A mind is a thing. An object. — Bartricks

Don't think that can be right.
Objects tend to be breakable (under conservation), whereas things associated with mind are interruptible (experiences, thinking, etc).
So, processes, occurrences, though maybe memory is an exception.
The quote looks like a category mistake, and that's going by evidence mind you.

I can't find any information about air particles :chin: at least online. — The Opposite

How about Nitrogen, Oxygen, water, and pollution?

Atmosphere of Earth

Wind is moving air. :D So, I guess it's "made from" air and motion?

innate ...but so is science! — Todd Martin

I'd say a development of our natural way of learning.

We learn from accumulating experiences, interacting with it all, ...
We might then extrapolate (induction) and formalize (for deduction), systematically do away with errors (or demarcate domain of applicability), ...

A cat doesn't type weight, wind angles, force, gravity, etc into parabolic formulae and calculate, to jump onto a prey just the right way.
We might by formalizing the scenario, taken all the way to self-guided missiles.

In principle at least, it doesn't really matter exactly and exhaustively what it all is, as far as the methodologies go.

Is belief in God innate?

Most certainly and obviously. Religious fervor is just as strong today, after thousands of years of science, as it was in the most ancient of times. — Todd Martin

I'm not so sure it's "belief in God" that's "innate".
Rather, we're prone to a variety of known cognitive biases or "features", like apophenia, patternicity, personification (abductive), autosuggestion (and the reiteration effect), knowledge-gap-filling, confabulation, wishful/magical thinking.
Taken together with childhood impressionability (indoctrination), this stuff easily leads to superstitions, "seeing faces in the clouds" as it were, etc.

Ah, Frank - I love you more than words can say. — Banno

But...you just did. :)

Would he be that pesky?

Mr. Esper and General Milley worried that if they even raised their names — Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost of the Air Force and Lt. Gen. Laura J. Richardson of the Army — the Trump White House would replace them with its own candidates before leaving office. — Promotions for Female Generals Were Delayed Over Fears of Trump’s Reaction (The New York Times)

My 2 cents for now.

Guy yells in pain when his hammer misses and hits his finger instead.
Other guy notices, recognizes, points, and grunts "Hammer", "Pain".
When the grunts, the words, grow common, they're used for hammers and pains.
I'd think most have experienced the unpleasantry of pain, some by hammers.
That doesn't mean anyone has another's pain, and apparently that isn't required either.
At least hammers can be shared.
I guess, once word use stabilizes across, nuances may be discovered, and shared meanings eventually become auto-assumed.
Something similar could be said of the audio itself, saying and hearing words and phrases, plus writing and reading.
Language is social; it seems natural language can give lots of insight into others' personal experiences.

The pain is subjective (existentially mind-dependent and process-like).
The hammer is objective (existentially mind-independent and object-like).

But if it is reasonable to believe in God, why would it not be reasonable to believe in revelation? — Janus

Belief in revelation is evidently unreasonable either way. Put differently, personal revelations are unreliable.


• Did Jesus Really Visit the Americas? (Carlos René Romero; Jul 2008)
• Argument from inconsistent revelations (Religions Wiki)
• Argument from inconsistent revelations (Wikipedia)

With 100 total:

Guilty: 57 (67 required)
Not guilty: 43 (34 required)

I imagine Trump saying "he's a good guy, I like him" to various non-guilty'ers, and swearing and name-calling on various guilty'ers. :D

Ultimately, theism [...] — Wayfarer

If so, then Protestantism, Sunnism, and many other religions, are no longer theisms.
Redefining theism like so, doesn't really do much here (except rhetorically perhaps).
Not sure you can speak on other people's behalf so cavalierly.

By odd verbiage, Eagleton abstracts away semblance of common religions, and takes off into the clouds.
I suppose that may be fine in lofty theology, and your faith perhaps.
(I might take it one step further, and say that Eagleton conjures up strawmen to replace Dawkins by misrepresenting what he's on about; don't know that much about Dawkins, though he seems to care less about, say, panpsychism and Spinozism than common religions.)

"Ultimately [...]" and Eagleton doesn't represent typical faiths of people on the ground.
Not sure what Anthony Kenny would have to say; maybe this is an indication (emphasis mine):

If we reflect on the actual ways in which we attribute words such as “know” “believe” “think” “design” “control” to human beings, we realize the immense difficulty there is in applying them to a putative being which is immaterial, ubiquitous, and eternal. With a degree of anthropomorphism we can apply mentalistic predicates to animals, computers, institutions; to organisms that resemble us or artefacts that are our creations; but there are limits to anthropomorphism, and an extra-cosmic intelligence appears to me to be outside those limits. It is not just that we do not, and cannot, know what goes in God’s mind; it is that we cannot really ascribe a mind to a God at all. — Knowledge, Belief, and Faith* by Anthony Kenny, 385-386

"Acting" isn't really in atemporal's vocabulary.
We'd be talking strangely inert and lifeless, more like abstract objects.

