Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

[Arioch]

They're not perfect, I wouldn't want to join them, but they are human beings just like the rest of us.

I don't think anyone here would suggest otherwise. My remark about sentience was merely a cheap joke.

[Krulle]

Most Amish sects support the "rumspringa" time for their youth.
You have to obey certain rules while you're "jumping around", otherwise you cannot return (so do nothing that can put you in jail, no tatoos), but otherwise they will turn a blind eye to most things you did during that time, if they get found out...

But if you decide to stay after that time, you basically forfeit your chance to demand less stricter rules.
You can work yourself up to respectable positions with the local group, and thus you might be able to soften the interpretation of some rules, but staying was your own choice.
A slanted start thogu: you know that if you decide to leave, your friends and family will turn their backs to you and there will be no return without an even higher price to pay...

(not wanting to join the Amish either, but they are good role-models. They mind their own business, keep to their rules, not enforcing them on outsiders...)

[Grayhome]

they are good role-models

In my experience no Christian faction has ever come anywhere close to being good roll models. Nor any other group, religious or otherwise, that holds blind faith and obedience as having sway over evidence, reason and logic. The damage that the Amish cause is marginally limited to themselves, so that makes them less of a problem than other religious factions, but it is still damage and they are still causing it.

These people do vote, and their votes are based on a 2000+ year old book that was written by superstitious, illiterate, ignorant, terrified desert nomads. That causes a GREAT deal of harm to the nation which they are a part of.

They (and many other religious factions) also allow their children to die from preventable diseases rather than allow them access to medical care, trusting in the power of prayer over science.

I cannot respect that. I simply cannot honestly bring myself to respect such a people. I am simply not capable of it, and I find myself very wary of anyone who says they respect the Amish or any other such group.

[icekatze]

hi hi

Well, sometimes I just don't get the joke, sometimes I think I must take things too seriously, but other times it seems like people are being serious.

I don't mind if people have different opinions about things than I do. I realize that I probably have a different point of view than a lot of people here, at least. But when it comes to presenting facts, I do try to make sure what I am presenting is accurate.

Greyhome, are you saying that you've been gathering personally identifiable data on people's voting records? I'm pretty sure that's illegal. At least in the United States, West Virginia is the only state which still allows open ballots as an option. I find it an extraordinary claim to say that one knows exactly what the Amish are voting for, and that it cause great harm to the country they live in. I find it especially extraordinary coming from someone promoting evidence and reason, when the evidence says that the Amish don't regularly vote. When 13% of the Amish population in Lancaster voted in 2004, it was after a 169% rise in new registrations from the previous year, after a large and expensive campaign to get it.

And as a proponent of democracy in general, I find the notion that people should not vote for what they believe in, and that people doing so is dangerous, to be anathema.

If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

- Louis Brandeis

I also find claims about the Amish's medical practices to be extraordinary, considering that the Amish do see doctors when it is necessary. Especially in comparison to the USA in general where, even with the Affordable Care Act, some 16.6% of Americans under 65 still don't have access to health insurance. Thats over 45 million, and using the Massachusetts rate of 830 to 1 over a 4 year period, that's still about 13.7 thousand people every year whose deaths could be prevented if we had universal health care.

Their life expectancy is actually similar to the general US population, average life expectancy is in the mid-70s, that's actually very interesting from a number of standpoints, because for one thing, they tend not to use modern medical care very much... Well for the most part the Amish don't like to use modern medical care, but they will if they have to. They will go to hospitals and will go to seek physicians if they absolutely need to. But on the whole, they don't believe in prevention, they'll only go to a doctor if there's a problem.

Alan Shuldiner, Professor and Head of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Nutrition, University of Maryland School of Medicine.

I find myself very wary of any claim that says being religious necessarily precludes a person or group of people from being good or respectable. If people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, or Nelson Mandela cannot be considered role models, I wonder if any human being can.

Anyways, on the topic of Outsider, I don't suppose the proven existence of aliens has shaken up the various religions on Earth. I've always wondered what that kind of reveal might do to people's world views.

[Grayhome]

Ahahahahahahahah oh my sides! Oh someone make him stop this is too much!

