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[Elmund Egivand]

In the spirit of this thread, I think I'm going to start calling my plumber "Pipe Sorcerer".

Seems to convey the appropriate mystique.

Having been around Deadrow too long, Pipe Sorcerer doesn't convey the image of an individual given to the laudable trade that is ensuring effective water supply in the household.  Though occasionally the individual bestowed with such a title may be dressed as a plumber, pursuing an equally virtuous, but unrelated, discipline of vital import to society.

Let's call them 'Hydromancers'. Sounds more dignified. Behold my magic spanner! With it I ensure smooth passage!

[Nmaro Makari]

In the spirit of this thread, I think I'm going to start calling my plumber "Pipe Sorcerer".

Seems to convey the appropriate mystique.

Having been around Deadrow too long, Pipe Sorcerer doesn't convey the image of an individual given to the laudable trade that is ensuring effective water supply in the household.  Though occasionally the individual bestowed with such a title may be dressed as a plumber, pursuing an equally virtuous, but unrelated, discipline of vital import to society.

Let's call them 'Hydromancers'. Sounds more dignified. Behold my magic spanner! With it I ensure smooth passage!

Though light hearted, this should convey a semi-serious point.

[BloodBird]

In the spirit of this thread, I think I'm going to start calling my plumber "Pipe Sorcerer".

Seems to convey the appropriate mystique.

Having been around Deadrow too long, Pipe Sorcerer doesn't convey the image of an individual given to the laudable trade that is ensuring effective water supply in the household.  Though occasionally the individual bestowed with such a title may be dressed as a plumber, pursuing an equally virtuous, but unrelated, discipline of vital import to society.

Let's call them 'Hydromancers'. Sounds more dignified. Behold my magic spanner! With it I ensure smooth passage!

Though light hearted, this should convey a semi-serious point.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable to magic."

This tread has been seriously derailed at this point. I guess I should be happy with how long it too to get this bad, and forgive what makes me less happy about the at-times absurd counter-arguments to why abolishing blasphemy laws is a good idea.

People have literally said in this tread that the middle east has issue with poverty and poor infrastructure and  suffering and so on, and this somehow means we (westerners) should not care about blasphemy laws and their effects because... somehow poverty etc. excuse religious practices that get's people persecuted oppressed and killed, depending on location and example?

Given more time later today or tomorrow I'll dig deeper and more specifically into examples from this tread, but so far, I got to say, I don't get some of the arguments against abolishing blasphemy laws at all. To me it seems many argue we should not bother to fix X issue because many that are affected by X issue have Y issue to deal with too. Completely besides the point, but we will see, perhaps I am missing something.

[Silas Vitalia]

Just saying, humankind lived not so badly without science for the vast majority of it's history and all of it's pre-history. I think it should be allowed to fundamentally question science, but then it's quite ingrained into many people nowadays that "if we start to put in question scientific conclusions... then what ?". Well, what then? The world certainly won't perish and the sun will come up regardless of whether we think the earth turns or the sun travels around earth.

Not accepting Science as the best way of determining what is true isn't the end of the world. And if your toilet is stuck what you need isn't a scientist, but a plumber. We depend far more on non-scientific professions than on science to makeour living. Science in a way is a luxury. (One that I'm quite in favour of.)

I must assume you are being sarcastic?

You are welcome to return to that brutal time of rampant disease, no medicine, starvation, extreme levels of violence as a % of population, short life spans with brutal endings, superstitious and violent tribes, and fear and ignorance of the world around us. 

Humankind has never been more peaceful and our lives so easy.  It is not a debate, for most of our history as a species life was short, terrifying, violent, and miserable.

The invisible sky wizard didn't give mankind fire, and spears, and tools to tame his environment.  We did that, and it is a great disservice to our ancestors who bled and died and fought against a cruel world to think otherwise.

[Silas Vitalia]

Religion has done some great things we must admit, but only as an agent of social control in a simpler and superstitious time.  Keeping people in line, social order, and yes much science.

