Atheists and Agnostics Meeting Place

[Stormer0628]

^ That would be one helluva spider!! We ought to farm and sell it! We'd soon be off bringing down some world-renowned pharmas out of business—if they don't get to us first, that is. lol

One thing tho: wouldn't the bite infect the whole thingy and make it fall off??? That would be a disaster, no...?

 

[rueryuzaki]

^ Found it. It's the Brazilian Wandering Spider.

Brazilian Wandering Spider Bite Erection

 

[Stormer0628]

Interesting creature indeed. The Southern Kung-Fu school of China took notice, too, and there are talks they are going to augment their in-house martial arts techniques with the Wandering Spider Stance (depicted below). Will the practitioners of the praying mantis style be happy about it...??

And someone duly noted 10 awesome attributes of this mighty arachnid too, while a couple visited by the critters do no appear to be happy about it.

- - - Updated - - -

---

---

Holy Horrors: Killing Heretics

NOWADAYS religions portray themselves as great ambassadors of peace, but a quick review of history would tell us that it took countless sacrifices by secular, enlightened individuals to bring down the tyranny of authoritarian religious domination and persecution.

EARLY ON, Christians killed Muslims in the Crusades. Muslims killed Christians back, returning the favor. Christians killed Jews in many massacres. Meanwhile, another dimension was added: Christians began killing fellow Christians as “heretics.”

During the first millenium of the church, execution for doctrinal deviation was rare. In A.D. 385 at Trier, Germany, bishops put to death Priscillian and his followers for doubting the Trinity and the Resurrection. At Alexandria in 415, the great woman scientist Hypatia, head of the Alexandria Library, was beaten to death by monks and other followers of St. Cyril, who viewed her science much as the church later viewed Galileo’s. At Constantinople around 550, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian killed multitudes of non-conformists to impose Christian orthodoxy. Otherwise, heresy was a minor issue.

After the turn of the millenium, a few prosecutions occurred. King Robert the Pious burned thirteen heretics at Orleans in 1022. At Goslar, Germany, a community of Christians—deviants whose beliefs made them unwilling to kill chickens—were convicted of heresy and hanged in 1051. In 1141, priest Peter Abelard was sentenced to life imprisonment because he listed church contradictions in a book titled Yes and No.

Then, in the 1200s, a storm of heretic-hunting burst upon Europe. The first victims were the Albigenses, or Cathari, centered around Alby, France. They doubted the biblical account of Creation, considered Jesus an angel instead of a god, rejected transubstantiation, and demanded strict celibacy. Bishops executed a few Albigenses leaders, but the sect continued growing. The Third Lateran Council in 1179 proclaimed a military crusade against them, but it was a minor expedition with little success.

In 1208, Pope Innocent III declared a major crusade to destroy the Albigenses. Some 20,000 knights and peasants answered the call, forming an army that scourged southern France, smashing towns where the belief was strong. When the besieged city of Beziers fell, soldiers asked papal legate Arnald Amalric (or Arnaud Amaury) how they could distinguish the infidel from the faithful among the captives. He commanded: “Kill them all. God will know His own.” Thousands were slaughtered—many first blinded, mutilated, dragged behind horses or used for target practice. The legate reported to the pope: “God’s wrath has raged in wondrous wise against the city.”

This was the beginning of numerous “internal crusades” against nonconforming Christians and rebellious lords.

Another group targeted for extermination were the Waldensians, followers of Peter Waldo of Lyon, lay preachers who sermonized in the streets. The church decreed that only priests could preach, and commanded them to cease. They persisted. The Waldensians had been excommunicated as heretics at the Council of Verona in 1184, and the Albigensian crusade was directed at them as well. Executions ensued for five centuries. The lay preachers fled to Germany and Italy, where they frequently were caught and burned. Some hid in caves. In 1487, Pope Innocent VIII declared an armed crusade against Waldensians in the Savoy region of France.

Also condemned were the Amalricans. French theologian Amalric of Bena preached that all people are potentially divine, and that church rites aren’t needed. After his death in the 1200s, his followers were burned alive as heretics, and his body was dug up and burned.

A similar fate befell the Apostolic Brethren, who preached and sang in public. Leader Gerhard Segarelli was burned as a heretic in 1300. His successor, Dolcino, led survivors into fortified places to withstand attacks and wage counterattacks. Troops of the bishop of Milan overran their fort and killed nearly all of them. Dolcino was burned in 1307.

In 1318 a group of Celestine or “Spiritual” Franciscan monks were burned because they refused to abandon the primitive simplicity of Franciscan garb and manners. Others executed as heretics included Beghards and Beguines, who lived in Christian communes, and the Brothers of the Free Spirit, a mystical order of monks.

The Knights Templar, religious warriors of an order that originated in the Crusades, were accused in France in 1307 of spitting on crucifixes and worshiping the devil. They were subjected to extreme torture, which killed some of them; others “confessed.” About seventy were burned at the stake.

Killing heretics was endorsed by popes and saints. They quoted Old Testament mandates such as “He who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall be put to death.” St. Thomas Aquinas declared: “If coiners and other malefactors are justly doomed to death, much more may heretics be justly slain.”

Excerpted from Holy Horrors: An Illustrated History of Religious Murder and Madness by James A. Haught. Copyright © James A. Haught, 2002. All rights reserved.

