Peterkin

I believe the most significant word there is "we". Other species take their environment for granted; though aware of themselves, "How comes I?" does not seem to concern them. All the earliest belief systems - long before organized religion - start with a creation story. This sometimes does and sometimes does not include the origin of land, water and sky, but it invariably includes the origin of the people telling the story. There are usually some tales regarding celestial bodies, landmarks, animals, weather phenomena, trees - which all predate humans, often with no origin story of their own. All these things can be personified, spoken-to and revered. But they are never explained. The spirit-story doesn't delve any deeper into the character of winds than 'Then North Wind was so angry with Antaki that he took back his daughter...' Yet these same people would have a thorough understanding of wind speed, direction, temperature, humidity, seasonal change, etc. that would enable them to plan hunts, fishing trips and migration. They don't need the stories to use weather; they need the stories to answer "Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here?" All kinds of different answers; none of them practical or meant to be taken literally. There seem to be some recurring themes, though, from parts of the world that could not possibly have had contact. Water as a starting point is one. Another is man being made from earth. Animal spirits and deities are very common. And this idea: The significance of language. Those excerpt are from Inuit mythology - a particularly imaginative culture. It's the one most exercises humans. Always looking for reflective surfaces! Whoa! There is really quite a considerable body of evidence for the natural origin of life and it's not matched by the evidence for a supernatural one. And when you consider how coherent the natural explanation is compared to the welter of supernatural ones... well.... Anyway, whether you evolved from an ape or some god fashioned you from mud hardly makes any difference. What's important is having a story to be at the center of. Because mud is better than apes. But then, we apes go back to mud, as well - it's just longer ago.

That would explain why neither has claim to universal truth. We can't really know what ancient man needed gods for - nor the exact route whereby those earliest supernatural beings were imagined and elaborated and adapted before civilization. I have some basis to think it was not primarily for explanations. Those same ancient peoples did use science and technology to solve their practical problems: they improvised, fabricated, invented and improved on tools, dwellings, food production and preservation, quite independently of their spiritual life. That served, and still does serve, a different function. People don't go to church to inquire about things; they go there to pray for things. They want someone more powerful themselves to care for and help them. This ancient temple is already a very sophisticated example of organized religion - far more so than the myths of nomadic peoples or hut-dwellers - and yet appears to explain nothing at all.

I'm an atheist. They wouldn't likely be talking to me. On a more serious note: many extraordinary claims are made on behalf of any number of supernatural entities, by Earth-bound humans, who do not then scruple to turn around and accuse me of making claims to knowledge i can't possibly have.

Exactly. Have they?

I have, more than you might think. What were their exact words? Did they say "Nothing that can be described as divine can possibly exist anywhere in the universe." or "No gods exist."? In the latter case, did you then follow up with a question "What do you include under 'gods'?" See the definition does get stretched out in theoretical arguments. "God" begins as either the specific named character at the center of a particular religion, or as a collective term for all the supernatural controlling entities humans have worshipped, thn is stretched to include supernatural beings that are not objects of worships but were supposed to have powers of some kind, then to vague ideas about communal coherence, any kind of spirit, anima, creative force, natural phenomenon, or maybe something that set of the big bang.... The more it's prodded, the more amorphous godhood becomes. So, when somebody makes a statement like "I know that my Redeeemer liveth." or "There are no gods." that's usually a proclamation of their own belief. Neither has claim to universal truth. It is, though. The Big All-Purpose God of modern Christianity didn't spring fully formed from the head of a guy in bearskin. There have been myths and legends and stories and songs about all manner of supernatural entities from ghosts to angels, from the minuscule pixie who lives in a bluebell to the demon at the heart of a maelstrom. They're not all creative and destructive being of great power; some are benign, some are vindictive, predatory or protective; they bring rain or fire, fertility or death - all kinds of gods and spirits. So it's quite fair to take the one familiar and poorly understood word 'god' or 'fairy' out of the question and raise it up one level: Is there anything supernatural?

