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What do you "Think" you know about science?


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2020 Dec 7, 2:07pm   4,841 views  94 comments

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Guest Post by Simon Black



If there were a Mount Rushmore to memorialize the greatest scientists in US history, Richard Feynman’s face would almost certainly be on the monument.

He was only 24 years of age when he was recruited into a secret research group that eventually became part of the Manhattan Project, joining some of the other most prominent scientists of his age, like Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi.

Feynman went on to make unparalleled advances in the fields of particle physics and quantum mechanics. He conceived of nanotechnology as early as the 1950s, and quantum computing as early as 1982.

Feynman also won the Nobel Prize, plus countless other awards and medals; and he was ranked by leading scientists as one of the greatest physicists of all time– alongside Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Galileo.


In short, Feynman knew what he was talking about when it came to science.

One thing that was really interesting about Feynman is that, despite all of his success and credentials, he was the first to admit that nothing was truly certain and absolute, even in science:

“Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.”

Feynman railed against “myths and pseudoscience,” and the so-called experts that peddled their theories as unquestionable truth.

According to his biographer James Gleick, Feynman found this type of scientific absolutism to be like an “authority, against which science has fought for centuries.”

Or, as Isaac Asimov put it, “Science is uncertain. Theories are subject to revision; observations are open to a variety of interpretations, and scientists quarrel amongst themselves.”

Yet now we’re being force fed a narrative that science is absolute and 100% certain… and that, above all else, we must listen to the scientists.

Or, more precisely, we must listen to the scientists they want us to listen to.

We must listen to the scientists, for example, who tell us that 2+2 = white supremacy.

We must listen to the scientists who tell us that biology no longer determines sex.

And we absolutely must listen to the scientists who tell us to cower in fear in our homes because of a virus.

We must listen to the scientists who say that unmasked BLM protestors packed together like sardines are not a danger to spreading the virus because of the righteousness of their cause.

We must listen to the scientists at the WHO that told us in late March to NOT wear masks, and then, oops, just kidding, please do wear masks.

We must listen to the scientists who tell us that we need to keep our masks on, and then take their own masks off as soon as they’re no longer on camera.

We must listen to the scientists who tell us to cancel everything and not spend time with friends and family, who then themselves hop on a plane to visit their own friends and family.

We must listen to the scientists who agree that cannabis dispensaries, acupuncture clinics, and casinos are “essential businesses”, but masked worshipers six feet apart in churches and synagogues must be forced to stay home under threat of imprisonment.

We must listen to the scientists who tell us that the national debt doesn’t matter, and the government can simply print as much money as it wants and give out free money to everyone without any consequences ever.

We must listen to the scientists who tell us that standing on wet sand is safe, but standing on dry sand will spread the Coronavirus.

We must listen to the scientists who tell us we need to do whatever it takes to prevent a single Covid death… but that deaths due to suicide, heart attack, and stroke are perfectly fine, and so are domestic violence, drug addiction, and depression.

And we must listen to the scientists who tell us that an unproven vaccine devoid of any long-term study is completely safe and effective.

Yes. Those are the scientists we must listen to.

But we absolutely must NOT listen to any scientists who voice concerns about Covid vaccines.

We must not listen to scientists whose peer-reviewed research shows that Covid might not be as bad or as deadly as the media continues to portray.

We must not listen to scientists, including a Fulbright scholar / MIT PhD in data science, whose research shows bizarre, highly suspicious statistical anomalies regarding the 2020 election.

No. We definitely must NOT listen to those scientists.

And thank goodness that Big Media and Big Tech make it so easy for us to not listen to those scientists.

Twitter and Facebook have conveniently censored posts, prevented sharing, and even suspended the accounts of dangerous scientists who present new ideas.

And the big media companies simply refuse to report on those stories altogether. How thoughtful of them to pre-determine for us what we should see and what we should believe!

It’s clear the people who control the flow of information– Big Media and Big Tech– are deliberately shaping the story they want us to believe.

Forget Feynman. Their science is certainty. Their science is unassailably, 100%, absolutely true…

Anyone who dares question the certainty and sanctity of their science is ridiculed. The media calls any blasphemy a ‘hoax’ and chastises your ‘baseless assertions’.

