furs that are commercially produced. PETA, on the other hand, is adamantly opposed to meat eating, fur clothing of any kind, and the use of rats in research. I don't think PETA is entitled to decide if I can wear a fringe of coyote fur on my parka, or wear a nice leather vest.

Vegans haven't become so militant yet that they are ready to free cows and chickens from captivity and throw pig shit at people who leave the supermarket with packages of eggs, milk, cheese, and meat. Earth Firsters are willing to drive spikes into trees to make it dangerous to cut down old-forests. Maybe all that will get out of hand tomorrow, but not quite yet.

perhaps the effect of these two is different? My concern is cheapening our humanness and playing to fantasies that are abusive, or believing hurtful acts are okay if that is what one wants to do. How art expressing intimacy can also bring out the best in us. — Athena

Sure, the effect of pornography and art is different. That won't make the headlines tomorrow. But if porn isn't usually mistaken for art, art is mistaken for either porn or trash fairly often, and sometimes sex has nothing to do with it.

Nobody I know has spoken out in favor of abusive sex acts. S&M or B&D are not something I am interested in, but some people are -- both the S and the M, the B and the D. I don't get it, but apparently a good time is had by all. Now, everybody agrees that subjecting an unwilling person to SMBD would be unambiguously wrong. A good many people would not interfere with SMBD, but definitely think that the participants might be at least somewhat screwed up.

There is a wideness in our humanness, and both pornography and art highlight our essential natures, just as a ball park hot dog and haute cuisine both express discerning taste as well as blunt hunger. I'm not content looking at fine art and eating haute cuisine all the time. Sometimes a hotdog, or some porn is just the thing. There are plenty of clear social mores, rules of etiquette, and laws to protect people from real harm, and there are many situations (having nothing to do with sex) where it is very difficult to protect people from their own intentions. Sometimes you just have to hope they don't kill themselves in the process of pursuing whatever harebrained goal they are seeking.

I just want there to be room for peoples' varied self-expression.

After 1000 years of annoying the French, what do the English expect?

I do not believe it is good for society to make intimate behavior public. I also am not at all in favor of freedom of expression. — Athena

Goodness gracious; she's not in favor of freedom of expression! My psychoanalytic theory is that there is a connection between believing intimate behavior on view is bad for society and being against freedom of expression.

@Hanover So, just how outsized is it?

Share of population using Facebook
North America 72.4%
Latin America / Caribbean 57.3%
Oceania / Australia 48.1%
Europe 41.7%

1 out of 7 people in the world uses Facebook.

I do not use Facebook; I do not have a Facebook account. I don't have to have an account to recognize its importance.

It has no effect on democracy, because democracy has no effect, because all aspects of power have gone from governments and are in the hands of corporations. — unenlightened

I think you are underestimating the power of the state, but I agree. Besides, the state has generally been on the side of the corporation. (Marx: "The state is a committee to organize the affairs of the bourgeoisie.") The transnationality of corporations, and the enormous wealth lodged in the hands of a tiny fraction of the world's population (where, according to Oxfam, a handful of individuals possess more wealth than half the world's population) is a relatively new arrangement. There is a lot of hidden money sloshing around in tax havens which are outside of national revenue departments' reach.

I'm not sure what's driving the fact that we've been going backwards--it's surely a complex of factors, and one of them was surely the rise of AIDS, but one of the main controlling, "high-level" factors is that we've maneuvered to a society where (1) livelihoods can easily be trashed via moralizing social pressure, (2) People are more prone to moralizing, including bandwagon-moralizing than ever, (3) and we've fueled this via the ubiquity of social media, where a few crazy, squeaky wheels can have a bigger impact than ever. — Terrapin Station

One way to account for a backward drift is that large portions of the population never approved of liberalization of values in the first place. Gay marriage is now possible coast to coast; that doesn't mean that most people now approve of homosexuality. Large blocks of the population do now and have always disapproved. Numerous civil rights laws have been passed; that doesn't mean that most people are now color blind. "Bohemians" might establish interesting urban enclaves, but they tend to get "redeveloped" out of existence. Birth control and liberalized abortion helped make a "sexual revolution" possible, but again, large numbers of people never approved of the sexual revolution. Divorce rates notwithstanding, marriage is still the norm.

Political and sexual deviants like myself tend to associate with other political and sexual deviants. This can lead to a serious misapprehension about what the masses are thinking.

it would help if we had a different economic structure in place, so that social pressure from moralizers doesn't matter. — Terrapin Station

Indeed.

The right to free speech isn't the same as the right to use someone else's platform. — Michael

I wasn't demanding that any platform comply with my wishes. Verizon, Facebook, Apple, et al can set whatever rules they wish. However, their decisions are not above criticism and their policies may affect the body politic -- for instance, Facebooks's lax policing of political ads and posts before the 2016 election. Newspapers can publish whatever news they think fit to print; that doesn't mean their decisions are above the most excoriating criticism when they misrepresent reality.

