Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Majority of Americans say religion is losing influence in public life and which cities are the least religious?

19 reason why more people are becoming atheists.

Satanists sue Tennessee district for trying to thwart After School Satan Club.

Religious Conservatives got greedy in Indiana, and it’s costing them.

Does the Mormon Church empower women?

Do Christians who vote Republican hate their country?

Two Pakistani women get death sentence for murdering a teacher who committed blasphemy in a students dream.

Moscow concert hall attack: Why is ISIL targeting Russia?

World of Woo: A study says intermittent fasting is making people drop dead.

Environment:  The Anthropocene unit of geological time is rejected.

This is funny advice for Catholics on talking to Atheists about Christianity. As if they could even manage point 3 when most of them don’t even have a Bible. Point 6??

Every human alive today originated from one African country, study finds.

How logic and reasoning can fail as scientific tools.

The Turing Tests of today are mistaken – How Goodhart’s law holds back AI.

Long Reads: How Evolution impacts our health.  The extraordinary Life and Work of Frans de Waal. The squatters of Beverly Hills. Can our capacity for moral reasoning be strengthened.

Sunday Book Club:  Candide (after my recent stay in Lisbon, I will reread it).

Some photographs taken last week.  Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest finalists.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Coffee Break Video:  Iran: ‘This new generation wants secular democracy’.  New Rule: Identity Crisis. Islamic apologetics at its finest – debunked. ‘Intimidation game’: Douglas Murray reacts to man chided for eating during Ramadan.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Have a great week Everyone!

Thanks Strega and Unapolgetic for the links.

[jakelafortParticipant]

The pathetic apologetics of Islam is dismantled.

How many ways are we failing Muslims by coddling them? Whose interest do we serve in doing so? By making it anathema to criticize the precious ideas/beliefs that keep so many in ignorance and sustain a depraved morality? And this while women, LGBT and other less than equals are oppressed.

Was that an islamophobic faux pas?

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

Innocent Russian civilians are victims of both Islamifascist terrorists and of Putin thinking he can somehow have Muslims as allies in his Revanchist aspirations towards Ukraine and the former Soviet Empire.

Little does Putin realize that Islam, too, has it’s own global aspirations baked right into the very Qu’ran which Putin doesn’t want desecrated.

Putin Condemns Qu’ran Burning During Dagestan Mosque Visit
https://www.newarab.com/news/putin-condemns-quran-burning-during-dagestan-mosque-visit

This should also inform the U.S. and the West in their dealings with the Islamic World. We also shouldn’t think we can come out a winner by dealing with Islam-ruled nations as if they can be good actors.

Given the costly, bloody failures in Afghanistan and Iraq, the best approach should be: Start no fights but be ready to finish them completely, quickly, and ruthlessly, without lingering longer than needed to destroy the aggressor. Kill the aggressors, break their things, avoid civilians if possible, but don’t let it stop you, then pull out and do not stay to rebuild or “win hearts and minds.”

Also, since oil is the only thing most of the Islamic World has going for it, we need to get back to drilling for our own again, as well as building nuclear power plants again and encouraging our allies to do the same.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 3 weeks ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendum

[UnseenParticipant]

Obliquely related to this week’s sermon:

The number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world.

Atheists, agnostics and other people who do not affiliate with any religion – though increasing in countries such as the United States and France – will make up a declining share of the world’s total population.

(source)

[StregaModerator]

Thanks Reg!  We’ve had a bit of snow here so I’ve been digging out my car.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Fellow Unbelievers,

Oh, and no one in Moscow could shoot back, so chalk another one against Putin and a Russian legal system that doesn’t recognize a right to keep and bear arms.

[UnseenParticipant]

@ Enco

I suspect more lives would be saved if everyone had a defibrillator with them than if everyone carried a gun. There is no lack of evidence that countries where gun carrying is rare have far, far, far fewer gun homicides.

One can’t form rational public policy based on black swan events.

So, what is a “black swan event”?

Here are the key features of a black swan event:

They are extremely uncommon and unlikely to happen.

By definition, they are difficult or impossible to predict beforehand.

They have a major effect, often negative, on people, economies, or entire systems.

After they occur, people often mistakenly believe they should have been foreseen.

[StregaModerator]

I suspect more lives would be saved if everyone had a defibrillator with them than if everyone carried a gun.

Unseen I love this!

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

The extraordinary Life and Work of Frans de Waal.

I was sorry to hear of the death of Frans de Waal.  He was much more than a primatologist.  He gave me several fundamental insights into moral philosophy as well, about natural normativity and the evolutionary basis of competition.  He was kind enough to reply to one of my e-mails.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

On Frans de Waal (from The Guardian)

The honor he was proudest of, however, was the Ig Nobel prize – awarded for research that “makes people laugh, then think” – he won in 2012 with a colleague, Jennifer Pokorny, for a paper showing that chimps can recognize each other by their bottoms.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

See the movie science myths article in the new secion I created on Mythbusting.

As with firearms, defibrillators are only as good or as bad as the hands and minds of the rational, moral agents who use them. And you’d want to stop the bleeding before using a defibrillator at a crime scene, terrorist attack, or war zone.

As for “Black Swans”, what happened in Moscow wasn’t new. It happened seversl times before, each time with mass deaths and casualties:

Timeline of Attacks in Moscow Since 1999
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/03/23/timeline-of-attacks-in-moscow-since-1999-a84582

And Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the coiner of the Black Swan Theory, would agree with me that when life hands you a Black Swan, the wise will make pillows and paté.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Stega,

Be safe, don’t overexert yourself in the snow, and keep the mind active against “cabin fever.”

We’ll know something is wrong if we see an entry that keeps repeating:

“All work and no play make Strega a dull girl.
All work and no play make Strega a dull girl.
All work and no play make Strega a dull girl…”
🥶 😉 😁

[UnseenParticipant]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

As with firearms, defibrillators are only as good or as bad as the hands and minds of the rational, moral agents who use them. And you’d want to stop the bleeding before using a defibrillator at a crime scene, terrorist attack, or war zone.

Talk about missing the point. Was I seriously proposing everyone carry around a defibrillator?

I think Enco is the only one.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

The squatters of Beverly Hills.

It doesn’t sound like there are any good people in this story at all.

Nevertheless, the concept of “squatter’s rights” under new laws has been used against hard-working good homeowners and it can easily happen to anyone who has been a victim of Identity Theft who gets their name copied from public records of deeds onto bogus “leases.”. John Stossel did a story on it recently:

[Author]

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