Posts by Pompous Git 3087 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Sep 2014
"The ability of the human mind to compartmentalise such that two opposing views can be held and believed to be true at the same time still astounds me. Is that science or the work of god?"Definitely god, though I suspect work is the wrong word. I see it as irrefutable proof that god has a sense of humour.
"It would appear that - given its relatively small population - it [Australia] had a more religious environment in the 20th century than did England."In England I attended a school established by the Church in medieval times; we had daily prayers and attended church every Wednesday morning. In Australia we never had prayers at school, nor did we attend church. So I'd say that Australia was less religiously inclined.
I'm not sure who the emigrants from Australia were that you refer to, but while the settlers (immigrants) did bring their religious convictions with them, the rather mixed nature of them has led to a reasonably successful multicultural and tolerant society.
"And yet you can't really define what this "God" is."How about "God is everything that there is"?
"Every god postulated so far is simply the ejaculate of mental masturbation. Deepity conjectures bolstered by unfalsifiable nonsense."I suspect from your hysteria and rudeness that you are deeply troubled by something. Or you forgot to take your meds...
"That the Church controlled the European centres of learning was a fact. Anyone whose research looked likely to contradict the established religious dogma was likely to find themselves in serious trouble. "
If the Church controlled the university at Paris how come The Condemnation of 1210? The works of a number of scholars were condemned for pantheism and Aristotelianism. "Neither the books of Aristotle on natural philosophy or their commentaries are to be read at Paris in public or secret, and this we forbid under penalty of excommunication." The condemnation had only local force. You clearly don't understand the medieval university system if you think it was centrally controlled. The universities weren't even controlled by the cities they were located in!
In 1615 it became required that De Revolutionibus have the frontispiece modified to include that this was a mathematical theory. This followed a debate with the case for heliocentrism being put by Jesuit priest Christoph Scheiner. The Church at no time proscribed astronomy and supported many astronomers. Another Jesuit astronomer of the period of the period was Fr Grassi. Galileo insulted both. He accused Scheiner of lying when he claimed to have seen sunspots first contra the evidence. He also launched a stinging personal attack on Grassi for establishing that comets occupied the space between Earth and the sun. Galileo insisted that comets were an atmospheric phenomenon.
You still haven't provided any evidence of the Church proscribing science.
"Even in England 50 years ago it mattered what religious pigeon hole you fitted... "Yes, it was a great relief to leave England's green, unpleasant land to come and live in the Land of Under. You have my deepest sympathy...
"1) The universe just exists - always has done."
Not according to modern cosmology. The universe came into being with the Big Bang. What caused the Big Bang? And so on... Personally I believe the Big Bang, not called that but invented by the Roman Catholic priest the Reverend Monsignor Georges Lemaître to preserve the Christian account of the Creation.
Your statement 1 is consistent with my view, but not the currently accepted scientific cosmology.
"Can you name one question religion has answered?"Certainly :-)
What personal, life-orienting core commitments are consistent with my worldview?
A Christian, Muslim or Jew might answer: "To fulfill the will of God, or to obey God and enjoy him forever, or to be devoted to knowing God, or loving God."
Mine (I'm not a Christian, Muslim, or Jew): "To realise my personal potential for experiencing life, and to do as much good as I can for others in a world of social diversity and conflict."
"Objection. Assumes location not in evidence."Overruled! The "hell" of the Bible is a rendition of the Hebrew sheol (the grave), or Greek Hades the place where dead people go.
OTOH if you had objected to heaven not being a place, then I would have agreed with you. I've always taken Jesus' words: "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand" to mean it's here and now, not a location t some future time. In the words of Frank Zappa: "You'd better dig it while it's happening, because it might just be a one-shot deal."
"99% of decent god fearing secular people don't really care about religion"
god fearing = deeply religious
secular = non-religious
Oh dear, you don't really expect anybody to pay the slightest attention to what you have to say when you commence with a made up statistic and a contradiction do you?
"A lot of people try reading the bible..."Indeed. What I find intriguing is the god-botherers who knock on my door from time to time. They want to convince me that it's the infallible word of god, yet when questioned about aspects of Leviticus (much more interesting than Genesis) they confess to having never read it.
"Ever try reading Revelation while considering that the author might be in the last stages of dying of syphilis..."No, but I have thought ergotism (Saint Anthony's Fire) and think it far more likely. The first written records of a syphilis outbreak of in Europe occurred in the late 15th C at Naples during the French invasion. There has been much effort in attempting to establish a European rather than North American origin of the disease, but I remain unconvinced.
Personally I have never been able to make any sense of Revelation, nor any of the proffered explanations for its inclusions.
"You don't have to be tortured."
