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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 22, 2019 - 05:29pm PT
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Does he?
yes, he probably reads you more than anyone else...
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Feb 22, 2019 - 10:00pm PT
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The poor young mother with the dying child in her arms... whom you've alluded to numerous times... Will she be soothed by an allegory? Will she be soothed by a lie? or a set of lies? There's the crux of the biscuit.
I think a lot of people do find lies soothing. They sometimes find them soothing even when they appear to realize they are lies.
It is a part of human nature that is not conducive to solving the complicated problems of a complicated world.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Feb 23, 2019 - 07:55am PT
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Ed: The grand themes are not as interesting to me in my old age.
You’re not old, Ed. It’s like the development of good wine. Such things take time, reflection, and sometimes a little tweaking.
HFCS: We are "disparaging" them as truth claims (claims to truth). That's one way to put it. Another: We are "disparaging" them as ontology (study of being or study of reality; 2 actual description of being or reality). We are "disparaging' them as epistemology (epistemologic accounts) assumed to describe/explain actuality/reality in a literal, for-real sense.
If you wanted to learn a bit more about literature and art, you’d do some reading in those veins. These claims of yours above are so wrong as to be completely ignorable. Neither literature nor art make claims of literal truth or the means of knowing literal truth.
As for literal truth, why don’t you describe just one that is final, complete, and accurate.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Feb 23, 2019 - 04:01pm PT
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"You’re not old, Ed. It’s like the development of good wine"
Careful not to stir the dregs.
;>)
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 24, 2019 - 10:13am PT
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MikeL, I have a hunch you've been an obscurantist and bullshitter a good part of your life.
"If you wanted to learn a bit more about literature and art, you’d do some reading in those veins."
Okay.
"Neither literature nor art make claims of literal truth or the means of knowing literal truth."
Finally something we agree on. But Paul and I were discussing the truth-claims of religions. And the truth-claims of science and "science papers". Perhaps you are speed-reading again, I don't know.
"As for literal truth, why don’t you describe just one that is final, complete, and accurate."
My love for Caroline in the sixth grade.
...
It's Science Sunday...
Thanks to Jan for bringing this to my attention...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/science/dna-hachimoji-genetic-alphabet.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Science
DNA hatchimoji (eight-letter)
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Feb 25, 2019 - 09:12am PT
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Proposing there is a physical genesis to life, searching for evidence of it, is not saying the process is accidental. And ignoring some west coast woo while continuing that search is not -necessarily- stubborn.
The problem, as many have pointd out, is that anything that does not adhere to a ground-up, linear/causal take is considered by some to be woo. This includes Robert Lanza, one of the most respected scientists in the world—a U.S. News & World Report cover story called him a "genius" and "renegade thinker," even likening him to Einstein.
I'm no Lanza fanatic, but there's no question that he is at least attempting to sort out the problems and road blocks inherent in a staunch physicalist belief system. The problem here is attemptiong to frame consciousness, life and all the other "threshold" issues strictly and only in terms of linear/physical drivers. I am not on a hobby horse on this point; it is a driver behind all fundamentalist physicalist modes - that is, the attempt to explain consciousness ONLY by virtue of the physical will never pan out because reality is always a melding of the observed and unobservable, the physical and non-physical, the objective and subjective. For me it goes back to the old credo: Form is emptiness and emptiness is form. The constitute a whole, but we have no right to start claiming the unity of the universe before we do the hard work of clarifying the differences, even though they vanish when we go deep enough.
I recently heard a physcist try and explain it this way.
A quantum field is not simply empty or void. It's full of potential and stuff is constantly hoping out of it. But nobody tries to understand the process simply in terms of the stuff, sans field, and nobody tries to explain the field as being "caused" by either the potentiality or the stuff that is blipping in and out of existence therein.