As @unenlightened has noted, parts of the once public body politic have migrated to the corporation. Take as an example the problem of accessing citizens in public to collect signatures for a petition, leaflet for some cause -- peace, sympathy with a strike, a political candidate -- etc. The "public square" sphere has become largely corporate property. In the US, the places people go and congregate are mostly private spaces like shopping malls (which include the parking lots). The malls look like public spaces, but are not. Security people routinely eject anyone leafletting, petitioning, or quietly protesting -- let alone anything more assertive.

What about "public sidewalks"? They are public property and one can demonstrate, petition, or leaflet to one's heart's content. But if you want to go where the most people are, the public sidewalk will generally be outside of the parking lot perimeter and sometimes 300 feet (90 m) or more from the front door of the establishment.

Back to Tumblr and Facebook et al: To suppose that abrupt policy changes (some in place for a decade or two) are a matter of political indifference is shortsighted. We don't have the Great Fire Wall of China, but we have a (so far) softer system of thought suppression.

Maybe referenda are not such a good idea? Sometimes referenda begin as a way for the "popular will" to be expressed, but most often referenda are started and fueled by some particular interest. California is a good example: A now decades-past referendum on lowering property taxes has degraded California's once excellent public services which depends on property tax revenue. Real estate interests were the instigators and beneficiaries.

Who started Brexit? What was their expected benefit?

Some state/local governments in the US have adopted ranked choice voting -- first choice, second choice, third choice -- for state/local elections. This system has been implemented in too few places and too recently (last 10 years) to tell how much of a difference it would make if adopted nationwide. I'd welcome it as a possible break of the lock the Democrat/Republican parties have on power.

Brexit is a heist. It isn't going to benefit the average British people.

Why not? You might not feel your expression is limited in any way, but what about your neighbor who does feel limited by such bans?

Side Note: Minneapolis is still (slowly) undoing restrictive laws on liquor sales put in place after prohibition ended. Loosening the grip of restrictive morality can take a long time.

Apple removed Tumblr's app from their store; they claimed the removal was in response to child pornography being found on the site. It may be that child porn was displayed on some accounts. I don't know -- what you see on Tumblr depends entirely on what you ask to see (by following accounts). But even if there was child pornography being shared on the site, it would make more sense to root out such material rather than purging the entire site of the many millions of photos which are perfectly legal.

One word used in two ways; denote means to use a word for factual communication. In the sentence, "I have ten marbles." "marbles" denotes small round glass objects that are used in games. In this sentence, "She has lost her marbles." marble connotes the sanity or good sense that she has lost. "He still has all his marbles." connotes that he is still high functioning.

If I say "The right wing of the bird is crooked." I am using "crooked" to objectively describe a broken wing. If, on the other hand, I say "The right wing of the Republican party is crooked." I am making a value judgement, I am connoting wickedness. Some would say that I am denoting wickedness because it is a plain fact that the right wing of the Republican party is wicked. So the difference between denote and connote is a bit fuzzy. But the Republican right wing is definitely crooked, no matter how you slice it.

our collective consciousness — Wallows

I have consciousness; you have consciousness; we do not have consciousness. Not as far as I know, anyway.

Walpurgisnacht doesn't have many connotations; mostly just denotations (the night of April 30). St. Walpurgis specialized in protecting people from pestilence, rabies and whooping cough, as well as witchcraft. She has been oozing oil from her bones for... 800 years or so. Actually the oil is water, but... even so... Apparently she is still i business; she died in 777.

Christmas on the other hand is so loaded with connotations one can't even get close to what it denotes. (denote = factual attachments; connote = affective attachments)

Here's a nice song about memory by Ysaye M. Barnwell sung by Cantus, a Minneapolis male choir, one of my favorites, both choir and song.

I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me
to see the beauty in the world through my own eyes.
I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me
To see the beauty in the world through my own eyes.

You said you'd rock me in the cradle of your arms.
You said you'd hold me ‘til the storms of life were gone.
You said you'd comfort me in times like these and now I need you.
Now I need you...
And you are -
gone.

I can summon two particular scent memories which "Christmas" stimulates: the odor of musty newspaper in which Christmas tree decorations were wrapped (and stored in a damp basement). The penetrating odor of volatile chemicals in the shellac we used in grade school to finish horrid art projects which we were supposed to force on parents as Christmas gifts.

Do these scent memories refer to anything beyond a mental experience? Only more mental experiences: the dimly lit and unpleasant cellar; the pine tree on which the ornaments were hung; the elementary school building and its classrooms...

My memories--your memories--anyone's memories--are the same: impressions from sensory input one step removed from a supposedly concrete world. What can the refer to but the now vanished sensory input?

Suppose we have a memory of something.

Ontologically speaking, where does that memory refer to? — Wallows

Because we don't have direct contact with reality--we only have sensory input which we develop into more or less consistent images, sounds, odors, textures, flavors--memory can only be an experience of images derived from the senses.