If people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, or Nelson Mandela cannot be considered role models, I wonder if any human being can.

Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, Hirohito, Mother Teresa.

Check it out, I can do that too. Grant it for one side you must grant it for the other, but I wouldn't be able to expect that from religious cultists who are trained since before they could walk or talk to not examine their religion critically.

[icekatze]

hi hi

If I had made the argument that being religious necessarily makes someone moral and just, those examples of people would have been relevant. However, I made -and continue to make- no such claim, and as a consequence, those examples of people are irrelevant to my argument.

A Deductive Argument
• no Christian faction has ever come anywhere close to being good roll[sic] models.
• Martin Luther King Jr. and his congregation were a Christian faction
• Martin Luther King Jr. and his congregation has not come anywhere close to being good role models.

I deny the conclusion, and therefore I find the first premise to be false, where the second premise is verified by historical documents.

[Arioch]

Anyways, on the topic of Outsider, I don't suppose the proven existence of aliens has shaken up the various religions on Earth. I've always wondered what that kind of reveal might do to people's world views.

Religion has shown itself to be largely impervious to logical arguments and evidence. When an inconvenient fact shows itself, some will refuse to believe it, and others will find ways to tapdance around it. I think that many Christian "scholars" already readily admit that the Bible is not word-for-word true, instead describing it as abstract, inspired poetry. Aliens could be worked into such a framework in a wide variety of ways. I'd guess that there are probably cases in which this has already been done.

But I don't really see the existence of aliens as a direct challenge to religion. There may be an issue in which some religious sects may hold that since humans are in "the image of God" that aliens may not be considered to have souls, but I imagine that these rulings will be widely various and will have little to do with logic or the technicality of religious writing, and everything to do with the xenophobia and intolerance of particular groups.

[icekatze]

hi hi

I suppose it might take a while for logical arguments and evidence to chip away preconceptions. Still, I would wager that things could change over time. I mean, outside of a few fringe groups, most people don't think the Earth is flat anymore, or that the Sun orbits the Earth, when those used to be almost ubiquitously held ideas. But why beliefs like that fall by the wayside, but others like young earth persist, well, I guess I'm no expert so I won't propose an explanation.

Perhaps there would be a significant movement of people believing the records were faked, which might last up until the hostile ships arrive in orbit and start disembarking troops.

[Arioch]

But the existence of aliens doesn't directly challenge religious doctrine. Presumably the aliens were created by God at the same time as everything else.

[Sweforce]

I like to amuse myself looking at TV Tropes. The "Fantastic Racism" trope apparently now have a "real life" section regarding aliens. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... sticRacism

[Krulle]

Alien life and the suspected influence on religion:
Vatican astronomer about alien life and its conclusions to the extistance of god or no god.
I first saw the article on a German news site, and just googled an English version.
This one's on a Christian site, so expect it to be slanted...
But I found it interesting non the less.

And I find we can drop discussions about certain religious groups alltogether.
We will not find consent here. Beliefs are strong in any direction....

[Razor One]

Honestly, I think opinions about alien life from a religious perspective are as slanted by one's personal beliefs as much as they are by their religious beliefs. The fact that most people tend to cherry pick their religious documents to validate their own personal beliefs rather than reading what's in there fully is evidence enough of this.

The Boston Globe had a fairly simple summary of what reaction most religious institutions would likely have. Some would have difficulty, some would take it in stride, and some would simply ignore it and carry on as they always have until forced to change by their circumstances or flagging membership.

You're always going to have fringe groups who will believe in all sorts of crazy though, such as the Flat Earth Society or Hollow Earther's. I could mention religious institutions, but I think it may be time to retire from the topic at large since it seems to have run its course.

Back on topic, Arioch, roughly how long have humans been jump capable? When was the jump drive discovered by Terrans and roughly when did it start to become commercially viable?

[Sweforce]

Back on topic, Arioch, roughly how long have humans been jump capable? When was the jump drive discovered by Terrans and roughly when did it start to become commercially viable?

