One thing that has been revealed, clearly, again, is how partisan politics are working. Everybody involved here--Donald Trump, the Democratic minority and Republican majority, and the nominee Kavanaugh--has again been on display, and not to everyone's credit.

National politics have always been played for high stakes, but at certain periods in the past the game has been played with better acting than it is being played now. Thinking back to the SCOTUS nominations by the much hated Richard Nixon, Warren Berger, Harry Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, and William Rehnquist, for example. Nixon did not nominate extremists to the court. Reagan's appointments weren't scandals either -- Reagan elevated Rehnquist to CJ, and added Sandra Day O'Connor and
Antonin Scalia.

For that matter, consider the Watergate Hearings (40 odd years ago) which led to Nixon's resignation. The subject (Nixon) engaged in skulduggery and covered up as much as possible (the fatal mistake). The investigation, however, was was quite orderly and civil.

Compare all that to Kavanaugh's furious partisan rant after the Ford testimony.

We are not going to know for sure (100%) what happened, who did what to whom, who did or did not witness what, and so on. What we do know is that under pressure, Kavanaugh turned more than a bit vicious. Not a good thing for a potential SCOTUS justice to display. Not a good thing for an appellate judge to display, for that matter.

And I was just thinking of a piece of blueberry pie!

What was that about ducks? Geez, people obsessed with duck smut. Ballistic penises and corkscrew vaginas...

"Normally, the duck keeps its penis inside-out within a sac in its body. When the time for mating arrives, the penis explodes outwards to a fully-erect 20cm, around a quarter of the animal’s total body length. The whole process takes just a third of a second and Brennan captures it all on high-speed camera. This isn’t just bizarre voyeurism. Duck penises are a wonderful example of the strange things that happen when sexual conflict shapes the evolution of animal bodies."



Have you ever noticed how Donald Duck almost never shuts his mouth? You would think he would get cramps in his head and neck holding it open all the time.

Too sarcastic, @Sir2U so deleted. Keep moving. Nothing to see here.

This is a church camp story illustrating what faith is supposed to be like. I have added a couple of my own touches to it.

A man was climbing a mountain. He liked to climb mountains, and he was good at it. This day, however, things did not go well at all and he found himself stuck at the end of his rope and his tools somewhere far below, having fallen off his belt. The situation was not good. He wasn't going to be able to climb up or back down the rock.

He wasn't very religious. He was in a very bad fix, however, and he feared that he would die. So he prayed to God, most fervently, because he was as one can imagine, very afraid. He prayed and prayed.

Suddenly he felt a very strong Presence near him. "God?" he quavered?.

"Yes, child, I am here."

"I'm afraid I am going to die." the man said.

"Yes, I see that. But I am here."

"God, I'm sorry I've never prayed to you before."

"Yes, I know that you feel sorry about not praying." God said.

"God, I've done very, very bad things to people--things much worse than Brett Kavanaugh has done."

"Oh yes, I know what you have done -- I was there when you did those very, very bad things. I was there with Brett Kavanaugh, too."

"God, why do you want to save me?"

(God thought to himself, "Who said anything about saving this jerk? It would, though, make for excellent PR if I saved him. He's the type who will never stop talking about it. He must, however, pass a test of faith.")

"Because I love you, my child." God said.

"God, I don't see how I can make it back up the mountain, even with your help."

"I am very powerful." God said.

"Ok, tell me what to do," the man said.

"Let go."

Very sappy, and not sapient. Through stories like this children (and adults) are encouraged to think that God might (possibly, maybe, perhaps) show up in the hour of great need and save us. Like, "Blessed Mary pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of my Senate Judicial Committee hearing" Brett prayed... until he lost his cool and started ranting and raving.

Judge Kavanaugh needs to read more classical drama, where the Gods routinely play nasty tricks on pricks like himself.

Size isn't everything — unenlightened

Bigger usually is better.

At what time and on what day were the first 7 drivel, because this thread is in the first 7 right now.

Drivel, drivel, snit and snivel;
key strokes fly and deep thinks fizzle.