Those days are quickly ending, and I can't wait until we collectively break those superstitious shackles that divide us and keep many ignorant and scared.   

[Vincent Pryce]

Religion has done some great things we must admit, but only as an agent of social control in a simpler and superstitious time.  Keeping people in line, social order, and yes much science.

Those days are quickly ending, and I can't wait until we collectively break those superstitious shackles that divide us and keep many ignorant and scared.   

[Silas Vitalia]

When thousands of scientists start murdering civilians, women, and children over who can calculate PI further, or has the more accurate climate models, I'll start rethinking my 'faith.'

In the mean time I'll keep watching and reading the history of Sunni kill Shia, Hindu kill Muslim, Jew kill Muslim, Protestant kill Catholic, Protestant kill Wiccan, Catholic kill scientists (burning alive, very classy), Catholic kill Jew, Christian kill Native American.. Are we seeing a pattern?

[Desiderya]

Religion was blending philosophy and science nicely. Then, as science found more and more contradicting evidence this shifted. Today, I do not think we need religion for progress, especially as it often contains elements that are decisively counter-progress, nor do we need it for philosophy or the much more important aspect of it: Ethics, which is vitally important, now as ever.


Also Hydromancer is pretty sick. I'm digging it. He's channeling to Mother Pipe.

[Lunarisse Aspenstar]

When thousands of scientists start murdering civilians, women, and children over who can calculate PI further, or has the more accurate climate models, I'll start rethinking my 'faith.'

In the mean time I'll keep watching and reading the history of Sunni kill Shia, Hindu kill Muslim, Jew kill Muslim, Protestant kill Catholic, Protestant kill Wiccan, Catholic kill scientists (burning alive, very classy), Catholic kill Jew, Christian kill Native American.. Are we seeing a pattern?

I'll help, both then and now:

Murdering of civilians, women and children by Nazi Scientists:

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005168

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation

On using the "other" for scientific ends by American medical researchers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

Oh.. and on climate models, given the increasingly decreasing tenor of the debate:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jack-coleman/2014/02/23/ny-times-cartoon-suggests-climate-change-deniers-should-be-stabbed-dea

Obviously given the vitirole being thrown about, both science and religion in the past - and now - can be abused to bring crippling abuses and untold suffering; both can also bring meaning and improvement, and structure to lives.  In simplistic terms, science can explain the "how," but can't necessarily explain the "why" and vice versa.

So when do you want to have tea and discuss rethinking 'faith' and the fact that both faith and science can co-exist and may actually be needed so the human race can breathe with both lungs, so to speak. 

[Lyn Farel]

People have literally said in this tread that the middle east has issue with poverty and poor infrastructure and  suffering and so on, and this somehow means we (westerners) should not care about blasphemy laws and their effects because... somehow poverty etc. excuse religious practices that get's people persecuted oppressed and killed, depending on location and example?

Given more time later today or tomorrow I'll dig deeper and more specifically into examples from this tread, but so far, I got to say, I don't get some of the arguments against abolishing blasphemy laws at all. To me it seems many argue we should not bother to fix X issue because many that are affected by X issue have Y issue to deal with too. Completely besides the point, but we will see, perhaps I am missing something.

Oh but I care. Besides making me sad i'm also sad that you didn't seem to consider our points too. Your petition in the case of non western states will just add oil on fire and achieve absolutely nothing, like the US literally smashing Irak into pieces to bring them democracy and freedom, one recent example among many other of the same magnitude done by various western countries in the name of ideals, which are only a mean to extend one's own sphere of influence and is basically about POWER; and how a dominating superpower imposes its views.

Well be our guest, take up arms and go smash another country with horrible religious laws in the name of human rights. Even with your heart at the right place, it will not be very different from the good civilized old colonial empire bringing civilization to the locals by force. See how they react to that, and see if they see you as a liberator, or as an invader with alien ideals. Eventually with a bit of patiences and centuries, and quite an amount of blood, they might start to think like you. Go Reclaim the hell out of their souls.

