Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

@theencogitationer  – Your descriptions of the various foods are good. I was reminded of Ambrose Bierce’s “The Devil’s Dictionary” which I dip into on occasion. Here.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

Bierce had some real doozies that could have added comic relief to Webster’s work if they were contemporaries, as well as some things that wouldn’t pass muster with either standards of his day or now.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendum

[jakelafortParticipant]

Enco,

Where do you come down on organic food v non?

That sunday school video about evil/stupidity is food for thought. Reg threw one right down the middle. For Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor who opposed the Nazis, and made a distinction between evil and stupidity, stupidity was more dangerous than evil. One can be stupid and yet intelligent. Stupidity is a choice to resist our skeptical nature and yield to groupthink so that one’s mind stops questioning and is no longer amenable to persuasion through logic.

Look in the mirror dead guy. Lutheran much? The existence of religion enables and encourages stupidity. That stupidity leads to and enables evil. Ask questions and be discouraged in that curiosity. Call into question the institution itself and risk severe punishment or execution. Once having permitted indoctrination of little ones they are gonna be more amenable to manipulation. Irrational beliefs are glorified and questioning is punished. So what do you expect from the flock? Critical thought?

Bonhoeffer could not see he too was stupid. Critical thought is not selective. It is not simply seeing through xy and z. It is applying reason to all issues. Good on him for seeing the German people as not necessarily unintelligent or evil, just stupid. Religion itself, its longevity and universality is proof of how very vulnerable we are to external influences that cause our curiosity and skepticism to be subordinated.

And the other error by Bonhoeffer is at least from getting him second hand how he posits free will into the equation. It is like Joe and Jane human are choosing to be stupid in exchange for acceptance into a group or in exchange for the mindless comfort of having unassailable beliefs.

I am not sure stupidity is the right moniker for the tendency of the overwhelming number of humans to be…well stupid. haha. I agree with the moderator that encouraging critical thought and being aware of some of the traps of becoming a mainstream human are well founded. I am just not sure the great majority of humans are capable of critical thought in all matters and issues. Clearly Bonhoeffer was not.

So i think it is high time that the noble experiment of teaching critical thought is underway. K through higher education. How to think is paramount. Seems basic. Seems more important than ever. As part of the critical thought movement in my chimerical fantasy we would observe the dismantling of the endless fucking bs of historical and contemporary thought. What is wrong with dictatorship, communism, nazism, religion and in particular Islam, today’s far right and far left. Lets replace it with an understanding of human nature and stop demonizing various identities. Stop with the childish good guy/bad buy narratives. Stop superimposing evils committed by other groups onto scapegoated groups. Realize how similar we all are. One big ass scratching tribe.

It is far closer to the truth. Are there differences in intelligence and innate nature in various populations? Almost surely. That is probably consistent with evolution. And yet the variations in populations are insignificant compared to the similarities of all humans wherever they hang their hats. Until we do that and work on defeating… I am gonna stop because i know how ridiculous it is to contemplate any of the following unwritten ideas as achievable. Let the Zionists be defeated and we will have our utopia once the world is cleansed of…

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake,

Where do you come down on organic food v non?

Refer back to my previous statements. If it is Carbon-based, as detected by Dr. “Bones” McCoy’s Tri-Corder, it is Organic, so everybody is automatically going Organic without even thinking about it.

Off the top of my head, about the only food item people consume on a regular basis that is not Organic is salt (NaCl). Whether it is sea salt, Kosher salt, ice cream salt, or Pink Himalayan salt, it’s best for the blood pressure not to eat too much.

It’s hard to avoid salt in the diet, but I at least do not add salt to anything. There are some great spice and herb mixes that add flavor without salt. Mrs. Dash is a commercial version, but there are other good salt-free seasoning recipes in books and online.

Lutheranism is an especially stupid flavor of Christian irrationality. The Thomists of Roman Catholicism at least gave lip service to Aristotlean syllogistic reasoning as “the Handmaiden of Theology.”. But Martin Luther outright condemned Reason as “a beautiful whore” and called emperical evidence “a sin of the eyes”. Luther’s vulgar, violent essay “On the Jews and Their Lies” was a favorite of the Nazis.

Luther was so stupid, he didn’t even have the sense to post his 95 Theses on the Church door with glue instead of nails. He could have used his Reason and been the inventor of the Post-It Note™ and done something genuinely good for the world.

Whenever you hear the religious use the word “discernment”, that is code for “let’s turn on our brains just this once for the crisis at hand, then go back to sleepwalking.”

