Gallup's Mirror

Reg,

Why doesn’t anyone trust the Media?

Well, here’s part of your trouble within the article itself, in the last four words of this quote:

taylor lorenz: Well, I think there’s a lot of culpability on the media side. Corporate media in particular has spent years selling people out and getting things wrong. Look at mainstream coverage of the Ira…

[Read more]

Thanks Reg!

Toppings and droppings.

Those chimps can of course do that. It would be surprising were it not so. I knew when i was a kid how stupid the so called scientists’ approach to other animal intelligence. But that is not same as beliefs humans hold in Trump and lefty beliefs et. al.

If chimps are capable of that sort of ideological belief formation…[Read more]

Have a great week!

In the event some lurker is confused about the Israel and Palestine morality play this video is worth watching.

Strega,

your mention of Utopia touches a long-standing thought I have. How do those Utopia Warriors behave, if they finally achieve Utopia on Earth? What do they do? They’re fighters, not bakers. What do the ‘Freedom Fighters’ imagine their role would be, in the Utopia they seem to be fighting for?

Well. not speaking for Jake, but mysel…[Read more]

Belle Rose:

did AI just outsmart us all? 😂 it’s the apocalypse. There’s a virus infected monkey running the streets.

If AI can’t draw human hands or faces properly, I wouldn’t give AI that much credit.

And COVID-19 and STIs didn’t kill off humanity the first time around, whether it came from from Bat-Soup or the Wuhan Virology Lab, so a wea…[Read more]

Strega,

Valid question and one that has occurred to me as well.

@Jake – your mention of Utopia touches a long-standing thought I have.  How do those Utopia Warriors behave, if they finally achieve Utopia on Earth?  What do they do?  They’re fighters, not bakers. What do the ‘Freedom Fighters’ imagine their role would be, in the Utopia they seem to be fighting for?

The AI faith and hope connection is a dodge. Probably reflects the biases of the public and the creators. Would not want to shoot anyone in the nuts with reality.

And yes of course there is as we all know a mundane usage of faith that is not at all the same as what is meant by faith in connection to religion. (That applies in my opinion to…[Read more]

“ Faith is a present-tense confidence and belief in something unseen, while hope is the future-oriented expectation and desire for something to happen
. Faith is often described as the foundation, or the “substance of things hoped for,” while hope is the confident anticipation that stems from that faith. Both are intertwined: faith provides the t…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Simon, you are still redefining “faith” to make it appear intellectually respectable. You are using the religious version, which explicitly praises belief without evidence, and you are stretching it to also mean rational expectations grounded in observation.

Yet, any day of the week, faith has a dual meaning of rel…[Read more]

Reg:

It’s a big escalation from “silent time” or “optional reflection” if teachers are leading prayers that reference Jesus. You can’t treat “Christians” as one monolith on this issue because tradition, race, age, and political affiliation all matter.

I would look at their graphs more if I wasn’t so distracted by their pictures so brazenly mad…[Read more]

Depositing carlinesque brain scat just like that DJ.

The butt is not the significant factor Enco. Rather it is the juxtaposition of smoking under different circumstances and the world of difference in feeling. Optimism regarding the future is not the sine qua non to valhalla that Simon says.

You think there will be elections? Pope, you are…[Read more]

Simon,

All this proves is that words can have multiple meanings, another thing that doesn’t require religion.

Jake,

Ya know that soldier who is cold and in pain danger at every moment and yet finds a moment to smoke a butt and feel the glow of life? That same guy in a quotidian mindless job at break smoking a butt might think….this sucks man. Rat on a fucking wheel. Get me off this imaginary apparatus.

In other words there are ways of achieving life s…

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Simon, you are still redefining “faith” to make it appear intellectually respectable. You are using the religious version, which explicitly praises belief without evidence, and you are stretching it to also mean rational expectations grounded in observation. That doesn’t create unity between religion and science. In a debate it confuses the point…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Simon, I think you are trying to rescue the word “faith” by redefining it. You are taking a specifically religious term that means believing in something without sufficient evidence and trying to stretch it until it becomes a synonym for “hope” or “general trust in life.” It sounds warm but it is sleight of hand.

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Thank you for your kind words Jake. I happen to be thinking in this line of thought all week…..from the piece I wrote for the previous week’s Sunday School post. We atheists should spend more of our time enjoying the fruits of freethinking.  Just Think Atheist and be in the Zone. 🙂

A plus Reg.

On a par with the best passages of Bertrand Russell and similar authors.