DrKrettin

 

Your post opens the whole "people aren't competent and thus have to be taken care of / thought for," and I object to that very strongly. The whole "paternal government" thing is a huge negative in my opinion. Worse, it's a self-fulfilling thing - when you impose a paternal government on people they start to forget how to be truly free. Give them the freedom, and after a while you'll have a population worthy of it.

You might object to it, it is objectionable, but the reality is that generally people vote on the most primitive, uninformed and ridiculous criteria. If you are happy with that, then great, and the USA get a manifestly incompetent arsehole as POTUS and we have the present situation in the UK. I see the only alternative is that peoples choice should be restricted to choosing an MP to represent their interests. Parliament stands a much better chance of making the best political decisions, and the people can change their politicians of not satisfied.

On the plus side for all the people in the UK we actually have a democracy whereby politicians are actually going to have to take into account all the different perspectives.

 

But it is precisely because we have a democracy that we got into this mess in the first place. It is, or should be, a representative democracy in which everybody votes for a person the represent them in parliament and make political decisions on their behalf. That kind of democracy makes sense. But the brexit referendum was the expectation that an average person could make an informed decision about something as complex as the EU. This was not realistic, and the net result of a combination of apathy by the youth and misinformation and xenophobia by the older generation gave us this result. So being a democracy is not always a plus, it can also be mob rule.

I know, I know!

I've remembered - legs?

Today I learned that the four-tusked elephant was an elephant-like animal with ...... damn I've forgotten.

There was a time when people viewed politicians with some kind of respect. Either these times have gone, or it was a myth and the internet has provided a medium for the insults to be expressed. Teresa May had reduced the number of police, and gave a speech to the Metropolitan police, during which she said it was not the number of police that mattered, but how you employ them. The police were furious. Anyway, the Met Police have an unofficial community forum, and they have just tweeted:

Dear Theresa, it's not the number of MPs that counts, it's how you use them.

 

However, if you look at the DUP's policies they make Trump or May look reasonable

I'm afraid they are a bunch of extremely primitive and stupid Christian fundamentalists. They (used to) have children's playgrounds closed on Sundays, oppose abortion under any circumstances and are openly opposed to homosexuality as a sin. How can the Tories expect to be able to deal with these morons when, for example, the leader of the Scottish Tories is openly gay? Nothing will be agreed this weekend because these bigots refuse to discuss politics on a Sunday but spend all day in church.

On a lighter note, I hear that they will be sending a Conservative and Union Negotiating Team to Brussels, and are looking for a handy acronym for us to remember them.

 

Couldn't agree more, the only caveats is how loyal the DUP has been in the recent past and how easily that critique can be deflected; they got better...

Unfortunately I fear the DUP are a crowd of ignorant bigoted religious nutters, supporting Trump's denial of global warming, against abortion, etc. etc.

Our Daily Mash has a series of articles which effectively nominate stupidest political acts, namely:

My idiot sons could run this country better than you, Queen tells May

Jubilant Corbyn celebrates defeat by an idiot

Please stay while we savour your humiliation, Britain tells May

Brexit to take 250 years

and a reference to the Northern Ireland protestant politicians which whom she is making a coalition

 

Even though it didn't go his way, I think David Cameron did the right thing with the referendum from a point of principle and kudos to him for that.

I don't see it quite like that. I see Cameron as a belonging to a highly privileged wealthy minority and he moved into politics because he didn't need to work and he had to do something to get a few kicks. He agreed to a referendum only because he gambled that brexit would not happen. They even had the champagne ready on the night. Being totally divorced from the harsh realities of life in some deprived areas of the country, he along with his chums totally underestimated the grievances people felt (even when unrelated to Europe). So when his little plan fails, he declares he is not putting up with the sh1t and walks out of politics, leaving the country in a political mess. I think the man is a disgrace, and I say this as someone who has never voted for Labour.

Take out your mobile and pretend to talk to someone if you haven't been spotted yet. Nod to the other person as you walk past

That works until your phone rings whilst doing it.

But there are a number of people in the middle (the 'but there must be more to life' type) who think the alternative to a human-centric universe is a clockwork universe type understanding they think is purported by science. They find it cold, sterile and uncaring. Now, science should be those things during the process, but once scientists share certain knowledge we should seek to frame that knowledge in the continuing human narrative. We've gone from God's chosen ones to a collection of atoms owing our existence more to chance than any design - that bothers some people, and they need help making sense of it, to not feel insignificant about it. Which goes back to the other thread: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. People need a framework in which to fathom the wonders science reveals..