Consciousness itself is an unobservable phenomenon, but it doesn't have any standalone existence separate from stuff. Lanza and others are purporting tentative ways of looking at the versa side of this - that the stuff doesn't exist separate from the field, or that the objective does not stand separate from the subjective. Such a dualist view of reality will always have insolvable problems because the starting point is false, or is riddled with conflation.
Life is not a non-physical "thing," rather a perfect melding of the physical and non-physical. When you take as your staring point that only the physical is real, then when faced with assertions about non-physical phenomenon, you're left to demand physical "proof" of same which puts you in Ed's circle of confusion, all else being "woo."
It's not one of the other. It's both. Leave one out and you spin in place per mind, or chirp out such whoppers as, "You only think it is..."
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Feb 25, 2019 - 12:38pm PT
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Fruity, check out Jordan Peterson. He's got a right wing following that don't really understand his drift but he goes far in the direction you are heading plus he understands mythology as well. Very well schooled dude with sound scholarship behind him. A nice melding of hard data (nature) and sane post modern thought (nurture), always a balancing act.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Feb 25, 2019 - 12:49pm PT
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"A quantum field is not simply empty or void . . ."
It's debatable whether a foray into quantum mysticism helps your argument. And oft-repeated referrals to linear causation. Also, leaving the Lanza platform might be advisable. But you express yourself well.
Hope your trip is enjoyable and your daughter safe.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Feb 26, 2019 - 09:01am PT
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Saw Green Book...
I would suggest reading about the outrage of various artists who’ve complained about Green Book as the Academy’s choice for Best Picture. (Even Spike Lee said it wasn’t his kind of movie.) It’s been argued that the Academy is making choices for politically correct purposes. It’s not always easy to see that the Academy rewards artistic achievement.
Both “BlacKkKlansman” and “Green Book” creatively [sic] reconceptualize reports of events [rewrites histories] to promote contemporary“white-savior sensibilities,” assuage guilt, and appeal to minority discontent.
(I wonder to what extent the telling of noteworthy climbs succumb to the same kind of creative reconceptualization? How can they not?)
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 26, 2019 - 09:24am PT
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How can they not?
ANS Actual video of the deed.
In the case of Alex and Free Solo, actual video of the deed.
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Norton
climber
The Wastelands
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Feb 26, 2019 - 09:36am PT
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I and my siblings were raised ritualistic catholic, myself and brothers were altar boys.
It is estimated that between 20-50% of catholic priests are gay in sexual preference.
In other words, they are more likely to abuse little boys than little girls when and if their
own pedophilia has the right opportunity.
Lots of survival accounts coming out recently whereby nuns tell of being impregnated by the priests and in fact the Vatican has established special rules to deal with the offspring.
Present Pope Francis is right now presiding over a large scale sexual abuse investigation.
Something that his predecessor Paul John Paul should have launched.
Oddly enough John Paul was made a "Saint" in spite of ignoring priestly abuse of children.
And to be a Saint you have to have caused two miracles to occur, somehow found.
At the catholic parish I attended back in the 1950s there were two priests found guilty of abusing children, I knew them both, was their little altar boy during mass.
Sickening to think of what went on in the rectory in the evenings.
But then think about the grand, colorful "costumes" the priests and bishops wore.
Think about the Popes with their red pumps and elaborately ornate clothing, not gay?
My younger brother is still very effected and claims PSTD sexual assault back then.
It is very difficult for many catholics to see the good versus evil done by the church.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 26, 2019 - 09:36am PT
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Child-f*#king, not an archaic ontology, is going to be its demise.
What about all the wonderful, heroic, lifesaving things the church does? Bad individuals are just that.
ANS Actual video of the deed.
Video can be every bit as tendentious as any other medium.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Feb 26, 2019 - 10:00am PT
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HFCS: Great to hear Rana Ahmad's story...
