My brother has been visiting town the past few days so I haven't commented on this yet. But I live 3 minutes away from a Unitarian church that a few of my friends attend. I used to think about joining the congregation but now I have no choice. I will be attending Sunday services due to a rather unfortunate set of events. ( if you don't know I'm an atheist )
(http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2008/07/28/tennessee_wideweb__470x359,0.jpg)
National News: Gunmen Opens Fire on Unitarian Congregation during Children's Performance
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7529450.stm
Of all churches.... Unitarians? There are thousands and thousands of Baptist churches in the area... but this one shimmering oasis in Knoxville had to be attacked? For their open-minded beliefs?
This man was under economic stress. For years his disagreements with Liberals, resentment for his ex-wife's involvement with the church, (and most likely the rise of Barack Hussein Obama) fueled his fire to walk into a church where children were performing... and he opened fire with a shotgun. He shot randomly, killed 2 members of the congregation. Injured many others.
This church is a refuge for people in Knoxville who don't fit into the status quo here. Gay men and women are accepted and encouraged to march downtown by the church. In fact a teenager I knew when he was four years old organized his own parade and might have been the catalyst for this violence. My other friend is a college professor and served as his mentor - helping him to organize the gay pride parade using the church.
These are people whose liberties were ATTACKED in America by a man who was under financial stress. And who hated the liberal movement. My town is drowning in bigotry and the shadow of this event looms over me when I drive down my street on the way out of my neighborhood. If there is any good from this, hopefully all the communities involved (Unitarians, gays, Knoxvillians) will gain strength from this and learn to grow.
More links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVKuteH2BW0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcLcUSsaXCA
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/07/29/tenn_church_shooting_victims_improving/
And to think, 15 years ago my parents left the Unitarian church we had attended for years because it wasn't liberal enough. (I had stopped going to church all together a few years earlier because it wasn't atheist enough.) They changed to a Unity church (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_Church) where they had a gay pastor. And of course protesters were outside that church every Sunday. I went sometimes just to sneer at them as I entered. Didn't they have... like... church to go to or something?
Churches are just trouble.
:(
When times are dire people look for scapegoats. The US is facing a perilous economic situation, a government that's so incompetent and brutal it's become nothing but a bitter joke, and (in the next decade or so, likely) the long-delayed fall of American hegemony. There's a lot of people out there screaming at the dark, hoping to blame everything on liberals, gays, blacks, Jews, whatever's an easy target (you said it: "people [. . .] who don't fit the status quo"), whatever they can that's not themselves. I'm afraid this kind of thing is going to get worse before it gets better.
If I thought it'd do any good I'd pray.
Things are a bit calmer in the UK. Here's about as violent as it gets: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7504472.stm
Personally, I can't see how comments like "[All] churches are just trouble" are any different from "All gays are just trouble". You bigots are all the same...
Ok, let me rephrase. Christianity is just trouble.
How about you get to the root of it: people are just trouble.
People are people. Christians aren't any different from anyone else, really, much as they'd like to be.
(Ironically, in my first post in this thread I was originally going to make a sarcastic comment about how clearly a gunmen shooting up a church is the church's fault, but I decided that you must have been being sarcastic in the first place, because no one would make that kind of blanket statement seriously. *sigh*)
Quote from: Redwall on Sun 03/08/2008 16:53:28
How about you get to the root of it: people are just trouble.
Don't call me xenophobix, but I don't agree: Sapients are just trouble.
Quote from: SSH on Sun 03/08/2008 16:22:27
Things are a bit calmer in the UK. Here's about as violent as it gets: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7504472.stm
With regards to religious ceremonies? Because I've been reading up on your country's increasing number of knife fight fatalities.
I see this man's attack on the local church as a fluke. But the more fundamental people's beliefs get, and the worse they are doing financially I'd expect to see more violence over the next few years. The precedent of opening fire at a congregation will hopefully not arise again any time soon.
The UK media's hysteria over knife crime is totally out of proportion to the problem. It's mainly confined to London, although probably the media hype will make it spread :o
And Redwall is right: people are the trouble. Christians are no better than anyone else, but the point of "The Good News" is that they are forgiven...
Quote from: SSH on Sun 03/08/2008 19:40:02
The UK media's hysteria over knife crime is totally out of proportion to the problem. It's mainly confined to London, although probably the media hype will make it spread :o
This isn't a UK-specific phenomenon. There's a reason crime gets so much coverage in newspapers - it's easy to spin it so that it seems like violent crime is a danger to everyone (when in fact it is, for the most part, only a danger to criminals, depending on the lawlessness of your particular area), it's easy to get good pictures (which drive both newspapers and television news these days), and it's really easy to construct a narrative around (that is, it's easy to find a victim to promote sympathy for and an aggressor to vilify).
