Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Good news from Poland which echoes that of other European nations; There has been a “devastating” decline in religious attendance among young people. The leaders of the Sexual Predators Club in Spain meet the Cuddly One to discuss how to deal with the survivors of their abuse who have “felt wounded”.

Afterwards DJ Cuddles went to a record store and Sunday School asks readers for some more suggestions as to what CD he purchased.  .

The Religion of Peace has updated its policy for men on how and when to beat women and children.

World of Woo: No plastic bottles are ever squeezed for my skin care routine.

Environment: For 7th straight year, Earth sets record for hottest in history. Report as a pdf.

Archaeologists reveal a key date in the evolution of modern humans while a new study provides the first evidence of non-random mutations in DNA. Another look at our extinct kin, the Denisovans. The range of technologies that shaped human evolution and laid the foundation for our world.

The journey to a pig-heart transplant began 60 years ago.

Why Kierkegaard believed it’s lazy to admire our moral heroes.

Long Reads: I told a teenager that sarcasm was a sign of intelligence and she just said “OK Boomer, Whatever!” Texas shows the dangers of indifference to Omicron. Bruce McCandless of NASA and his Flying Machine.  Quantum Mechanics and the fundamental nature of reality. The importance of academic impartiality.

Sunday Book Club: A brief history of Timekeeping. (See also video below).

Some photographs taken last week.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Coffee Break Video:  The Passage of Time and the Meaning of Life with Sean Carroll. What is Spinoza’s God? Life aboard a refugee rescue ship.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Have a great week everyone! The last video above on refugees reminded me of a poem I once posted on TA.

A poem by Warsan Shire:

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough
the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off
or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here…

[StregaModerator]

Thanks Reg, and an extra thanks for the poem!!

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

The Religion of Peace has updated its policy for men on how and when to beat women and children.

This is classic patriarchal coercion and control.  It shows that religion is cultural in part, and is there to uphold the status quo in the form of what is convenient for the male species.  The sense of entitlement is overwhelming.

It’s not surprising that patriarchy combines so well with narcissistic personality disorders (dominant and controlling behaviour).

[jakelafortParticipant]

The not random headline is a bit misleading.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Fellow Unbelievers,

It is just tsk-tsking, jaw-dropping, and head-shaking that you can get stuff by modern made-to-order printing and Kindle that is more suited to Monks writing Encyclicals on parchment with quills or cave men doing pictographs on cave walls with berry juice.

Here’s a book I seen refernced favorably on another Forum I’m on frequently.

Edward Dutton
Witches, Feminism, and the Fall of the West

From the dust jacket/liner notes on Amazon:

“The archetype of the “witch” is burnt deep into the European psyche, recurring again and again in folklore and fairytales. But is she merely the stuff of fantasy? Roald Dahl warned that witches don’t always don black hats and ride on broom sticks. They “dress in ordinary clothes, and look very much like ordinary women. . . . That is why they are so hard to catch.”
In Witches, Feminism and the Fall of the West, Edward Dutton examines the history of witches and witch-hunting in light of evolutionary psychology. Throughout the centuries, witches were ostracized across Europe and often condemned and executed for sorcery and harming children. They generally adhered to a type: witches were low-status, anti-social, and childless, and their very presence was viewed as poisonous to the community. Dutton demonstrates that witches did, in their way, represent a maladaptive mentality and behavior, which undermined Europe’s patriarchal system. When times got tough-that is, when Europe got poorer or colder-the witches were persecuted with a vengeance.
Today, the evolutionary situation has been turned on its head. The intense selection pressures of the past have been overcome by the Industrial Revolution and its technological marvels. Modern witches survive and thrive in the postmodern West, still possessed by the motivations and dispositions of their sisters of yore. “Sorcery” (nihilism and self-hatred) is no longer taboo but has become a high-status ideology. Roald Dahl was all-too correct. Witches do exist, and they mean to do us harm.”

🧙‍♀️🧹😁😆😅😂🤣

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Deleting link. You can search the title, though

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

Witches do exist, and they mean to do us harm.

I’d agree with that blurb, except for this bit.  In my experience, witches are “white witches” – they intend to do good rather than harm.  It’s seen as very bad form karmically to try to hurt others with “magic”.

[AutumnParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Environment: For 7th straight year, Earth sets record for hottest in history.

I, for one, support the Earth in trying to rekindle that old flame and set new records. We have some ways to go before it beats its all time high, but I’m getting a little sick of environmentalists who can’t support the planet and its ambitions. According to scientists, in its infancy, our planet was around 2000ºC, but you never hear about Adam and Eve complaining about it in the Bible.

That aside, my mom gave me some N95 masks. I’ll probably need them for when the sky turns to ash again as the forests in the region go up in sprawling infernos this summer.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

@autumn – I think is problem is that people just won’t clean up the forests as they did in the U.S. with the “Make America Rake Again” campaign. It was the greatest campaign ever. It really worked although my fellow farmer friends in Mendocino County would disagree. They are just too liberal, I guess.

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