I judge more by his actions. Someone, for example, who proclaims his faith in the Christian god, in ultimate judgments and everlasting life - and yet behaves in ways that contravene the tenets of his professed faith, you can tell that he doesn't believe: if he did, he'd be afraid to behave that way. If you look around, there are plenty of pious atheists who tell you the opposite of what they believe. Someone may tell that they don't believe. They don't always explain why they don't believe. And even if they do, they're not always telling the real reason or the whole reason - they might not even know all of their reason. They've constructed an explanation, yes, but it doesn't account for all the impressions, conversations, readings, ideas, reflections, responses and emotions that went into the current mind-set. You can't account for that long complicated thought- process; much of it is subliminal. They may have never been indoctrinated, and so encountered various forms of religion on a purely theoretical level. They may have been steeped in one specific religion from infancy and struggled with their own skepticism and their family's disapproval. They may have been brought up in one religious culture and transplanted to a different culture and struck by the contrast. They may have been believers and something happened to shake their faith, or vice versa. There are many routes even to a minor conviction, and this conviction involves an entire world-view. So when somebody tells you they don't believe in god, you can't know from that statement whether it relates or doesn't relate to the dangers of religion or anything else. The word itself is so variously defined that when someone says "There are no gods" you know very little about what they actually think on the subject of deity, the supernatural and organized religion.

The other thing about technological mass culture - the really big and destructive thing - is its ephemerality. There is never time to understand anything, no time to reflect and compare, no time to assess. Impressions come thick and fast, images, rumours, accusations, opinions - and then they're gone. There is never time to look beneath the surface. Primitive tribes had tribalism, but it had depth and substance.

But.... Why does anyone care? That is a shift in cultural dynamics (the sensibilities are a different topic) - where the buying/voting/adoring/revolting public's attention is focused. To a large extent, legitimate mainstream news media have lost their audience and credibility, because they failed to inform the public.* But they have also been undermined by government funding policy and the public's thirst for sensation. *That's largely down to money again, plus partisan politics.

I have my own solution: I don't know any of the celebrities de minute; I'm not on Twitter, facebook, Snapchat, Tik-tok, Instagram, Reddit, or whatever Trumps' new platform is called...(Oh. Seriously??? Of course.) I don't know who's hot, who's so last week, who's on the way up or in a doghouse. If one of those people or events is brought to my attention on a forum, I research the basis of the claim before commenting - then don't bookmark it, don't commit the names to memory - move on. I find detachment remarkably unstressful.

What are the weapons? Public shaming, shunning, banishment, expulsion, ostracism , exile and excommunication have been common methods of dealing with members who threatened the stability or transgressed the rules of communities, since long before we had any recorded cultures. Much longer: lions and apes and wolves do it! Back when communities were small enough, the offender was sent away to make his way alone in the wilderness, or join another tribe that would have him. In civilizations like Ancient Rome, it would be a judicial decision meted out by vested authority. Now, because of extensive, intrusive, obtrusive, all-encompassing, ubiquitous mass communication media, societies are not limited and defined. Anyone can be in in any tribe consisting of members the world over. Everyone has access to a big platform; can be noticed if their performance stands out in some way - and because there is so much competition, many of the performances are deliberately confrontational, provocative or outrageous. Who does the noticing? What kind of personality is attracted to these performances? Anyone can become an overnight celebrity, and just as easily fall afoul of the millions of equally public personae who pay attention to them. They usually can't be physically removed from their residence or place of work, but their virtual life can be made unpleasant by unpopularity. All the other people have access to the same platform: they can throw virtual tomatoes at close range. And nowadays, we're at a point in the breakdown of civility where threats of beating, rape and murder are not at all unusual. As for businesses, strike and boycott are nothing new, either. A merchant who offended his suppliers and customers went out of business in 1200 BC, just as in 1876. Now that corporations are global, so are their suppliers and customers - their disapproval is expressed through a bigger megaphone - like everything else. It's just one of the ways all this communication complicates our social lives and cultures. Yes, that's another aspect. So much of cyber opinion is manufactured - fake news, fake election campaign, fake feedback, fake editorial....

I've heard 3, 4, 5, 6, or even a spectrum from 0 to 100. (Hardly anything human comes in just two categories.) Actually, I've never heard an atheist claim that a god of some kind cannot exist - but you'd have to stretch the definition all out of recognizable shape. What they (we) often do say is that none of the gods of myth and legend exist. More frequently, the discussion centers on the specific deity (whether of one part, two or three) central to the modern Christian doctrine. These latter discussions commonly start with a challenge issued by a theist, who thereby establishes the identity of the God in question. However, it's not unreasonable to declare non-belief, skepticism, even incredulity at the suggestion that an intangible, invisible, non-measurable concept has known characteristics or habits - such as presence and absence - and still fits into that one little word with Jehovah and Thor. I'll try not to confuse it, but I wonder: How do we know what another person's unbelief relates to?

Seriously? A rude university professor started the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Holocaust? I can only stand so much hyperbole. Deal me out.

After or for? Name three of each, with credible citations. Okay, name one.

Good idea! Let's stop pretending anyone has lost their job for being discourteous. Or for being called ignorant bigots.

