Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
At The Back => The Dressing Room => Topic started by: tomjackson on May 07, 2011, 12:31:08 PM
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I've just had a morning chatting with some JW's that knocked on my door.
They get a bad press but if you are up for good debate they are very accomodating.
I think they left with a few more questions than they came with and in the end couln't wait to get away. I felt a bit bad lecturing them at first but then I though well there was 2 of them and they did knock at my door so it's all fair game. All in all a fun hour or so.
Now they did say that imagine how good a musician I'd be (I told them I play guitar) if I got the offer of eternal life by signing up and studying Jehova. This made me chuckle as I've got no better in the last 10 years!
It would really depress me if I was still playing the same pentatonic cr@p in 1000 years!
It's not as if I could say I'd had no time to practise :D
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Wow, what possessed you to do that? I frequently get Saturday morning visits from the Jehovah's Witnesses - usually don't answer the door but I get caught sometimes if I'm expecting a parcel or something. I always politely say I'm not interested, it would do my head in to actually talk to them.
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I usually start with "Your heaven is the hell I'm trying to avoid!"
Then when they leave, I follow them down the sidewalk from a short distance, and as they knock on my neighbors' doors I'll shout out "STOP LYING TO PEOPLE!" and "WARNING!! RUSSELLITES INBOUND!" :lol:
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Wow, what possessed you to do that?
I just love a good argument sometimes!
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tried this trick once and never been bothered since...
went to door wearing nothing but a towel...
let towel drop to floor, waited for screaming to stop, closed door - job done
my address is probably on some JW banned list 8)
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tried this trick once and never been bothered since...
went to door wearing nothing but a towel...
let towel drop to floor, waited for screaming to stop, closed door - job done
my address is probably on some JW banned list 8)
Even if that upset them, I bet they admired your balls :wink:
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My opening address to any JW or other evangelical on the crusade is "I'll speak to you if you know "Jesus"' true name.
None have been successful.
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You could always just say, "No, thanks. I'm just too fond of having my life saved by blood transfusion and I really don't have the time to attend 3-4 church sessions a week adding up to 17 hrs total." I asked them once about their side project of saving the environment and the pollutants caused by their members traveling to their clubhouse so often. Cutting back on God time for clean air that God wants seemed like a good suggestion, but they didn't like it so much. I don't like being bothered at 8 in the morning on Saturday when I have a hangover though. I wish my area had laws against random solicitation or "cold calling." They fall into that category and are unable to walk around with their comic books about Jesus.
Next time I'll sing them a Tim Minchin song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBUc_kATGgg
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I prefer the Victor Meldrew approach...
"Hello!'.... Goodbye!"
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most of my family are JW's. i am not, parents left well before i was born.
the oddest moment for me was at my gran's funeral a few years back. the guy doing the service actually asked us to be thankful she was not born as hitler - that was the basis of the whole service!
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Yeah, they have a MAJOR thing for Hitler. They started to pick up speed around WWII with the whole impending apocalypse thing they say is coming any day now. Hitler is supposed to be a version of Satan or Santa that came down and started forcing people to mass murder the Jews, Catholics, Gypsies, the mentally ill, the mentally retarded and the nay-sayers in Germany. My aunt is one and she started calling everybody non-stop after her last yearly convention. They told her the world was ending soon(they do this every 10 years or so) and their might not be a convention next year. Their conventions are these 3 day events. I had to go to a few as a child since my mother had also been a door knocking vampire at the time. I think that's about when I decided to be an atheist, except on major holidays(free stuff and drinking).
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i think the apocalypse predications are great, normally shuts them up for a while afterwards!
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most of my family are JW's. i am not, parents left well before i was born.
the oddest moment for me was at my gran's funeral a few years back. the guy doing the service actually asked us to be thankful she was not born as hitler - that was the basis of the whole service!
Wez nothing I said was meant to cause any offence to you or your family - I apologise if that is what occured
David
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hah, dont worry about that!
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the first and last time they knocked on me I was wearing my Morbid Angel t-shirt, they didn't come back - lost cause possibly :lol:
this one...
(http://www.loudclothing.com/prodimages/morbid-angel-altars-of-ts-m.jpg)
I will say, it wasn't planned at all (as if I could or would), just dossing round the house on a Sunday morning tolerating the Sunday tv.
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We rarely get Jehova's round here. We do however have a daily swarm of driveway, double glazing, energy supplier salesmen, ringing the bell. Think that's worse. Can't stand cold callers.
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JW are so wrong on many different levels, it's quite embarrassing. They are one of the few sects that rely on teachings that can be proven to be wrong, as members of the Adventists, Methodists or other religions have done. Saying you're a "JW" is basically like admitting you're not able to think properly or take a critical stance towards your teachings. Frankly, I am surprised they are still around and the organisation hasn't collapsed by now.
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I dated a JW.
she wasn't right in the head.
I think the world has more than enough straight up crazy depressed or drug fueled loons and manipulative scumbags to perpetuate the cycle of various cult like groups.
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JW are so wrong on many different levels, it's quite embarrassing. They are one of the few sects that rely on teachings that can be proven to be wrong, as members of the Adventists, Methodists or other religions have done. Saying you're a "JW" is basically like admitting you're not able to think properly or take a critical stance towards your teachings. Frankly, I am surprised they are still around and the organisation hasn't collapsed by now.
They're quite funny to discuss theology with. Even with their own special ropey translation of the bible, most of them clearly haven't read most of it, and they simply hold rigidly to dogma. They're also terrible for translating passages very literally with no context whatsoever. I think next time they come I'll ask them if they keep their menstruating women separate from them.
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Tell them you would love to listen but you will be late for a blood doning appointment.
They are crazy fools. I tried to engage one once. I used evolution against his creation nonsense, so he said "what about an eye! They are too complex not to be designed." "They evolved like ears, noses & everything else." I said. You athiests are all the same" he said. He was totally brainwashed poor chap.
It's all about selling their publication The Watchtower as far as I can see.
Nutters. :shock:
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Short earth creationism is actually fairly simple to challenge theologically, probably a more successful approach (or at least more likely to mess with them :D ) than adopting a rationalist position.