- - - Updated - - -

---

---

Secret Files of the Inquisition – part 1 – Root Out Heretics

Power of the Church in the Middle Ages

 

[Stormer0628]

WEEKEND SNIPPETS

​

- - - Updated - - -

Material 10 times stronger than steel but only a 20th its density

 

[Stormer0628]

christianity: destroyer of civilizations

One Catholic Priest Destroyed the Entire Mayan Written Language

THE NEW YORK TIMES described the decipherment of the Maya hieroglyphs as “one of the great stories of twentieth century scientific discovery.” Tragically, this decipherment was only necessary because of a one-man Spanish Inquisition, a deliberate, decades-long campaign by a single Catholic priest to destroy the Mayan language and culture. The priest, Diego de Landa, wiped out all knowledge of the written language, and nearly destroyed the spoken language too.

Diego de Landa’s one-man inquisition perfectly illustrates the power of the Intolerance Meme, an idea that evolved in the Jewish religion a few centuries before the birth of Jesus, and was taken up with a vengeance by Christians in the third and fourth centuries AD. The Intolerance Meme declares that not only is Yahweh the only god, but in addition, anyone who worships other gods is committing a sin. The Intolerance Meme justifies all sorts of atrocities in Yahweh’s name: Murder, slavery, forced conversion, suppression and destruction of other religions, racism, and many other immoral acts.

This was Diego de Landa’s background when he discovered that many of his Mayan “converts” had actually incorporated the Catholic Yahweh/Jesus/Spirit, along with the various saints and angels, into their own traditional religion. When Landa discovered “idol worship” among some of his converts, he felt that his “children” had turned their backs on him, and his life’s work was a failure.

Being a good Roman Catholic, and a carrier of the Intolerance Meme, Landa was furious – he saw this as a betrayal, and started an inquisition that resulted in torture and death across the Yucatan region. He was determined to wipe out all knowledge of the Mayan religion, and saw the Mayan language and hieroglyphs as a key. Fifty years later, in 1699, Spanish soldiers burned a town that had the last school of scribes who knew the Mayan hieroglyphs. By 1720, not a single person alive knew what the hieroglyphs meant.

The Roman Catholic church’s response? They punished Landa. But not for murder, not for torture, and not for destroying an entire culture’s history. No, none of these things were worthy of the Church’s sanctions. Diego de Landa’s crime was that he carried out an inquisition without authorization.

It took over two hundred years, and an international team of linguists, anthropologists, archeologists, mathematicians, an architect, a few brilliant hobbyists, and one twelve-year-old child prodigy hieroglyphics expert, to undo the damage that Landa caused. Armed with their fierce determination and perseverance, they recovered the written language, bit by bit, word by word, symbol by symbol. Thanks to this dedicated group, the meaning of almost 90% of the hieroglyphs is now recovered.

As for Landa, he had to spend a few years under house arrest in Spain, contemplating his disobedience and praying. Once he’d done his penance, he was promoted to Bishop of Yucatan, and sent back to Central America where he lived out the remainder of his life.



SOURCE

 

[Stormer0628]

tech watch: robotics


In a development reminiscent of Asimov's Law of Robotics, we take note of the following:

1. EU to debate robot legal rights, mandatory "kill switches"
2. World’s Top Experts Have Created a “Law of Robotics”
3. Google's New AI Has Learned to Become "Highly Aggressive" in Stressful Situations
4. AI Just Defeated a Human Fighter Pilot in an Air Combat Simulator
5. Controversial AI Has Been Trained to Kill Humans in a Doom Deathmatch
6. Google's AI Makes History, Beating World-Class Go Grandmaster
7. We Need a Plan for When AI Becomes Smarter Than Us
8. Google’s DeepMind AI Just Made a Machine That Sounds Exactly Like a Human
9. This AI Can Beat Almost Anyone at Chess After 72 Hours of Learning
10. Hacking the Human Brain—New Tech Could Make It a Reality
11. Artificial Intelligence Just Owned Some of the World's Best Poker Players
12. Scientists Have Invented a Mind-Reading Machine That Visualises Your Thoughts
13. Scientists Have Built a Nightmare Machine to Generate the Scariest Images Ever
14. NSA Leak Confirms Skynet Is for Real

Is this a solution...?

DARPA: We’re Moving to Merge Humans and Machines​

Why, you may ask?

BECAUSE OF NIGHTMARE-INDUCING ROBOTS LIKE THESE
AND WHAT THEY COULD MEAN TO FUTURE HUMANITY:​

AND THIS ONLY THE START....​

 

[Stormer0628]

Anyway, all is not doom and gloom in the AI/robotics front.

The operating room has this bright future in store for humans...

Until Skynet took over. How did it get there...?? Through this:

New AI Writes and Rewrites Its Own Code to Increase Its Intelligence​

 

[rapidox]

tech watch: robotics


In a development reminiscent of Asimov's Law of Robotics, we take note of the following:

1. EU to debate robot legal rights, mandatory "kill switches"
2. World’s Top Experts Have Created a “Law of Robotics”
3. Google's New AI Has Learned to Become "Highly Aggressive" in Stressful Situations
4. AI Just Defeated a Human Fighter Pilot in an Air Combat Simulator
5. Controversial AI Has Been Trained to Kill Humans in a Doom Deathmatch
6. Google's AI Makes History, Beating World-Class Go Grandmaster
7. We Need a Plan for When AI Becomes Smarter Than Us
8. Google’s DeepMind AI Just Made a Machine That Sounds Exactly Like a Human
9. This AI Can Beat Almost Anyone at Chess After 72 Hours of Learning
10. Hacking the Human Brain—New Tech Could Make It a Reality
11. Artificial Intelligence Just Owned Some of the World's Best Poker Players
12. Scientists Have Invented a Mind-Reading Machine That Visualises Your Thoughts
13. Scientists Have Built a Nightmare Machine to Generate the Scariest Images Ever
14. NSA Leak Confirms Skynet Is for Real

Is this a solution...?