I think we can assume that the jump engines was indeed independently invented by terrans since they already have several off world colonies when the Orgus showed up two years ago. It is of course possible that they may have found and reverse engineered an old relic somewhere I doubt it, if they did it was most likely kept a secret for all but a few people. As far as I understand, the orgus was their first encounter with anything related to alien civilizations.

I am curious if the invention of the jump engines was preceded as a mathematical theoretical invention for a long time before people actually started to work on in. If not, scientists may have stumbled upon something that was quickly utilized in the first jump engines. A real life example, jet engines was suggested and then experimented with for some time before they became viable enough for regular use.

.

[Arioch]

Back on topic, Arioch, roughly how long have humans been jump capable? When was the jump drive discovered by Terrans and roughly when did it start to become commercially viable?

The first successful manned hyperspace jump was accomplished to Barnard's Star in 2086. The navigational problem of jumping into a multiple-star system was solved and demonstrated with a jump to Alpha Centauri in 2088.

The chief danger of jump travel is the chance of a mis-jump, and this risk is reduced not through technology, but through repeated verification of the safe jump parameters between each star system. Commercial viability is then just a question of testing these parameters to an acceptable tolerance, and that would have taken less than a decade for the near-Earth jump links. The first permanent extra-solar outpost was established in Alpha Centauri in 2092, and the TCA was formed in 2107.

I am curious if the invention of the jump engines was preceded as a mathematical theoretical invention for a long time before people actually started to work on in. If not, scientists may have stumbled upon something that was quickly utilized in the first jump engines. A real life example, jet engines was suggested and then experimented with for some time before they became viable enough for regular use.

Developing a proper theory of gravity (the missing link of the Grand Unified Theory) unlocked both gravity manipulation and a rudimentary understanding of hyperspace (as, according to some versions of String Theory, they are linked). Small-scale experiments showed that the principle of a hyperspace jump could work, and this was probably the easy part; the hard part was developing an inertial damping field that would prevent the jumping vessel from being torn apart by the gravitational tides created by the transition to hyperspace.

And yes, these developments were achieved by humanity independently, without any alien intervention or artifacts.

[Grayhome]

A Deductive Argument
• no Christian faction has ever come anywhere close to being good roll[sic] models.
• Martin Luther King Jr. and his congregation were a Christian faction
• Martin Luther King Jr. and his congregation has not come anywhere close to being good role models.

I deny the conclusion, and therefore I find the first premise to be false, where the second premise is verified by historical documents.

Martin Luther King Jr. and his congregation were a Christian faction

No they weren't. Their faction comprised of strong atheist, secular, feminist, LBGT and communist elements all of whom despised religion for obvious reasons. Which Dr. King took a lot of flack for, mostly from the religious elements of his "flock".

I have no doubt that 50-100 years from now, the religious factions of the US will also be taking credit for making LGBT marriage possible. You may whitewash history all you want Ice, you can never hide the truth deep enough that the discerning wont find it.

[Krulle]

A Deductive Argument
• no Christian faction has ever come anywhere close to being good roll[sic] models.
• Martin Luther King Jr. and his congregation were a Christian faction
• Martin Luther King Jr. and his congregation has not come anywhere close to being good role models.

I deny the conclusion, and therefore I find the first premise to be false, where the second premise is verified by historical documents.

Martin Luther King Jr. and his congregation were a Christian faction

No they weren't. Their faction comprised of strong atheist, secular, feminist, LBGT and communist elements all of whom despised religion for obvious reasons. Which Dr. King took a lot of flack for, mostly from the religious elements of his "flock".

I have no doubt that 50-100 years from now, the religious factions of the US will also be taking credit for making LGBT marriage possible. You may whitewash history all you want Ice, you can never hide the truth deep enough that the discerning wont find it.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968), was an American Baptist minister, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs.
King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. With the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia (the Albany Movement), and helped organize the 1963 nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama, that attracted national attention following television news coverage of the brutal police response. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he established his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history.

While at the beginning King supported other movements, later the non-Christian groups rallied behind King, as he became a face for the movement.
King started from his belief that God created all Humans equal.
You may see that as Christian or not, but it was his belief which made him face all the problems of becoming a face for the fight against segregation.

