It serves the interest of religious authorities that their sacred texts be obscure. For distinction between authority and clarity, Martha Nussbaum’s “The Professor of Parody,” New Republic,...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 1 hour ago
I've tried to explain that I'm neither optimistic nor pessimistic, or perhaps I am optimistic and pessimistic by turns, depending on which set of assumptions I project from. (Sort like...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 1 hour ago
I wonder how much of this erosion of Roman Catholic Church moral authority results from the collapse of geocentrism playing out. The Catholic Church took a bold stand for the geocentrism of the...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 2 hours ago
If the "I" (Intelligence) part of "AI" (Artificial Intelligence) holds true, then ever since late 2022 when ChatGPT triggered the current wave of public-facing AI LLM chatbots,...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 2 hours ago
In the 13th chapter titled, Science and Evidence, P poses this challenge to R:
“I mean wouldn’t you at least admit that there’s some inconsistency in the idea of...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 2 hours ago
Just a reminder: ever since I've been posting on DC, I have said many, many times that (any) religion is based on a fairy tale. So comparing religion to movies and cartoons, it's not...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 5 hours ago
Well, sadly I don't share your optimism about AI. Sure it will do away with trucking jobs and other similar jobs but it won't raise human intelligence. There's a saying going around,...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 14 hours ago
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 · 1 day 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 · 1 day 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 · 2 days 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 · 2 days 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 · 2 days ago
That might soon change for the better! Already there are AI screen-only...
Debunking Christianity: Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives · 2 days 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 · 2 days 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 · 2 days 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 · 2 days 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 · 2 days 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 · 2 days 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 · 2 days 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 · 2 days 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 · 2 days 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 · 2 days 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 · 2 days 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