DARPA: We’re Moving to Merge Humans and Machines​

Why, you may ask?

BECAUSE OF NIGHTMARE-INDUCING ROBOTS LIKE THESE
AND WHAT THEY COULD MEAN TO FUTURE HUMANITY:​

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h5qpXO3isM




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


AND THIS ONLY THE START....​

Sa ngayun magaling lang mga AI sa simulation pero parang mga clown parin sila in real world. Yung nakakatakot tlga is maging sentient yung mga AI.

Eto yung mga movie na mas thought provoking about sa AI.

 

[bearer]

Kumusta ang mga enlightened diyan!

House Rules

• Hindi maaaring magdebate ang Atheists at Agnostics.
• Atheists igalang mo ang pananalig ng mga Agnostics
• Agnostics huwag mong personalin ang mga Atheists
• Mabuhay tayo ng may katibayan. Yehey!

Alin ang pwede
SQUARE SOCRATIC ARGUMENT LANG ANG PWEDE! NO FALLACY KUNG HINDI I-REREPORT NAMIN KAYO! Logical and Philosophical Analysis should also work, Scientific evidence must be provided with logical explanations too.

Thread Purpose
Upang magkaroon ng lugar at diskusyon ang mga Atheists at Agnostics.

For Our Visitors
If you have to ask anything, feel free. btw, we have apple juice on the frigged.

salamat dito bro...marami kaming malalaman

 

[bjayetnap]

Long time no post... I'll just leave it here.

Pope Francis: Better to be an atheist than a hypocritical catholic.

Ang daming tinamaan.

 

[Stormer0628]

America

The Long, Slow Death of Religion

By now it’s clear that religion is fading in America, as it has done in most advanced Western democracies.

Dozens of surveys find identical evidence: Fewer American adults, especially those under 30, attend church — or even belong to a church. They tell interviewers their religion is “none.” They ignore faith.

Since 1990, the “nones” have exploded rapidly as a sociological phenomenon — from 10 percent of U.S. adults, to 15 percent, to 20 percent. Now they’ve climbed to 25 percent, according to a 2016 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute.

That makes them the nation’s largest faith category, outstripping Catholics (21 percent) and white evangelicals (16 percent). They seem on a trajectory to become an outright majority. America is following the secular path of Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and other modern places. The Secular Age is snowballing.

Various explanations for the social transformation are postulated: That the Internet exposes young people to a wide array of ideas and practices that undercut old-time beliefs. That family breakdown severs traditional participation in congregations. That the young have grown cynical about authority of all types. That fundamentalist hostility to gays and abortion has soured tolerant-minded Americans. That clergy child-molesting scandals have scuttled church claims to moral superiority. That faith-based suicide bombings and other religious murders horrify normal folks.

All those factors undoubtedly play a role. But I want to offer a simpler explanation: In the scientific 21st century, it’s less plausible to believe in invisible gods, devils, heavens, hells, angels, demons — plus virgin births, resurrections, miracles, messiahs, prophecies, faith-healings, visions, incarnations, divine visitations and other supernatural claims. Magical thinking is suspect, ludicrous. It’s not for intelligent, educated people.

Significantly, the PRRI study found that the foremost reason young people gave for leaving religion is this clincher: They stopped believing miraculous church dogmas.

For decades, tall-steeple mainline Protestant denominations with university-educated ministers tried to downplay supernaturalism — to preach just the compassion of Jesus and the social gospel. It was a noble effort, but disastrous. The mainline collapsed so badly it is dubbed “flatline Protestantism.” It has faded to small fringe of American life.

Now Catholicism and evangelicalism are in the same death spiral. One-tenth of U.S. adults today are ex-Catholics. The Southern Baptist Convention lost 200,000 members in 2014 and 200,000 more in 2015.

I’m a longtime newspaperman in Appalachia’s Bible Belt. I’ve watched the retreat of religion for six decades. Back in the 1950s, church-based laws were powerful:

It was a crime for stores to open on the Sabbath. All public school classes began with mandatory prayer. It was a crime to buy a cocktail, or look at nude photos in magazines, or buy a lottery ticket. It was a crime for an unwed couple to share a bedroom. If a single girl became pregnant, both she and her family were disgraced. Birth control was unmentionable. Evolution was unmentionable.

It was a felony to terminate a pregnancy. It was a felony to be gay. One homosexual in our town killed himself after police filed charges. Even writing about sex was illegal. In 1956, our Republican mayor sent police to raid bookstores selling “Peyton Place.”

Gradually, all those faith-based taboos vanished from society. Religion lost its power — even before the upsurge of “nones.”

Perhaps honesty is a factor in the disappearance of religion. Maybe young people discern that it’s dishonest to claim to know supernatural things that are unknowable.

When I was a cub reporter, my city editor was an H.L. Mencken clone who laughed at Bible-thumping hillbilly preachers. One day, as a young truth-seeker, I asked him: You’re correct that their explanations are fairy tales — but what answer can an honest person give about the deep questions: Why are we here? Why is the universe here? Why do we die? Is there any purpose to life?

He eyed me and replied: “You can say: 'I don’t know.'” That rang a bell in my head that still echoes. It’s honest to admit that you cannot explain the unexplainable.

The church explanation — that Planet Earth is a testing place to screen humans for a future heaven or hell — is a silly conjecture with no evidence of any sort, except ancient scriptures. No wonder that today’s Americans, raised in a scientific-minded era, cannot swallow it.