And Twitter subjects you to the “Two Minutes Hate” ritual from Orwell’s 1984 (along with the hateful cancel culture rituals from Orwell’s lesser known work, 2021).

At this point I just want to know what these people are so afraid of– why are they so terrified of anyone asking questions?

Because when you’re not allowed to question something, it’s no longer science. It’s just authoritarian propaganda.

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55   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 10, 8:32am  

Answer! The! Questions!
56   PeopleUnited   2020 Dec 10, 8:38am  

Glad you at least acknowledge Jesus was here riding on one of his creations. It is a start.
57   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 10, 8:39am  

Yeah, that's what I thought.
58   PeopleUnited   2020 Dec 10, 8:41am  

He may have named that donkey “brontosaurus” he does have a sense of humor you know.
59   richwicks   2020 Dec 10, 9:18pm  

PeopleUnited says
No evolution doesn’t create new species, that is what I mean and any idiot can see.


But it does.

Do you think that a horse and a donkey don't have a common ancestor? They can interbreed to produce a mule provided a male donkey has intercourse with a female horse yet the offspring is sterile.

Donkeys and horses have different numbers of chromosomes so they are incompatible enough so that offspring is defective in that it cannot reproduce, a mule is not another species, it's a combination of two different species that are close enough that they are able to produce an offspring.

It has been conjectured that human beings can interbred with some apes. There are claims that it has been done, but this breaks a wall of morality so it is only rumor although attempts at making such a being are confirmed but I think they are all invitro - meaning the creation was terminated. I consider such an experiment monstrous but it may have been done well beyond that.

www.youtube.com/embed/WM28BxRnShI

That is about Oliver, who was thought to have possibly been a chimp/human hybrid. Officially, he was simply a chimp. He died in his 50's but chimps rarely live beyond 40 in captivity. He was an outlier in many ways regardless.

Ultimately, we don't really know, we cannot prove evolution is the basis for all the variation of life we see, but there's tremendous amounts of evidence to suggest it happened. To create a new species would take at least centuries and it would be monstrous to do it. Bacteria, fine - but anything else it would require a great deal of suffering by drastically changing environments and forcing mutation. We've already seen major bacterial mutation in nature, one bacteria learned to feed off from the waste of a nylon production plant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria

Moving from one cell to multiple cells may not be possible with existing living things today or changing an asexual reproducing organism to a sexual reproducing organism may be impossible. We are the result of billions of years of evolution today - our early progenitors were entirely unlike us. We can advance, but it's doubtful we can go back. Every living thing today has found a niche and exploited it. When life began, presumably, there were many unused niches and life was far less complex.

I do miss my faith, I have to admit. Certainty had its comfort. The more you learn the more you realize you don't know so you want to learn more - it's a never-ending cycle. It is a vicious cycle or perhaps a virtuous cycle. I'm not at the end of it yet, so I cannot know.

I will not dump on your religious faith, but understand, what I believe is not based on faith. It's possible, I suppose, that there's a massive conspiracy to misdirect me, but if there is, it's not of human origin and the conspiracy would stretch over more than centuries but millennia. You might say Lucifer* has done this. Maybe - but he's made a convincing argument. Why is God not intervening? Am I to be punished for all eternity for my curiosity and my desire to eliminate my own ignorance? Well, if I am, I am. I cannot leave this course at this point and I've been on it for decades.

* Lucifer isn't really the devil or Satan, he was a king according to the Bible.
60   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 10, 10:38pm  

Eight generations... Eight generations and any hint of your ancestor's DNA within yours is ^gone.

I have some genealogists in my family who traced our ancestry back to William the Bastard/Conqueror. We stayed Kings through a few Henries then branched off with some lady whose name I've forgotten. I'd imagine millions of Americans could make the same claim.

Yet I don't have ^any connection genetically to the 9th generation of my ancestors. Only the fact that if they didn't exist, I wouldn't.

^Excluding chrY and chrM.

Some consider the Y chromosome to be a damaged chromosome. It's certainly missing the 4 arms required to recombine with X so you basically get a straight copy with some random mutations. I believe it's typically 2 but don't quote me on that. Despite sounding small, that blows up Male lineage ancestry trees and is a problem for modern genetics. We used to just look several or a dozen short stretches (STRs, short tandem repeats, ex: AGTAAGTAAGTAAGTA) of DNA that don't change much vs. point mutations (SNPs, single nucleotide polymorphisms, ex: A) over large strategic portions of the chromosome. Newer trees blow up with many more branches each generation and it's incredibly hard to keep track of. Nobody really wants to take it on in any sort of consortium. National Geographic is probably the best but that's private IP.

