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Weekend Roundup 01-06-2007

By Gregon

A few things to keep you busy over the weekend…

Enjoy!

Greg
Editor
Greg is the owner-editor of The Daily Grail, as well as the author of a number of books including Stop Worrying, There Probably is an Afterlife.
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26 Comments

  1. Strange article
    That’s a strange sort of article about religion for skeptics to write on their site.

    Of course with religion being banned in Russia people are going to cling onto it.
    You never know what you have until you are about to lose it.

    shadows

    1. what is so scientific about being a skeptic?
      these folk belch, fart, do any other human nuance of what is considered to be unpolite just like the rest of us profane and mundaners. They were caught in a bind, they realized the most ruthless, tyrannical regime on earth failed to unseat the soul out of folk. Skeptics in this instance were puzzled to say the least, since they were already committed to what they believe and couldn’t believe sensible folk would endure so much torment.

      What folk hold near and dear, nothing will persuade them otherwise. The Irish have been persecuted viciously by UK for centuries to give up their belief system and UK failed. Soviet attempt didn’t last 100 years and gave up

      I wonder how long the sci-fi crowd’s belief in sci will hold up as contrasted to demonstrated endurability of believers in 2 countries with same goal of extinguishing a belief system. The sci-fi crowd will get their day of trial when the 666 show hits town, and it won’t be of same time duration but of same intensity. This will be an interesting scenario to watch as it unfolds.

    2. russian religion
      I don’t know that many Russians. A few of the colonials, like the Baltic or Ukranian people, but 2nd or 3rd generation. The only Russian I worked with was a Jew. I know some other people from the Soviet empire, from Poland and Romania and places like that.

      So if you consider Communism, it was a belief system, still is. Not just in Russia. The Big People told you what to believe – first it was their brand of Christianity, then their brand of Socialism. Mixed with the worship of some Czar or Party President or something else.

      Islam says that there is exectly one God, and Muhammad is his prophet.

      Communism says that there is no God, and Marx is his prophet.

      —-
      There are 3 kinds of people. Those who can count, and those who cannot.

      1. The Russian Orthodox religion
        was the religion that people adhered to throughout the Communist era.
        It is a branch of Christianity although younger.
        I think.

        shadows

        1. Greek
          Russian Orthodox is a branch of the Greek Orthodox, adopted by one of the Czars, somewhat after the split between Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox. I don’t know all the details about why they split, supposedly some different about icons and the precise date of Easter. But really it was politics.

          Whether it is older or younger than the Catholic church depends on who you ask – they both (all) claim to have the originally correct faith. Everyone who diverged from that faith was wrong, and just Jonny-come-lately misguided people.

          And yes, Russians adhered to the religion, even when they wre not supposed to. That’s why it came back pretty fast.

          Of course Romanians adhered to Romanian Orthodox, and probably Ukranians to Ukrainian Orthodox and so on.

          —-
          There are 3 kinds of people. Those who can count, and those who cannot.

        2. Russian Orthodoxy Is The Same Age!
          Shadows

          Russian and Eastern Orthodoxy were the result of splits in the Christian Church in the Second and Third Centuries. Protestantism is relatively new.

          Roman Catholic claims of being the only true church and of being founded by Peter are rationally absurd!

          What do you think?

          cnnek

          {You Can Teach People How To Think Or What To Think; But, You Can’t Do Both! It Is Better To Teach People How To Think!!!}

      2. and your point is?..
        are you making an assumption folk who get out from underneath oppression of communism will forever wave the red flag? I can understand folk trapped in Russia who can’t get out have to go thru the motions to survive, that don’t constitute a die hard fanatic commie to me.

        Russians who get out never get so homesick they will give up freedom to go back to oppression of ma Russia. There’s a huge group of russified germans who returned to germany to get their german mojo working again. They had to re-learn german since it was a kiss of death to use it during the Stalin years. In Luneburg, they have per capita the most russified germans living there. Germans who have the hardest time accepting them are those who came from East Germany, do I need to get enclyclopedic to explain why?.

        Marx said, communism comes thru socialism. A society has to be a socialist state in order to attain communism, That why the soviet system was called socialist republics. Every EU country is socialist, the only difference they are not considered as commie states is that they allow capitalism to be their economic base. Cuba is considered commie ‘cuz Castro sez so. Yugoslavia, previously was quasi-commie, it depended on income from workers allowed to leave and support the village they came from. Only men left, no women, no kids. And these guys were spied on relentlessly to make sure they paid.