Occam’s Razor says the simplest explanation is most accurate. Why is religion dying? Because thinking people finally see that it’s untrue, false, dishonest.

White evangelicals tipped the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump, giving an astounding 81 percent of their votes to the crass vulgarian who contradicts church values. But white evangelicals, like most religious groups, face a shrinking future. Their power will dwindle.

It took humanity several millennia to reach the Secular Age. Now it’s blossoming spectacularly.

SOURCE

 

[Stormer0628]

Van Gogh and Seurat Under the Lens​

Van Gogh and to a lesser extent Seurat (at least in the Philippines) ... what teacher or starry-eyed fine arts lover would not swoon over the names?

Great artistic visionaries, tragic lives—just the right ingredients for an explosive afternoon telenovela.

Recent archeological digs, however, want us to rethink what we've always been told about these giants of the field...

 

[Stormer0628]

WHEN A GROUP OF SCIENTISTS just did what no humans have ever done before—declared that the Earth is entering a new geological age in real-time—it confirms what scientists have known for a long time now: humankind is now the strongest force shaping the planet.

The panel, presenting to the 35th International Geological Congress in South Africa, recommended that scientists officially recognize that the planet is entering a new "epoch" on the geological calendar, which divides the Earth’s 4.5 billion-year history into time periods marked by major planetary-wide changes. For the last 12,000 years—since the end of the last Ice Age, when glaciers melted and sea level rose 120 meters—we have lived in the Holocene epoch.

But now the geologists say we have entered a new epoch—called the Anthropocene—that is defined by how humankind has fundamentally reshaped the land, oceans, air, and wildlife.

The designation isn't final yet. The Anthropocene Working Group officially submitted it for recognition and there is an official procedure to be followed. One important next step is to determine what "markers" would show a scientist in the far future when the Anthropocene began, just like geologists today studied the earth's sedimentary and fossil record to lean when the Cretaceous period ended and the Tertiary period began. This is when a big asteroid in the Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs.

For the Anthropocene, the group suggested one beginning—1950—when radioactive elements from nuclear testing were likely spread all over the globe. As we wrote about in-depth in a previous article, there are many other possibilities that show the human touch, including mass extinctions, plastic pollution, and the spike in carbon emissions in the atmosphere.

Whatever the verdict, it's clear that humans alive today are living in an unprecedented time that will be noted by historians tens of thousands of years from now. That is, of course, if humankind doesn't become a casualty of the Anthropocene era itself. If so, our demise would be our own doing.

In one of the strongest support for this move, and most recent, scientists have just identified a sudden explosion of mineral diversity on the surface of our planet that would not exist if it weren't for humans.

The study found that the incredible upsurge of new minerals around the time of the industrial revolution led to the unprecedented diversification of crystals on Earth, eclipsing even the Great Oxidation Event 2.3 billion years ago as the "greatest increase in the history of the globe."

"This is a spike of mineral novelty that is so rapid—most of it in the last 200 years, compared to the 4.5-billion-year history of Earth. There is nothing like it in Earth's history," one of the team, Robert Hazen from the Carnegie Institution for Science told The Guardian.

"This is a blink of an eye, it is just a surge, and ... we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg."

Hazen and his team analysed the 5,208 minerals on Earth that are officially recognised by the International Mineralogical Association, and found that 208 of them would not exist if it weren't for human activity.

These human-triggered minerals include chalconatronite, a powdery blue corrosion product composed of a hydrated sodium copper carbonate that crystallizes as a bright blue crust on ancient Egyptian bronze artefacts, and andersonite, a uranium-laced mineral with a fluorescent green or yellow glow that forms on the walls of mine tunnels.

The bronze-hued abhurite was discovered on the wreck of the SS Cheerful, which sank off the coast of Cornwall, England in 1885, and only formed because of a chemical reaction between the salt water and the ship's sunken supply of tin ingots.

Most of the 208 minerals triggered by humanity came about thanks to mining, while six were found on the walls of smelters, three in a geothermal piping system, and four on prehistoric sacrificial burning sites in the Austrian mountains.


SOURCES:

Scientists Say the Earth Has Entered a New Era

Will naming the Anthropocene lead to acceptance of our planet-level impact?

An Explosion of Never-Before-Seen Minerals Could Mark the Dawn of a New Geological Epoch

 

[ilocin26]

Hello mga sir. nakita ko lang yung thread niyo and maganda dito, walang debate and ni rerespect lahat ng opinyon May tanong lang ako sa mga Agnostics, please enlighten me. Ako kasi, naniniwala ako kay God, naniniwala ako na may lumikha sa atin. Pero hindi malakas ang faith ko sa religion, nag karon ako ng religion crisis ng nag try ako ng iba't ibang religion.. sobrang na ccurious ako sa kanila, nag INC, Christian, Catholic, even Muslim, nakikinig ako sa kanila. For now I am Catholic, pero hindi ako sumasamba sa rebulto or anything, basta diretso lang ang dasal ko sa Taas. hehe Anyway,ano ba matatawag sa ganitong "faith"? Naniniwala ako kay God pero hindi sa mga religion. May nabasa ako from Karen Armstrong and she named it "freelance theism", anyone heard of this? and tingin ko yan yung tugma sa kung ano pinaniniwalaan ko. kasi ang alam ko sa mga Agnostics, hindi kay naniniwala na may God, pero hindi niyo din cnclaim na walang God. tama ba? sorry if medyo magulo hehe.. maraming salamat sa inyo


Side question lang din from Atheists naman hehe.. ano ang side niyo for example may nag tuturo ng word of God, sorry for the word, pero binabastos niyo ba? nag sisimula ng debate, nag papakita ng pictures na bastos or bad words about God etc. Kasi may naka away ako na "Atheist" daw, he's claiming na Atheist daw siya, pero grabe ung walang respeto niya sa religion, lahat binabara niya etc. Sabi kasi ng kaibigan ko na Atheist, hindi daw ganun yung tunay na mga Atheist. Marunong rumespeto, hindi nambabastos na paniniwala ng iba at yun din pinang hahawakan ko sa mga atheists hehe.

