Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Rev. Scumbag would be happy to see U.S. Rep Ilhan Omar hang. Now Christians have to resist being used to justify things that Jesus would never justify and stop believing that Trump has done more for Christians than Jesus ever did. But you can believe he will do plenty for QAnon. However don’t allow any of that to deflect from what Mike Pompeo will be doing over the next four months.

So many people in a Cleveland church got infected with Covid19 that they gave up counting.  Why is it that the States who leaders claim to be “pro-life” have such high Covid-19 deaths?

In Nigeria an atheist is being sued by an Evangelical witch hunter.

Does atheism have to be anti-religious?

After lobbying, the Catholic Church won $1.4B in virus aid.

Trump’s commission on human rights issues report undermining LGBTQ people & international law. The report itself is in the very last link at the end of this post.

A black woman sat on the grass outside an L.A. church…….

Political Correctness as an existential threat to human civilization?

This weeks’ Woo: COVID-19 parties: Urban legend or real thing?

Climate Crisis:  Could a solution be found in the rocks beneath our feet?

Ten testable properties of consciousness.

A new understanding of Herd Immunity.

Life on the slippery Earth for nobody is perfect.

The role of Cognitive Dissonance in the pandemic.

Do we need a Theory of Everything?

Mystery over Universe’s expansion deepens with fresh data.

Long Reads: The real cost of Amazon. What Rita Schwerner remembers. Political Correctness as an existential threat to human civilization?

This week I am reading this book: How Innovation Works.

Some photographs taken last week.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Coffee Break Video: A different TedTalk. A different Hitchens conversation.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Have a great week everyone!

“Now, as then, important questions arise about those transcendent foundations. To what extent do unalienable rights rest on the work of a creator Deity? Can faith in such rights be sustained without faith in God?  Can unalienable rights be known by all through reason? In the very ideas of human nature, objective reason, and a creator God have come into disrepute among intellectuals, while the view that human beings are entirely explainable in terms of the physical properties of their bodies has grown in popularity”.

REPORT OF THE COMMISSION ON UNALIENABLE RIGHTS.

Mike Pompeo’s draft asks if Human Rights can be sustained without faith in his imaginary god.

[_Robert_]

RE:A new understanding of Herd Immunity.

Surprisingly the article on ‘herd immunity’ doesn’t detail the effects of diminishing immunity over time such as what happens with colds and flu. I saw recent alarming data that shows C-19 immunity falling off rather sharply so that reinfection is possible within months. Immunity gained by vaccination is not the same as immunity gained by natural infection, so yeah…yet another unknown.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Herd Immunity may even be just wishful thinking.

[Unseen]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

To what extent do unalienable rights rest on the work of a creator Deity? Can faith in such rights be sustained without faith in God?

What is an unalienable right? In modern philosophical parlance, I suppose it would be an inherent right.

I think any rational examination would have to conclude that there is no such thing. Rights have to be legislated and enforceable to exist outside the imagination.

[Unseen]

I don’t know where else to put this, so I’ll put it here:

From Dr. Fauci.

Chickenpox is a virus. Lots of people have had it, and probably don’t think about it much once the initial illness has passed. But it stays in your body and lives there forever, and maybe when you’re older, you have debilitatingly painful outbreaks of shingles. You don’t just get over this virus in a few weeks, never to have another health effect. We know this because it’s been around for years, and has been studied medically for years.

Herpes is also a virus. And once someone has it, it stays in your body and lives there forever, and anytime they get a little run down or stressed-out they’re going to have an outbreak. Maybe every time you have a big event coming up (school pictures, job interview, big date) you’re going to get a cold sore. For the rest of your life. You don’t just get over it in a few weeks. We know this because it’s been around for years, and been studied medically for years.

HIV is a virus. It attacks the immune system and makes the carrier far more vulnerable to other illnesses. It has a list of symptoms and negative health impacts that goes on and on. It was decades before viable treatments were developed that allowed people to live with a reasonable quality of life. Once you have it, it lives in your body forever and there is no cure. Over time, that takes a toll on the body, putting people living with HIV at greater risk for health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, diabetes, bone disease, liver disease, cognitive disorders, and some types of cancer. We know this because it has been around for years, and had been studied medically for years.

Now with COVID-19, we have a novel virus that spreads rapidly and easily. The full spectrum of symptoms and health effects is only just beginning to be cataloged, much less understood.

So far the symptoms may include:
Fever
Fatigue
Coughing
Pneumonia
Chills/Trembling
Acute respiratory distress
Lung damage (potentially permanent)
Loss of taste (a neurological symptom)
Sore throat
Headaches
Difficulty breathing
Mental confusion
Diarrhea
Nausea or vomiting
Loss of appetite
Strokes have also been reported in some people who have COVID-19 (even in the relatively young)
Swollen eyes
Blood clots
Seizures
Liver damage
Kidney damage
Rash
COVID toes (weird, right?)

People testing positive for COVID-19 have been documented to be sick even after 60 days. Many people are sick for weeks, get better, and then experience a rapid and sudden flare up and get sick all over again. A man in Seattle was hospitalized for 62 days, and while well enough to be released, still has a long road of recovery ahead of him. Not to mention a $1.1 million medical bill.