I'm not a moderator and do not read every post as a member, so I cannot be sure whether what you are claiming is true or not.

My guess is that if an atheist claimed that theism was so irrational as to constitute insanity and ought to be treated with severe methods (lobotomy, shock treatment, political reeducation camps, execution, being forced to work in some incredibly tedious office) that they would be censored. Atheists are unlikely (but it's not impossible) to make such a claim. Why? Because atheism is a general rejection of all kinds of theisms, while theists generally affirm a particular variety. Nothing wrong with that, either.

What upsets the moderators (and the moderators are biased) is when someone makes a claim like "If you do not accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, you are doomed to hell!" I have a sister who says that fairly often; she would be banned pretty quickly from here.

Some theists are fundamentalists (not just Christian ones, either) and they raise a lot of hackles because they reject cultural trends that most people on philosophy forums hold near and dear. A mainline Christian (Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran...) will be far less likely to make sweeping claims which will bother moderators.

Some atheists here have long histories of theistic belief and are not hostile towards theism. Like moi for instance.

Interesting. Also about 40 or 50 years ago, I had two dreams in which I met the Devil. In one the Devil was in a person I knew, had some reason to fear (a threat to personal autonomy maybe); in the other he was much less distinct but more threatening. The setting of the dream was not at all hellish -- it was hometown sited.

From one psychoanalytic POV, the dream was clearly a message from the unconscious to NOT take up this guy's invitation to live with him during graduate school as a lover. (I did anyway -- it worked out well). From a POV as to whether the supernatural exists, it was a validating message (though about the devil rather than Jehovah... one has to take what one can get).

When I was a child, even into adolescence, I had a fear of dark places -- like the barn where we stored coal. One of my jobs was to fill buckets of coal after school and bring them to the house for the stove. I always tried to get this done while it was still light out. I knew the barn like the back of my hand, but alone in the dark it took on a malevolent character. As a mature adult I have felt these feelings about dark places only very rarely, and they were easily rationalized.

It isn't hard at all to imagine how a person immersed in a culture where it was believed that the world was infested with benign and malignant small gods could be both comforted and terrorized frequently. Imagining spirits seems like something humans are just primed to do -- unless otherwise instructed. And most of us are not otherwise instructed. Billions are encouraged to believe in 1, 2, 3... 50 gods.

How about Elizabeth Warren, Senator, D - Massachusetts? I'm pretty sure she's available for nomination in 2020 - she's been running spots on the internet where she talks about policy. She's more like Sanders, less like Clinton (in policy).

No, she's a moronic republican who makes Trump sound erudite.

Sarah Palin?

What other examples are there that provides evidence for something supernatural? — Purple Pond

Supposing you were sitting there in front of your computer contemplating your next post, and you heard, clear as a bell, a voice that said "Jack Jones" (or whatever you name is) "I am god and I am real and you are not imagining my voice. You will now feel an intense comforting warmness." And you did feel a comforting warmness which lasted for days.

Would that be sufficient? (John Wesley, an Anglican priest and the founder of the Methodist Church felt his heart "strangely warmed" and reassured.

Or do you need to see the stars in the sky rearranged to say "I am god and you all are totally screwed"?

It's a philosophy forum, there are philosophical arguments for and against, which are the subject matter of 'philosophy of religion'. — Wayfarer

Yeah, I've found the arguments presented for religion unpersuasive. If god, God, the gods are ineffable, beyond our ken, immortal, invisible, omnipotent, and so forth -- then our attempts to explain or prove their existence ought to be unsuccessful, and I think they are. Our pious inventions are constructed such that the gods are not explainable by logic.

So why do people believe? The vast majority are taught to believe; some experience conversion (see visions, smell pancakes, whatever...) and maybe several read logical arguments and were convinced. There is nothing wrong with teaching children to pray to god, or whatever else about religion they teach them.

We are religious because we can be religious -- we have the wherewithal between our ears to have faith and everything that goes with it. It serves many functions individually and socially.