 

[Stormer0628]

Hello mga sir. nakita ko lang yung thread niyo and maganda dito, walang debate and ni rerespect lahat ng opinyon....

Side question lang din from Atheists naman hehe.. ano ang side niyo for example may nag tuturo ng word of God, sorry for the word, pero binabastos niyo ba? nag sisimula ng debate, nag papakita ng pictures na bastos or bad words about God etc. Kasi may naka away ako na "Atheist" daw, he's claiming na Atheist daw siya, pero grabe ung walang respeto niya sa religion, lahat binabara niya etc. Sabi kasi ng kaibigan ko na Atheist, hindi daw ganun yung tunay na mga Atheist. Marunong rumespeto, hindi nambabastos na paniniwala ng iba at yun din pinang hahawakan ko sa mga atheists hehe.

From an atheist : sa nagtuturo ng word of god, i.e. theist side, okay lang yan. Live and let live lang tayo. Democracy is about a free market of ideas, so yung idea of god let's just say is thousand years old idea on the market, hehe. You buy it, up to you. Syempre kaming atheists have our strong opinion against that, but like me I choose my own battles and the "battlefield."

Atheist na walang respeto? Cguro one way to look at it is that atheists are just normal people. May kanya-kanyang flavor din gaya ng theists. May temperamental, may moderate, etc., etc. Kanya-kanyang style bale. Best way is to keep an open mind about people na lang cguro.

Yung part na "freelance theist" mukha namang akma sa case mo. Or just theist. Maraming ganyan. Walang specific religion but believe in higher authority, kahit na wala pa nga exact definition kung anong klaseng god yung pinaniniwalaan nila—higher being, divine being, advanced extradimensional alien beings, etc. Kahit ibang scientists may ganyan hehe.

 

[xymo]

Yung part na "freelance theist" mukha namang akma sa case mo. Or just theist. Maraming ganyan. Walang specific religion but believe in higher authority, kahit na wala pa nga exact definition kung anong klaseng god yung pinaniniwalaan nila—higher being, divine being, advanced extradimensional alien beings, etc. Kahit ibang scientists may ganyan hehe.

hindi ba "deist" ang word para don?

 

[Stormer0628]

hindi ba "deist" ang word para don?

Ah, turns out "deism" and "theism" easily lend themselves to some mix-up.

Deism : a movement or system of thought advocating natural religion, emphasizing morality, and in the 18th century denying the interference of the Creator with the laws of the universe (Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary 11th Edition). Thus a deist is someone who follows this movement.

Theism : belief in the existence of a god or gods; specifically : belief in the existence of one God viewed as the creative source of the human race and the world who transcends yet is immanent in the world (Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary 11th Edition). Thus, a theist is someone who believes in any god, however undefined that god is.

I guess this makes "theist" the apt term for Ilocin. Right?

- - - Updated - - -

---

---

SHELL KNEW:
The big oil company was aware of the effects of climate change since at least 1991​

A new, previously unreleased film has emerged, revealing that big oil company Shell was aware of what they called the “catastrophic effects of climate change.”

A snippet from the video. You can watch the whole thing below.​

Shell Knew
It’s not like oil companies are oblivious to the effects of their activity. Some of the world’s best geologists are working in corporations like Shell or Exxon — and these companies invest a lot in science. It’s just that they don’t always make their findings public and they don’t always act on what they find. After all, profit is a hard incentive to ignore.

The video has resurfaced thanks to research from Jelmer Mommers of the Dutch blog The Correspondent, after which it was picked up by Damian Carrington of the Guardian. The film, shot in 1991, paints our current situation with disturbing accuracy. It talks about the negative effects of fracking (which has since become a mainstream technology), increased floods, and the social change which will accompany the climate change. Shell’s 28-minute film is ominously called Climate of Concern, and was particularly aimed at schools and universities. However, it was never made public until now.

Ironically, it starts discussing the need for climate studies — something that the fossil fuel lobby is trying to sweep under the rug for years.

“Research of this kind is being stepped up worldwide. The need to understand the interplay of atmosphere and oceans has been given a new sense of urgency by the realization that our energy-consuming way of life may be causing climatic changes, with adverse consequences or us all.”​

Does that sound familiar? It’s what researchers have been saying for years and years, with growing urgency. Yet the US just elected a president and an administration which promised to U-turn on all climate action. But it gets even better, as the video emphasizes the negative effects that everyone will suffer:

“If the weather machine were to be wound up to such new levels of energy, no country would remain unaffected,” it says. “Global warming is not yet certain, but many think that to wait for final proof would be irresponsible. Action now is seen as the only safe insurance.”​

To top it all off, the film also lauds existing renewable energy sources — which in 1991, were much less efficient than the ones we have access to today.

Knew, but didn't act...