In any possible world, a triangle will have three sides.

Hence, it is necessarily true that a triangle has three sides. — Banno

Strictly speaking, shouldn't that be:

In any possible world with triangles, a triangle will have three sides.

?

Otherwise you might inadvertently have populated all possible worlds with triangles.

Ed: was implicit

Madness on display:

Revising God's Prophecy! (16m:47s youtube)



Greg Locke has substance-free demagoguery nailed to a T. Sid Roth laughs in tongues, too. :D

Do not pay attention to the news, to the headlines, to the reports — Hank Kunneman Prophecy (Omaha, NE)

And there are people following just that — "lying left media", "news in the pocket of evil socialists", "'they' suppress or censor opposing views", ... And so a problem emerges. Problems. Popularization of "free" "alternate" (and extremist) "information" sources, isolation, echo chambers, mis-dis-trust, ... QAnon is more of the same madness.

The Bill of Rights grants freedom to such stuff, and maybe that's fine, after all, it equally allows those "Holy Koolaid" people freedom to expose the madness. A minimum of generally available, mandatory/expected education (and skills in critical inquiry) might be better. That takes resources, though.

sold out in less than 30 minutes — Olivier5

That's awesome.

In the scheme of things, it's nice to know that some politicians are actually doing something right down to hungry children on the street.
Child poverty is an awful problem (as far as I'm concerned), but often dismissed by tax-phobic politicians.

, there have been other..movements/trends as well. :sad:

Holy Hate: The Far Right’s Radicalization of Religion (2018)

Accompanied by a hyperbolic "red scare"...

, sure. I just meant that conspiracy theories haven't replaced Christianity. Rather, going by evidence, it seems more like Christians have been more prone to running with conspiracy theories.

They call themselves Christians but really it's a degenerate form of Christianity. — Wayfarer

Maybe? Watch for generalization across conspiracy theorists. And the "no true Christian" thing. Well, the QAnon'ers are goners anyway.

, the US conspiracy theorists are largely Christians, though (but vice versa surely not all Christians are conspiracy theorists).
Maybe a variation of 's Voltaire quote could be something like ...
"If you've come to believe enough absurdities, then what's one more?"
Might be evident to some extent:

A particular strength of our findings is that we assessed the interactions of a converging set of cognitive biases in a single theoretical model that explained several types of supernatural beliefs — Cognitive biases explain religious belief, paranormal belief, and belief in life’s purpose (2013)

Secular children were more likely than religious children to judge the protagonist in such fantastical stories to be fictional. The results suggest that exposure to religious ideas has a powerful impact on children's differentiation between reality and fiction, not just for religious stories but also for fantastical stories. — Judgments About Fact and Fiction by Children From Religious and Nonreligious Backgrounds (2014)

The results showed that supernatural beliefs correlated with all variables that were included, namely, with low systemizing, poor intuitive physics skills, poor mechanical ability, poor mental rotation, low school grades in mathematics and physics, poor common knowledge about physical and biological phenomena, intuitive and analytical thinking styles, and in particular, with assigning mentality to non-mental phenomena. — Does Poor Understanding of Physical World Predict Religious and Paranormal Beliefs? (2016)

more radical participants displayed less insight into the correctness of their choices and reduced updating of their confidence when presented with post-decision evidence
[...]
our findings highlight a generic resistance to recognizing and revising incorrect beliefs as a potential driver of radicalization — Metacognitive Failure as a Feature of Those Holding Radical Beliefs (2018)

A first-hand account, which the author then relates to the US:

Fascism is Not an Idea to Be Debated, It’s a Set of Actions to Fight (by Aleksandar Hemon on Literary Hub; Nov 1, 2018)

I'm guessing Hemon has read Umberto Eco.

Those who don't learn mistakes from the past are doomed to repeat them — paraphrasing Santayana

Anyone know how much truth there is to this stuff?

• Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General (The New York Times; Jan 22, 2021)
• New York Times: Trump and DOJ attorney had plan to replace his acting AG and undo Georgia election result (Washington's Top News; Jan 22, 2021)

The Georgia runoffs later seemed to confirm the election results.