That said, it's true, desperate times call for desperate measures, and the more deranged people in the world may every now and then decide that blowing a few people away is the way to deal with things. Here in Canada, we just had a guy saw off another guy's head on a Greyhound bus. This sort of thing just doesn't happen in Canada.
Quote from: SSH on Sun 03/08/2008 16:22:27Personally, I can't see how comments like "[All] churches are just trouble" are any different from "All gays are just trouble". You bigots are all the same...
Quote from: Ishmael on Sun 03/08/2008 16:37:18
Ok, let me rephrase. Christianity is just trouble.
Quote from: Redwall on Sun 03/08/2008 16:53:28
How about you get to the root of it: people are just trouble.
People are people. Christians aren't any different from anyone else, really, much as they'd like to be.
Fanatics are trouble.
Positive.
You cannot tell that all people/all christians are trouble. But you can tell that most of the christian fanatics are trouble. There's nothing wrong with being a christian. If a person is bad, it has nothing to do with being of any faith.
I have one neighboring family in my house. They go to church every sunday. They pray. They do everything like "true" christians. But they don't help you when you need it. They won't say hello when you approach them and say hello to them. They look at you like you're an ape, because you don't go to their fucking church every single sunday and you don't sing their fucking songs every time. It's almost racistic. Are they wrong because they are christians? No. Christians are wrong, because the whole christian society consists of people like this.
You can be a hell of a good person which helps others, but someone keeps telling you that you are not a christian because you don't go to confessions, you don't go to church, you don't..... Christianity is not about how often you go to church. Christianity is about how you treat others.
Am I a trouble because I am a christian?
Quote from: Oliwerko on Tue 05/08/2008 09:09:43
[snip]
I have one neighboring family in my house. They go to church every sunday. They pray. They do everything like "true" christians. But they don't help you when you need it. They won't say hello when you approach them and say hello to them. They look at you like you're an ape, because you don't go to their fucking church every single sunday and you don't sing their fucking songs every time. [snip]
You can be a hell of a good person which helps others, but someone keeps telling you that you are not a christian because you don't go to confessions, you don't go to church, you don't..... Christianity is not about how often you go to church. Christianity is about how you treat others.
[snip]
Well said. These people are church-goers, but they are not Christians. They can that they are all they want, but if they're not living up to the meaning of the term, they might as well be atheists.
I thought Christianity was about believing in Christ.
The trouble with saying "Oh well, but they're not REAL Christians" is that you very soon end up with a very small number of people who are REAL. Often excluding oneself (assuming that one wanted to be included).
I believe that there are actually very few of the "real" ones. Not to mention that I may be also one of the masses that are not "real". But I do my best to be "real". That's all. For me it really doesn't matter in what you believe. Call it Christ, call it God, call it Budha, have 50 gods, believe in what you want, you still believe in SOMETHING. Or you don't have to believe in something. It's totally personal. The important thing is not to be evil. Everything's ok as long as you treat the world nice. That's my opinion.
Labels are bullshit, tools of definition (which is to say division, which is to say valuation, which is to say bullshit).
Writing fanatics off as evil and the rest of us fine is making the same mistake they are.
There are actually only two religions in the world that have the concept of good and evil. I think the world would work better if people would believe in themselves and see how helping others helps yourself in the end.
I never understood what point is to go randomly shooting **random** people. Especially kids. Why not lawyers or bankers or IRS workers or politicians? Because
1) you will get caught, and most likely shot
2) media attention drains quickly, it won't be news after week or two
3) It doesn't change anything*
4) You wasted bullets pointlessly, and your life, and uncountable other material and moral resources
* Sure, for the close ones of the victim, and of course, victims themselves, but hurting 1-20 people among 6 billion is not something that makes world spin other way nor solve problems
If I was sick, desperate, disoriented and crazy maniac and angry at power, I would act stealthily and commit big things. Like poisoning entire city water supply or something. Bring true terror. And never get caught. Maybe give a tip to the emergency so they'd resolve problem before anyone gets hurt, but still make everybody afraid and power figures appear weak and helpless. Actually, it shouldn't be poison, but a truck full of laxatives...
But then again, supervillains are getting out of fashion with that boring and pointless hunt for Ol' Osama.
This guy clearly has a screw loose. And it doesn't really sound like there's any religion behind this.
It's simple mental disorder.