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Short earth creationism is actually fairly simple to challenge theologically, probably a more successful approach (or at least more likely to mess with them :D ) than adopting a rationalist position.
It is however also EXTREMELY easy to argue in favour of (if you accept the established reading order of the books of the bible) from their point of view. It's a pretty pointless argument to indulge in. If fun when you're 16.
I used to go out with a JW and also winched her sister. By crikey did their mum loathe me.
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It's pointless and a waste of breath to try to challenge faith.
There is no argument.
As anyone of faith/without faith "What proof would you accept that God exists/doesn't exist?"
There's no answer. Pointless.
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Short earth creationism is actually fairly simple to challenge theologically, probably a more successful approach (or at least more likely to mess with them :D ) than adopting a rationalist position.
It is however also EXTREMELY easy to argue in favour of (if you accept the established reading order of the books of the bible) from their point of view. It's a pretty pointless argument to indulge in. If fun when you're 16.
I used to go out with a JW and also winched her sister. By crikey did their mum loathe me.
Yeah, I've got the killer point though. I can demonstrate that to read Genesis 1 literally is to engage in the heresy of deism :) Showing that an internally consistent system is actually inconsistent is challenging.
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Genesis 1? I can think of nothing that suggests deism in Genesis 1. Perhaps 2.16.
The free will = deism line is generally scoffed at by philosophers (with good reason, in my book) if that's what you're getting at?
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I have messed with the heads of JW's in the past. I no longer have the patience/inclination though- if they want to beleive that stuff then thats fine- just don't expect me to.
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In some cases, the pay from their jobs goes to their group of other JWs and the rent and food bills get taken care of by th group they're with.
Now why would they do that I wonder. :? Ahh money.
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It's pointless and a waste of breath to try to challenge faith.
There is no argument.
As anyone of faith/without faith "What proof would you accept that God exists/doesn't exist?"
There's no answer. Pointless.
"If you could reason with religeous people, there would be no religion." - House
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In some cases, the pay from their jobs goes to their group of other JWs and the rent and food bills get taken care of by th group they're with.
Now why would they do that I wonder. :? Ahh money.
I think that's a disingenuous way to state that, it would seem that even right up to the highest echelons they remain a pretty meek bunch. They do need money, but it really goes into their endless printing and the running of the council - though I'll happily be proven wrong. They deserve pelters for their abhorrent ideas, not for things we associate with wider faith groups that they may well not be guilty of. They're not an ancient organisation built on money and the controlling of it to their adherents.
It's pointless and a waste of breath to try to challenge faith.
There is no argument.
As anyone of faith/without faith "What proof would you accept that God exists/doesn't exist?"
There's no answer. Pointless.
"If you could reason with religeous people, there would be no religion." - House
Good wholesome empty, pig-headed rhetoric a la Dawkins, that :lol:
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We're all doomed anyway! http://judgementday2011.com/. I can't wait as I've been good all year.
Hands up who's been naughty.
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Genesis 1? I can think of nothing that suggests deism in Genesis 1. Perhaps 2.16.
The free will = deism line is generally scoffed at by philosophers (with good reason, in my book) if that's what you're getting at?
LOL, just looked and I actually mean 2:2 (it's part of one continuous flow, so I'd forgotten it was 2 chapters). If read with a historical-grammatical (very literal) interpretation this verse is contrary to the christian understanding of God's action in the world. TBH more paradox than gaping flaw though, but again, any encouragement to get JWs to actually think about their faith.
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Well, if you read it literally, in isolation, and then never read another line of the bible, then yes. But God rather clearly takes an interest in humanity after creation.
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That being the problem with the grammatical-literal approach to interpretation, especially when added to the other dispensationalist approaches that typically go with it. JWs are very bad for this, but so are many "fundamentalist" groups, read a passage in isolation and then link it to a completely unrelated passage to "prove" your point.
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My sister used to go to this place:
http://www.salisburyemmanuel.org.uk/index.html?/main/front.html
When she died we went to her funeral there which was really wacky...
Basically the coffin was up front near the altar and the minister spent the whole service telling us that we were sinners and that we would go to Hell!
Nothing about my sister, her life, etc etc
It was really wierd and we came out of there feeling a mixture of anger and amazement that some churches are like that.
Takes all sorts, I suppose....
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That being the problem with the grammatical-literal approach to interpretation, especially when added to the other dispensationalist approaches that typically go with it. JWs are very bad for this, but so are many "fundamentalist" groups, read a passage in isolation and then link it to a completely unrelated passage to "prove" your point.
Well yes. But there are endless biblical passages that illustrate that well. Arguing deism from Genesis just seems peculiar and not something that'd ever deliver the point, to me - I spend much of my life debating biblical history, it's not one I'd ever pick up to demonstrate anything. Though Genesis itself is full of good stuff for the purpose.
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Religion is all about control and it's a nice little earner. I detest it.
Man created God.
If people feel the need to worship somthing, then worship the Sun. Life in all forms would be pretty f*cked without it.
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Religion is all about control and it's a nice little earner. I detest it.
Man created God.
If people feel the need to worship somthing, then worship the Sun. Life in all forms would be pretty f*cked without it.
+1
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If people feel the need to worship somthing, then worship the Sun. Life in all forms would be pretty f*cked without it.
True, but I wish it would stay behind clouds a bit more. I want some RAIN!
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Religion is all about control and it's a nice little earner. I detest it.
Again, very two dimensional, fundie-athiest thinking. "The majority of organised Abrahamic-derived faiths are about control and money in their modern incarnation" would be an appropriate sentence.
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So when did the 'modern incarnation' of the Abrahamic religions fall away into 'control and money' to make it 2D thinking?
When was it for Christianity? The time of the Acts (if we accept that Acts is not a second century work borrowing heavily from fiction and other authors)? The time of Paul's epistles and his railings against other's interpretation of how 'the Gospel' works? The time of Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch and their demands that the Christians submit to their elders (πρεσβύτερος) ? At the time of Constantine and the state take over of Christianity? The rise of the Roman Popes? Those periods all seem to be good dates to begin the start of giving credence the 2D fundie-atheist criticism of religion. From pretty much the time it move from a cult around a Galilean carpenter to a organised entity it has been about control, and, no doubt, money.