I'm truly relieved to hear that DougS. I really wasn't looking forward to it with any great relish ;-)
"Even fifty years ago, telling people you were an atheist might not get you the rack, but it probably would guarantee you didn't get invited to many parties."Depends on where you're living I imagine. I don't recall anyone in the part of semi-rural Australia I then lived having any great interest what your religious persuasion was. I suspect that would have already been perceived as infra dig. I can only remember one teacher at the high school I was attending having any obvious religious leanings. The chap who lent me the money to attend university (and later returned the money when I repaid him) was a lay preacher and I was firmly atheist in those days. I didn't ask for the loan and was somewhat surprised when he offered it.
I certainly accepted more invitations to parties than I should have; my studies suffered a little and I had to accept placement at one of the lesser institutions.
"What is that supposed to prove other than the fact that there was no alternative in their societies at the time if they didn't want to be ostracised or even tortured etc.?"What evidence do you have that Lord Kelvin, Wilhelm Röntgen, Pierre Duhem, Guglielmo Marconi, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Max Planck, Arthur Eddington, John Ambrose Fleming, Robert Millikan, Max Born, Arthur Compton, Ronald Fisher, Georges Lemaître, Kathleen Lonsdale, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Werner Heisenberg, Michael Polanyi, Mary Kenneth Keller, Mary Celine Fasenmyer etc were ever tortured, or threatened with ostracism for their science. As well as Nobel Prize winners, there are nuns, priests and theologians in that far from complete list. According to 100 Years of Nobel Prizes a review of Nobel prizes awarded between 1901 and 2000 reveals that 65.4% of Nobel Prize Laureates identified Christianity as their religious preference. Christians have won a total of 72.5% of all the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, 65.3% in Physics, 62% in Medicine, and 54% in Economics.
I note also that many non-Christian scientists also expressed a belief in God during the 20th C (Einstein for example). Maybe you're claiming they were tortured. I dunno, you don't seem to like providing any support for your assertions.
"Was he? Or was Christianity founded in his name?Try reading 1 Corinthians 15:1-4; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Romans 5:8; 1 John 2:2; 1 Corinthians 15:12-34. Ephesians 2:20 tells us that Christianity was "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone." See also Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:8 and Revelation 5:9-10.As your opening was false it doesn't say much for your intellect does it?"
The rather obvious fact that you haven't bothered to read the Bible, or provide a source for your assertion, says far more about your "intellect" than mine.
brainbone:
"You completely misrepresent Eisenstein's position."Actually no, I quoted him. You represent him as having a position different to that quoted. How about Paul Dirac?
"I learned to distrust all physical concepts as the basis for a theory. Instead one should put one's trust in a mathematical scheme, even if the scheme does not appear at first sight to be connected with physics. One should concentrate on getting interesting mathematics."
"This result is too beautiful to be false; it is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment."
brainbone:
"Science has answered many of these questions."
From The Existence of God (OUP : 2004), P. 53:
"Its degree of simplicity and its scope determine the intrinsic probability of a theory, its probability independent of its relation to any evidence. The simpler a theory, the more probable it is. The simplicity of a theory, in my view, is a matter of it postulating few (logically independent) entities, few properties of entities, few kinds of entities, few kinds of properties, properties more readily observable, few separate laws with few terms relating few variables, the simplest formulation of each law being mathematically simple. … A theory is simpler and so has greater prior probability to the extent to which these criteria are satisfied."
and
"It is crazy to postulate a trillion (causally unconnected) universes to explain the features of one universe, when postulating one entity (God) will do the job."
Have a nice day :-)
brainbone:
"Science is about trying to find the most reliable answer a question you can using the available data we have, admitting when you're shown to be wrong and updating that answer."Not according to Einstein:
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts."
brainbone:
"Religion is about taking the most unreliable path we've ever had to an answer"Not really... It's more about attempting to answer questions that science can't answer.
Physicist Paul Davies:
"Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves."
"Yes, I have trouble respecting religions because they do so much wrong..."Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, instructed his followers to heal the sick. The early Christians were noted by their contemporaries for tending the sick and infirm. Hence it is no surprise that today the Roman Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of health care services in the world. It has around 18,000 clinics, 16,000 homes for the elderly and those with special needs, and 5,500 hospitals, with 65 % of them located in developing countries. The Church's Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health Care Workers said that the Roman Catholic Church manages 26% of the world's health care facilities.
Can't be arsed to look at the contribution provided by the many other institutions that hew to the Christian or indeed other faiths.
The universities at Bologna (1088), the University of Paris (c.1150), and the University of Oxford (1167) were all established by the Roman Catholic Church.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Christian, but I am capable of accepting the facts of history.
"They do have an office in France.Although I'm not familiar with French taxation law, this is far from surprising. The writer of the headpiece likely forgot to include the word "Registered" before the word "Office". Rarely will the offices occupied by the workers be the same place as the headquarters of the law firm retained by the company providing the Registered Office address.....