But more to the point, they will look at your petition, and laugh at you, most probably.

We tend to believe that those cultures are actually oppressed and only ask that we show the Truth to their leaders so that we can free them of their misery. Sorry to disappoint, they just see your culture as repulsive and for some of you might also hate you. They care about their religious laws, besides a few minorities and the "few" (few compared to the majority) victims they cause.

Why do you think we see counter insurgencies leaded by people like Putin now that the US empire of freedom and democracy - the greater Storytelling ever in history - is declining ? Maybe it would be best to open our eyes and notice that the western world - not even the western world as a whole; just a post modern elite - is definitely not the majority to think like that ? We are just enjoying a disproportionate influence of our ideals mostly due to our position of POWER in the world. And it might not last long.

In the mean time I'll keep watching and reading the history of Sunni kill Shia, Hindu kill Muslim, Jew kill Muslim, Protestant kill Catholic, Protestant kill Wiccan, Catholic kill scientists (burning alive, very classy), Catholic kill Jew, Christian kill Native American.. Are we seeing a pattern?

Well yes, though, I am definitely not sure how Christian kill Native American ? Wasn't it not more a matter of expansionism, land grabbing, and more importantly, railroad companies ? Was religion really involved in native american history ?

[Desiderya]

That cartoon is the best proof. We could stop there.

But to give a more profound example: Are you certain that these violations of ethics have been because science said so - the results of these nazi tests are sadly useful (and used) to this day without question - or because the people whose health has been violated have been labelled as worth less than others, either through ideology or through the sad fact that these have been instituded in death camps (They weren't called like this for the hangovers).

If your point was that there are misguided humans out there I can wholeheartedly agree. There is always someone misappropriating a cause, or going way, way beyond what is acceptable in the pursuit of 'noble' goals. However it should be quite trivial to come up with a list that is remarkably bigger if you want to know people who have harmed others because of religious motives or incitement through religious organisations, not counting the aforementioned misappropriation, which obviously happened/happens, too.

The elemental position in Silas's statement was murdering people over [scientific issue]. Because the first time who clubbed someone to death with a specially engineered murderclub was using science to be better than Ogh from the valley nearby.

[Silas Vitalia]

When thousands of scientists start murdering civilians, women, and children over who can calculate PI further, or has the more accurate climate models, I'll start rethinking my 'faith.'

In the mean time I'll keep watching and reading the history of Sunni kill Shia, Hindu kill Muslim, Jew kill Muslim, Protestant kill Catholic, Protestant kill Wiccan, Catholic kill scientists (burning alive, very classy), Catholic kill Jew, Christian kill Native American.. Are we seeing a pattern?

I'll help, both then and now:

Murdering of civilians, women and children by Nazi Scientists:

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005168

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation

On using the "other" for scientific ends by American medical researchers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

Oh.. and on climate models, given the increasingly decreasing tenor of the debate:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jack-coleman/2014/02/23/ny-times-cartoon-suggests-climate-change-deniers-should-be-stabbed-dea

Obviously given the vitirole being thrown about, both science and religion in the past - and now - can be abused to bring crippling abuses and untold suffering; both can also bring meaning and improvement, and structure to lives.  In simplistic terms, science can explain the "how," but can't necessarily explain the "why" and vice versa.

So when do you want to have tea and discuss rethinking 'faith' and the fact that both faith and science can co-exist and may actually be needed so the human race can breathe with both lungs, so to speak.

Ah yes, I was waiting for the Nazi reference.   Many were certainly athiests, and they killed many millions of people, absolutely no denying that.

That's a small drop in the bucket over a 15 year period compared to the extend of human suffering at the hands of religious extremists.   Not even in the same ballpark comparison.

American scientists certainly did awful, ghastly things as well to many minority groups, purposly infecting african americans with syphilis, radiation, and worse in gruesome experiments. 

