One of the cool things they teach in statistics courses (or in self-study books such as Statistics: A Very Short Introduction (OUP link)...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 3 hours ago
I asked Gemini for historical examples of long-standing, bitter conflicts between neighbors that eventually ended. Gemini suggested (1) the Troubles of Northern Ireland, (2) the three wars between...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 4 hours ago
Hard to believe that Spain was among the first and it has now been 20 years. Ireland was 10 years ago, still 5 years ahead of Northern Ireland. I was surprised to see that quite a few South...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 1 day ago
Well, I've worked long enough with a wide variety of people to have encountered a fair number of not-very-bright individuals who could still take directions and learn stuff. Stupidity also...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 1 day ago
Obviously in Palestine/Israel the dynamic has been different for decades, so there is a lot of momentum in the direction of not coexisting. But I can't imagine any logical reason...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 1 day ago
That might soon change for the better! Already there are AI screen-only...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 1 day ago
What healthcare professionals encountered in some communities was an intransigent stupidity [...]
Is there another kind of stupidity? Intransigence is baked into the...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 1 day ago
Those two claims are irreconcilable.
Yes, if the two sides refuse to share. But there are places in the world where people from different cultures live cheek by jowl. Queens...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 1 day ago
After exchanging posts with Ignorant Amos and Ficino about movie fiction and religion, I asked ChatGPT to write something for me based on the idea that there is a very strong and clear parallel...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 1 day ago
It's hard to see the settlements fitting into a "hearts and minds" strategy for pacifying the region.
That's not going to happen when the region is...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 1 day ago
You may have seen the 2021 documentary, Ennio. I liked it a lot, and of course, they play a lot of his music.
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 1 day ago
Fascinating! The line of transmission of "boss" was opposite to that which I had supposed! It's funny that in ancient Greek, αὐθέντης also means murderer in the sense of one who does...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 1 day ago
it's not a call to violence as such but it does provoke it when Palestinians eventually resist such expansion.
Check out the Wikipedia article on Israeli settlements...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 1 day ago
Do you think that the "war of the wombs" idea exploited by Hamas et al. is qualitatively different from the practice of Israeli settlers' on the West Bank having large...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 1 day ago
We might say that to a first approximation, only the scientific method creates value; and everything else, at best, might redistribute some of that value. There's a lot of value to...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 1 day ago
According to ChatGPT, ""the word "efendi" originates from the Greek word αὐθέντης (authentēs), which originally meant master or one with authority. Over time, the word evolved...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 1 day ago
Saying I like the movie music of Ennio Morricone would be a huge understatement. I have been whistling and humming the music of Sergio Leone's movies for the last 55 years. The music of...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 2 days ago
Same precipitous loss of influence by the Church as happened in a few other countries around the same period of time: Ireland, Spain, Poland...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 2 days ago
Friends and I were amazed when parliament in Greece voted 176-76 to legalize same-sex marriage last year. Good for Mitsotakis, who is a conservative. Of course the Orthodox Church opposed it...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 2 days ago
Do you like the movie music of Ennio Morricone? I am a big fan. Maybe you've seen Once Upon a Time in America. Like Good Bad Ugly, it was directed by Leone. But I'm sure you know that.
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 2 days ago
@simhemmed:disqus and Amos, I've mentioned before, in modern Greek, "to become Catholic" as in conversion is φραγκεύω, frangevo, "I become a Frank." An expression for...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 2 days ago
Talking about high IQ levels, a mate has just sent me a TikTok of that woo-woo nutjob Christopher Langan.
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 2 days ago
By the way, when Kazantzakis wrote Zorba the Greek, the Church was a dominant force in Greek life, and it had a lot of authority. Ironically, the author himself was denied a church burial when he...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 2 days ago
It wouldn't be the first time that I've had to factcheck myself, when confidently misremembering a detail I was sure was the case.
That is happening more and more with age.
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 2 days ago
I am obviously getting senile. Despite the number of times I watched that movie, I could have sworn Zorba said "two fingers". In defense of the few neurons left in the muddy swamp that is...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 2 days ago