Let's pay a visit to our underground ontology lab. First we fasten you to an immovable chair with duct tape in front of a screen. Then we leave the dark room and lock the door. You are instructed to report whatever you are remember. The following word appear on the screen:

Christmas

Tell us what are you remembering, Wallows! (we have ways of making you talk...)

Images of Christmas trees? the smell of cinnamon and apples? decorated urban streets? boxes wrapped in colorful paper? gingerbread cookies? sweetness? Saint Nicholas? incense at Midnight Mass? Shopping at Target? Angry people trying to get out of the parking lot? Screaming children? cursing adults? The feeling of overwhelming dread? ...

What could your memories be but reactivated sensory input. Perhaps some of your memories are from A Nightmare Before Christmas. Is any reference made at all?

Donald Trump

Robert Mueller

...

Personally, to me the apparent great divide between theism and atheism is mostly a form of mythology. I see a bigger divide between the adamant people on both sides, and the calm reasonable people on both sides. — Jake

Good observation. There are greater differences between conservative Catholics and liberal Catholics than there are between the average Catholic and the average Lutheran. Conservative Baptists are vigourously opposed to ritual, liturgical seasons, and "catholic" in any form, and most other churches aren't much better than heathens.

From what I have seen, atheists are as likely to be as quarrelsome as religious partisans. Bertrand Russell noted that the kind of atheism people espouse is similar in warmth to the kind of religion they rejected. So, your average ex-Baptist atheist or liturgically particular ex-Anglican will be different kinds of atheists. Ex-wishy-washy religious probably make easy-to-live-with wishy-washy atheists.

I find religious behavior a useful area of study, and Marx was correct in his assessment: The whole quote is: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people". Religion has its source in an oppressive, heartless, soulless world -- one in which a dose of opium every now and then is pretty welcome.

THEREFORE religion is an appropriate topic in The Philosophy Forum. Sectarian bickering is not -- for example, heated discussions of how often one should make the sign of the cross, for instance, or whether the world is 6,022 or 5,157 years old, and how old Noah was when he died (assuming he was ever born) are NOT appropriate topics. They belong in church.

If you are physically attacked, the rules of civil society allow you to protest and defend yourself. For instance, if someone menaces you, and you are able, warn them off; if they strike you, you might strike back, or flee. (You are not obligated to display defensive behaviors if you can flee.)

You aren't required to be nice to the attacker, or stand there without a defensive effort. On the other hand, there are limits to how much physical response you can make. In some places, you would not be out of line if you pulled out your gun and shot them to protect your "honor". In other places, you would be subject to arrest for manslaughter or murder if you killed someone for insulting you.

Where I come from, the minimum necessary response is in order. If you are insulted, no response is required. If you are threatened or attacked physically, no more physical response that is necessary to protect yourself is proper. Deadly violence would be proper ONLY if you were threatened with deadly violence (like with a gun, a baseball bat, a knife...) and you could not flee.

Welcome to Philosophy Forum.

Oh, StreetlightX, that's sooo cute, you used a quote from "Guess How Much I Love You" by Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram. Did your caretaker read it to you when you were still just a small bulb on the corner?

"I love you up to the moon," said Little Nutbrown Hare.

"Oh, that's far," said Big Nutbrown Hare. "That is very, very far." Big Nutbrown Hare settled Little Nutbrown Hare into his bed of leaves.

He leaned over and kissed him goodnight. Then he lay down close by and whispered with a smile, "I love you to the moon and back."

Note how the Big Hare is modeling good male parenting behaviors, as well as raising astro-engineering problems.

Philosophy is everywhere.

Don't sneer too much -- they've sold 28,000,000 copies of the book.

6.1k
Does the following sentence...:

"I love you more than words can say."

... express its meaning? — Wallows

If you really loved me more than words could say, you would say nothing, would you not? Since you attempted to quantify your love for me, I have to assume that you do not love with more than words can say. And after all I've done for you!

"I love you" is meaningful, "I will love you until the day I die" is meaningful. "I will love you as long as you are beautiful; after that, forget it" is meaningful. A bit too frank and honest, but meaningful. "I will love you forever" is highly doubtful, because you are not going to live forever, and even if you did, I don't expect to be around forever to check up on whether you are fulfilling your claim. Jesus can get away with saying "I am with you till the end of time" but he is a special case, since he exists in all times.

Sentences don't literally "express meaning," you assign meaning to them. — Terrapin Station

Terrapin, edible turtle, I am not altogether happy about your view that sentences don't literally "express meaning". Granted, we are reading abstract symbols grouped into words into sentences, and the symbols just sit there waiting for a reader, hearer, or clairvoyant. But the author picked particular words grouped into unique sentences. The author expressed something, and that something is carried in the sentence. Arbitrarily assigning meaning gets us... where?

So true, so true.

The dead fish should be grateful that there is still enough water in the river for there to be a flow worth going with.

The tedious tweet smelling of dead fish was, no doubt, twatted by some twee twit who thinks he or she is one of the few, the brave, the independent, the unique... who are in a position to judge everybody else as subservient sheeple.

Off with their head! Then throw it in the muck with the dead fish.