Also, I agree that labels are bad. Communities? Churches? Gays? Unitarians? Christians? Linux users?
I see making a church, closing doors and singing there, preaching yourself "different" and asking others to join as an act of extreme isolation. This is first reason why I'm practical atheist. I don't want to be a part of the flock, because I am not a sheep, damnit. If I believe, I don't need separate house, a book and a fool in black clothes to confirm this and continuously rate how "good"(like it could be measured) "believer"(like it had exact definition) I am.
Aren't we, ehm, human beings? Isn't that "label" more important than other ones?
QuoteThere are actually only two religions in the world that have the concept of good and evil.
Ah yes, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Wait. (Of course, even beyond this, the question becomes: how do you define a religion? It's a label; it's meaningless.)
Quotesick, desperate, disoriented and crazy
Those things generally preclude people from acting as efficiently as you describe. Also, most people in that condition are only looking for a visceral release, not a true solution (and usually want to die, too, so they don't really care about what happens afterward).
Quote from: Redwall on Tue 05/08/2008 23:37:48
QuoteThere are actually only two religions in the world that have the concept of good and evil.
Yes, this is a bit overstated. Do you mean of the current major religions? Because there are hundreds, possibly thousands of mythologies to sift through to prove the statement you made correct.
And I agree that we put too much weight on labels... but in order to convene with other humans you usually need to conform to a set of standards. And sure enough there are others convening elsewhere with their own standards, and boom you have labels. I believe that people should convene with each other, so removing labels altogether is mucho difficult.
Oh right, three. And yes I meant the "world religions" as they are labeled. All the others have the concept of good and bad, ringt and wrong, and people try to do the good thing. But they don't, what I've been taught, fear any supernatural evil. If they've done wrong they fear the same gods that bring them all the good if they are good.
And I don't think many ancient mythologies really had true evil either. Not that I know them all, though.
Quote from: Ishmael on Wed 06/08/2008 13:50:43
Oh right, three. And yes I meant the "world religions" as they are labeled. All the others have the concept of good and bad, ringt and wrong, and people try to do the good thing. But they don't, what I've been taught, fear any supernatural evil. If they've done wrong they fear the same gods that bring them all the good if they are good.
And I don't think many ancient mythologies really had true evil either. Not that I know them all, though.
You've just contradicted yourself. And redefined all the terms you used in your previous assertions. And you're still wrong. A typical example of internet debate... :=
Christians don't fear any supernatural evil as they believe that Christ defeated it on the cross.
Some branches of Christianity don't believe in a personified or supernatural evil force.
Zoroastrians believe in a supernatural evil force.
Ancient mythologies had arbitrary gods who killed you (or worse) for looking the wrong way. Or if they felt like it. Because the world was arbitrary and that was a pretty good explanation at the time.
evenwolf: that's why the world still sucks. :P Seriously, I agree, we can't live without labels, but I do think things go a lot better when people recognize labels for what they are.
Oh right yeah, people don't fear the evil. They fear the good. But there still is the evil, which no matter how long ago has been defeated still lives. Tho I'm just a bystander observing the matter here, I wouldn't really know. And I'm not trying to argue against anyone, atleast no-one's yet denied christianity among the couple of others really having something labeled evil. Tho, if there was no evil what would be the point of constantly trying to cleance oneself from it? It's a very contradictious religion alltogether.
Quote from: Ishmael on Wed 06/08/2008 18:41:35
Tho, if there was no evil what would be the point of constantly trying to cleance oneself from it?
To make yourself more cleansed than others. That's it! I've cracked it! All the pieces of the puzzle are together! A Christian person does all this stuff in order to show everyone else how better, cleaner and holier he/she is than others. It's like A max lvl epic gear owning a lvl 1 noob. It's all about ownage!
Quote from: Lionmonkey on Wed 06/08/2008 18:51:12
A Christian person does all this stuff in order to show everyone else how better, cleaner and holier he/she is than others.
Sadly, many people do this. And it basically denies the basis of christianity itself.
QuoteIt's a very contradictious religion alltogether.
Again, this is nothing unique. People are contradictory. And they can't be any other way. Instead of picking holes in something that's easy, why not try for something hard, something that's supposed to be logical and consistent and non-contradictory? Take physics, the study of the most fundamental, basic parts of the universe, and what do we humans have to say? Schrodinger's cat, entanglement, and more: it doesn't work. The universe is impossible. Take mathematics, the basis of all structure, organization, order, and what do we humans have to say? Godel's incompleteness: it doesn't work. Math is broken.
Push anything far enough, and you'll find everything is flawed. Nothing makes sense. But that only matters if you decide it does.