“They knew. Shell told the public the truth about climate change in 1991 and they clearly never got round to telling their own board of directors,” said Tom Burke at the green thinktank E3G, who was a member of Shell’s external review committee from 2012-14 and has also advised BP and the mining giant Rio Tinto. “Shell’s behaviour now is risky for the climate but it is also risky for their shareholders. It is very difficult to explain why they are continuing to explore and develop high-cost reserves.”​

Shell might try to say that have taken action against climate change. They could point to their call for a carbon tax, its carbon capture project in Alberta, even the renewable investments in the Netherlands and their new climate division. If I were Shell, I’d even say that I warned the world of climate change since the George Bush / Al Gore debates. These are all realities, and in a way, Shell could be considered the best of the worst — out of all the big oil companies, Shell has been one of the more proactive when it comes to climate change. But when you’re the best of the worst, you’re still one of the worst.

Although times are pretty grim for the oil industry, Shell can still boast profits of over $4 billion / year — most of which, of course, come from their core petroleum exploration business. But it’s not just that Shell continued with a ‘business as usual’ approach, even though they had a good idea global warming was happening.

The Dutch company used their powerful lobby to successfully undermine European renewable energy targets and is estimated to have spent $22m in 2015 lobbying against climate policies. Their investments in renewable energy have been peanuts compared to its fossil fuel investments, and this is happening now, more than 20 years after this film. Knowing comes with a responsibility, and Shell didn’t act on that responsibility.


Exxon knew, too

It’s not like Shell was alone: they weren’t the only ones to figure out what was happening. As said before, there are many good scientists working in oil companies — and Exxon could easily claim the top spot here. The largest private oil company and the third largest company in the world invests heavily into research. They’ve done so for decades, and it paid off… sort of. Exxon knew that climate change was happening since the 70s. A 2015 investigation showed that despite knowing about global warming years before it became a public issue, they chose to fund people to simply deny the problem instead of coming out publicly.

Exxon is currently under investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and state attorney generals for allegedly misleading investors about the risks climate change posed to its business. Much like Shell, Exxon too chose to focus on profits instead of doing what was right. The strategy of the two companies is similar in the long run: make a whole lot of money, invest a small part of it into renewables or some sort of clean technology and have all your spokespeople say how “green” you are. Save your face. In the meantime, invest more of it into lobby to push forth your agenda. Keep pumping oil and making more money. It works, the oil industry arguably has a stronger voice than ever. Have you seen the new US Secretary of State? Meet Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil.

SOURCE

 

[Stormer0628]

thinking outside the box

Why I am not going to buy a cellphone

IT IS MILDLY SUBVERSIVE and perhaps a little quaint when someone clings to their flip phone and refuses a smartphone. Refusing both kinds of phones is viewed as downright lunacy, especially if the person refusing was born after the mid-1970s. But I’ve never had a cellphone and I’m not going to get one. I have several reasons, and they are good ones.

The first is cost. No cellphone means no monthly bill, no possibility for an upgrade, no taxes, and no roaming charges (whatever those are). In an era of stagnant wages and growing income inequality, it is remarkable that people unthinkingly spend $75 or more per month on something that we hardly knew existed 15 years ago, much less counted as a necessity.

The second is concern for the environment. The manufacture of mobile phones (including raw material acquisition), the power they consume, and the energy used to transmit calls and access the internet all produce significant carbon dioxide emissions. The idea that cellphones are good only for a couple of years is widespread, increasing the number of phones that end up in landfills and leak toxic heavy metals such as copper and lead into the soil and groundwater.

The decisive reason, however, for me to refuse a cellphone is the opposite of everyone else’s reason for having one: I do not want the omnipresent ability to communicate with anyone who is absent. Cellphones put their users constantly on call, constantly available, and as much as that can be liberating or convenient, it can also be an overwhelming burden. The burden comes in the form of feeling an obligation to individuals and events that are physically elsewhere. Anyone who has checked their phone during a face-to-face conversation understands the temptation. And anyone who has been talking to someone who has checked their phone understands what is wrong with it.

Communicating with someone who is not physically present is alienating, forcing the mind to separate from the body. We see this, for example, in the well-known and ubiquitous dangers of texting while driving, but also in more mundane experiences: friends or lovers ignoring each other’s presence in favour of their Facebook feeds; people broadcasting their entertainment, their meals, and their passing thoughts to all who will bear witness; parents capturing their daughter’s ballet performance on their phones rather than watching it live; people walking down the street talking animatedly to themselves who turn out to be apparently healthy people using their Bluetooth.

The cellphone intrudes into the public and private realms, preventing holistic engagement with what is around us. Smartphones only perfect their predecessors’ ability to intrude.

The disembodying and intrusive effects of cellphones have significant implications for our relationships to the self and to others. Truly knowing and understanding others requires patience, risk, empathy, and affection, all of which are inhibited by cell phones. Cellphones also inhibit solitude, self-reflection, and rumination (formerly known as ‘waiting’ and ‘boredom’), which I think are essential for living a good life.

Long before cellphones, human beings were good at diverting themselves from disciplined attention. ‘The sole cause of man’s unhappiness,’ observed the French philosopher Blaise Pascal in the 17th century, ‘is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.’ This propensity for diversion was notably confirmed in a recent study where subjects preferred to give themselves electric shocks rather than occupy themselves with their own thoughts for 15 minutes.

Pascal believed that the height of human dignity is thought, and that the order of thought begins with oneself, one’s creator, and one’s end. He linked this kind of thought inextricably to genuine rest and happiness. Avoiding a cellphone allows, for me, space for thinking and so enables a richer, more fulfilling way of life. With fewer tasks to perform and preferences to satisfy, life slows to a pace compatible with contemplation and gratitude.