Of course, Secular people are just as subject to turning off the brain, as the ridiculous infighting and cancelling among Secular groups amply demonstrates. Some have pronounced New Atheism as dead from the walking death of Wokeness. And aside from this, we can all make dumb mistakes in mundane personal affairs. Myself included. Each of us have to watch ourselves.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Closing a tag

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Regular table salt often contains anti-caking agents (like sodium ferrocyanide or calcium silicate), which are synthetic additives. These could further disqualify a product from being labeled as “organic.” But even if unrefined sea salt is used, it can never be labeled 100% Organic…..salt is a mineral so can never be called an organic compound.

 

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

Regular table salt often contains anti-caking agents (like sodium ferrocyanide or calcium silicate), which are synthetic additives. These could further disqualify a product from being labeled as “organic.” But even if unrefined sea salt is used, it can never be labeled 100% Organic…..salt is a mineral so can never be called an organic compound.

All this is true, though the mere lack of Carbon will suffice to make salt Inorganic. It’s doubtful much Carbon would be in unrefined sea salt, since fish and sea animals would sink to the bottom when they die and microbes would get broken up and burnt away with heat from desalination. Adding ash from the cookout charcoal will make salt organic but decidedly not tasty.

Another thing about salt: Iodized salt is not necessary if you have either enough vegetables or a good multivitamin and Iodized salt makes food taste like motor oil.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Zalts!

Gimme lots of it. Love it love it love it. But i understand if you have high BP then it is in moderation. My BP is good because i kill myself as often as possible. When i was a sedentary great big fat person practicing law it was too high.

And while we are often admonished about too much salt in our diet be mindful that too little is a condition known as hyponatremia. It is not fun and can be fatal if not treated.

As to the designation organic as it relates to food i always thought it was simply a way of saying no pesticides or added shit. And don’t we have ample evidence that in sufficient concentrations that shit will make ya sick or lead to some disease? All things being equal isn’t it more intelligent to buy organic blueberries for instance. Grown in a greenhouse.

[jakelafortParticipant]

“Moral purity means observance of moral norms. So, woke people can go big on purity. So can nazis. So can religious people. That doesn’t make it a bad thing, but it can get very oppressive and tiresome, to the exclusion of values like compassion.”

So says Simon and Simon sez. Hmm. Yeah i can’t subscribe to notion that it is not a bad thing. I agree some moral norms are neutral or good but i disagree that an unexamined norm isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It is the equivalent of faith in religion. Faith may enable some neutral and some good shit to flourish. On balance though it is the absolute categorical wrong thing to guide one’s actions or inform one’s ideas about reality and about morality.

I don’t think it is necessary to elaborate. But one thing i will touch on is how wrongheaded it is to decide that morality is always relative and that we should not judge others who make us retch and puke purple and green chunks because of their vile norms.

In contradistinction ya hear about/read about idea that morality can only be infallible and not subject to criticism due to its relativity if it is provenance is god. Absolute BS.

[_Robert_Participant]

Hmm, let’s see. Here is the playbook.
Step 1) Destroy the ability of the Social Security Administration and Medicare to function effectively.
Step 2) Point to this as a reason to end it. My hero!

I can’t think of any Mexican immigrants that threaten me. I can think of a South African immigrant who is actively trying to destroy my retirement income and health insurance. At the same time lower taxes for billionaires and corporations.

American are neck and neck IQ-wise, with a box of hammers. Grandma’s a-movin-in kids..or maybe she’ll live under a bridge.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Democracy dies in dumbness and stupidity.

“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.” – Plato

The above link has a good article on Bonhoeffer.

 

 

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Moral Purity rocks!!

 

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake,

Doing categorically without modern pesticides could mean some not-so-well Sowellian trade-offs:

Mideaval Pest Control

Medieval Pest Control

So sternly-worded letters to rodents and anecdotal remedies by people with primitive grasp of causal connections, remedies that may not even have reproducible results.

And these were the innovators of that time. According to my British History Professor, some British feudal estates did nothing but plant extra crops to feed the pests.

Neither of these approaches knew of Evolution and Genetics favoring species smart enough to go where the crops are and signal others of their species and gorge the most crops until the crops are gone.

Greenhouses can help isolate crops from pests, but they require energy to protect crops from frost and cold. And energy sources can produce other toxins besides pesticides.

Now pesticides should be used cautiously and made friendlier to humans and Genetic Engineering can possibly breed crops that are more resistant to pests, but too many Crunchy types wouldn’t go for any of these rational courses. For Crunchy types it’s either Eden 2.0 or Hellscape on Earth.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

I’d run from that therapist, take the kid away, and get the kid an RC car and a tour to an auto factory to teach the wonderful benefits of individual tranportation.

• This reply was modified 1 month ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendum

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

jakelafort wrote:

But one thing i will touch on is how wrongheaded it is to decide that morality is always relative and that we should not judge others who make us retch and puke purple and green chunks because of their vile norms.

Put it this way, different people value different norms and goods, and some of those norms/goods are incompatible with each other.

[Author]

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