Quote from: Redwall on Thu 07/08/2008 02:32:59
Take physics, the study of the most fundamental, basic parts of the universe, and what do we humans have to say? Schrodinger's cat, entanglement, and more: it doesn't work. The universe is impossible. Take mathematics, the basis of all structure, organization, order, and what do we humans have to say? Godel's incompleteness: it doesn't work. Math is broken.
Your examples (like Gödel's theorems and Scrödinger's cat) do not necessarily mean that the sciences are broken, but that our current understanding of them, the theories we've come up with so far have flaws. Actually Schrödinger used his famous thought experiment pretty much to say that quantum mechanics are damn confusing, and that our understanding of them is far from complete. In any case it's not really a paradox or proof of anything of the sort you describe.
Quote from: Redwall on Thu 07/08/2008 02:32:59
Push anything far enough, and you'll find everything is flawed. Nothing makes sense. But that only matters if you decide it does.
Push anything far enough, and you'll find it confuses the hell out of you. But that only matters if we're talking about everyday things like brushing your teeth or making an adventure game. Let's leave the hard stuff like quantum physics and female psychology to the Einsteins of the world.
PS: Sorry about dragging this even further from the topic.
Add this to the stack. (http://www.wnbc.com/automotive/17120347/detail.html)
(http://www.follow-me-now.de/assets/images/Pale_Rider-1.jpg)
QuoteYour examples (like Gödel's theorems and Scrödinger's cat) do not necessarily mean that the sciences are broken, but that our current understanding of them, the theories we've come up with so far have flaws. Actually Schrödinger used his famous thought experiment pretty much to say that quantum mechanics are damn confusing, and that our understanding of them is far from complete. In any case it's not really a paradox or proof of anything of the sort you describe.
While I'm not a physicist (or a mathematician), my understanding of these things is that they're not saying "we don't understand why this is", they're saying "we can't understand why this is". Uncertainty (e.g. Heisenberg's, which I probably should have mentioned above) as an intrinsic, inevitable property of the relationship between humans and the rest of the universe. The same goes for incompleteness: while again, I'm not a mathematician, my understanding is that it's demonstrating a fundamental property of mathematical systems. Granted, intrinsic and fundamental properties often turn out to be not-so-intrinsic-and-fundamental given enough time, but they're not intended as expressions of a lack of understanding. (It also seems to me that incompleteness is the one less likely to be overturned, and that's the only one you really need anyway, because every order can be expressed as a mathematical system--that's what makes it order--and therefore applies.)
Quote
While I'm not a physicist (or a mathematician), my understanding of these things is that they're not saying "we don't understand why this is", they're saying "we can't understand why this is". Uncertainty (e.g. Heisenberg's, which I probably should have mentioned above) as an intrinsic, inevitable property of the relationship between humans and the rest of the universe.
I'm no physicist either but people who skim read physics books and mix in some Buddism are annoying because its hard to know if it is BS. Are you sure there are things that can't be understood or is it there hasn't been a theory developed yet or is it they need more experiments? Perhaps you have misunderstood the limitations of our understanding.
Something that seems off: the uncertainty principle is about a trade off between measuring two quantities - location and momentum. I don't know how they measure these two quantities but it would use some device (eg. sensors, photographic plate), not humans.
Getting back on topic they found experimental proof that the purple teli tubby was gay.
Quote
. Uncertainty (e.g. Heisenberg's, which I probably should have mentioned above) as an intrinsic, inevitable property of the relationship between humans and the rest of the universe
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/uncer.html#c2) has absolutely nothing to do with human beings or measuring devices. It is a fundamental property of the universe and to date there have been no evidence to suggest otherwise.
Quote
Uncertainty (e.g. Heisenberg's)
Redwall, I'm no physicist either, but I'd say you'd be safer quoting Murphy's Law in the future. I know I do all the time!
A mathematician chips in (I'm not a mathematician by trade, but I have a degree in the subject):
One of the great things about mathematics is that it works. All of the other sciences stem from it, and it is its consistency that means we are able to do science at all. If it weren't true that every time you added 2 to 2 you got 4, then it would not be possible for us to do science, and, indeed, the universe would be a very strange place, if it were even possible for it to exist at all.
Gödel's incompleteness theorem is not a flaw in mathematics. Put simply, it says that however much we develop mathematics, there will always be new mathematics to be discovered. So it shows that mathematics is infinite, not that it is flawed.
