mererdog

With an error margin big enough that it might leave room for everyone's pet theories to potentially be true... Historians and archaeologists who find the assumptions underpinning their life's work to be under attack tend to get fairly defensive... No?

For the life of the dvd, which can sometimes be measured in minutes- we all agree they are fairly flimsy? I have movies I have legally moved from drive to drive or stored in the cloud for years. The licensing for those is as permanent as the companies I originally bought them through, or my ability to obtain compatible third-party software, whichever lasts longer...

Nothing wrong with it. Its just strange. The tech has been outdated for decades, and the only real advantages to it are for the manufacturers, not the consumers. And blue-ray really isnt that much better, technologically. I mean, really? Lasers? Nothing at all. Nothing at all strange about worrying that an enemy might track your calls? For a lot of people (possibly a majority) it is accurate. Asside from obvious access problems due to infrastructure and income imbalances, many simply know no better way to get information- and that makes them reliant on outdated and innefficient methods....

People relying on "channels" for their news is strange to me... As strange as the fact that people still buy dvds and have landlines...

Right. 95.4% accurate with an error margin of plus or minus 38 years. So the traditional version of history is safely within the margin of error, but that isnt a controversial enough analysis to sell papers, so they are focusing on the "could".

HEADLINE- Publishers Relying Heavily On The Word "Could" As Error Margin On Radiocarbon Dating Of Qur'an Too Broad Too Prove Anything

God has never spoken to me, and people all over the world disagree about what God says about right and wrong. So I have no real option other than to make my own moral determinations.

The same is equally true of each individuals life. Some get ostracized over leaving a hometown, some over opting out of a family business, some for picking the "wrong" side in a war or a political contest. Families often do not tolerate independent decision making well. I think the religion is more a symptom than a cause. The Klan is racist because it's members are racist- not the other way around. Make sense?

Eating another person's body is cannibalism. "This is my body. Eat of it." By simple definition, it is symbolic cannibalism. By the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, it is actual cannibalism. I can understand not wanting the word cannibalism used in reference to your rituals, but it is what it is, you know?

But why would I say those things in a fundamentalist church? Believing those things means a fundamentalist church is not the place for me. I assume that if I preach racial tolerance at a Klan rally, it would not be received well, so I don't go to Klan rallies.

It's not really a religion thing, though. It's a people thing. People feel justified persecuting others because of perceived superiority in everything from political affiliation to taste in shoes. And they will go to great lengths to come up with rationalizations that somehow manage to paint them as a hero for doing it. Some hurt the innocent under the guise of protecting everyone from witches, and some hurt the innocent under the guise of protecting witches from Christians...

The problem with any reasoning involving an all powerful being is that anything that can't defy logic is not all powerful. By definition, if God is all powerful, God can have it both ways. He can make the rock so heavy even He cannot lift it, and he can lift it. It doesn't have to make sense. If it has to make sense, He isn't all powerful.

I have no idea. Well, lots of people say that isn't true. Personally, I have no real reason to believe either way. Experience with other things tells me, however, that evil does not always look evil and the greatest evils are always perpetrated in the name of doing good. You know what I mean? That is a very nuanced take. I don't agree with it, but I wanted to repeat it.

Or even "love the sinner by hating the sin."

From another topic... I would add that disapproving with what someone does is not always the same as disapproving of who they are. Small, subtle, highly important differences...

I am fairly certain, however, that the vast majority of people in the United States do not believe that witches or sorcery are a real thing. So punishing someone for being a witch is assumed to be as ridiculous an act as punishing someone for being Peter Pan. And yet, when people are out to get you, it isn't paranoia to think they are. Rational fear of real danger, you know?

It is worth pointing out that big corporations and the rich are neither imaginary nor incapable of causing problems. So while some of the accusations made about them are delusional, others are factual. The same is true of some right wing conspiracies but not all. Do you think it is true of witchcraft and sorcery?

In some cases, they didn't disagree about whether it was wrong to kill witches, but only about who was (or was not) a witch.

Unfortunately, people often confuse apathy for tolerance, and so never really understand how hard tolerance is. It is only when we believe things are bad that we can tolerate them. If you don't care what your neighbor believes, it isn't tolerant to allow him to believe as he wishes. It is only when you think the other guys beliefs are harmful that you have the option to tolerate them. You tolerate pain, not pleasure. You tolerate injury, not health. You tolerate fatigue, not rest. Tolerance is important because we cannot live our lives without causing a degree of harm to each other. We either learn to tolerate, or we are consumed with a resentment that invariably grows into hatred. So all reasonably functional members of society are reasonably tolerant. But we all have our sore spots, and some of us are slower to forgive than others. And, yeah, there are things you probably shouldn't tolerate, and I know this is going to seem melodramatic, but I truly believe that with most of the bad stuff you either learn how to live with it or you let it kill you. No third option available.

While I don't fault your logic, and your conclusion is valid, I find myself distrusting your premise....

I found three slightly, but significantly, different definitions of "chair" on the internet. An item could easily qualify under one or more while not qualifying under one or more. Now, we could all agree, for the sake of argument, to stick to the wiki definition, but there are still parts of that definition open to enough interpretation to extend the semantic argument, thereby stealing focus from the logical argument and/or confusing the issue.

You know what a car is. It has four wheels and an engine. You know what a bicycle is. It has two wheels and no engine. Then you see something with two wheels and an engine. Is it a car? Is it a bicycle? Is it both? They are laws the same way gravity is a theory. They explain the data. They create useful predictions. They have stood up to loads of testing. You wont get a ticket for breaking them.

While that is true, the logical answer to the question of electrons is that they are neither waves nor particles, but some third thing having some of the properties of both. When things appear to defy logic, it usually turns out that it isn't.

"Chair" is merely a categorization. It is a concept used to simplify and explain part of the world we live in. Whether or not a thing is a chair is entirely a matter of.definition, and there is no universally authoritative definition of chair. Ask two people of differing opinion, and you will find an object can both be a chair and not be a chair. I agree that a thing cannot be both A and not-A. The problem is that how we categorize a thing does not limit what a thing actually is. As such, when you go beyond abstract logic and into describing the real world, the imprecision of our language inevitably confuses the point. Some will see differing definitions as proof the the law of identity is bunk. Others will see the law of identity as proof that some definitions are "wrong". Both will be missing the point.

Making things worse is not better than doing nothing. It is, in fact, worse. Letting fear of the evil others will do cause you to do evil is cowardice, not courage. This is what I am saying.