Although as a cradal (although not credal) Calvinist, I have deep respect for people of faith. If you can stick to the demands of religion you are either dedicated or a moron.
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With Christianity, I'd argue that it first began to be used to control a populace when it replaced the Mithraic faith of Rome officially. Though many strands of it were never used in such a fashion, nor with any monetary interest. Judaism was much later, it being merely a device of hope for an endlessly oppressed people for most of its history.
My problem with the statement is it's monstrous generalisation. There are plenty faiths which do not serve as control methods nor have any relation to money. And almost no faiths begin with those things in mind (in fact if you can point me to one which was, which has existed for more than a couple hundred years I'll be glad to learn of it), though most which have existed for a long time were eventually developed to serve in that fashion.
It's utterly preposterous to make such a blanket statement with any seriousness.
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You guys kill me. :P
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Religion is all about control and it's a nice little earner. I detest it.
Again, very two dimensional, fundie-athiest thinking. "The majority of organised Abrahamic-derived faiths are about control and money in their modern incarnation" would be an appropriate sentence.
Really? How incredibly interesting ....... :roll:
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That being the problem with the grammatical-literal approach to interpretation, especially when added to the other dispensationalist approaches that typically go with it. JWs are very bad for this, but so are many "fundamentalist" groups, read a passage in isolation and then link it to a completely unrelated passage to "prove" your point.
Well yes. But there are endless biblical passages that illustrate that well. Arguing deism from Genesis just seems peculiar and not something that'd ever deliver the point, to me - I spend much of my life debating biblical history, it's not one I'd ever pick up to demonstrate anything. Though Genesis itself is full of good stuff for the purpose.
The conversation's drifted a bit. The Genesis 2:2 paradox is specifically to address short earth creationism, where historical-grammatical interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis is essential to the doctrine.
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I don't think religion is inherently about control, however people have a depressing tendency towards conformity, and there are always people who will manipulate this for their own advancement. This is by no means unique to religious groups, any activity where people have a shared interest which they become very involved in is at risk of developing these behaviours (martial arts groups are a classic example of this).
Ironically in Christian settings the best way to avoid being controlled by people is to read the bible.
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'Ironically in Christian settings the best way to avoid being controlled by people is to read the bible'
Like the tyrant's charter in Romans 13 for example:
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:
For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.
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Religion is all about control and it's a nice little earner. I detest it.
Again, very two dimensional, fundie-athiest thinking. "The majority of organised Abrahamic-derived faiths are about control and money in their modern incarnation" would be an appropriate sentence.
Really? How incredibly interesting ....... :roll:
Well your statement was incorrect, mate. Not a matter of opinion or owt, just wrong. I think a more accurate statement IS more interesting, yes. You can't take the huff because it was pointed out as such any more than if you'd said Les Pauls were first built in 1985 and were told you were wrong.
I think organised religion should be challenged extensively. But with reasoned thinking and debate, not with as all-ecompassing, inaccurate and intolerant views as it itself is often guilty of proposing.
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Intolerance, you hit the nail on the head there. You obviously have more time than most to chit chat about fantasies and lies of the past. People dont need this cr@p, it gets passed down to them and they are brainwashed with it by older generations and steered into their teachings and agendas. Reading just a few of these convoluted posts on this subject just proves to me what a load of cr@p religion is and why human beings would be better off without it.
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Every time they knock at my door I'm usually in full on slob mode which means shorts, hair not brushed properly, usually some T shirt with skulls or a band name splattered across it and they're usually interupting my morning of game play. It gets rather annoying.
If I'm interested, I'll come see you, untill then don't knock on my door and expect me to listen to you waffle on about something I have 0 desire to be apart of.
:P
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Intolerance, you hit the nail on the head there. You obviously have more time than most to chit chat about fantasies and lies of the past. People dont need this cr@p, it gets passed down to them and they are brainwashed with it by older generations and steered into their teachings and agendas. Reading just a few of these convoluted posts on this subject just proves to me what a load of cr@p religion is and why human beings would be better off without it.
You made a factually incorrect statement, which I pointed out. That's it.
But to respond to that particular post. It's part of my areas of study, so yes, I do spend more time than most studying and discussing it. Rationally. I wouldn't use a phrase like "chit chat" to demean academic study of anthropology, history and archaeology, mind.
It's one of the most important things in the history of our species, if not THE most important, in terms of how we came to arrive at where are and in order to understand our past. Likewise study of Chritianity in particular is essential to understanding our specific western culture.
I don't know what makes reasoned discussion convoluted.
Many people are brainwashed and it often amounts to child abuse, I would agree. Human beings might well be better off without it (though in real terms, it's actually science that has guaranteed the eventual demise of civilisation, ever since the agrarian revolution, to play devil's advocate) but that's really besides the point I was making.
Put simply, I'm an anti-theist, but it's important to understand something you wish to debate, and making incorrect or ill-educated assertions about it serves nobody but those who hold the opposite view to yourself.
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What I think youre overlooking, nfe, is that a motivation behind an ideas inception and the mechanism or pragmatic reasons for it proliferation are not one and the same.
Perhaps the intentions behind most major religions were benign spirituality and exploration of the human condition. Perhaps. But they are too laced with behavioural instruction and too fundamentally tribal (and therefore unifying for a single group and adversarial and dehumanising, or always on the brink of it, to others) for them not to be a mechanism of population control. Its intrinsic to them; their centralisation of power and homogenisation of thought, belief and behaviour, not to be. What any original authors intended and what they are and have always been and been used as are not necessarily connected.
Pragmatic example: tithing. You must give the first 10% of your income to the church. What this has to do with any spiritual relationship with their imaginary friend I have no idea, but its right there in jesus' teachings (as a secondary consideration, albeit) and is one of many doctrines that facilitated the hegemony of the church for centuries, from damn near day one.