Mitochondria is DNA from an ancient parasite and isn't in our nucleus with the rest of our chromosomes. It's basically like a bacteria with a ring genome. The former is used for Male lineage ancestry tests, the latter for Female. It doesn't change much at all and you have thousands of mitochondria in each cell making it more likely to survive a disaster like 911. Mito was used to group body bits found after that for years to deliver to family. I've used it to identify dead Vietnamese War dead this decade.

Both of these older techniques didn't have a lot of statistical power in a database. By that I mean if they did a dragnet on a database the probability they'd found an innocent person might be 1:million or 1:10million. That shit didn't hold up in court so nobody did it. However if you genotyped a suspect and got a match then it's like 1:10billion that the match is a false positive which does hold up. So that's how it ran for a long long time.

Now with the new stuff they're doing dragnets on databases, finding family members and then narrowing to the guilty person. But they've fucked up and gotten innocent people too. I could tell you stories... Moral of this one: Encourage genetic privacy with respect to the government. The GINA legislation ain't good e'nuff for that by a long shot.
61   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 10, 10:45pm  

Not having that other arm on chrY prevents repair (no example on the other one for your lil robots to read from) and turns out may be the biggest reason Males live shorter lives than Females. We get large chucks deleted in that region and rack up mutations there more quickly. When I said two above that's inter=generational. Over your lifespan thousands.

A typical human baby is born with a genome composed of their parents that has been rearranged. In addition to that they average about 7 thousand novel mutations not found in the parental units.

Autism is strongly linked to large structural variations like deletions (chunks missing) in Males. For so long we've told females not to have kids at an advanced age but it's looking like we might point the finger at Males for that one.
62   richwicks   2020 Dec 10, 11:52pm  

just_passing_through says
Autism is strongly linked to large structural variations like deletions (chunks missing) in Males. For so long we've told females not to have kids at an advanced age but it's looking like we might point the finger at Males for that one.


What is your opinion on people who believe autism is linked to vaccine damage? A friend of mine considers it a possibility that his friend's child was damaged from it. Neither of us is certain of course, but the vaccination schedule has changed drastically since we were kids. I think I got 7 vaccinations as a child, today it's like 70.

My friend's friend got his child "caught up" in vaccinations, where his child received several vaccinations at once and it was then he thought his son had changed and had become autistic. I've talked to my parents (who are in their 80's now) who were shocked and considered this insane to get several vaccinations at one time. When I was vaccinated, it was under a very strict schedule and spread out. Thimerosal I've heard is still used, that's a mercury compound. I know it's supposed to be an inactive preservative, but cryogenic preservation is widely available today. Thimerosal should be outlawed, even for animal use.

I am probably very ignorant in this area, and am just asking for correction and opinion.
63   PeopleUnited   2020 Dec 11, 8:42am  

richwicks says
PeopleUnited says
No evolution doesn’t create new species, that is what I mean and any idiot can see.


But it does.


For clarification: when I say that evolution does not create new species, I mean that bacteria cannot evolve to become a mouse or a human. Certainly a horse and a donkey which are the same type of animal, share a common lineage. They belong to the same Genus together with zebras. That horses, donkeys and zebras have a common ancestor is evident. And they will always be members of that Genus, their offspring will always be horse like. They will never be anything but horses, just like bacteria will never be anything but bacteria.

I appreciate your thoughtful responses.

I must correct you with regard to 2 statements.

First: Lucifer is a created being. He is an angel, who chose to pursue his own will and persuaded a third of the Angels God created to join his rebellion. I suppose he might be considered a leader of the fallen angels but he is not a king. He does desire worship, for some vain reason. He currently is free and has access to both Heaven and earth where he currently works his influence and also spends time accusing Christians of evil deeds to the Throne of God.