        The communist belief system you allude to is based on the concept, every body belongs to the State, nobody is any better than anybody else, everybody has to work for their daily bread. Capitalists are parasites. They use a big brother is watching after you approach to supplant the notion of a God who intervenes on behalf of the masses. This ain’t zakly the stuff that constitutes a belief system, it meant cooperate or off to the gulag, comrade.

        I have contact with russified germans, they say little so that spies planted in their group won’t betray kinfolk still trapped in Russi. These russified germans have to pay a fee to get their kin folk released, it ain’t as simple as jumping in a taxi and say to the driver let’s go.

        1. My point
          My point is that communism is a fake religion, with fake prophets, and fake promises of redemption. But the patterns are copied from more traditional religions. Communist governments were based on indoctrination, intimidation, theft, and murder. The pretty philosophy was a smokescreen from day 1.

          It’s not very complicated.

          —-
          There are 3 kinds of people. Those who can count, and those who cannot.

          1. A complaint
            This really isn’t fair. Why is it there are so many good debates on TDG while I’m asleep?
            I know, I can guess the joke:
            ‘That’s why.’
            I must take issue on a few issues. The UK, or England as it was then, was the Protestant vanguard to Spain’s Catholic vanguard, and all politics in the region at this time were geared to this Hot/Cold War known as the Reformation/Counter Reformation. I’m a Brit myself and disagree with the violence involved.
            As for Communism, it has never existed. Communism belongs to cloud cuchoo land. The final phase of communism is for all hierarchy to disappear. This could never happen, for some people always want to be in charge – as has been proved in every supposedly Communist state. It is also wrong that in the supposed communist state, all people are of the state. That is Fascism.

            …

            Sin is what you’ve done once you’ve been caught.

            Anthony North

  2. The Dirty Little Secret
    And apparently we’ve been keeping it too good a secret: science is SUPPOSED to be proven wrong. It’s constructed so as to be falsifiable. It progresses when it’s falsified and supplanted by something else. If it’s not falsifiable, it’s not science.

    There are two groups of people who consider being proven wrong to be a problem — those who don’t understand science, and those who understand science but see more value in the PR they’re getting for waving this particular flag. When the latter can get their attention cup filled elsewhere, they’ll be off, leaving the former to look silly all alone.

    When most of a field is refuted within 15 years, that only means that there’s a lot of progress in that field. I only wish we had that sort of progress in psychology.

    The real dirty little secret is that those things that are falsified were themselves accepted at the time because they falsified something before them. And those new results that show the previous to be wrong? They’ll be proven wrong in time. Science goes from being somewhat right to being slightly more right, step by step. Never completely right, but better than what came before, which it builds on.

    No, I am not the brain specialist…..
    YES. Yes I AM the brain specialist.

  3. it takes more faith to believe in science than religion…
    I get my chuckles and grins watching the sci-fi crowd pushing sci as the only answer to anything and everything and yet the fanatical knee-jerk reaction on the part of the sci-fi crowd to put down religion oriented believers ‘cuz of their blind faith is even more hilarious.

    Here, serious sci folk seriously putting down their fella sci folk as sci-fi spin meisters is drama at its best. This on-going fraud scenario in the name of sci has degraded sci to a level on par with voodoo and casting spells as serious treatment modalities.

    I wondered why it has taken so long for an ethical, moralistically realistic scientist to blow the whistle on all these fraud perps hiding behind their non-scientific science. It is pushing the belief button beyond belief limits to believe in any thing which is tinged with the word science attached to it.

    The sci folk winge and whine about man-made religions and never include their own man-made sci systems to the same scrutiny. I am ROTFLMAO at the way in which sci fixated, call them sci-fi folks, same thing, have been suckered in to the biggest scam of all.

    Sci is the ultimate fairytale, ‘cuz as 1 sci-fix dude sez, the only constant in nature is change. So much for sci based truth, sci based laws, etc. To keep flogging this dead horse of sci further is really like measuring the pollution value of a single marmite fueled methane fart blast on the rotational speed of the cosmos. Both exist, both can be separately observed, both can have multiple theories proposed to measure the effects, but this is no more scientific than bored renaissance philosophers arguing about how many angels can sit on the tip of a needle. Its all speculation, all about opinion of the proposer and counter-rebutter, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

    Imagine that, sci-fi writers have more credibilty than scientists.

    2. science, science fiction, fantasy, and funny english
      Most of what is being sold today as “science fiction” is fantasy. Lost of mysticism and fake religion with big guns and spaceships.

      Fantasy is a lovely and entertaining form of literature and fiction. It is sad that a lot of people can’t tell it apart from science fiction.

      And it is also sad that most people cannot tell science fiction apart from science.

