Simon Paynton
@simonpaynton
Active 1 week, 3 days ago-
Simon Paynton replied to the topic Sunday School February 1st 2026 in the forum
Sunday School 6 months, 3 weeks agoReg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Modern physics does not operate with any variable for time = flow. No equation contains a term to describe ‘time is moving’. Relativity explicitly forbids universal flow as different observers in different locations disagree on temporal ordering.Is this not “argument from ignorance”? We can’t explain it, ther…[Read more]
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Sunday School February 1st 2026 in the forum
Sunday School 6 months, 4 weeks agoReg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
I needed to stop confusing time passing with time as a coordinate 🙂Yes, but the coordinate keeps changing as time passes. Or, as you pass time.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Sunday School February 8th 2026 in the forum
Sunday School 6 months, 4 weeks agoReg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Do we cooperate or compete to survive?It’s interesting to think about the conditions where it’s optimal for the individual to cooperate, or to compete. As a species, it’s necessary to cooperate to survive. As individuals, it’s sometimes optimal to cheat.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Freethinkers Must Be Free Spirits, In My Opinion in the forum Small Talk 7 months ago
loganharris wrote:
To Sammy, we were too dim to realize that organized religion had evolved for a reason, and to oppose it so much was a character flaw.Even if it was for worthy goals, there are other ways of achieving those worthy goals, and we don’t have to use religion. Unless one of those goals is “worshiping God”, in which case you’re…[Read more]
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Freethinkers Must Be Free Spirits, In My Opinion in the forum Small Talk 7 months ago
loganharris wrote:
To Sammy, we were too dim to realize that organized religion had evolved for a reason, and to oppose it so much was a character flaw.But everything happens for a reason. That’s a dumb reason to follow religion. It evolved for all kinds of reasons and purposes. So what?
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Freethinkers Must Be Free Spirits, In My Opinion in the forum Small Talk 7 months ago

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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Freethinkers Must Be Free Spirits, In My Opinion in the forum Small Talk 7 months ago
I consider myself a free thinker, and other people consider me to be a free spirit. In my experience, the two tend to go together as people take their free-spiritedness into their thinking. I consider someone who is not a free thinker to be a dumbass, as it’s an intellectual failing not to be. So, ideologues are behaving like a dumbass.
The fr…[Read more]
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Sunday School February 1st 2026 in the forum
Sunday School 7 months agojakelafort wrote:
Don’t knock sexual repression. It is great for creating teenage and early twenties suicide bombers.It’s worst in highly patriarchal countries, where the rich men hoover up all the wives, and the poorest men are left with no-one to marry.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Sunday School February 1st 2026 in the forum
Sunday School 7 months agoReg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
States with higher percentages of evangelical Protestants, theists, and biblical literalists tend to have higher overall frequencies of Google searches for the term “porn.”Similar work connecting religiosity and web searches found a link between state-level religiosity and searches for explicit content like “po…
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Sunday School February 1st 2026 in the forum
Sunday School 7 months agoReg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Why Ideology, not Faith, drives the Culture War.This article is super-interesting. I know you’ve got to be clever to do all that statistics stuff. Evangelicals are conservative and have conservative (i.e., highly patriarchal) views. Non-religious are mainly liberal and have liberal views. That makes a lot of sen…[Read more]
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Simon Paynton posted a new activity comment 7 months ago
Happy Birthday Rich! I’m actually a bit older than you
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Sunday School January 25th 2026 in the forum
Sunday School 7 months agojakelafort wrote:
ask him to justify his framing of almost every issue through the narcisstic lens of Trump. How is it that the president of the USA subordinates the interests of the people he is representing as the ultimate public servant to his own interests?If you did that, he would ruin you, and possibly have you shot, lol. Is anyone still…[Read more]
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Sunday School January 25th 2026 in the forum
Sunday School 7 months, 1 week agoReg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
My take (yours may differ) on the cause of the fracture was replacing (or displacing) the concept of universal individual rights in favor of group-identity moral ranking. A lot of modern progressiveness has moved away from treating everyone as equal individuals and toward treating people primarily as members of… -
Simon Paynton replied to the topic Sunday School January 11th 2026 in the forum
Sunday School 7 months, 2 weeks agojakelafort wrote:
I thought as mass approaches speed of light it becomes infinite?I think that mass becomes infinite as it approaches the speed of light through space, not time.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Sunday School January 11th 2026 in the forum
Sunday School 7 months, 2 weeks agojakelafort wrote:
And if big bang is a beginning at what point does blocking become the nature of the thing as a whole?It’s a shape. I can’t visualise something in 4D, but I presume we have length, breadth, height, and time. Eventually, if there’s heat death, then events stop happening and time runs out.
Inside the shape, local events exist a…[Read more]
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Sunday School January 11th 2026 in the forum
Sunday School 7 months, 2 weeks agojakelafort wrote:
Does it follow that the universe is eternal?You’re talking about a finite 4-dimensional block. It must have edges. At one edge is the Big Bang. At the other end is heat death, or whatever its terminating fate is. In between, is the history of the universe and all its internal events.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic You don't need determinism… in the forum Small Talk 7 months, 2 weeks ago
Unseen wrote:
The block universe gives an unbelievable account of experience. If you take it seriously, nothing actually happens, however experience consists of a cluttered stream of experiences.Yet, we travel through spacetime at the speed of light. So, the block universe could exist. But I am still unable to connect the “self” with “now”.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic You don't need determinism… in the forum Small Talk 7 months, 2 weeks ago
Unseen wrote:
No, you feel you have a certain amount of agency.What I’m saying is, we treat ourselves and each other as if we have agency, whether we “really” do or not. It’s on this level that we’re held accountable.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic You don't need determinism… in the forum Small Talk 7 months, 3 weeks ago
Unseen wrote:
Some will say, “But that’s nihilistic. That means there’s no point to anything. The child abuser, the family annihilator, the terrorist…they’re no better or worse than the hero or altruist or selfless caregiver.”I don’t know what to tell you other than…”Yup! In a very real sense, we’re not the author of our actions, no matter…
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic You don't need determinism… in the forum Small Talk 7 months, 3 weeks ago
Unseen wrote:
The notion that the big bang, the trillions of galaxies and septillions of planets, the inception and explosion of life forms on Earth or anywhere, the construction of the Pyramids and The Sphynx, the sinking of The Bismarck, and that time my cat destroyed my tablet by knocking a coffee mug onto it, as well as everything included in… - Load More