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All of the above is true. But, and the real issue, is that it is not all true of all religion. And that's what Johnny Mac stated and what I said was untrue. Not all religion is organised, for a start. Various religion to this day exist only as origin stories and hope mechanisms, with no real scriptural laws nor requirements.
Who could argue that deism is a control mechanism? Or monetarily motivated?
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While any religion has to be a control mechanism to a degree (its inevitable for any set of teachings and behavioural instructions, and there are all that, near-definitionally), not all are as politically and economically charged as the abrahamic religions, no. They in particular, however, are spiritual and belief systems woven into political and financial systems that lead to the dominion of the central religious authority over the people. Not true of, say, buddhism, obviously.
Deism is pretty obviously not a religion at all. Confucianism is more of a religion. Both being philosophical positions, and the latter being instructive on behaviour, the former not, even if desim is the one that has *something* to say about the nature of the universe and out place in it (made by cosmic engineer, we dont really matter) while confucianism is agnostic/apatheistic. Hell, marxism and keynsianism are more religious than deism.
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Surely the purpose of all religion (as opposed to individualistic philospohical paths, including some forms of Buddhism) is to create a community- after all the Latin meaning of the word 'religion' is probably 'to bind together again' or 'to oblige' (if 'religare' is the correct source of the word). The idea that religion provides an individual with a personal spiritual path is pretty much a modern notion - community obligation was at the centre of Greek and Roman religion as well as the Abrahamic religions. Religion is essentially about bringing people into conformity with the rest of the community.
In the case of the Abrahamic religions the added view that God is exclusive in who he chooses to be his People is a pretty powerful force and one that has given rise to a great deal of atrocity - After the God of the Bible is the God of a few (although that 'few' may be in the millions), not of all. For example, the circumcised descendants of Abraham (Genesis 17) or those, 'not the World', who God has given to Christ to intercede for (e.g John 17).
If you found a community on such notions you are bound to find that supremacist ideas and political domination to the community's definition of orthodoxy is going to arise - and thus political domination.
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Religion comes from religio. Meaning reverence for/bond with gods or along those lines. Of course, Latin derivatives are often quite different from their origins, even our dictator is quite different from their dictator.
I think the most sensible modern working definition would most simply be "theistic belief in the nature of the universe". In which case, deism is certainly a religious belief. You could perhaps change theistic to spiritual in order to include some Eastern belief systems that should probably be considered religious but it's troublesome as it would probably also then have to include some things which are really only philosphies.
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Surely the purpose of all religion (as opposed to individualistic philospohical paths, including some forms of Buddhism) is to create a community- after all the Latin meaning of the word 'religion' is probably 'to bind together again' or 'to oblige' (if 'religare' is the correct source of the word). The idea that religion provides an individual with a personal spiritual path is pretty much a modern notion - community obligation was at the centre of Greek and Roman religion as well as the Abrahamic religions. Religion is essentially about bringing people into conformity with the rest of the community.
In the case of the Abrahamic religions the added view that God is exclusive in who he chooses to be his People is a pretty powerful force and one that has given rise to a great deal of atrocity - After the God of the Bible is the God of a few (although that 'few' may be in the millions), not of all. For example, the circumcised descendants of Abraham (Genesis 17) or those, 'not the World', who God has given to Christ to intercede for (e.g John 17).
If you found a community on such notions you are bound to find that supremacist ideas and political domination to the community's definition of orthodoxy is going to arise - and thus political domination.
Well put, I quite agree
Deism =/= theism. Theism is the belief in a personal god or gods. Deism isnt, it just says that some intelligence invented the universe, not that it gives a toss about us.
Following from 'personal' gods, a theists god is typically interested in what food we eat, the days we work on, who we have sex with and when, that sort of stuff and so behavioural instructions are derived from divine authority. Deists 'god' couldnt care less.
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I would disagree. My take is purely that theism is the belief in a supernatural creator. Their interest in their creation thereafter being besides the point.
I would describe the beliefs of most hunter gatherer communities to be religious, though most are desitic in nature. In that the gods created, then left everyone to get on with it and live in harmony with the planet.
I'm a little disappointed no one took up my assertion that it is scientific (or rather, technological) progress that currently has civilisation, humanity and the rest of life on Earth destined for extinction, or at best ruin, and has done for about ten-thousand years. Purely because I've been reading an interesting book on that theme (related to the hunter gatherers mentioned above).:lol:
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Then its your turn to be factually wrong ;). That is the accepted definition of deism; the 'take' of any of us doesnt matter. Theism being belief in an intervening/active/miracle doing, prayer hearing personal god, and desim being the belief in a cosmic engineer that pushed the 'universe ON' button and has done nothing since.
They are quite mutally exclusive, and all theistic religions require at least an active and best (and mostly) personal god or gods, while deists have usually arrived at their deism through (poor) interpretation of sciences and semi-rational philosophical enquiry and generally agree that if the cosmic engineer is still around then A: it doesnt do anything anymore and B: second guessing its nature, interests, awareness, intentions or even if any of the terms apply is futile; hence no doctrines for deists.
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And to the technology will doom us/implication that hunter gatherers had or did it better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ramBFRt1Uzk
Complete with evidence (and carefull hypothesising)
If the comment pertains to environmental damage, the video isnt relevant, if it pertains to violence, it is.
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To quote my Oxford dictionary (admittedly from the 80's and definition/narrowness of definition changes) which obviously has a few options, one being;
belief in the existence of a god or gods.
Regards the hunter gatherer line, it's nothing to do with violence. Sort of to do with environmental damage. Essentially the case the book I'm reading (Ishmael - Daniel Quinn) makes is that since the agrarian revolution when we removed ourselves from natural selection humans have been actively at war with the planet in that we've systematically destroyed anything that competed with us for food, causing rapid population growth which we then felt compelled to try and sustain and leading to the endless problems we have now.
I don't know how my mind is really made up on the argument, but it's been an interesting read.
I'll watch the video though, I saw an interesting talk previously on the subject of violence through the ages on the TED website (which is FULL of great stuff).