And what do believers do? The profess their beliefs. What more can they who believe in the immortal, invisible, ineffable do?

One thing some believers do is live out aspects of their belief: The feed the poor or slay heathens, whatever they are inclined to do. The least they do is get together with other believers for an official validation of their belief, every now and then.

What is it you would expect from S? Personally, I can't offer you any evidence for either belief or disbelief, and I doubt very much if you can, either. (Suggesting nothing inadequate about you, of course. Just that... how could you?)

If you believe in Baby Jesus, my guess is he has no complaint with that either. — Jake

Correct. People believe in all sorts of things. Jesus, Abraham, Mohammed, Buddha, the god of the swamp, the god of the wind, Odin, Demeter, Brahma Shiva, Vishnu, etc. And no gods whatsoever. People also believe in the likelihood that they will win the lottery (even though the odds are at least 100,000,000 to 1 that they won't). Some people believe in unfettered capitalism, others in rigorous regulation.

I've been a believer and I know from that experience that there are pleasant features of belief, so I don't have anything against people believing in Baby Jesus or Shiva. It isn't that I think Jesus is going to do anything on their behalf, just that the opposite nullity isn't either. We're on our own. We're on our own in a lonely universe. IF most people are less lonely because of Allah or Ahura Mazda, fine by me.

I get upset when believers want gods to do more than alleviate their loneliness -- like boost their GDP, smite their enemies, lay gold and jewels on them (the believers), fix their parking tickets, cause pond scum to be approved by the Senate, and so forth.

I also get upset when I am informed of my imminent damnation because I don't happen to believe what they believe.

I guess I am a laissez faire atheist.

8 posts (including mine) in 16 hours. At this rate, it should fare well — Hanover

Really? It is only my impression that success is more immediate. Within 16 hours a virile manly thread will have taken off and have dozens of progeny. A wrinkly, limp-dick thread will get a post or two here and there and then shrivel up completely.

Timing matters too. Were you to start a new, not very novel thread on Ford/Kavan right now, it would probably not go anywhere, since the existing thread has been doing well. 435+ in 6 days).

Atheism and religion topics usually do well, even if most of them are really pretty similar. (Most of them could all be combined into one giant thread--The Gods: fir'em 'n agin'em.)

A successful-traffic generating post is something about which many care. The Donald Trump United thread has 2.9K posts, while "The Morality Of Bestowing Sentience" -- which was addressed by 7 posts. Clearly Donald Trump is of more interest than the problem of bestowing sentience on the non-sentient--like Donald Trump, for instance.

The Uplift science fiction novels were about bestowing human-level sentience on dolphins and primates. Cracking good stories. Lots of science fiction novels feature sentient machines. Apparently the authors and enthusiastic readers of these novels are not members here.

90% of all of my OPs have failed to appeal to more than a few people. Either it's the way I pose topics, the topics itself, or personal animosity toward me. Of course I take a lack of interest personally.

Sometimes indifferent threads become quite interesting when a weeds-sending poster performs their magic and says something irrelevant that transforms the discussion into something really good.

I do not know how to define a good topic. It seems to be the case that [what seem to be] good topics presented properly can be derailed by posters who wander off into the weeds. Whether it is the posters or the topic that is the problem could be tested by posting a splendidly well-structured OP, then allowing posters from Group A, who have a record of responding to posts in an on-point, orderly manner to respond in one thread. Group B, who have a record of responding to posts in a fashion that disrupts orderly discussion would be allowed to respond to the topic in a second thread.

You could also post a potentially good but poorly structured post. Have Group A and Group B respond to the same badly written OP in separate threads.

One could thereby observe the difference a well-structured and a poorly structured OP faired in the hands of good posters and bad posters.

Another approach would be to allow the OP author to delete off-topic, off-point postings. The OP author would have to be on-line a lot to delete every weeds-bound post.

I have now sent your OP into the weeds by making an impractical experiment out of it.

I could, if you would like, now launch a personal attack on your person to further ruin the integrity of your opening post.