Which is the essence of my quotation from Goethe on page 1 of this thread.

I'm just not willing to judge (and penalize) literally at least hundreds of millions and possibly billions of people because of the actions of a few hundred / few thousand radical extremists.

That's fair enough, but if you are a rational atheist or sceptic and are trying to understand the world and our own species in particular, you have to try to come to terms with the fact that huge numbers of people are fundamentally irrational, and a religious belief is the largest manifestation of it. This means that an atheist will feel himself marginalized, and will feel at a loss realising that he doesn't actually know what makes most of his species tick.

I think non-believers are way too "engaged" with the whole business of religion - something they don't even believe in. .

 

 

I don't. I think the vast majority just ignore it. The minority who discuss it on internet forums are those who are genuinely baffled by how this form of ignorance can affect so many lives in so many ways.

How do they claim it to be beneficial? Sounds bloody frustrating to me. Anyway, what do they mean by energy, and if you lose it, what difference does it make if somebody else benefits from it? (can't think how, nor do I want to).

I think one needs to distinguish between primary sources and their use by modern historians.

Though the latter may have biased independent of the historic subject, of course.

I think the modern view is that there is no such thing as objective history, and that even the primary sources are biased when written. We then get into the mysterious region of historiography.

Maybe becsuse history is the most falsified area of science.

Since when was history a science?

 

Some would argue that a person that lived and died with hope in their heart was better off than one who felt "doomed."

 

Hope for what? Hope of something better than a crap life on Earth? Would it not be more constructive to embrace life and accept reality?

What use would there be for mathematics if not for it having applications?

I find it very sad that something has to have an application for it to be of value.

Today I learned about Broody Hens and how they don't like to be disturbed while they are setting. “Puck-AAARRRGGGH!”

If you have the good luck to have a hen go broody, try getting her to hatch out some duck eggs, as I did once. Poor thing thinks she's got half a dozen chicks when they hatch, and proudly marches them off on foraging expeditions. That works until she walks past the pond, and she goes totally berserk when the "chicks" all go for a swim. It's the funniest ever farmyard scene.

 

The thread however is about " When will religious belief, or belief in gods become a thing of the past? 100 years? 300 years? Never?

Do you think most of humanity will ever drop superstition and embrace scientific and secular worldviews? "

 

I was merely pointing out above that, religion protects itself and is self perpetuating. It is supported by governments via tax incentives, ie no taxation.

 

I think it is generally accepted that Religion is a tool used for control of people.

No, I don't think humanity will ever drop superstition, because they won't have the kind of vision that Goethe had. Some will, but it requires a level of education and study as well as intelligence. Our species has a long way to go for an enlightenment - the fact that the USA can vote for an ignorant arsehole as their leader shows just how far.

 

In an evolutionary standpoint, religion may become obsolete when our frontal lobes are no more.

 

Does a goat have any frontal lobes?

 

Me too but I thought it might be:

 

then you might as well take up won't understand religion either.

 

I don't think so - that subjunctive in line four has the meaning "let him have religion" (because he has nothing else). That's how I understand it, anyway.

Your statement was unclear and I was asking you to be clarify your grammar. Most people on the planet do not read German poetry and would have no idea who Goethe was or when he lived.

He is a greater figure in German literature than Shakespeare is in English. Born 1749, I guess he wrote this around 1800. Certainly not the Dark Ages, but a time when it was very courageous to suggest that religion was unnecessary. It seemed appropriate for this thread.

 

What exactly do you want the quote to mean?. Are you trying to say religion is included in science and art?. How old is the quote? Is it from the dark ages, when religion was assumed to over rule science, and the earth was thought to be flat?

 

Who owns science and art,

has also religion;

who does not have those two,

He got religion.

Your translation fails totally, because you did not spot the subjunctive "habe" in the fourth line, which is the whole point. I thought the quotation was obvious - that anybody who has science and art has no need for religion. If you don't have these, then you might as well take up religion. And do you really have to ask when Goethe lived?

A mushroom walks into a bar and orders drinks for everyone. Someone asks the bartender why he did it, and the bartender responds "because he is a fun guy".

And this joke doesn't work, because he has to be a fun guss in the singular.