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To be fair, the etymology of the latin word religio is uncertain. There is nothing in the direct etymology of the word religio that gives the sense of reverence to the Gods: the prefix means re- '[to do] again' The dispute is whether the -lig derives, as most Christian Fathers such as Augustine thought, from 'ligare' as in ligament - a binding or, as Cicero thought 'legere' to read - hence 'relegere' - to read again and again (the connected idea is the reading of the ancient texts in the temple, i.e. a pious following of ritual) .
The OED (which Wikipedia uses as its source) stresses the Ciceronian interpretation of relegare. But Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary (which is the big one on Latin) states that the majority of golden age Latin sources prefers the 'religare' interpretation.
Which all goes to show that even basic knowledge of anything is an impossibility :D
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As to the Hunter/Gather thing - it was the Earth declaring war on us in the form of the Ice Age that set most of northern hemisphere humanity on the path to cutting its nose off to spite its face. Hunter gathering requires a largish area of fertile land for humans to travel through, strip and move on until the cycle of growth begins again and the humans can return. Post ice age most of that was gone in the northern hemisphere and humans had to adapt by farming the land and raising their own food.
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Collins is the Latin dictionary that's on the reading list for all the Scottish ancient unis, dunno about elsewhere. It gives religio as religious scruple, reverance, awe, object of veneration etc I'm not writing the whole lot out. I was going by memory earlier but am home with my bookcase now!
Yes though, any ancient language (and indeed modern) is open to quite some interpretation!
The last ice age finished what, 12,500 years ago (my geography is rudimentary)? Farming really originated two and a half millennia after that in the fertile crescent of mesopotamia.
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OK, your right on the ice age thing - I was getting confused with something I read on farming and population change in Europe :? : Here it is, if it is any interest:
...Humans arrived in Europe 45,000 years ago and replaced the Neandertals. From that period on, European hunter-gatherers experienced lots of climatic changes, including the last Ice Age. After the end of the Ice Age, some 11,000 years ago, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle survived for a couple of thousand years but was then gradually replaced by agriculture. The question was whether this change in lifestyle from hunter-gatherer to farmer was brought to Europe by new people, or whether only the idea of farming spread. The new results from the Mainz-led team seems to solve much of this long standing debate.
"Our analysis shows that there is no direct continuity between hunter-gatherers and farmers in Central Europe," says Prof Joachim Burger. "As the hunter-gatherers were there first, the farmers must have immigrated into the area."
As to dictionaries - Collins is a pretty small dictionary, I have one at home too from when I was an undergrad and whilst its ok for undergraduates to use it is not (like the OED (for English) or Lewis and Short (for Latin)) a dictionary based on historical principles. You wouldn't put the OED or L&S on reading lists as they cost more than most student grants (state, parental or otherwise) and I don't know any classics scholars who would rely on Collins for etymology (and, yes, I do know lots of classics scholars). :lol:
Anyway, sorry, this has drifted away from JWs!
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Oxford online defines theism as the belief in an interventionist creator and deism as the belief in a non-interventionist creator. It makes a point of contrasting them.
All the literature I've ever read on the matter refers to theism as a belief in a god that intervenes in some way in reality and/or has personal interest in people, and deists as people that think that god made the universe, or making it with intelligent beings as being part of the plan, but never as having interest in how people live.
They're both a kind of belief in god, but they're very different. A deist is by definition not religious as they dont think that god is a moral or behavioural authority, and its part of the normal defintion of deism to reject any assertion that there are any texts written or inspired by god; the cornerstone of theistic religions being that god/s wrote or ghost wrote a book or fifty telling us what to do. This shouldnt be hard to verify or contradict with a quick search or cracking open any books that discuss the ideas in any detail (top links in google and bertrand russel 'history of western philosophy' to my right tell me this is right).
On the wrecking the planet thing: Highly doubtfull. I'm quite interested to see just how much of the inevitable devastation this chap blames on "technology" and how much (more sensibly) on market forces driving its use and shortsightedness and poor decisions that go hand in hand with them, and exactly what level of doomsaying we're talking about here before making any sort of proclamation on how wrong he is, but, yeah, highly doubtfull. Its a tough planet, and we as a species have been through worse when we were far less advanced. Its gonna be hard to get rid of us, harder still for us to make a lasting impact on the planet as a whole.
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I shouldn't have stuck "theistic" in my working definition, perhaps. And simply said belief in a supernatural creator. Even "a supernatural belief concerning man's relation to the universe" would work for me, which I would certainly consider deism to fall into. Any belief concerning a creation of the universe by an intelligent designer is a religious belief in my book, whether it has dogma, ritual and rules or not.
All in, I still assert that religion is not "All about control and is a nice little earner", which was the main point. I consider it no less than a laughable statement. Whether it is regularly (even almost without exception) usurped for those ends is quite besides the point, you chuck that "all" in there, and it's immediately false.
It's not about technology per say, but about our use of it to dominate the planet, not in a fear of us damaging the planet itself to any great degree, just the species upon it.
He makes a basic distinction between what he call takers and leavers - agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers. Those who think they've a "right" to upset the natural order and those who don't. Basically, the thrust of it is that our efforts to control the planet to suit our civilisation is destined for catastrophic failure sooner or later, as our eternally growing population must eventually outstrip our ability to feed it, but we'll likely have wiped out virtually everything we can't eat and everything that competes with us for food by then.
EDIT: I don't retell it well, it's a complex line of thinking that gets built in fragments and I'm poorly condensing it. Wirth a read.
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Finite planet, growing population = problems...Well thats just intuitively obvious, but catastophic failure is equally inuitively obviously impossible. Its supply and demand, basically, and the changes that (will inevitably) take place will be gradual (and likely, indeed certainly, asymmetrical, as they already are). Its not like we're going to wake up one day and go '$%&#, all the foods gone'
Ingoring for a moment technological adaptations to increasing demand on the yield of any given acre of farm land (like GM, for example), which will inevitably improve (as a magic bullet its somewhere between a post-dated cheque and wishfull thinking at the moment), limited food supply will force stabilisation of the population at a maximum sustainable level that corresponds to rate at which food can be grown.