I do not have any problems with your statement about the kind of atheism you uphold.

...the Republicans are against the investigation because they're worried ... that it will cost them votes in the midterms — Michael

Offer up prayers, burnt offerings, your first born, whatever you've got, that "cost them votes in the midterms" turns out to be a huge understatement, and that the 2020 election turns out to be even worse for the Republicans.

I would not consider it out of order for Trump and his cabinet, and the Republican leadership of the House and Senate to perform hara-kiri on the front lawn of the White House. It would be messy but...

Ok, so you're a cross between Karl Marx and Santa Claus. :100: — Baden

so true, so true...

Sorry for calling you a shithead. — frank

Shit happens.

I can see why some people would think I was being insensitive. I do understand that Dr. Ford was psychologically damaged by the assault upon her. Kavanaugh was drunk at the time, and his roommate at Yale noted that he became belligerent when drunk. I've lived with mean drunks, and a guy who is sunny and charming when sober can become a tough customer when drunk. And that's speaking of mature men.

Ford spoke about her own brain development (incomplete at 15) contributing to her trauma. Kavanaugh's brain was also incompletely developed. My understanding is that development isn't complete until 25 years on average. I'm pretty sure my brain wasn't done even at 25. The length of time required for the brain to finish developing is why juveniles are not responsible, and why their finished character isn't set at 17.

Actually shit doesn't just happen.



The long green part has a lot to do with it.

I heard much of Ford's testimony, then I had to leave for the Dentist. The people in the University dental school cubical didn't know anything about it. Well, the graduate student prosthodontist is from Wales, so he has an excuse. The other two are young-to-middle age women--dental techs. They didn't know jack shit about it.

I missed the melt down and Kavanaugh's ranting (heard excerpts later).

So... we shall see what happens next.

The second from the left on the bottom is pretty much what I envision you look like. — Baden

The picture is untouched. The brightness is the result of my Transfiguration which was beginning that morning.

The second from the left on the bottom is pretty much what I envision you look like. — Baden

I imagine the second from the left on the top row is what you look like--on a good day.

I've posted my picture you could post yours.

NYT:

1. If hell exists, there would be Biblical evidence for its existence, or it exists only conceptually in the minds of human beings due to misinterpreting the Bible.
2. Things that only exist conceptually in the minds of human beings do not actually exist.
3. There is no Biblical evidence for the existence of hell.
4. Therefore, hell does not actually exist. — Francesco di Piertro

A logical exercise is mostly irrelevant in religious belief. Belief just doesn't work that way. People do not arrive at belief through logic (in 99+% of the cases) and they won't abandon their belief because of a syllogism (in 99+% of the cases).

The Bible references numerous events and things that do not exist, as far as we know. There's no evidence, for instance, that the Red Sea was parted for the fleeing Hebrews, and then closed up over the Egyptians who chased after them. So Heaven and Hell, neither of which exist in some specific place that we can know about, are not supported by the Bible.

IF you are against Kavanaugh being approved by the Senate, then welcome to the club of people who wish to see him rejected. The appropriate grounds for voting against Kavanaugh is the kind of judge he would probably make.

I don't care how many lie detector tests Ms. Ford takes. She can swear on a stack of Bibles that Kavanaugh was not nice to her. Kavanaugh can deny he was unkind to her till hell freezes over. It's irrelevant. EVEN IF she produced a video tape of these clumsy adolescents on a bed, it would still be irrelevant.

Everybody (bar none) misbehaves at times. Everybody (bar none) behaves unwisely at times. Everybody (bar none) has their own memory of what did or did not happen in the past. "His lies" depends on "her truth". No. I don't automatically believe what women say. Sorry. They have to have something more than to just allege men doing things that they didn't like. Even if it happened, it wasn't a crime then or now. And even if it did happen, it still doesn't determine what kind of man he is now, what kind of judge he is now, or what kind of judge he will be in the future.

