The Faith & Religion mega Thread

Originally Posted by enorbet I've witnessed 5 year old boys severely chastised for pointing a cap gun at someone.

I never saw that with regard to "cap guns," but May God Have Mercy On Your Soul™(!) if you ever did that with a BB-gun!

The first point that is stressed in every gun safety course is: "The only purpose of a firearm is to destroy whatever it is aimed at."

And, as the one who is pointing the weapon and controlling the trigger, you alone are responsible for anything/everything that happens next.

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@enorbet: I doubt that "licensure" will ever come to pass, but it does utterly terrify me to know that people can buy "entirely inappropriate" weapons, "that they know absolutely nothing about," and do so without ever being forced to learn or demonstrate anything.

"Their feet deserve better."

In one case, in a very overbuilt suburb of Phoenix, a woman thought she heard a noise so she fired her "pocket howitzer." Turns out that the bullet went through the paper-thin walls of her house, and then also through the also paper-thin walls of the house that was about thirty feet "next door," winding up on the floor in the neighbor's dining room. They say that it still possessed "deadly force" in that second house, although as it happens no one was injured. The woman said that "she had no idea." Which is precisely my point. She had bought an entirely-unsuitable weapon and knew nothing about it.

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs The first several books are, in fact, "remarkably violent." As Christians and Jews would know if they had ever actually read them.

Unfortunately, and sadly too often, ^^this is a major problem that defines "Confirmation Bias". In such views one only needs to know this book or that speech "defines me" so I don't even have to read it let alone study it. A perfect and recent example of this are the large numbers of far right pundits that pay lip service to the US Constitution and have barely a clue about what's actually in it. It is almost beyond my comprehension that a standing congress person, Lauren Boebert, not only referred to Separation of Church and State with the remark

Lauren Bobert: “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk that’s not in the Constitution.”

but since then actually doubled down with

Originally Posted by Congresswoman Lauren Boebert The church is supposed to influence govt .. The Bible says that government rests on God’s shoulders.

...this from a person that doesn't know the difference between John Adams and Samuel Adams let alone James Madison's contribution to Separation of Church and State. Also I seem to recall a passage in the Christian Bible demanding to "render unto Caesar..."

sundialsvcs,
Yes raccoons are a rabies vector species but it just so happens to be a myth that seeing them moving around in daytime is abnormal behavior. It is possible that raccoon was a mother and you might of caused the death of its babies as well. There are several telltale signs that they might exhibit that could indicate being rabid.

I'm really not too concerned about "raccoon babies." A nocturnal animal running around in broad daylight is suspicious enough that I'm going to do something about it.

@enorbet: It's not "confirmation bias" to observe what these books actually say. On multiple occasions, "The LORD" is ordering genocide. In one case, ten thousand Israelites were murdered for disobeying Him in a very slight way. But their surrounding nations were doing the same thing, too, sacking each other's cities and taking them away into captivity. God was obviously their war god, and most of the official accounts of this king or that king have only to do with wars won or lost. If you "did good in the eyes of The LORD," you won. If you didn't, you lost. And it was a bad time to be a sheep or a cow, since they routinely sacrificed them in huge numbers. Apparently, "The LORD" liked the smell of burning meat.

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs @enorbet: It's not "confirmation bias" to observe what these books actually say.

Of course this ^^ is true and I never have said otherwise. My point has always been that the insistence on "divine revelation" of scripture, with bit perfect reproduction no less, and a supposition that such a thing even if it was divinely inspired could be literally understood by mere humans is misguided at best. Then to insist that one individual or one sect's translation of each and every specific item is 100% perfect and all the countless other translations are 100% wrong is arrogant and ignorant in the extreme AND completely due to prejudice and Confirmation Bias.

A lot of people have very peculiar opinions about old books.

So are people like those "ministers" speaking from tax exempt Christian pulpits saying things like "You cannot be a Christian if you vote Democrat" and "You haven't seen insurrection yet. The Bible says we should take power by force!" and politicians echoing with "I'm tired of this separation of Church and State junk" merely peculiar? How do sane people deal with such obviously dangerous Duning-Kruger Effect in a way that ends well?

Easy, @enorbet: We ignore them.

Just as we ignore the ministers who teach their followers to pick up rattlesnakes. Apparently conveniently-forgetting the admonition quoted even by Jesus: "Thou Shalt Not Tempt The Lord Thy God." (Luke 14:12, quoting Deuteronomy 6:16-18.)

But, Matthew 7:21-23 did not agree: "Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’"

(A very interesting description of people who presumably approached Death with a smile, believing that "their mansion reservations" were fully secured.)