And yet somehow the Parisian court says this doesn't count because the advertising contracts were sold through Google Ireland."
""Curmudgeonism" is one thing, showing a complete lack of respect at a funeral by being a selfish disk and not bothering to wear a tie on that ONE occasion is just highlighting the fact."Aaaah, the vile stench of cultural imperialism... The last couple of dozen funerals and weddings I've attended were largely devoid of formal attire (the funeral directors being the exception). Goths attending wore black of course, but how would we know they were Goths if they didn't? Scots and those of Scottish descent wore kilts, but showed no disdain whatsoever for those of us who eschew their idea of dress-sense. Only a complete twat would turn up to such an event dressed for a formal job interview in Australia.
"It is a sad thing that the democracies are also sliding into this kind of pit..."They were always there. Perhaps you need to read some William Cobbett.
"Manipulation of foreign elections. Hmmm... off the top of my head:"Not to forget the sacking of Australia's Whitlam government in 1975 engineered by the CIA as they have later admitted. That government's sins? Equal pay for equal work (i.e. women deserved the same amount of remuneration as men), abolition of university fees so the working class could (barely) afford to go university...
Nor forgetting the death on September 11 1973 of Salvador Allende during a coup engineered by the CIA. The list is quite long I'm afraid...
I received an email alerting me to a blog telling me of the nefarious activities of Kaspersky. My response:
"You’ve called into question the scruples and modus operandi of Kaspersky and that raises the interesting question: Why? Most likely explanation is because your own scruples and modus operandi are questionable. As an ex-Kaspersky customer I will be terminating my Vipre license when it expires and most likely returning to Kaspersky there being no great differences between your respective products. Congratulations on the own goal…"
remains in moderation.
"Your argument is a bit like blaming Sabatier for stabbings."Really? Sabatier implies a high-quality knife produced by any one of a number of manufacturers in the Thiers region of France, but more than likely it's a cheap piece of shite from China. Sabatier is not a registered brand unlike Henckel, Wusthof, or Messermeister for example who make the knives chefs use.
"I even made the installers install the NTD in my study on the other side of the house. I call it fibre to the computer."I call it fucking incredible! NBN installer insisted the NTD go in the living area adjacent to the dining table! He had to "borrow" some Cat 5 off me because he didn't have any.
Blind friend's house the NTD was installed at the opposite end of the house to his living room and computer. I donated 25 metres of Cat 5 to run from the front bedroom, past the master bedroom to the living room where the now redundant POTS outlet is and the computer. Somebody else donated the long telephone cable...
"Since when is an uptake of around 50% for anything, 'less-than-enthusiastic'?"When it's compulsory? If you don't NBN you lose Internet connectivity and frequently your telephone service.
The "guaranteed 12 Mb/s" you are so looking forward to might just be 10 Mb/s max, 3 Mb/s frequently and 0 b/s weekly. Not to mention 256 kb/s when shaped. Did I mention 10% of the bandwidth we had on ADSL? Broadband? More like fraudband...
"But this is best done by keeping the executables as stable as possible and pushing the changes to tax rates as data, preferably human readable text data."Only possible if you can anticipate what lunatic changes are going to be made to the taxation system down the track. Here in Oz for example, this month we have a change in the PAYE system that is date dependent and employee number dependent...
"To themselves and their clients. To the rest of us [ad agencies are] known as pests."Presumably then you would prefer to pay ever so much more for things which would certainly be the case without advertising.
I have very fond memories of the 1960s and 70s poring over the adverts in Electronics Australia and Electronics Today while deciding what to build next: graphic equaliser, compander, amplifier, loudspeakers... Along with ever so many other electronics enthusiasts in Oz, I used to pay for the Dick Smith Electronics Catalogue that was issued once a year.
Then there's TV advertising that funds the TV shows that ever so many people live for. Don't like the ads? Then don't watch TV. Simples really.
Perhaps I'm somewhat biased by having worked for an award-winning magazine that failed to return sufficient income for the investors, so it was folded.
The DTP revolution led to every man and his dog believing they could do just as well as the professional "pests". My favourite advertisement of all time was one such. It appeared in one of those free airline magazines you get when travelling. It was a gorgeous full-colour picture occupying a quarter page (so quite expensive to place). For the life of me I can't remember what it was advertising, but that's irrelevant in this instance. There was no business name, address, or telephone number... And of course it saved the advertiser heaps by being produced in-house by the advertiser :-)
Then we can contrast this with advertising in the good old People's Paradise:
No competitive advertising allowed
Worked to fulfill the government's economic plan by redirecting demand.
Propaganda, propaganda, propaganda...
Public service announcements (aka propaganda)
Promote use of unacceptably large inventories (stuff nobody wanted to buy)
Sell obsolete goods (see previous)
Stores were not allowed to advertise their locations
Citizens were not allowed to place classified ads
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