, I can heartily recommend the Bernie meme inauguration threads out there for a good laugh.

Haven't read the two articles yet, just glossed over a few paragraphs.

Every adult should be able to make as many effective decisions without fear or favor about as many aspects of her or his life as is compatible with the like freedom of every other adult. [...] Apart from prohibiting interference with the freedom of others, liberalism does not have any particular positive doctrines about how people are to conduct their lives or what personal choices they are to make. — The Liberalism of Fear by Judith N Shklar

Just FYI, there is some history to this take on liberalism/liberty/freedom. Elements can be found in the Cortes of León (1188), the Codex Holmiensis (1241), ..., the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), this one in particular (which Thomas Jefferson aided in putting together):

Article IV – Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the fruition of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law. — Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789

The French Revolution was nasty business, but they did seem to flesh some things out well for the future — only equal freedom in principle limits individual freedom.

Embedding morals in political codes doesn't seem easy, but restricting freedom to non-cruelty is certainly intuitive. Looking forward to actually reading the articles. (y) :)

, dang, I'll have to watch the movie again, s'been a while. :)

Seesaws Built On U.S. Border Wall Win Prestigious Design Prize (NPR; Jan 19, 2021)

Seems kind of symbolic.

Extremists sometimes quote each other interspersed among others:

Yes, It Was a Stolen Election (John Perazzo; Frontpagemag; Dec 23, 2020)

(The Federalist, Breitbart, The Epoch Times, Washington Examiner, The Daily Wire, Project Veritas, ...)

Questionable Source
Factual Reporting: Low
Extreme Right, Propaganda, Conspiracy, Anti-Muslim — Media Bias Fact Check: Frontpage Magazine

Free expression with accountability of some sort seems like a good idea.
There are people out there only getting their news from such publications, e.g. having been told everything else is ungodly deception and lies, and when that turns to action, problems happen.
If I told my hopeless colleague that drinking a liter of Vodka + bleach would take care of their headache, then I might just be right, and I'd definitely be immoral and have committed a crime.

The lighter side of the darker side :D

Don't know how representative this is ...

The Trump Mob In Their Own Words (5m:55s; The Bulwark; Jan 13, 2021)

... but those people are reciting the conspiracy theories.

Parler refugees — Banno

They also have other echo chambers and propaganda sites, like Gab (gab·com) and Turning Point USA (tpusa·com).
I'm sure their user-bases have gone up recently.
I think the former is hosted by Azure. The latter is transparently McCarthyism.
Anyway, seems likely at the moment that they'll find other (Presidential) candidates down the line.

, Google and Apple stopped offering the Parler app in their app stores, Amazon took Parler offline (this is basically where Parler lived). Without the host (Amazon), there's no Parler. The app could be made available outside Google and Apple, and a web-based frontend might still access the Amazon backend hosting (much like Facebook or The Philosophy Forum, for example). Anyway, those companies are capitalist.

Would this count as a high crime/misdemeanor, going by the definition (per ), or is that not the spirit of the law?

Trump has stated multiple times that he lost the election due to fraud, a punishable crime.
Trump has not prosecuted anyone for that.
Or established that to be the case, which would be a prerequisite for prosecution.
Trump has a legal apparatus at his fingertips and resources to thoroughly investigate.

I guess simply lying may not be a high crime/misdemeanor.

@Rafaella Leon, here's roughly what I'd (ask you to) do, to start making a case:

^{Draw up timelines for each relevant locale, places where votes were counted, that stuff.
Mark all relevant events on them, referring to evidence (the more evidence the better, the less the worse).
Stack the timelines, especially if something is relevant across locales.
Mark open ends, e.g. unknown origins of material evidence, whatever.
Draw up a chart of alleged actors, including unknowns.
Connect actors that (must have) cooperated or conspired together, include their (corroborated) statements.
Add (corroborated) statements of others, e.g. photographers, witnesses, and cross-reference timelines/evidence.
Determine alternate scenarios that might explain the evidence (the more weaker explanations the better).}

So, a technical thing, like forensics, reconstruction.
The allegations are fairly serious, I'd expect something fairly good to support them.

I wonder, though, why wouldn't the President have gotten someone to do that?
Sure would be better than some scattered unsourced photos of stacks of paper with some arrows and circles on them and such, or just saying so.

@Brett, FYI, I wanted to see for myself, due to rumors on the street and FBI warnings across most US states. The backend hosts apparently shut Parler down because of messages like those posted, lots of them. Make of it what you will. :shrug:
Personally, I'd be somewhat reluctant to just remove/ban it all, but that may just be me; other platforms do have means to force-tag posts, make it a bit slower to get to offensive posts, etc.