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 26, 2019 - 11:13am PT
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Marlow, Paul, Nortion... just imagine how much has gone on behind closed doors in any historical context, 50 years, 500 years, etc... and how little our world today would know about it were it not for today's internet, global communications, and social media. It's mind-bending to ponder it too long.
By many measures, we're only now "coming of age."
...
Video can be every bit as tendentious as any other medium.
Of course this is true. And yet, did you see Free Solo? did you see Alex execute the Boulder Problem? Kind of hard to bias that, thus to question that.
What about all the wonderful, heroic, lifesaving things the church does?
Of course. But to be fair you have to look at the entire balance sheet. All the plusses and minuses, all the pros and cons. Which is exactly what we do with every other social construction under the sun. Enough of exempting religions or religious institutions from this process / scrutiny when it turns out it is as earthly, evolutionary and secular as anything else.
From another perspective, performance, really any system performance - be it in regards to communications, transportation, education, health care, home construction, politics, safety systems... or climbing gear - needs to meet modern standards of acceptable quality. Plainly, and esp against a backdrop of modern science and modern living standards, Old Religion whether Islam or Christianity, does not. On many counts.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 26, 2019 - 11:19am PT
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"During its 25th anniversary celebrations, the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers announced that the Catholic Church manages 26 percent of health care facilities in the world. According to a press release, the Church has “117,000 health care facilities, including hospitals, clinics, orphanages,” as well as “18,000 pharmacies and 512 centers” for the care of those with leprosy."
“About 15 percent of all hospitals in the United States are Catholic hospitals. In some parts of the world, the Catholic Church provides the only healthcare, education and social services available to people.
Perhaps the greatest single contribution to education to emerge from Catholic civilisation was the development of the university system. Early Catholic universities include Bologna (1088); Paris (c 1150); Oxford (1167); Salerno (1173); Vicenza (1204); Cambridge (1209); Salamanca (1218-1219); Padua (1222); Naples (1224) and Vercelli (1228). By the middle of the 15th-century (more than 70 years before the Reformation), there were over 50 universities in Europe.
Many of these universities, such as Oxford, still show signs of their Catholic foundation, such as quadrangles modelled on monastic cloisters, gothic architecture and numerous chapels. Starting from the sixth-century Catholic Europe also developed what were later called grammar schools and, in the 15th century, produced the movable type printing press system, with incalculable benefits for education. Today, it has been estimated that Church schools educate more than 50 million students worldwide.
The centrality of Greek and Latin to Catholicism has greatly facilitated popular literacy, since true alphabets are far easier to learn than the symbols of logographic languages, such as Chinese. Spread by Catholic missions and exploration, the Latin alphabet is now the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world. Catholics also developed the Armenian, Georgian and Cyrillic alphabets and standard scripts, such as Carolingian minuscule from the ninth to 12th centuries, and Gothic miniscule (from the 12th). Catholicism also provided the cultural framework for the Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy), the Cantar de Mio Cid ("The Song of my Lord") and La Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland), vernacular works that greatly influenced the development of Italian, Spanish and French respectively. The Catholic Hymn of Cædmon in the seventh century is arguably the oldest extant text of Old English. Valentin Haüy (d 1822), brother of the Abbé Haüy (the priest who invented crystallography), founded the first school for the blind. The most famous student of this school, Louis Braille (d 1852), developed the worldwide system of writing for the blind that today bears his name.”
The problem is, again, exaggeration and generalization: the meat of tendentious argument that does little more than reflect an ungrounded bias.
No doubt the church needs to clean up its mess with regard to sexual corruption, but institutions are susceptible to all kinds of corruption because the are run by fallible human beings. The church has suffered corruption before and it will suffer the consequences of that now.
Still, condemning the whole church and calling for its end remains an exaggeration based on generalizations: not a very scientific a way of understanding.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Feb 26, 2019 - 11:19am PT
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HFCS: Yes, and there's much to be found in our own backyards too... it's still going on... as long as we're aware that we're all carrying the genes it is possible to compensate...
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