Second: it is never too late to listen to the voice of God and let Him in to your heart and life. The fact that you have life and ability to reason is evidence that God still has purpose for you and can give you ability to realize that purpose. And chief among those purposes is to agree with God that he can redeem that life you characterize as on a unalterable (irredeemable) course.
64   Shaman   2020 Dec 11, 9:13am  

richwicks says
Ultimately, we don't really know, we cannot prove evolution is the basis for all the variation of life we see, but there's tremendous amounts of evidence to suggest it happened.


All this is true. However, science has been utterly powerless to explain how life began. Even unicellular organisms are complex beyond belief. DNA may exist on its own for a short time, but has no means of replication without cellular machinery (ribosomes) to read it and reassemble it. It’s a serious mystery as to how life ever got started, and the mystery only deepens with every biochemical discovery. It’s like discovering a small flat rock on the ground, and discounting it as a simple natural phenomenon for millennia. Then someone examines it closely and finds it permeated with minuscule wiring. The more it’s examined, the more complex it reveals itself to be. Eventually we discover that it’s a computer CPU, and the idea that it could have arrived here through some natural process is entirely debunked.
That’s exactly where we are with biochemistry. Life is more akin to micro machinery than organic ooze, regardless of what it resembles. Like the flat little rock that turned out to be a CPU, the cell has proven to be packed full of ridiculous complexity, making the CPU look positively simple by comparison.
65   richwicks   2020 Dec 11, 9:50am  

Shaman says
That’s exactly where we are with biochemistry. Life is more akin to micro machinery than organic ooze, regardless of what it resembles. Like the flat little rock that turned out to be a CPU, the cell has proven to be packed full of ridiculous complexity, making the CPU look positively simple by comparison.


Examine the solutions that an AI will come up with. It's well beyond the ability of an engineer to generate the same complexity. It produces crazy solutions. That's what life is like, it's got crazy solutions. An engineer creates an environment, basically, to have an AI reproduce but what the AI ultimately becomes is bizarrely complicated. We don't study the solutions that are produced, we just test and use them.
66   richwicks   2020 Dec 11, 10:02am  

PeopleUnited says

For clarification: when I say that evolution does not create new species, I mean that bacteria cannot evolve to become a mouse or a human.


No, it doesn't, but something that is neither a mouse nor a bacteria is a common ancestor.. What this was, we have no idea. There's no fossil record, and the ancestor doesn't exist, it's evolved ancestors drove it to extinction.

I won't bother to argue with you in regard to Lucifer. Lucifer does refer to a king but I don't want to argue it. It's a trivial point to me.

PeopleUnited says
Second: it is never too late to listen to the voice of God and let Him in to your heart and life. The fact that you have life and ability to reason is evidence that God still has purpose for you and can give you ability to realize that purpose. And chief among those purposes is to agree with God that he can redeem that life you characterize as on a unalterable (irredeemable) course.


I appreciate the concern, however if there is a god, I cannot possibly conceive it as the Christian depiction. I do not wish to argue religion, because I recognize it is useful to people.

15 years ago, I would have, and I can make some powerful arguments. I've hurt people by doing this I believe thinking I was doing the right thing at the time. I had a fanatical belief in "truth". That's a naive viewpoint I see now. I once saw religious faith as dangerous as any unreasonable belief - equivalent to danger in believing in communism. Religion I believe, at least the western ones, are used as a political tool, and I still believe that, but they can resist the power of the state. A bunch of intellects cannot.
67   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 11, 7:38pm  

richwicks says
What is your opinion on people who believe autism is linked to vaccine damage?


I don't have one because I haven't seen any data. There's some nasties in vaccines though so I'd guess it would not surprise me. I sat near the lead on this while he was still working on it:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6449150/

A lighter read:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/autistic-children-may-inherit-dna-mutations-their-fathers
68   Onvacation   2020 Dec 12, 7:16am  

richwicks says
I had a fanatical belief in "truth".

Truth? or facts?

Get used to it with the new administration.
69   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 12, 12:06pm  

Shaman says
However, science has been utterly powerless to explain how life began.


Not true at all. There are many great hypotheses. We're a long way from the Miller-Urey experiments posted above. But yeah, we still can't create life from dirt yet.

https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/uc_san_diego_researchers_may_be_shedding_light_on_lifes_chemical_origins

But even better @shaman, just look at all of these articles and new insights/results that have been building up over the past 13 years:

https://www.scripps.edu/krishnamurthy/news.html

We are going to recreate it at some point...
70   Shaman   2020 Dec 12, 5:52pm  

I appreciate your science approach, @just_passing_through
But I took a look at that and it’s a long way from anything we’d consider life. Innovative approach I guess. But a few peptides that can make more of themselves in the presence of the right kinds of proteins won’t accomplish much. It’s still the scientific equivalent of hand waving over the difficult bits.
71   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 13, 11:21am  

Shaman says
hand waving over the difficult bits.