But "King's faction" (if you want to name it that) within the movement, was the Christian faction. The other factions supported him, as he was successful in gaining media attention and rallying support. In other topics they may not have supported him, but that was not the goal of the anti-apartheit movement anyway.

[Mr.Tucker]

A Deductive Argument
• no Christian faction has ever come anywhere close to being good roll[sic] models.
• Martin Luther King Jr. and his congregation were a Christian faction
• Martin Luther King Jr. and his congregation has not come anywhere close to being good role models.

I deny the conclusion, and therefore I find the first premise to be false, where the second premise is verified by historical documents.

Martin Luther King Jr. and his congregation were a Christian faction

No they weren't. Their faction comprised of strong atheist, secular, feminist, LBGT and communist elements all of whom despised religion for obvious reasons. Which Dr. King took a lot of flack for, mostly from the religious elements of his "flock".

I have no doubt that 50-100 years from now, the religious factions of the US will also be taking credit for making LGBT marriage possible. You may whitewash history all you want Ice, you can never hide the truth deep enough that the discerning wont find it.

That is a pretty extreme way of looking at it. From a social perspective, religion is a way to devise a philosophy with clear bounds on right and wrong, to help pinpoint what is evil and what is good. Lots of people do need these sorts of bearings when they themselves decide that. Religion puts that into perspective. For me, as a somewhat religious person, the tennents of faith were just a starting point in the evercontinuing process of defining my personal views on right and wrong. Real world experience was the rest. Most religions today have flexibility built into them, and most religious people are not fanatics but pretty down to earth, normal persons. After all, thou shall not kill seems like a pretty good rule right? The legal systems in most countries seems to agree with this, as secular as they are. Religious violence tends to underlie pretty bad social issues (poverty, corruption, etc). The conflict between the Shia and Sunnis isn t caused by different beliefs. That's just a casus belli as the romans used to say. It''s caused by POLITICAL competition between the historical civilisations of Persia (Iran) and Arabia (the Saudis). There are very real, down to earth reasons of why these states compete, that have little to do with religion. The world is bad because people are bad, regardless of what they believe in. Religion is just an excuse. To attack people that express a religious belief as being delusional is just as extreme as stonneing them to death.

[Grayhome]

While at the beginning King supported other movements, later the non-Christian groups rallied behind King, as he became a face for the movement.

But "King's faction" (if you want to name it that) within the movement, was the Christian faction. The other factions supported him, as he was successful in gaining media attention and rallying support. In other topics they may not have supported him, but that was not the goal of the anti-apartheit movement anyway.

Atheists, Secularists, LBGT, Communists, Marxists, etc have been forced to rally behind the leaders who profess the right religion and who worship the right God in the United States since the nation’s founding. If you do not profess the right religion in the US you have no chance in public office and therefore no say in shaping legislation. Your comment is technically true, Krulle, but it is not true in any meaningful or positive light that I can see. That a single religion so deeply permeates and perverts the United States so that it holds total power over it’s political functions and actively excludes other factions based not upon logic, reason or evidence but upon religious dogma is not a particularly endearing fact for you to raise, nor does it do anything other than damage your credibility in my eyes. Why do you think the African Americans were fighting for their freedom in the first place? Do you think it was because atheists and communists kidnapped them from their homeland, dragged them to the new world in chains, and forced them into slavery? Come on Krulle, be serious here.

King started from his belief that God created all Humans equal.

This is a lovely sentence and I am certain it gives Christians a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. However the Christian god vehemently disagrees with your opinion on the matter of human equality. You should read the Bible sometime, as it explains the matter with great (I would say sadistic) attention to detail. The Christian bible clearly and repeatedly states which humans are superior and which are inferior, and precisely what the superior humans can, and are indeed commanded to do unto the inferior ones. Slavery, being merely one example.

You may see that as Christian or not, but it was his belief which made him face all the problems of becoming a face for the fight against segregation.