People like these are quite similar to the Florida state attorney who just got his teeth pulled: "they think that they are a law unto themselves."

In short, I think that the essential lesson to be learned – whether we are talking about [the Christian] religion or not – is that: there are people out there who will abuse their positions of "public, or religious trust," to their own ends ... or simply to their own lust for attention. (And, generally, "for these people it does not end well.") One must learn to recognize them, and then to run-like-hell the other way. This, of course, is not a "religious" admonition!!

Originally Posted by enorbet So are people like those "ministers" speaking from tax exempt Christian pulpits saying things like "You cannot be a Christian if you vote Democrat".

How is that worse than (or indeed different from) Joe Biden saying, "You can't really be black if you vote Republican."? Americans always seem to be saying weird things. It goes right across the political and religious spectrum.

Dunno, Hazel ... as a breed, politicians have never changed much. They are ruled by PR people who try to figure out what words will push the desired buttons, knowing that many people have buttons that are very easily pushed and they will react without thinking it through. Categorically, I ignore politicians too. I am not so easily manipulated ...

Originally Posted by hazel How is that worse than (or indeed different from) Joe Biden saying, "You can't really be black if you vote Republican."? Americans always seem to be saying weird things. It goes right across the political and religious spectrum.

Considering the polls on Biden's popularity, it should be obvious it's almost as bad and few buy the Democrats line of bull either.. The difference is stated by my subsequent quotation you omitted from yours, that IS being bought, even applauded!, by the far right masses of "The bible says we should take it by force". That is right up there with "not suffer a witch to live".

Have you not seen the video of the guy calmly asking at a far right rally "So when do we get to use the guns? When can we just kill these people".

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...-fraud-claims/

Just because I focused for a moment on US far right does not mean that I'm giving the left a walk. Both of them have largely fallen prey to the erosion of not only the need for critical thought but the need to think at all! I submit this is a symptom common with denigrating Science and elevating simple-minded Populism. It really makes no difference to me what Politics or Religion my executioner holds dear, only that he/she wants to murder any Others. Mao, Stalin, PolPot, Hitler... who cares if the results of "Big Brother" are all the same? It's all simplistic Collectivist Us vs/ Them. Please do consider what any Age of Enlightenment championed instead.

If God wants someone to be dead, "that person will no longer be alive." Easy peasy. It's that easy for Him. He does not need anyone else to be His executioner.

Originally Posted by ntubski It's hypothetical, nobody is actually [experimenting on human zygotes]

So, it's not precisely an experiment on zygotes, but it seems medical science is a bit further along than I realized...

https://www.technologyreview.com/202...gan-harvesting

Remarkably, when stem cells are grown together in specially shaped containers, they will spontaneously join and try to assemble an embryo, producing structures that are called embryoids, blastoids, or synthetic embryo models. Many researchers insist that despite appearances, these structures have limited relation to real embryos and zero potential to develop completely. By adding these synthetic mouse embryos to his mechanical womb, however, Hanna managed to grow them further than ever before, to the point where hearts started beating, blood began moving, and there was the start of a brain and a tail. "The embryos really look great," says Hanna, whose report this week provoked awe among other scientists. "They are really, really similar to natural embryos." Analyses show the synthetic versions are about 95% similar to normal mouse embryos, based on the mix of cell types inside each. Even so, techniques for growing synthetic embryos remain inefficient. Fewer than 1 in 100 attempts to mimic a mouse embryo was successful, and even the model embryos that developed for the longest time eventually suffered abnormalities, including heart problems, perhaps because they couldn't grow any further without a proper blood supply. Mini-Me In a next set of experiments, Hanna is using his own blood or skin cells (and those of a few other volunteers) as the starting point for making synthetic human embryos. It means his lab could soon be swimming in hundreds or thousands of tiny mini-mes - all genetic clones of himself.

Sorry but I think that's absolutely disgusting. Especially as he wants to do it with human embryos; the mice are only a start. And how does he propose to deal with the ethical problems of using embryonic human beings as disposable sources of organs for transplantation? Simple! He'll grow them without heads!

Originally Posted by hazel Sorry but I think that's absolutely disgusting. Especially as he wants to do it with human embryos; the mice are only a start. And how does he propose to deal with the ethical problems of using embryonic human beings as disposable sources of organs for transplantation? Simple! He'll grow them without heads!

But surely the cloned embryos won't have souls (as I understand it, the soul comes in at the moment of conception, and these embryos were never conceived), so it should be fine, right?