Yeah, life didn't start with difficult bits. It's not going to look like that at all. That 2nd link has more than a dozen approaches not just peptide replication. One is a primitive krebs cycle for Pete's sake!
72   Rin   2020 Dec 13, 11:52am  

PeopleUnited says
Glad you at least acknowledge Jesus was here riding on one of his creations.


How about the idea that Paul was a channeler and only knows Jesus as a channeled entity? That's also a start.
73   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 13, 12:45pm  

Rin says
How about the idea that Paul was a channeler and only knows Jesus as a channeled entity? That's also a start.


I think I know where you're going with this but I'm going to mangle the fuck out of it and not get it right:

Isn't it true that apparently Jesus died, rose whatever and then nothing happened for something like 50 or 100 years. Then a cloud or a bolt of lighting or something told someone (Paul?) the story and that's when the religion started? There was definitely some large gap in time as per what I read long ago...
74   PeopleUnited   2020 Dec 16, 1:01am  

just_passing_through says
Rin says
How about the idea that Paul was a channeler and only knows Jesus as a channeled entity? That's also a start.


I think I know where you're going with this but I'm going to mangle the fuck out of it and not get it right:

Isn't it true that apparently Jesus died, rose whatever and then nothing happened for something like 50 or 100 years. Then a cloud or a bolt of lighting or something told someone (Paul?) the story and that's when the religion started? There was definitely some large gap in time as per what I read long ago...


Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday, he appeared to Mary and his disciples that same day. (Jews measure days from sundown to sundown so he may have technically rose on what we would call Saturday evening.) He appeared to many over the next 40 days before ascending into Heaven. 10 days later (After His Ascension) was Pentecost where God poured out His Spirit into the hearts of men and women who were gathered in His name and this is the start of the church. So, no gap.

Paul was actually a devout Religious leader in Jewish traditions who persecuted and sought to kill Christians until God showed him his error. Saul became Paul after his conversion to Christianity, this happened about a year after Pentecost. Paul was roughly 30 years old at the time of his conversion and was essentially a contemporary of the disciples (Peter, John, Luke etc...) who unlike the disciples never met Jesus in he flesh. Though they never met, surely Paul knew of Jesus and his followers who Paul sought to destroy as heretics before his conversion, let’s just say that Jesus made a bit of an impression on the world of his day.
75   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 16, 7:16am  

What happened to the church immediately after Jesus ascended into heaven? During the first twenty years of the church, no New Testament book was written. Paul only began writing about twenty years later, and the Gospels only began to appear about forty years after Jesus’ ascension.

https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/columns/detrinitate/the-first-twenty-years-what-happened-to-the-church-immediately-after-jesus-died/

That gap.
76   richwicks   2020 Dec 16, 7:31am  

just_passing_through says
What happened to the church immediately after Jesus ascended into heaven? During the first twenty years of the church, no New Testament book was written. Paul only began writing about twenty years later, and the Gospels only began to appear about forty years after Jesus’ ascension.

https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/columns/detrinitate/the-first-twenty-years-what-happened-to-the-church-immediately-after-jesus-died/

That gap.


What is the point in shaking somebody's religious belief? How does this advantage either you or them?
77   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 16, 7:41am  

It's a science thread. What is the point of shaking someones scientific belief? Normal religious people don't do this. Only christian 'scientists'. I always push back against that crap.

Advantage? I just do it for fun!
78   Onvacation   2020 Dec 16, 8:08am  

just_passing_through says
Only christian 'scientists'. I always push back against that crap.

What was before the big bang?
79   Onvacation   2020 Dec 16, 8:11am  

The theory that we are a hologram sent from the stars or live inside a computer simulation are as valid as the creation story.

My wife has this theory that covid and online work is just a way for AI to take over.
80   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 16, 8:12am  

Onvacation says
What was before the big bang?