A fight in which the opposing faction was massively supported by the religious who quoted their opposition to granting African Americans equal rights, quite correctly, from their bible. If you grant the one side Krulle you MUST grant the other. You cannot simply say “Christians supported Dr. King” and then omit that Christians also supported the opposition to the Civil Rights movement That is called whitewashing history. I have no doubt that some communists, atheists, secularists, LBGT, etc also opposed the Civil Rights movement, I am not making that claim.

[Hālian]

[Grayhome]

Tucker

From a social perspective, religion is a way to devise a philosophy with clear bounds on right and wrong, to help pinpoint what is evil and what is good.
Basing one’s society, or even solely the justice system, upon the laws of a 2000+ year of nomadic desert tribe is a terrible idea Tucker.

Lots of people do need these sorts of bearings when they themselves decide that.

I find that to be horrifically insulting to the human intellect and fundamentally untrue. I am non-religious. I have many non-religious friends. Those who identify as non-religious are steadily growing into a significant portion of the population. Are you saying that my community and I are incapable of morality simply because we do not follow the laws of a primitive society of horrifically ignorant desert tribesmen who believed in witches and magic? Are you saying that without religion, the religious would immediately descend into mustache twirling villainy? Be serious Tucker, please.

For me, as a somewhat religious person, the tennents of faith were just a starting point in the evercontinuing process of defining my personal views on right and wrong.

Well isn’t that a wonderful buffet for you then, that you can pick which of your god’s laws to follow and simply ignore the rest of your god's laws. How delightful that must be for you.

Most religions today have flexibility built into them, and most religious people are not fanatics but pretty down to earth, normal persons.

And why is that Tucker? Why are today’s religions defanged and declawed in comparison to where they were just a few centuries ago? Let’s be intellectually honest about where this change is coming from, it’s coming from outside said religion. Religion comes to us today in such a delightfully flexible form and not fielding armies of genocidal rapists precisely because it has had to give up so much ground to secular and scientific breakthroughs. Freedom of Speech, Civil Rights, Freedom of Religion, Germ Theory, vaccinations, the theory of gravity etc, are all values that brutally annihilated their religious counterparts and replaced them, at least in most of the developed world.

Religious violence tends to underlie pretty bad social issues (poverty, corruption, etc). The conflict between the Shia and Sunnis isn t caused by different beliefs. That's just a casus belli as the romans used to say. It''s caused by POLITICAL competition between the historical civilisations of Persia (Iran) and Arabia (the Saudis). There are very real, down to earth reasons of why these states compete, that have little to do with religion. The world is bad because people are bad, regardless of what they believe in. Religion is just an excuse.

I really don’t know what evidence I can provide to you if someone strapping a bomb to their chests and blowing up school buses full of children while shouting “god is great” at the top of their lungs isn’t enough proof for you that these people honestly do believe in their heartfelt religious beliefs. They are literally martyring themselves in the name of their dogmatic god. What more evidence could you possibly need, or indeed could, be presented with to change your mind?

I would also argue that the many of the problems a nation is experiencing are directly linked to that particular nation's religious beliefs. If for example a nation has the heartfelt religious belief that every third child should have its eyes put out, that nation is going to be measurably worse off than nations which do not have that particular religious law. If a nation has a religion which mandates that half of it’s total population is forbidden from having jobs, owning property, investing, participating in the government, driving a vehicle, going out in public, forces them to wear cloth sacks and considers them to be incubators of the next generation of males and nothing else, that society is going to be measurably worse off (socially, culturally, politically, economically, militarily, etc) than nations which do not. Nations that have a religious viewpoint that climate change conflicts with the bible and choose not to prepare for it are going to be measurably worse off than nations who do prepare for the coming climate catastrophe, it's as simple as that.

The trend in political science is that the more religious a nation is, the worse off it is. Conversely, the better off a nation is the less religious it is. That goes for literacy, quality of life, quantity of life, education (college & other), GDP, etc. Less religious nations also experience less famine, disease, murder, crime, experience less civil strife, etc.

Tells you quite a bit about religion if the more religious a people are, the worse off they are. I guess their god must want them to suffer horribly or something. Doesn't seem to be an entity I would want to worship but to each their own I suppose.