Quality of life at that point is entirely another matter, but you start saying things like 'state enforced planned parenthood' and every retard with functioning gonads throws up their arms in horror at the threatened retraction of their right to have 5 kids. Its not hard to see that the problems arent just agricultural, or technological, but social. Indeed it could easily be argued that they're social in their entirety and that the social problems are as a result of adaptation to hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Hunter gatherers (modern ones) live in a perpetual state of scarcity, and we still have the same vestigial instincts to gather and eat as much as we damned well can while we can, because we havent really evolved since then.
There wont be any 'wiped out anything we can eat though': I dont see cows being an endandgered species any time soon. Its not a matter of consuming a finite amount of resources; its a matter of matching rates of consumption to rates of production.
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Oh, yeah, today is me be argumentative git day. Dunno why. Happens occasionally. Direction of the wind, alignment of planets. It'll pass soon I imagine :lol:
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Wiped out anything we CAN'T eat.
Population will continue to grow, at faster and faster rates as long as we increase food supply. Eventually we will hit a limit, and famine will kill masses of people. Technological advances in terms of food production only increase the problem. More food grown = more people born. Forever. The problem is social, and that's his argument towards the end of the book, that we're obviously never going to return to hunter gatherer life, but the plains Indians were agriculturalists for centuries before returning to a nomadic life, and they never upset the environment in doing it, so it has to be possible. But the global population needs to realise that they belong to the world, not that the world belongs to them.
Of course, and related to the theme of this thread, religion wont allow that to happen, as it usually states that the world was a gift to us.
Hunter gatherers do not gather and eat as much as they can. They do little saving of food either. They find food as and when they need it, indeed it was the start of food storage techniques that created civilisation and turned hunter-gatherers into agriculturalists in the first place. And no we haven't evolved since then, and never will. Which is a bit sad really, we've removed ourselves from natural selection, so chances are we'll never get to see what comes after homo sapiens.
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straight up truth injection
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqbeo5A6ujE
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Sounds like, as with most doomsaying predictions for the grand sweeping fate of mankind, hes rather oversimplified things
but
argumentativeness.....fading....caring........less...........
(http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f227/joemariko/Funny/jesussaves.gif)
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The world population according to some things I've read will peak around 9.3 Billion and things get really nasty. How long will we go on for? I did have a good talk in a pub about this a few years back and we all thought around another 200 years. Who knows.
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Nah. 200,000 more like.
In one form or another.
Not getting rid of us that easily, as a species.
Our civilisational infrastructure might not be that robust, and our current level of comfort (in the 'developed' world at least) might not be sustainable indefinitely, nor our high population, but even the worst conceivable events that could befall us probably couldnt wipe us out. We've been through some of them already. Climate change? We may end up tilling fields in antarctica with the rest of the world a desert, but there'll be a billion or so of us left to do it, and we survived an ice age with nothing but stone tools, mud huts and camp fires. Disease? Been there and done that quite recently (plague); could kill lots of us, nearly impossible that it will get us all. Nuclear war/winter? If we're dumb enough, but large pockets of humanity would survive and have to go through a couple of centuries of rebuilding and being weened off human flesh. No biggie in a >100,000 year history. Asteroid? Similar story but worse; there would be enough of us to carry on. etc etc etc.
When people talk about the survival of 'the planet' or 'the human race' usually what they really mean is modern civilisation. One way or another, by being replaced, changing into something else gradually, or being destroyed, thats gonna go, quite probably in a couple of centuries, but its my guess that we as a species are likely a little bit behind bacteria in succeptibility to outright extinction.
I mean shite, if crocodiles can make it for 50 million years surely we cant do that badly. Even the dumbest of us can make a simple house, start a fire and grow/trap/hunt some food.
Alright, maybe not the dumbest, but most of us could handle that, after the apocolypse, while pining for our guitars and amps
Basically, so long as there are some rocks and trees, until all the worlds lighters run out, we're good :lol:
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Yeah, the general meaning of anybody talking about "saving the human race" is really "save the cars and computers and tv and microwaves". Simply because they think ANY way of life having gone before must have been utterly miserable, for no good reason.
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I dont even think they think it through that far.
I dont really know what goes through the heads of people that bang on about saving the human race, or saving the planet. Niether need it.
It is indeed saving our comfort level at best, and at worst saving a large number of people from dying (of something other than old age) at more or less the same time from the same thing and, while that would be tragic, no one wants to see (or experience, if hit in whatever cataclysm) the suffering it would no doubt come with, it would in the grand scheme just weave itself into history after we pick ourselves up again and carry on eating and breeding and making clever things like soap and houses and iphones that help us stay alive (and comfortable and amused once alives dealt with)
Lack of perspective. Thats what it is.
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And to the technology will doom us/implication that hunter gatherers had or did it better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ramBFRt1Uzk
Complete with evidence (and carefull hypothesising)
If the comment pertains to environmental damage, the video isnt relevant, if it pertains to violence, it is.
So it transpires that this WAS the talk I watched before. It is good.
However, I challenge his reasoning on hunter-gatherer violence. His figures, I presume, are correct, but his figures are for 20th Century hunter-gatherer populations which live in monstrously constricted areas compared to how they did prior to the agrarian revolution, and following 10,000 years of their being annihilated and geared towards vicious defence by agriculturalist aggression.
Our archaeological evidence does not suggest high violence-related mortality rates amongst ancient hunter-gatherer populations at all. The noble savage idea is almost certainly false, pragmatic savage would probably be more sensible, but they weren't anything at all like as violent as he suggests.
I will note of course, that at the end of the day, we're guessing, all social understanding of prehistoric populations is mythical - in the deepest meaning of "myth", not to mean lie or fantasy but to mean a narrative based on a bunch of disconnected information which can't be studied in context.
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Perhaps. I'm not familiar with the data on the studies on older populations causes for mortality. It was referenced as a near-throwaway comment iirc? 'Studies of ancient populations show similar levels of violence' or something to that effect? Its been a while since I've seen it.