Here's a simple example (this is not quite what the theorem is on about, but it illustrates the point behind it): consider the everyday counting numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... If you add any two of them together, you get another counting number; for example, 3 + 5 = 8. Combining two numbers of a particular kind and ending up with another number of the same kind is the concept of "completeness" that the theorem talks about.
But if you subtract one from the other, you can end up with a number that isn't a counting number; for example, 3 - 5 = -2. So you need to throw zero and negative numbers into the mix if subtraction is always going to work. Now multiplication of any two of these numbers gives you another one of the same kind, but if you divide one by another, you can end up with a different kind of number, that is, a fraction like 1/2. So for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division all to work, you need fractions as well as whole numbers. (I'll ignore the thorny issue of dividing by zero here, as that's another matter.)
So this set of numbers seems to be complete for any sort of arithmetic you might want to do. But it's not... you can square a number by multiplying it by itself (eg, 3 x 3 = 9) but doing the opposite operation, square roots (that is, finding what number multiplied by itself gives a certain number - for example, the square root of 4 is 2, and of 25 is 5), often gives numbers that are neither whole numbers or fractions. The square root of 2 is not a whole number and neither is it a fraction. So we have to bring in another set of numbers (called irrational numbers) so that we can always do square roots (of positive numbers and zero).
And so it goes on (finding the square roots of negative numbers is very useful in maths, but these square roots are not whole numbers, nor fractions, nor irrational numbers, so mathematicians invented more numbers so that they could do maths with the square roots of negative numbers). Every new mathematical concept that mathematicians come up with allows them to do things that result in something outside the scope of mathematics as it has been developed so far. This is what Gödel's incompleteness theorem states, in a nutshell.
Sorry to drag this thread away from the original topic, but Redwall's assertion that "maths is broken" is false and I felt it needed to be countered.
Quote from: evenwolf on Mon 11/08/2008 10:27:00
Quote
Uncertainty (e.g. Heisenberg's)
Redwall, I'm no physicist either, but I'd say you'd be safer quoting Murphy's Law in the future. I know I do all the time!
I prefer Cole's Law:
Spoiler
Thinly sliced cabbage
Cole's Law is just trouble.
QuoteHeisenberg's Uncertainty Principle has absolutely nothing to do with human beings or measuring devices. It is a fundamental property of the universe and to date there have been no evidence to suggest otherwise.
All science is from a human point of reference; uncertainty is a fundamental property of the perspective from which we observe the universe. That perspective is the limit of our possible knowledge, so we often generalize it to be the absolute truth, but it's not and that's the point.
Paolo: I realize math "works", of course, and that's it's not "broken". But you point out that mathematics is infinite, which means it cannot be complete, which is what I meant. Basically, no structure/system/organization/order (which are all fundamentally mathematical) can be absolute, there is always something that cannot be contained by it, something above/beyond/outside of it. Math is very useful, and works within specific points of reference, but it can never be the end-all arbiter of truth, nor can any structure/system/organization/order, which is what a great many people aspire towards.
Quote from: Redwall on Mon 11/08/2008 14:32:21
All science is from a human point of reference; uncertainty is a fundamental property of the perspective from which we observe the universe. That perspective is the limit of our possible knowledge, so we often generalize it to be the absolute truth, but it's not and that's the point.
Ironically, in my experience, just about the only people who even suggest that science would ever aspire to "absolute truth", are those who are eager to announce that it can't. A scientific theory is a model that can explain the stuff that actually happens. The scientific method is a way of devising and testing these models, and one that happens to be successful at accomplishing just that. That's all there is to it. Who says it's absolute truth? No physics or chemistry textbook (or teacher) tells you, "
this is what atoms really look like". It tells you: if atoms looked like this, then this would happen, and since that's what actually does happen in the real world, it's
a successful model, and
good science--
regardless of what atoms really look like. To be honest I've hardly ever heard anyone claim, with any other motive than immediately refuting it, that we really do know exactly what atoms look like, or by extension that any scientific theory or model is infallibly true and nonnegotiable.
Quote
All science is from a human point of reference; uncertainty is a fundamental property of the perspective from which we observe the universe. That perspective is the limit of our possible knowledge, so we often generalize it to be the absolute truth, but it's not and that's the point.
Could you please explain what this has to do with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle other than you and he have used the word "uncertainity"?
[edit]
Well said Eldkatt ;)
Quote from: RickJ on Mon 11/08/2008 07:21:01
has absolutely nothing to do with human beings or measuring devices.
You need to perform an experiment to confirm it (using measuring devices). I went down to the uni near my place and asked them.
They were testing that Schrodinger's cat idea. So many dead kittens.
Related.... (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D92HM6000&show_article=1)