A cellphone-free life not only helps to liberate the mind, but also the body. The ancient Greek philosopher Anaxagoras presents a different view of human nature from Pascal: ‘It is by having hands that man is the most intelligent of animals.’ We can be pretty sure that Anaxagoras was not anticipating the advent of smartphones. On the contrary, refusing a cellphone enables one to use one’s hands to carry out meaningful activities (playing the piano, gardening, reading a book) in such a way that one is fully absorbed in those activities, so that they reach their height of meaning.

Without a mobile phone, it is easier to concentrate on what is in front of me: my spouse and children, my work, making dinner, going for a walk. I try to choose my activities thoughtfully, so when I do something, I don’t want to be somewhere else. What cellphone users call multitasking does not interest or impress me.

Of course, it’s true that cellphones can be used responsibly. We can shut them off or simply ignore the incoming text. But this takes extraordinary willpower. According to a recent Pew survey, 82 per cent of Americans believe that cellphone use in social situations more often hurts than helps conversation, yet 89 per cent of cell owners still use their phones in those situations. Refusing a cellphone guarantees that I won’t use it when I shouldn’t.

Some people will insist that if I’m going to refuse a cellphone, I should also refuse a regular telephone. It is true that using a landline introduces similar disembodying, mediated experiences as to mobile phones. But there have always been natural and physical limits placed on the use of a regular phone, which is clear from the name ‘landline’. The cellphone’s mobility introduces a radical form of communication by making its alienating effects pervasive. I want to protect what unmediated experiences I have left.

The original meaning of ‘connect’ indicated a physical relationship – a binding or fastening together. We apply this word to our cellphone communications now only as metaphor. The ‘connections’ are ethereal; our words and thoughts reach the upper regions of space next to the cell tower only to remain there, as our devices disconnect us from those with whom we share space. Even though we have two hands, I’m convinced that you can’t hold a cellphone and someone else’s hand at the same time.

SOURCE


- - - Updated - - -

---

---

The Hoverbike You’ve Always Wanted is Here

- - - Updated - - -

---

---

Priests Who Raped Children Are Sentenced
To “Lifetime of Prayer” By Pope Francis​

Pope Francis is still viewed as a more progressive Pope, but a deeper look into his actions shows that is certainly not the case. Pope Francis has not taken strong action against the child rapists in the Catholic Church and his latest protection of them was appalling.

Mauro Inzoli is a high ranking priest that received Pope Francis’ clemency and was convicted for sex crimes against children in an Italian court. Inzoli, along with several other Catholic priests convicted of sex crimes, were sentenced to be removed from the church by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. However, Pope Francis overruled the defrocking sentence and instead wants the priests to serve a “lifetime of prayer.”

Pope Francis has defended his protection of these child rapists by citing the “mercy” of the church.
This is absolutely outrageous. How is the epidemic of child rape from Catholic priests going to change if the church cannot even police their own? A lifetime of prayer as a sentence is simply unacceptable.

Former Vatican official Rocio Figueroa has spoken out against the Catholic Church saying that they are “not zero tolerance” when it comes to sexual assault against children. However, we need more people in the church, especially those in positions of power, to come out and condemn these light sentences and protections of child rapists.

What allows the priesthood to get away with such impunity from all these staggering crimes? Look no further than a dogma that makes people blind to common sense and social justice....

SOURCE

 

[Stormer0628]

My God, how the money rolls in!

---

---

A jobless West Virginian, living on welfare, began preaching in Pentecostal tabernacles to support his family. Within a few years, T.D. Jakes had raked in so much money from believers that he was able to pay $870,000 for two side-by-side mansions, one with a pool and bowling alley. Then his soaring cash flow enabled him to pay $3.2 million for a Texas megachurch vacated by a crooked evangelist who went to prison. Before long, Jakes was grossing more than $20 million annually. Today, he ranks among America’s flagrantly rich preachers, traveling by private jet, wearing enormous diamonds, living like royalty.

Thirty-two centuries ago, during the reign of Ramses III, Egypt’s great temple of the supreme god Amun-Re – supposed creator of the world and father of the pharaoh – owned 420,000 head of livestock, 65 villages, 83 ships, 433 orchards, vast farmland, and 81,000 workers, all obeying the ruler priests.

In medieval Europe, as the church acquired tighter control over all facets of life, a gold mine was discovered by the clergy. It was simony, the sale of blessings. Fees for absolution, baptism, burial, marriage, etc., escalated into a cash-and-carry system including sale of high church office. Most outrageous were indulgences, church documents bought by worried families to release dead relatives from the alleged pain of an invisible purgatory. In the 1200s, Pope Innocent III denounced simony, saying the clergy “are enthralled to avarice, love presents, and seek rewards; for the sake of bribes they pronounce the godless righteous.”

In every age, in almost every culture, priestcraft has been a ticket to comfort. Churches and holy men reap earnings and exalted status from the supernaturalism they administer to followers. As self-proclaimed emissaries of invisible spirits, they outrank common folk, who support them.

The Internal Revenue Service says Americans took tax exemptions for $88 billion in religious donations in 2004 — thus the U.S. Treasury funded churches by forgoing taxes on the $88 billion. And this total doesn’t count unknowable sums dropped into Sunday collection plates. Religion is lucrative.

In 1931, amid the misery of the Great Depression, novelist Theodore Dreiser called the church and clergy parasites sponging off people — hypocrites railing against “sin” while doing little for the hungry. “For it is not men who are talking, as they assert, but God through them,” Dreiser wrote in Tragic America, “and so through the mouths of tricksters and social prestidigitators, and no more and no less, comes all this hooey in regard to the hereafter.” Two centuries earlier, in The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine likewise wrote that religions are “no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”

Through the years, other writers have sounded similar warnings. Yet most people rarely think about the giant earnings from faith, or their consequences. The topic mostly escapes notice.