That doesn't verify the truthfulness of a proposition. — Ram

That's alright. I don't care.

heard her specifically mention Kavanaugh as being the one who assaulted her way before he was being considered for this post. — Baden

It doesn't matter how many people heard her discuss Kavanaugh's behavior. It wasn't criminal when it happened and being brought up 35 years later doesn't make it criminal now, either.

I hope eventually the apparent sexual abuser... — Baden

There are plenty of good reasons to vote NO on Kavanaugh without defining juvenile behavior as sex crime.

You are corralling too much behavior and too many people you disapprove of into the category of criminal sex abuse. An adult forcing / coercing a child to engage in intercourse is the classic definition of sex abuse. Rape, forced sexual intercourse by an adult on an adolescent or adult, is another definition of sex abuse.

What adolescents do at parties may be appalling breaches of taste, etiquette, good sense, and more but a boy doing what the young Kavanaugh allegedly did to this girl (Ms. Ford) is not a crime and is not sex abuse. It's juvenile sex play. What should be done about juvenile sex play? What should be done is provide adult supervision. Apparently there was none on hand at this famous party. Is juvenile sex play insignificant? Maybe not -- but it isn't a criminal matter. It's an educational issue: teaching juveniles how to engage -- or not engage in sex -- goes for boys and girls both. Once the juvenile becomes an adult, THEN juvenile-style sex play (if that's what the adult was doing) could be criminal.

Let's save the term "sex abuse" for the real thing.

I'm not trying arguing this on behalf of Kavanaugh. I don't want to see him approved by the Senate. What Weinstein did, or Trump did, or what Cosby did, or what a serial rapist did, and so forth is not what Kavanaugh did.

Be against Kavanaugh because he will probably be a very conservative judge, if you want a good reason to be against him.

At times religion has seemed a lot like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, and other times it has felt better than that.

I haven't read the thread, but complex human organizations need glue to hold them together. I think @praxis talked about glue.

We need various things to establish controls, order, hierarchies, meaning, and so on. Religion is one piece among several systems for holding societies together. Just because we are alive in the 21st century doesn't mean that we are different than we were 15 centuries or 150 centuries ago. We still need institutions like religion, law, courts, schools, etc. We still need to make many things, grow food, trade, and what not -- and manage all of that economic activity. And more besides.

The trick with religion is to prevent them from becoming static and irrelevant on the one hand and tyrannous on the other hand. Something in between. Reformations have to happen periodically.

Jews, Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Jains, etc. have been busy trying to explain/defend/make sense of their religions for a long time.

Man is the author of the Gods. Our Gods generally demand a great deal more of humans than we feel like delivering on most days, so we disappoint our gods. We have to find a way to get around the problem of disappointing, angering, and enraging our various gods, less they smite us. How can our created gods harm us? Of course they can't, but bad things are always happening -- fire, wind, earthquakes, boils, itchy skin, tumors, stinging wasps, snakes, poisonous algae, ponzi schemers, lions, communists, radiation leaks, rats... there are a lot of things out there waiting to get at us, and periodically succeed. We can charge all these bad things to our Gods' accounts.

I found it liberating to just stop thinking about it from the POV that I was liable to eternal damnation--or heaven, either.

BTW, I think creating gods was a major (the major?) cultural achievement of either the very early modern period or the very late stone age period -- around 20,000-30,000 years ago, give or take 15 minutes.

Just curious... are you concerned with your own salvation and damnation, or is this a logic problem for you?

I don't like stingy salvation and generous damnation schemes either, the "You must believe in Jesus or Allah or Marx or Neoliberalism... or you will surely die as unpleasant death as we can arrange for you and dying will last forever..." sort of thing.

My way around all this is to make God bigger, concerned with the whole cosmos (including us, of course, but not as the Crown of Creation). Bigger, cooler, farther away, embodying the universe. Did that God inspire the Bible? Send an angel to impregnate Mary? Raise his alleged child from the dead? No. We did all that on our own. Our god is too small.

I figure that when I die that will pretty much be it. No pits of fire, no pearly gates, no trumpets, no pitchforks, no wings, no horns. And that's fine with me, because life is good, and sometime it will be over. That's enough and we should be grateful.