Of course it is! Doesn't matter how big and nasty a lie you tell, it is your right to tell it, and nothing will happen to you: nobody's silencing, muzzling or oppressing you. What is that hyperbole supposed to mean? Criticized? Disapproved of? Denounced? She said something unpopular and people reacted. Maybe overreacted; maybe she was surprised. You have to take the temperature of the room before you decide on a potentially inflammatory course of action. She didn't lose her job; she wasn't turfed out or forced out. She was uncomfortable with the reaction - which is what she knew would happen - and quit. That's certainly one of the options. So is taking her message to social media, her blog, You Tube, and interview programs that invite her. She's not injured; not violated, not jailed, not destitute. She made an informed choice as an autonomous adult. She wasn't blamed for refusing to say something somebody was trying to force on her that she found repugnant. She was blamed for saying something she didn't have to say that other people found repugnant. There is a substantial difference. Where is the state/institutional oppression?

I sincerely doubt that. People can be coerced to the limit of their willingness to comply; beyond that, they have the option of the consequences of non-compliance. If you insist on responding negatively to the opinions of internet posters with whom you disagree, the option is to be called an arrogant, cherry-picking, virtue-signalling hypocrite. There is always a choice. Rarely do the options include D - Do as you please and everyone always approves.

Disaster relief missions, probably. It might stow away undetected in the medical personnel themselves, or in their equipment and/or vehicles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK2u4y7J58I

Why? Same reason you expect a psychology professor not to take a fixed position on human interaction? Academics are as prone to rigid ideology and territorial aggression as other people; perhaps more than most, since their range is so small. Like you said, messy world. Messy psyches. Messy social issues. Somebody we've only heard about fourth-hand is reported by somebody else we've never met to have committed suicide [directly and exclusively] because people we don't know anything about beyond the label put on them by the reporter had written mean things we didn't read. Which should be sufficient to convince us that somebody entirely different whom we never met, in another country, not only isn't entitled to be referred-to by a simple one-syllable pronoun of their choice, because we don't know whether they're spoiled or unable to bear children, but requiring the use of that word in a university setting amounts to persecution - not of the person who makes the request, but of the person who vilifies it from a huge, very public platform. ?

Maybe every human being on Earth is delusional. They still have rights under constitutions and legal systems enacted by other delusional people. And one of those rights, atm, is self-designation. That may mean sometimes somebody who wants to keep a position as shaper of youthful minds, or someone who wants to stay in charge of a department staffed with some flakes and kooks, has to learn one of the nine new gender pronouns - which he never actually has to use except possibly in reports, since the standard form of address "you" is already gender-neutral - well that's child's play compared to having had to learn all the professional jargon needed to bullshit his way into the job in the first place. Then again, the political climate can change in a heartbeat (though not very probably through radical tolerants storming Parliament) and all that midnight oil could be wasted. Oh well.

Open and fair competition for the wage-earner's custom, or for the provision of public facilities, will certainly result in a happier country than tax cuts and subsidies to monopolies. Graft takes a lot of the bang out a tax buck, and having the consumer in thrall can add a great deal of excess profit to corporate coffers and reduction of the consumer's buying power - resulting in ever more income disparity, which immediately translates to political and social disparity. That doesn't rule out the public ownership and government control of essential services. Some things are far more efficiently done according to a long-term, comprehensive plan than periodic contract renewal and market adjustment. However, there is a great danger in government being in charge of a service and contracting it out to private companies - both in corruption and quality control. The tax-payer doesn't actually know who is in charge of deploying his money to its full potential.

These are foreseeable consequences of every opinion ever posted on the internet. None of these consequences force anyone to say anything they don't want to say.

You mean, like, if you refuse to take the oath of office as written, you can't be inaugurated president? Or if you refuse to promise not to divulge company secrets, they won't hire you? Or if you can't be respectful to your student and fellow faculty members, your contract won't be renewed? I'm not terribly upset by those consequences.

There is a handy lookup function on my browser that allows me to bridge small rivulets of ignorance in particular subjects. I avail myself of this function from time to time, hoping that eventually my vast ignorance will diminish. The insolence, however, is intransigent.

Of course we cannot agree - especially about your low opinion of all human beings. Comapare that chart with the list of all the English words you don't know (e.g: thoroughly) and have managed to lived without, so far. Infacilty in a few more pronouns will make no appreciable difference to your communication skills. Only the tense is wrong. Every biology textbook did refer to male and female, wherever the authors deemed it applicable to sexual reproduction. (There are, of course, other kinds of reproduction, which involve no genders at all) What biology textbooks will refer to is yet to emerge. Whether biology textbook will delve into the details gender fluidity and variation depends on the level of instruction.