It would be fairly easy to figure out how many people were killed violently from remains and some decent assumptions and reference populations, sample sizes allowing. Probably some pretty big margins of error on it, its not quantum chromodynamics, but I would be inclined to think the conclusions quite sturdy. Data analysis, both in/validation and formulation of methodology has been one of my things (as in I've done it professionally), and taking other analysts at their word was never one of my practices because they're often morons, but I dont have much choice in this case. I could hit up google schollar I suppose, but I cant really be bothered :lol: Niether of us has much choice but to think that pinker, being a responsible intellectually honest sciency type, one trusts, has done his homework. Maybe, maybe not, but its an assumption I'm willing to work under.
Not a terribly unfair point on the availability of territory, but as you've been keen to point out, we will tend to saturate an area as completely as practicable; its not unreasonable to assume that a similar degree of conflict would occur between larger and more widespread populations once regions have been saturated. If so, which is a reasonable assumption, we come full circle to the representivity of modern populations and the archaeolgical evidence is near-moot.
True enough, though, we'll never really know. That the trend of lowering violence and tolerance for suffering in general is borne out with far greater evidence over the last few decades and centuries is much more significant I believe anyway.
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It's an excuse to use rather skewed data to build a bar chart to make a surprising point, I think. He claims that the best evidence we have for hunter-gatherer violence is watching the still present tribes today, then compares the high level of violence amongst them to the comparatively low level of violence amongst developed society.
I think it's wooly thinking for various reasons. Firstly, there are somewhere in the region of 500,000 true hunter-gatherers in the world today, probably only tens of thousands, if that, who don't have contact with the developed world. On the other hand, there are around 6 billion people living in civilisation. So any significant numbers of violent deaths in the hunter gatherer population massively distorts their appearance in comparison. In fact, the example he uses of the Jivaro to demonstrate a very high violent death rate only number (at the very top end of estimates) about 30,000. So 600 of them die in a war and you've lost 2% of the entire global population. We need to lose 120,000,000 people to match that in the developed world.
Also, Lawrence Keeley, who's research he is paraphrasing, only shows figures for the UK and US in the 20th century, ignoring the genocides, wars, violence and massacres in other parts of the globe. His work is regularly challenged but even Keeley himself conceded that of the 5-10% of societies that do not engage in warfare, almost all are nomadic hunter-gatherers (the rest being defeated, demoralised refugees)
Next, in 8000 BC there were in the region of 5,000,000 people alive, spread out through most areas of the globe. Whilst populations do grow to whatever point they can still be sustained, as hunter gatherers, this never approaches any kind of significant density. It's entirely likely that many tribes would never encounter anyone who could be perceived as an enemy in generations. Nowadays they've been forced into small areas where they must actively compete with each other for resources. And as I say, have been practicing violence for millennia when trying to defend themselves from agricultural oppressors trying to move them away so they can farm their land.
So I still think his applying modern figures to represent ancient peoples is sneaky, likely why he spends a few sentences on it, gets his impressive bar chart of massive red lines for hunter gatherers out of the way, then jumps forward in time 8000 years.
Good thread.
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The classic article on hunter gatherers is Marshall Sahlins 'The Original Affluent Society' - old now, but still worth a read:
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
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Valid qualifications for the interpretation of the data, to an extent, I think, but none of them invalidate it. While modern hunter gatherers probably arent 100% comparable to ancient ones, they are the best representation that we have. Its important to note that pinker provided a range of data for the modern hunter gatherers, and its a wide range. Its reasonable to assume that ancient populations would widen the range even more - that there would be murder rates above and below those there. That doesnt invalidate the synthesis of the argument; that any data you can find for it shows that youre more likely to be killed by another person (intentionally at least) in a hunter gatherer society than you are in a modern 'developed' society. The data for ancient societies would have to be different to that for modern hunter gatherers by orders of magnitude for the point to be different, and I dont see that happening (of course I cant know this, but its a falsifiable position at least).
The most important point being made there is the alteration in the acceptable standards of violence. Here, now, we have people that are dubious about the killing of bin laden. Our tolerance for capital punishment is somewhere between low and zero in developed societies. But, as stated in the vid, no one batted an eyelid 500 years ago at being brutally exceuted for calling the king a bad name.
Some of the reasons he suggests for this can qualify the exclusion for consideration of many modern global populations. It hadnt escaped my attention that he leaves out many wars and genocides in, say, africa. The situation/s in there are poor enough that you can damn near throw a dart at a map and hit somewhere that theres been a war or genocide or tyrannical dicatotorship or oppressed population in the last 20 years far more egregious than anything europe has seen in centuries (save the holocaust).
Thats kinda part of the point; the same forces havent shaped, or yet had the chance to shape those societies, and what we're really talking about here is societal evolution. We live in a post renaissance civilisation of civil rights, democratic republics where to overthrow a government you get enough people to put a tick in a box, police and courts to mediate and moderate our vengence and prevent violation of our rights, trade with other nations and mutual cooperation in general leading to reduced hostility due to codependence, media coverage of wars and conflicts increasing our awareness of them and lowering our tolerance for it etc etc etc etc. Much of the world doesnt have this. Why? Thats a topic for a naomi klein book, I think :lol: But the fact is that, within the working definition of 'modern' for his argument (not just 'alive now' but post-renaissance democratic society) not everywhere on earth is 'modern', and so that regions lacking the pacifying infulences and forces in their histories that he argues have made us less violent, there is more violence. It adds up well.
It boils down, I think, to an argument whereby in the places and histories where such pacifying ideas as hobbes leviathan and freedom of speech and democratic goverments have arisen and taken hold, it begins a feedback trend whereby lowering the need for/benefits from violence lowers tolerance for violence and so lowers violence and so again lowers the need for/benefits from violence, and so on and so forth. There are no such factors at play in a hunter gatherer society, no developed and, as importantly, developing philosophical and sociological basis for the intentional construction of a more passive society, and in point of fact a society that prospers from being passive; theres only inherited tradition (little to nothing in the way of documented ideas upon which more can be built; no printing press!) and so levels of violence are directly related to geological and ecological happenstance. Hence very variable, yes, but also potentially unrestrained by social forces; in point of fact, force rules. They may not need to use it, but at the end of the day 'we can kick the shitee out of you and take the food you've gathered' is a high risk but high payoff strategy that doesnt really fly today. Except under bush&blair and if you replace food with oil. There are always going to be exceptions :(
Edit: good thread indeed. Not really my area, I'm out of my element and quite probably in over my head, but interesting :)
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They may not need to use it, but at the end of the day 'we can kick the shiteee out of you and take the food you've gathered' is a high risk but high payoff strategy that doesnt really fly today.