For example, how many know that riches from religion contributed to the downfall of Classical Greece? Few have heard of the Sacred Wars that helped deliver the peninsula into the hands of Alexander the Great. Here’s the historical account:

In Ancient Greece, priests reaped wealth through various methods. One apparently was sacred prostitution. The Greek historian-philosopher-geographer Strabo wrote that Corinth’s Aphrodite temple had 1,000 consecrated women who served male worshipers for fees, enriching the temple. Presumably the holy hookers were slave women, visited especially by sailors arriving at the large Corinth seaport. If Strabo’s account is accurate, religion spawned a profitable bordello.

Even more lucrative were oracles, the fortune-tellers who captivated the ancient world. Superstitious Greeks flocked to oracles. First the worshipers purified themselves by bathing and prayer, then they paid dearly to hear mumbo-jumbo from priests and priestesses.

At Dodona, a barefoot priestess sat in a high cliff, listening to the supposed voice of Zeus in the rustle of leaves or the flutter of dove wings. She provided yes-or-no answers to written questions. At Delphi (named for a dolphin that Apollo allegedly became) a stuporous priestess breathed vapors in a grotto and made incoherent answers, which were “translated” by a priest. The messages were murky — but swallowed avidly by paying believers.

As the fame of the Delphi shrine spread, so did its storehouse of gold, silver and jewels taken from gullible clients. Kings and generals came to Delphi, seeking Apollo’s guidance on important decisions, and they brought rich donations to the gods. Soon, various city-states built treasuries around the shrine to hold the wealth. The Amphictyonic League, a consortium of twelve city-states including Athens and Sparta, governed Delphi cooperatively and secured its riches, like directors of a bank.

But money breeds trouble. Mountain people surrounding the shrine, the Phocians, saw an opportunity to cash in on the holy traffic, and began levying steep fees on visitors. Other members of the League sent troops to halt the extra profiteering. Phocians resisted. The First Sacred War erupted in 601 BCE and lasted 10 years. The Phocians were defeated and forced to serve the shrine.

A century later, in 480 BCE, a Persian army under Xerxes marched on Delphi to seize its wealth, but a landslide (caused by Apollo, the faithful said) blocked the troops.

A generation later, Phocians again grabbed Delphi’s treasuries, and the Amphictyonic League again attacked. This Second Sacred War, in 447 BCE, ended like the first.

Seventy years later, a different stash of religious wealth was looted. During many, many wars between Greek city-states, an Arcadian army plundered treasuries of the mighty temple of Zeus at Olympia in southwest Greece. Naturally, this theft triggered more warring by kings and assemblies who had donated riches to the Supreme God.

Soon afterward, back at Delphi, the Third Sacred War flared in 356 BCE when Phocians seized the Apollo shrine once more. Phocian leaders promised not to loot the treasuries — but soon did so. The wealth that had been drained from believers was squandered to hire mercenary soldiers to battle neighbors, to bribe opposing generals, and to reward cronies. Historian Charles Morris related:

“One hundred seventeen ingots of gold and 360 golden goblets went to the melting pot, and with them a golden statue three cubits high, and a lion of the same precious metal. And what added to the horror of pious Greece was that much of the proceeds of these treasures was lavished on favorites. Necklaces of Helen and Eriphyle were given to dissolute women, and a woman flute-player received a silver cup and a golden wreath from the temple hoard.”​

This time, the Amphictyonic League had been sadly weakened by centuries of fighting, especially by the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, and by constant conflict with Persia. From the north, King Philip of Macedonia had been gaining power, expanding his territory, and sending legions in attempts to grab Greek lands. After the Delphi shrine was seized a third time, some local assemblies asked Philip to drive out the occupying Phocians. Shrewdly, he obliged. Posing as devoted champion of Apollo, he waged a long war that finally quelled the temple-grabbers. To inflict the vengeance of the god upon the looters, Philip drowned 3,000 Phocian prisoners on charges of sacrilege. Subtly, he formed Greek “alliances” that made him de facto ruler and protector of the holies.

Then the Fourth Sacred War erupted in 339 after a different neighbor state invaded the sanctified Delphi region. The Amphictyonic League asked the Macedonian army to save the oracle temple again. However, some city-states perceived that Philip was using his defense of Apollo as a pretext to seize large sections of the peninsula. They fielded troops to resist — but ten thousand Macedonians in full battle array were unstoppable. At a crucial clash at Chaeronea, Philip’s army crushed Athens, Thebes and other allies. Philip’s son, Alexander — who had been born at the start of the Third Sacred War — was a brilliant 18-year-old cavalry commander in the decisive massacre.

Victory in the Fourth Sacred War gave Philip complete control of Greece, except for defiant Sparta in the south. But he didn’t live to rule. He was assassinated in 336, and Alexander took command. Greece was subsumed beneath Macedonia in a mighty war machine, an engine of conquest. The era of city-states ended. After Alexander’s death, Greece fell under Roman rule. More than 2,000 years were to pass before it regained independence.

Although Ancient Greece had multitudes of wars, and plenty of other self-destructive factors, wealth taken by priests from the gullible was a trigger that helped topple the classic civilization.

It’s a little-known footnote in the age-old tale of riches from religion. Apparently, the tale never will end, as long as believers feel compelled to give tribute to purveyors of the supernatural.

Stephen Fry on God

SOURCE

 

[kenta]

pwede bang sumali kahit wala ako sa dalawang yan. Open minded ako (not on networking ha).
Gusto ko mga ganitong mga kwentohan.