Who knows. Many physicists consider that in invalid question. In other words time might not have existed. So the question itself doesn't make sense / is a divide by zero error.
81   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 16, 8:13am  

Onvacation says
The theory that we are a hologram sent from the stars or live inside a computer simulation


Is making more and more sense all the time... More from physicists: When you get down to the Planck Length, the math breaks down into several programming languages.
82   Onvacation   2020 Dec 16, 8:14am  

And where does the tangent function go when it is between positive infinity and negative infinity?
83   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 16, 8:15am  

Onvacation says
And where does the tangent function go when it is between positive infinity and negative infinity?


Need. More. Coffee.
84   Onvacation   2020 Dec 16, 8:15am  

Math is mans feeble attempt to explain nature. It works!

We still have a lot to learn.
85   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 16, 8:20am  

https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/22/2/247/htm

Abstract
We modify the simulation hypothesis to a self-simulation hypothesis, where the physical universe, as a strange loop, is a mental self-simulation that might exist as one of a broad class of possible code theoretic quantum gravity models of reality obeying the principle of efficient language axiom.
86   Patrick   2020 Dec 16, 8:53am  

Onvacation says
My wife has this theory that covid and online work is just a way for AI to take over.




I was wondering this myself. Seems paranoid, but possible.
87   FarmersWon   2020 Dec 16, 9:32am  

Patrick says
Onvacation says
My wife has this theory that covid and online work is just a way for AI to take over.





I was wondering this myself. Seems paranoid, but possible.


I believe the opposite will happen.
Look at election, The technology caused all the mess.


People will be so fed up that there will be premium for vacation/living on island with no internet connectivity beyond basic SOS.
I heard that all the Tech CEOs limit their kids access to technology to nothing.
88   Patrick   2020 Dec 16, 6:00pm  

election2020 says
I believe the opposite will happen.
Look at election, The technology caused all the mess.


Might happen, especially after this kind of thing keeps recurring:

https://patrick.net/post/1336827?offset=0#comment-1720290
89   theoakman   2020 Dec 16, 7:35pm  

The kids at my school went on a field trip to Mexico. They got no signal or wifi for a week. They thought they were going to be miserable. They said it felt so liberating.
90   PeopleUnited   2020 Dec 25, 7:23pm  

just_passing_through says
What happened to the church immediately after Jesus ascended into heaven? During the first twenty years of the church, no New Testament book was written. Paul only began writing about twenty years later, and the Gospels only began to appear about forty years after Jesus’ ascension.

https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/columns/detrinitate/the-first-twenty-years-what-happened-to-the-church-immediately-after-jesus-died/

That gap.


What do you think the purpose of Christians is? To sell books?

They were busy telling everyone who wanted to hear of Christ. That is what every Christian is called to do.

Merry Christmas!
91   FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden   2020 Dec 25, 7:53pm  

Christianity is the original self help books. Basically don’t do bad shit, and world will be a better place. Collection of stories of successes and failures.
92   PeopleUnited   2020 Dec 25, 8:46pm  

Fortwaynemobile says
Christianity is the original self help books. Basically don’t do bad shit, and world will be a better place. Collection of stories of successes and failures.


Well, not exactly. What Christianity is, is an acknowledgment of Jesus’s death, burial and resurrection as an atonement for personal sin. The goal is not to make the world a better place, even though Christians do tend to be moral. The actual goal is to give people a choice, trust God or trust yourself, and preach the consequences for that decision.
93   FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden   2020 Dec 26, 8:56am  

PeopleUnited says
Fortwaynemobile says
Christianity is the original self help books. Basically don’t do bad shit, and world will be a better place. Collection of stories of successes and failures.


Well, not exactly. What Christianity is, is an acknowledgment of Jesus’s death, burial and resurrection as an atonement for personal sin. The goal is not to make the world a better place, even though Christians do tend to be moral. The actual goal is to give people a choice, trust God or trust yourself, and preach the consequences for that decision.


That too. But it’s also advice on how to reduce suffering. Suffering was everywhere, and collection of stories through example showed what leads to suffering and what to good life.
94   just_passing_through   2020 Dec 28, 9:09pm  

All of these posts about religion in a science thread is like someone posting hairy dick pics in the Tired of politics - sexy picture thread.

Make a religion thread... They are mutually exclusive.

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