Actually it's alive and well in Stockport where Kebab / chippy robbings are on the rise. You buy your food then as you are walking home some hunter gatherers (scallies) ambush you, tw@t you in the face and then go and enjoy their bounty. They hunt in packs and even carry basic tools or weapons.
Anyway, enough of 'those were the days' reminising about the good old days of hunter gathering. That horse has bolted. How can we save the world and live in harmony. You're leaving me with such a feeling of doom I might prefer to join the JW's after all. Perhaps they are right about the impending armageddon....
So what about the future? Although we have lost something surely we have gained something. Scientific minds to overcome anything, to play God ourselves? Deseases cured, the origins of the universe and grand unified theory look possible, particle accelerators that are discovering the building blocks of everything. Computers with amazing power. The ability to clone ourselves is on the horizon. Telescopes that can record the early universe.
Is this just all part of the progression?
Discuss
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Religion is all about control and it's a nice little earner. I detest it.
Man created God.
If people feel the need to worship somthing, then worship the Sun. Life in all forms would be pretty f*cked without it.
I'm sorry, I just had to dig out some Black Sabbath lyrics
Will you still sneer when death is near
And say they may as well worship the sun?
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There are Sabbath quotes for every occasion, I think!
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Religion is all about control and it's a nice little earner. I detest it.
Man created God.
If people feel the need to worship something, then worship the Sun. Life in all forms would be pretty f*cked without it.
I'm sorry, I just had to dig out some Black Sabbath lyrics
Will you still sneer when death is near
And say they may as well worship the sun?
Muse did a song called ' Thoughts of a dyeing Atheist' or something like that.
I don't give any thought to any of that. Life's for living, by my rules, not anyone else's. Especially some blagger who rode in to Jerusalem on a Donkey or a Schizophrenic looney over 2000 years ago. When the time comes i may not see it coming. If not then I'll take a inspiration from both of my Grandfathers and smile.
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Valid qualifications for the interpretation of the data, to an extent, I think, but none of them invalidate it. While modern hunter gatherers probably arent 100% comparable to ancient ones, they are the best representation that we have. Its important to note that pinker provided a range of data for the modern hunter gatherers, and its a wide range. Its reasonable to assume that ancient populations would widen the range even more - that there would be murder rates above and below those there. That doesnt invalidate the synthesis of the argument; that any data you can find for it shows that youre more likely to be killed by another person (intentionally at least) in a hunter gatherer society than you are in a modern 'developed' society. The data for ancient societies would have to be different to that for modern hunter gatherers by orders of magnitude for the point to be different, and I dont see that happening (of course I cant know this, but its a falsifiable position at least).
Raising this from the dead somewhat, but I've just read a pretty stark tearing apart of Pinker's talk (well, of the first five or so minutes, the prehistory part).
Of the seven "hunter-gatherer" populations he talks about, only one are even close to hunter-gatherers (they're still not even immediate-return foragers), them being the Murngin (who've been living with missionaries, guns and powerboats for going on fifty years), all of the rest cultivate crops and raise domesticated pigs, llamas and chickens between them. Four of them are from a confined part of conflict-ridden Papau New Guinea.
The Murgin themselves are the only notably violent Aboriginal tribe, there being little to zero inter-group conflict in the general Aboriginal populace. Also, Bruce Knauft, who carried out the research Pinker presents himself had said regarding one of the groups "The elevated death rates had nothing to do with warfare, disputes over territory or resources are extremely infrequent and tend to be easily resolved".
So essentially, he picked the seven most violent "primitive" populations, called them hunter gatherers and claimed they were representative of the hundreds of other tribes and the population of the Earth of 95% of humanities history.
He might as well have said "I can demonstrate that during the 11th Century, non-white people were more violent than white people, let's look at China, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Somalia and Sudan today".
It boils down, I think, to an argument whereby in the places and histories where such pacifying ideas as hobbes leviathan and freedom of speech and democratic goverments have arisen and taken hold, it begins a feedback trend whereby lowering the need for/benefits from violence lowers tolerance for violence and so lowers violence and so again lowers the need for/benefits from violence, and so on and so forth. There are no such factors at play in a hunter gatherer society, no developed and, as importantly, developing philosophical and sociological basis for the intentional construction of a more passive society, and in point of fact a society that prospers from being passive; theres only inherited tradition (little to nothing in the way of documented ideas upon which more can be built; no printing press!) and so levels of violence are directly related to geological and ecological happenstance. Hence very variable, yes, but also potentially unrestrained by social forces; in point of fact, force rules. They may not need to use it, but at the end of the day 'we can kick the shiteeeee out of you and take the food you've gathered' is a high risk but high payoff strategy that doesnt really fly today. Except under bush&blair and if you replace food with oil. There are always going to be exceptions :(
On this front, regarding hunter gatherers and a "We can do you in and take your food" high payoff strategy being worthwhile is an absolute nonsense. First up no one stored food, so you'd only be nicking what was gathered that day, but that aside; They've little to gain (food? Grows on trees everywhere around them and was in plentiful supply - archaeology proves famine and malnutrition were almost non-existant in prehistoric populations. Possessions? Virtually nothing was owned. Land? They lived in a world where the population almost certainly never topped a million until after farming was invented and was probably about 5 million as recently as 2000BC) and plenty to lose - their lives. In a society with nothing to fight over, who share everything from sexual partners to tools as a matter of course and have no hierarchy, the entire prosperity of their society was reliant on egalitarianism and friendliness to one another. Were anyone to start a war, all you'd do is wander off, with such a miniscule number of people on the entire planet a couple days walk and you've a totally new picking ground, why fight over one?
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What the Johovies? got no time for em mate.