Then there is MIS-C. Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children is a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs. Children with MIS-C may have a fever and various symptoms, including abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, neck pain, rash, bloodshot eyes, or feeling extra tired. While rare, it has caused deaths.

This disease has not been around for years. It has basically been 6 months. No one knows yet the long-term health effects, or how it may present itself years down the road for people who have been exposed. We literally *do not know* what we do not know.
For those in our society who suggest that people being cautious are cowards, for people who refuse to take even the simplest of precautions to protect themselves and those around them, I want to ask, without hyperbole and in all sincerity:

How dare you?

How dare you risk the lives of others so cavalierly. How dare you decide for others that they should welcome exposure as “getting it over with”, when literally no one knows who will be the lucky “mild symptoms” case, and who may fall ill and die. Because while we know that some people are more susceptible to suffering a more serious case, we also know that 20 and 30-year-olds have died, marathon runners and fitness nuts have died, children and infants have died.

How dare you behave as though you know more than medical experts, when those same experts acknowledge that there is so much we don’t yet know, but with what we DO know, are smart enough to be scared of how easily this is spread, and recommend baseline precautions such as:

Frequent hand-washing
Physical distancing
Reduced social/public contact or interaction
Mask wearing
Covering your cough or sneeze
Avoiding touching your face
Sanitizing frequently touched surfaces

The more things we can all do to mitigate our risk of exposure, the better off we all are, in my opinion. Not only does it flatten the curve and allow health care providers to maintain levels of service that aren’t immediately and catastrophically overwhelmed; it also reduces unnecessary suffering and deaths, and buys time for the scientific community to study the virus in order to come to a more full understanding of the breadth of its impacts in both the short and long term.

I reject the notion that it’s “just a virus” and we’ll all get it eventually. What a careless, lazy, heartless stance.”

ALSO:

• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by Unseen.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by Unseen.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

What is an unalienable right?

That is a very good question. Mike Pompeo said this recently:

America is fundamentally good and has much to offer the world, because our founders recognized the existence of God-given, unalienable rights and designed a durable system to protect them. (emphasis is mine).

But would I be correct in saying that this take on history is not accurate. Was it not more a case of Rights being “self-evident” (Franklin’s term) rather than “god given”. The sentiment was composed without consideration of a supernatural entity and that it is a misreading of history to suggest otherwise?

[Unseen]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

What is an unalienable right? That is a very good question. Mike Pompeo said this recently: America is fundamentally good and has much to offer the world, because our founders recognized the existence of God-given, unalienable rights and designed a durable system to protect them. (emphasis is mine). But would I be correct in saying that this take on history is not accurate. Was it not more a case of Rights being “self-evident” (Franklin’s term) rather than “god given”. The sentiment was composed without consideration of a supernatural entity and that it is a misreading of history to suggest otherwise?

“Self-evident” may be religion-free but that doesn’t make it any more intelligible. What ways would this attribute manifest itself? I mean, whether someone is intelligent or compassionate or agreeable can be self-evident I suppose, but how would possessing a right evidence itself? It sounds like religion trying to do some sort of end run or Hail Mary. (If you’re not into American sports idioms you may need to google those expressions.)

 

• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by Unseen.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

“Self-evident” may be religion-free but that doesn’t make it any more intelligible.

Yes, I agree it does not define the basis for deciding what is a Right and what is not or on what basis a right assumes universal objectivity. Who decided “Free Speech” is a right?

But I was curious as to why Pompeo stated that the Founding Fathers saw these “unalienable rights” as god given. I was wondering if the Founding Fathers had used such religious terminology or is he only using it because he believes in the trope that the Constitution was founded on “Judaeo-Christian values” (another vague term).

And yes, I get the baseball references 🙂

 

[Strega]

Thanks Reg!

[Simon Paynton]

Unseen wrote:

What is an unalienable right? In modern philosophical parlance, I suppose it would be an inherent right. I think any rational examination would have to conclude that there is no such thing. Rights have to be legislated and enforceable to exist outside the imagination.

I think that people say that rights are “God-given” because of the Christian tradition of seeing humans as being born in the image of God.  Also there are various Bible stories such as the lost sheep, the little birds:

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither. do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly. Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

and others that indicate that God takes care of every living thing.  So, if we want to be like God, we do the same.  Makes sense, if you believe in God.

From an atheist perspective:  I don’t think that rights are inherent or inalienable.  But they are asserted by the self, and given by others.

I believe Kant said that humans are valuable and rights-worthy because we are rational agents.  I think that has a number of flaws, such as excluding mentally disabled people and most non-human animals.

I think the basis for giving rights to people and other conscious beings, on a sliding scale, is that: 1)  each one is a self-generating source of flourishing; 2) in humans, this flourishing matters to the self; 3) we have the Golden Rule, a fundamental part of human cooperation, where we imaginatively and compassionately put ourselves (or a loved one) in the role of another.  Humans are already compassionate because we are interdependent and therefore need each other to be in good shape.

All of this adds up to a ready-made and accessible source of normativity regarding human rights, and the rights of other sensitive, social and intelligent creatures.

[Author]

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