It's interesting for me because my only real point of contact with the debate is "In God's Path" by Robert Hoyland where he tries to go as far in synthesising the two main approaches as possible while pointing out flaws in both
It seems an extremely funny trap: You not only believe that what happens in this text literally happened, but that literally every single verse is a flawless narrative of real events, but some parts of it are very clearly written from different perspectives
I'd never thought about the fact that the gospels must be problematic for some intense literalists somewhere, given that they are very clearly separate accounts of the same events. That's very funny
Is Mohammed-Mysticism a thing? I have the thought because, while I do believe he existed, I found it remarkable reading a book on the Arab Conquests recently how quickly Mohammed seemed to achieve mythical "well obviously he believed all the things I believe" status among his immediate successors
Heard that argument as a refutation of Jesus-Mysticism (the theory that there was no real Jesus the biblical figure is based on) before: Making up the story about him ACTUALLY being from Bethlehem despite being called 'of Nazareth' only makes sense if the 'of Nazareth' part was pre-established
That about cleared it up actually
I find it extremely funny that even a description of Sparta even this simplified and seemingly hyperbolic actually understates the slave population of Sparta by at least some estimations. 80%+ doesn't seem unrealistic. Societies considered cruel by pre-industrial standards are generally horrorshows
It is very much a deeply conservative movie. Conservative and indeed fascist art can in fact be good, at least in the "is entertaining to consume" quadrant, and even in the "makes observations and conveys messages about the world and humanity" if you view it through the correct lense
Yeah, I slightly misread her final sentence and went "there are a lot of jobs that require you to arrange words in a sequence, this seems extremely useful"
Just saw a man argue that Iran shot first because "we" are in a conflict that started Oct 7, there are people that are so god damn fucked
This is roughly what I believe as well, and it's probably the ethically trickiest case if something like brain-uploading does become possible
That said, the answers you may find are not necessarily less freaky! I used to feel like you do, and now I believe consciousness is basically an emergent, temporary illusion we don’t have most of the time!
We need to shut this down before a lobster undergoes the ascension to machine-godhood and we are all screwed
That is both how it tends to work in fiction (almost all fictional constructs can be neatly divided into "object" or "person" for narrative purposes) and how we would LIKE for it to work to make the ethics of the situation clear, but there's no obligation for that to be the reality of intelligence
There are 350 North Atlantic Right Whales left.
Their primary method of death is ship strikes.
Since these protections were implemented in 2020 the population grew by around 5% - 7%.
This rollback will be catastrophic.
*NYC, but my robust knowledge of American geography informs me that I can probably make that in a week on foot, I'll bring snacks
If you don't tell me the winner of the Georgia gubernatorial race I'm heading to California with a blackjack and a dream
I'll chain you to a chair and extract more oracles I can then use for the intended purpose of all divination: Hitting it big on Polymarket
Simón Bolívar over here
Fars seems to have given confirmation that that is incorrect, only have Telegram as a source though
I love how the Kuwaiti's are fully prepared to calm her down because she might think she landed in hostile territory and she doesn't seem to understand what all the fuss is about
The boilerplate "well if life wasn't so shit and it'd be easier to have kids the birthrates would be fine" stuff is primarily annoying because there's a bunch of data more-or-less disproving it
bots' success with engagement farming makes me wonder whether something like a Humans vs Zombies: Bluesky Edition could work, where a human is "turned" when their main account follows or reposts a zombie's alt account created just for the game, and then the turned human starts their own zombie alt
The first deaths announced from the US-Israeli strikes on Iran: dozens of school girls. They hit an elementary school in Hormozgan.
It looks like one of the lamer military uniforms did it crazy style with a boymoder hoody
Scientific theories are more accurate frameworks of reality than religious ones, but on some level they are different varieties of the exact same mental mechanism
Belief in the supernatural is in my view inseparable from belief in the abstract. Believing in Jesus and believing in Justice or The Proletariat are psychologically the same thing to a degree
Oh yes, fundamentally the people who do this are extremely racist, they just don't think of themselves that way for social reasons
It is very strange how easy it is to find people who are against race mixing, but leftishly; "marginalized communities/cultures need to be special preserved" or whatever they tell themselves the correct reason is for viewing white people dating non-white people as icky
It's people who are actually deeply racist, don't believe they are, so they adopt a very racist framework, but just draw slightly different conclusions than rwingers. Non-white people are natural servants, but having servants is bad, so any white-nonwhite interaction is suspect
