Sunday School

Sunday School May 14th 2023

This topic contains 11 replies, has 6 voices, and was last updated by  PopeBeanie 10 months, 2 weeks ago.

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  • #48236

    Southern Baptists lost nearly half a million members in 2022.

    Jewish women cite Kentucky’s Religious Freedom law in contesting state abortion ban.

    Catholics are getting giddy over news of another potential Eucharistic miracle.

    The coronation isn’t for us. It’s for the Church.

    Conservative Christians want more religion in public life. Texas lawmakers are listening.

    Are some human rights more important than others?

    World of Woo: Peddling misinformation about diet and cancer.

    Environment: The far north of is burning—and turning up the heat on the planet

    A tale of two gun countries.

    Woke corporations aren’t your friends.

    Debunking the Dunning-Kruger effect.

    Why some people hand their lives over to cults.

    A lack of alien signals actually tells us a lot.

    Long Reads: Death is everywhere in Kherson.  Why not scientism?  AI: Let’s worry about the right things.

    Sunday Book Club:  Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories and Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry.

    Some photographs taken last week.

    While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

    Coffee Break Video: How our brain creates the delusion of God. Mindscape Ask Me Anything, Sean Carroll | May 2023. What if you were born 50 years earlier? Bernie Sanders meets Frankie Boyle – It’s OK to be angry about Capitalism.

     

    #48238

    Have a great week everyone!

    #48239

    Strega
    Moderator

    Thanks Reg!

    #48241

    _Robert_
    Participant

    “It’s the guns, stupid” is a common invocation after another senseless loss of life to a mass shooting in the US. And it’s a challenging one, too, especially as more queer, BIPOC, and unhoused people are articulating the greater safety they feel with firearms for self-defense, in a political climate where state officials are less likely to value their protection.

    Oh, the irony that LGBTQ, homeless, and the mentally ill are arming themselves these days.

    #48242

    _Robert_
    Participant

    I think the authors of “Debunking the Dunning-Kruger Effect” overestimated their ability to debunk the Dunning-Kruger effect. And there is no way I am wrong.

    #48245

    Unseen
    Participant

    The Dunning-Kruger Effect is the biggest pile of horseshit since The Germ Theory of Disease.

    #48246

    TheEncogitationer
    Participant

    Fellow Unbelievers,

    Uh, wasn’t Serbia engaged in “ethnic cleansing” of Bosnians, Croatians, and Montenegrins just 30 years ago? Yeah, no, their leaders have nothing to tell anyone about violence or guns.

    And although he should have avoided that teeth-gritting D-word and replaced it with “Individualism,” George Orwell got it right.

    The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do: they cannot give the factory-worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. That rifle, hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or laborer’s cottage, is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.

    –George Orwell

    George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). The Complete Works of George Orwell: A patriot after all, 1940-1941

    • This reply was modified 10 months, 2 weeks ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendum
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    #48250

    Unseen
    Participant

    Regarding the article on freedom of religion…

    What IS freedom of religion, anyway?

    Is it the right of a religion to exist and to be practiced unhindered, including in some cases regulating society, or is it the right of individuals to practice or not practice a religion as they see fit?

    Imagine a religion that dictates its women must wear chastity belts, is that okay even if the practice is limited to its own female members though the practice is illegal under secular law? Can secular society outlaw circumcision as a barbaric mutilation of male children equivalent in some ways to the genital mutilation of females under Islam in some regions?

    I don’t have the answer though I tend to favor personal freedom.

    #48251

    Unseen
    Participant

    Re: A Lack of Alien Signals Actually Tells Us a Lot

    That there’s no life anywhere in the Cosmos is a thesis that borders on the silly. That such life evolved into highly organized, technological life long enough ago for their signals to have reached us today is a lot less silly.

    The universe is vast and while it is still young (if one believes the Big Bang Theory), it is old to us. But evidence of intelligent and highly technological life may not reach us in time for us to become aware of it, unless someone seriously believes that mankind will still exist on Earth a very long time from now.

    I think our best hope for becoming aware of intelligent life elsewhere may be UFO’s, though I think the distances and timespans involved in interstellar travel are so huge that even all of those may be credited to natural anomalies or even scientific laws as yet undiscovered, a phenomenon hinted at by black energy and black matter.

    So, in other words, I don’t hold out much hope.

    #48255

    Unseen
    Participant

    In the

    That there’s no life anywhere in the Cosmos is a thesis that borders on the silly.

    That such life evolved into highly organized, technological life long enough ago for their signals to have reached us today is a lot less silly.

    I phrased it poorly. Should say…

    That there’s no life anywhere in the Cosmos is a thesis that borders on the silly. That such life evolved into highly organized, technological life far enough away that their signals haven’t reached us by now is a lot less silly.

    • This reply was modified 10 months, 2 weeks ago by  Unseen.
    #48263

    _Robert_
    Participant

    The Dunning-Kruger Effect is the biggest pile of horseshit since The Germ Theory of Disease.

    Exactly, LOL. This is way too easy.

    #48268

    PopeBeanie
    Moderator

    At least one of our spacecraft, the Parker Solar Probe has attained a velocity of about .06% the speed of light. It’s not hard to imagine that we could, only with current technology, send a smaller probe out of the solar system (e.g. with multiple planet gravitational assists) at perhaps 1% the speed of light. A hundred years from now, maybe 10%?

    Low mass is key, so imo it’s quite reasonable to expect the majority of any alien probes to be tiny. Entire space ships would not be sent so fast and so far, or with full-grown biological creatures. Small, AI vessels would be much more common, especially if they could self replicate and disperse, shotgun style.

    Who knows how it could/would actually happen? I’m just pointing out that it’s increasingly easy to see how possible it is to cross such distances within the lifetime of (say) one’s planetary system, or to and from nearby parts of one’s galaxy. While it should not be surprising if they don’t advertise themselves before they reach their potential destinations and set up shops.

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