See, those [the business with e-mail you mentioned] are the kinds of reasons that I would like to see for disqualifying a candidate to a nominated federal office. And I want the disqualifying acts to have been investigated and proven. Alleging that someone stole e-mails is not sufficient to act upon. I could allege that someone is a Russian spy, operates a child pornography studio, robs banks, or anything else. Why would anyone believe me? They would believe me if they felt I was a font of truth, if they felt they were obligated to believe me, or they felt compelled by their perception of public opinion to believe me, or at least create the impression that they believed me.

They could disbelieve me for similar reasons, and disbelief would be as valid as belief IF for the reasons just stated.

So it is, if someone is alleged to have have behaved inappropriately (whatever that means), the accusation should be ignored unless the accuser can come up with creditable evidence (like rape kit evidence, official photographs of the injuries (bruises, cuts, bleeding, witnesses to the acts, fingerprints, etc). If there isn't any evidence, then there isn't any evidence. That may be regrettable or highly inconvenient, but the lack of evidence can not be corrected by vehement insistence that an unsupported accusation be taken as truth.

#metoo is not the first or only instance of this sort of thing in the US, or elsewhere.

I'm not objecting to talking. I'm objecting to going endlessly round and round in circles while pretending we are making progress towards some goal other than going endlessly round and round in circles. — Jake

Of course you are not objecting. Pretending to make progress while going round and round is one of the principle activities of humankind.

Are people consulting the canon of Anglo-American literature (let alone the canons of western lit) for guidance? I have a sneaking suspicion they are not.

Whom the hero is might depend on context, might it not? Robin Hood was certainly not a hero to everyone; presumably the poor to whom he distributed the wealth he liberated from the rich thought him a hero. The rich? Not so much. If a dictator protects the estates of the rich and suppresses the poor, might the rich think the dictator a hero? Yes.

To whom is Trump a hero?

Trump has done absolutely nothing material for the poor, or for the dispossessed white working classes. What Trump did was galvanize a significant number of white working class people who were looking for somebody to blame for their bad situation. If Trump is a hero to the "white trash" in the rust belt and elsewhere, it is because he directed them toward a target they could heartily hate -- Hillary Clinton. (I can understand how working class people could dislike Hilary. I'm at least a solid liberal if not a democratic socialist, and I didn't like her much, either.)

Trump is also a hero to the very well off; he is one of them (even if his own wealth is exaggerated, he certainly is in the top 5%) because he supports the privileges of wealth--the privileges of economic power.

There are hundreds, thousands of Americans, British, Germans, Russians, and other rich sons of bitches who have behaved far worse than Donald Trump. Some of the Russian Romanov Tzars were grotesquely cruel and vicious. There were plenty of British grandees whose behavior was thoroughly contemptible by any standard, any time. Ditto for the rich German, Turk, Saudi, Indian, Chinese, Hottentot, and Aztec panjandrums all.

We just didn't expect run of the mill New York real estate entrepreneurs to be quite so... unsavory. But why shouldn't we? What is not to loathe about New York real estate dealings?

"Religion", as Uncle Karl said, "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".

It is too central to the experience of most of the people (on earth) to be neglected. Most people are born into their religious form, but many navigate their way to it or out of it, and their efforts are worthy of philosophical speculation.

But then, my view of philosophy isn't 'academic'; I prefer a wideness to the definition of philosophy, and "why people behave the way they do" is central to it.

it has lost or jetisoned the essential guidance that was afforded by Thoreau (and Emerson — Marcus de Brun

Were Thoreau and Emerson ever that influential? I like them both, but... An Essay on Civil Disobedience was never a best seller, and the people who were the most uncivilly disobedient--the Confederates--were scum, filth and dirt to a substantial degree.

There were a whole batch of New Englanders -- the transcendentalists, abolitionists, various religious (Shakers for instance, even Mormons, I suppose), mellowed Puritans, etc. who were something of a city on the hill.