As far as I can tell (I know some of those guys), there's a McCarthyist type fear-dread of their faith/culture going away, which easily turns to hate. Things like "commies" "socialism" "taxes" "Marxists" "leftard" "big government" "globalism" are special loaded/pejorative/trigger words here. So, anyway, this contributes to far-right moves for (some) Christians. Not that there are that many communists in the US as far as I know (Sanders certainly isn't one) — unless you ask those guys. Trump has become / is their guy (to an extent).

_{Holy Hate: The Far Right’s Radicalization of Religion (Southern Poverty Law Center; Feb 10, 2018)
The Rapture and the Real World: Mike Pompeo Blends Beliefs and Policy (The New York Times; Mar 30, 2019)
Christian Nationalists Aim to Dismantle this Core Freedom (Religion Dispatches; Jan 15, 2020)
Pompeo claims private property and religious freedom are 'foremost' human rights (The Guardian; Jul 16, 2020)}

I was trying to get an impression of what was going on at Parler (now offline) ...

Parler is filled with coffee shop talk for Nazis (Nov 18, 2020) ugh :/

Apparently, someone grabbed terabytes of Parler posts, though I'm not sure if it's publicly available.
Head over to donk_enby's twitter feed for details.
I imagine it's just the usual rambling and raving littered with the usual keywords.





The tone of Trump and crowd have an undercurrent of certain sub-cultures, where loyalty trumps truth (pun intended), where alignment outweighs doing the right thing - a divisive or alienating Us-versus-Them sentiment.
"Us" have zeal, guns, leadership, a tint of fear hate paranoia, and sufficient resources to both pollute the general public, reinforce internal pseudo-trust, and further sweep up those disposed to fringe.
Not pretty.

Maybe the Trumpers are recruiting more folk?

Trump Supporters Invite BlackLivesMatter Protesters on Stage at MOAR Rally (6m:44s youtube)

I am talking about the “fake news” as a pretext for censorship — NOS4A2

• Veracity of statements by Donald Trump
• List of conspiracy theories promoted by Donald Trump
• AP FACT CHECK: Trump distorts record on National Guard in DC

I'm sure the lists are incomplete. :D When serial liars become the go-to authority for a lot of people with zeal and guns, then it could well make sense for privately owned platforms to kick them off.

Trump’s Legacy: Voters Who Reject Democracy and Any Politics but Their Own — Wayfarer

(y)

I guess there are different ways to protest...

• Baton Rouge killing: Black Lives Matter protest photo hailed as 'legendary' (Jul 2016)
• Protests in Minneapolis and across the US following the death of George Floyd (May 2020)
• 'I am notoriously naked': Portland protester dubbed 'Naked Athena' is revealed as a sex worker in her 30s who says her face-off with police was unplanned (Jul 2020) :D
• The Story Behind Banksy (Feb 2013)
• Flower Power (photograph) (Oct 1967)

As far as I can tell, the 1960s movement did have impact throughout the West, for better or worse.
This is different:

• Holy Hate: The Far Right’s Radicalization of Religion (Feb 2018)
• Some of the Most Visible Christians in America Are Failing the Coronavirus Test (Apr 2020)

With a large growth in readily available (dis-mis-mal-)information, demagoguery, and confirmation bias, the stage is set.
I (personally) tend to run with free expression - combat crap with more free speech.
The dark side thereof is now on display.
By the way, has Pompeo made any statements or something? (haven't seen anything myself)

I guess people know, just thought Gravel Institute made a fair point (apologies in advance for the spamminess):

, congratz Georgia et al (y)

:D

Apparently some folk are betting and biting nails over this:

Election Needles: Georgia Senate Runoffs (The New York Times)

Republicans have taken a narrow lead in the tabulated vote, but the Democrats are clear favorites in both races. The overwhelming majority of remaining votes are in the Atlanta metro area, and while the race remains competitive, there's no indication that the Republicans are poised to outperform expectations. The big Democratic vote left: the DeKalb County early vote. We expect these 170,000 votes to break for Ossoff by an 85-15 margin.

(Will the conspiracy theorists also see faces in the clouds here...?)

Would this be applicable here?
§ 21-2-604. Criminal solicitation to commit election fraud; penalties :: 2016 Georgia Code

Or, I guess Trump could try suing Raffensperger for recording the call? :D

Dang, lawyering must be good business these days.