Again, a few thousand cases over what, a few decades?   Suffering in the twisted service of the advancement of some terrible researchers is still in the tiniest first steps of the kiddie pool, the religious persecution deep end of the pool has a few thousand years and many many millions more bodies in it. 

Martin Luther posts a little piece of parchment on a church door the Pope doesn't like and millions of people get butchered for hundreds of years?

Native Americans non-plussed about those zany Spanish priests on their shores.  Time for feet-choppin' and mass conversions!

That woman in town that no one likes? She's a witch. Burn her alive as a lesson to the other women to shut up.

You can't really compare the scale of suffering of the two, even with nazi murderers on one end of the scale.


Now they can certainly co-exist peacefully, and they do for millions of people who aren't zealots on either end.  The majority.

But only one has a repeated track record of being 'anti' advancement.   Keeping women in their place. Keeping knowledge down. Keeping the 'other' down. 

People had to risk their very lives to say something as simple as 'the earth moves around the sun' under repressive theocracies.   



 

[Silas Vitalia]

Well yes, though, I am definitely not sure how Christian kill Native American ? Wasn't it not more a matter of expansionism, land grabbing, and more importantly, railroad companies ? Was religion really involved in native american history ?

The Spaniards went full Amarr on the indigenous peoples of the Americas, killing millions, raping and pillaging, and utterly destroying their societies.  The priests gave them a pass as God's will, and blank cheques to murder any who would not convert.

[Silas Vitalia]

I can't deny that science has given mankind ever more efficient and ghastly tools for killing in larger and larger numbers (hello swords, hello guns, hello nuclear bombs), but those are just better and better tools, usually in the service of my god is the one true god.  Convert or die.



 

 

[Lunarisse Aspenstar]

Well yes, though, I am definitely not sure how Christian kill Native American ? Wasn't it not more a matter of expansionism, land grabbing, and more importantly, railroad companies ? Was religion really involved in native american history ?

The Spaniards went full Amarr on the indigenous peoples of the Americas, killing millions, raping and pillaging, and utterly destroying their societies.  The priests gave them a pass as God's will, and blank cheques to murder any who would not convert.

Sadly enough human nature being what it is, the greedy Spaniards listened to what they wanted to and ignore what was inconvenient to their profit motive and denigration of the other, including the parts of religion that were inconvenient.

The following condemnation of slavery was not from Pope Franchis I, or even a more "modern" pope but Pope Paul III who issued a Bull against slavery, entitled Sublimis Deus, to the universal Church. He wrote:
 
...The exalted God loved the human race so much that He created man in such a condition that he was not only a sharer in good as are other creatures, but also that he would be able to reach and see face to face the inaccessible and invisible Supreme Good... Seeing this and envying it, the enemy of the human race, who always opposes all good men so that the race may perish, has thought up a way, unheard of before now, by which he might impede the saving word of God from being preached to the nations. He (Satan) has stirred up some of his allies who, desiring to satisfy their own avarice, are presuming to assert far and wide that the Indians...be reduced to our service like brute animals, under the pretext that they are lacking the Catholic faith. And they reduce them to slavery, treating them with afflictions they would scarcely use with brute animals... by our Apostolic Authority decree and declare by these present letters that the same Indians and all other peoples - even though they are outside the faith - ...should not be deprived of their liberty... Rather they are to be able to use and enjoy this liberty and this ownership of property freely and licitly, and are not to be reduced to slavery... [Ibid., pp.79-81 with original critical Latin text]
 
Pope Paul not only condemned the slavery of Indians but also "all other peoples." In his phrase "unheard of before now", he seems to see a difference between this new form of slavery (i.e. racial slavery) and the ancient forms of just-title slavery.  Unfortunately, the kings of portugal and spain disregarded that as well as the bulls from Popes Gregory XIV (Cum Sicuti, 1591), Urban VIII (Commissum Nobis, 1639) and Benedict XIV (Immensa Pastorum, 1741).

There's a good movie that explains the unfortunate interplay between state power, politics, religion, and the priests on the ground called "The Mission". Human history.. is complicated.