      As to funny English, why do you jaako often start with this rather phoney colloquial from of english, and then after you get a little tired, you write more normal?

      —-
      There are 3 kinds of people. Those who can count, and those who cannot.

      2. why be academically boring when humor makes the same point..
        I made a simple pun and combined science fixated with sci-fi and equated them since there is not that much to separate them any more. It seems to me you didn’t attach any credence to a scientist ringing warning bells about his less than credible fella scientists. He flushed them down the toilet, dude.

        I use bubba-like speech yawl to put the message at that level, to show folk reading these threads they be written by supposedly normal folk, not the hi-falutin’ kind with no sense of humor at all. Try some enlightenment next time, that would be nice. Criticism for the sake of criticism is like watching a dog chase its own tail when its bored.

        Shadows attributed the rantings of a 1-hand clapper as to what that whistle blower meant. That is sad, since it means she can’t separate anything from anything else just like you. If you wish to delude yerself that fantasy, sci-fi and science are separate worlds, be my guest, just knock yerself out. The whistle blower was ringing alarm bells to save what he can of the reputation of valid sci. That ranter dude was into the economic side of the spin and wouldn’t know the difference between what constitutes valid science from todays schlock.

          1. predictions
            yes indeed Paul, there has been some science fiction that predicted parts of what is happening. I was just complaining about the lack of it, everything seems to degenerate into seeing magic all over the place, and calling it science.

            Good science fiction is about the human condition, and how it would change, or stay the same, given some speculative changes in technology. You give some classic examples.

            —-
            There are 3 kinds of people. Those who can count, and those who cannot.

        2. Yo Bubba
          Bubba-like speech is only funny in some local communities, and most of the people here are not from those communities.

          What is wrong with reasonably correct and precise speech or writing? It’s not a sign of arrogance, it just saves time. ANd it is quite evident that you can write that way, so why spend the extra effort to write like Bubba ?

          We do seem to disagree about the difference between fantasy and science. I have done real science, and I have fantasies. I can speculate about fantastic things that have no basis in reality, and I can do real science. Not that I count medicine among the real sciences.

          —-
          There are 3 kinds of people. Those who can count, and those who cannot.

          1. SF and prediction
            Just to put the cat among the pigeons, I’d argue that SF doesn’t so much predict as direct. Could it be that the next generation of scientists read SF and are somehow inspired to look at science in that way?
            If so, SF is future science in an exact way.
            I’m a Yorkshireman so this is for Jaako:
            If thee disn’t tark rite, n’er yan we lissen.

          2. Tomorrow, today
            I think it was Robert Silverberg who said that the best science fiction is written about tomorrow, today. Or it might have been said about Silverberg, I can’t remember.

            And then you have authors like William Gibson, turning everything inside out with contemporary books like Pattern Recognition (Amazon).

  4. There’s pulp fantasy, and fantasy literature
    You’re reading the wrong fantasy, Shadows. The best fantasy fiction reads like mythology:

    • Neil Gaiman’s American Gods (Amazon) and Anansi Boys (Amazon),
    • Gene Wolfe’s Mythago Wood (Amazon),
    • Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series (Amazon),
    • Lian Hearn’s Tales of the Otori (Amazon),
    • George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire (Amazon),
    • Charles de Lint’s Newford books (Amazon),
    • Ursula K. Le Guin’s Wizard of Earthsea (Amazon)

    er, need I go on? I get the feeling I’ve forgotten a certain book, too. 😉

    1. That’s great Rick!
      Thank you.

      I’ve read some of Ursula Le Guin’s stuff, amazing.I think I may have read some Philip Pullman too, a while back.
      But none of the others.

      A good SciFi is a treasure.

      shadows

      1. Awesome, I’m glad you’ve
        Awesome, I’m glad you’ve read Pullman’s His Dark Materials. You’re a little like an older Lyra. Although Capt’n is your daemon. 😉

        Ach, what is that other fantasy book I can’t remember? Kat might know….

        1. Capn sure is my demon!
          He has such a mess here on the floor with his constructions I can hardly walk for it.

          I knew you’d put Neil Gaimon first!

          shadows

          1. Yeah, Neil’s an old fave.
            Yeah, Neil’s an old fave. You might like his Stardust, too Shadows. It’ll be released as a film this July. Oh, and his Sandman comics; very mythological.

  5. I had my bad spelling hand slapped, bubba and I call it a day…
    tony, not bad for a yorkshire bloke. I know a few folk there since my bro works in Bradford.

    now i bid folk adieu. it was fun while it lasted, for me anyway. greg just don’t like fun I guess, what a shame. some posters got with the spirit like tony and his yorkshire-ism.

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