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(review) Seven Types of Atheism, by John Gray

#21
Yazata Offline
Yazata Wrote:There's nothing that I have less confidence in than a crowd of post-adolescent "futurists" pushing for "massively disruptive Change". Where's it's just being assumed that "Change" is a good thing and the more "Change" the better.

When I wrote that, I was thinking of Singularity University.

https://su.org/concepts/

And this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of...l_Machines

Kurzweil is one of the Singularity University guys.

I was also thinking of people on the other forum who seem to have an almost religious style faith in scientific progress.

(Apr 14, 2018 10:17 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: I've never heard of this movement of young activists fighting for change for change's sake. Perhaps you direct me to their very non-specific website.

They needn't be chronologically young. But the people I'm thinking of think young. Like teenagers and twenty-somethings, they are tremendously alienated from a world where they feel they don't fit in and more than a little afraid that they never will. There's lots of anger and resentment there, so the world obviously has to change.

And it's the young who typically have the unfounded belief that they have everything figured out and know just the scheme to make everything right.

Quote:I did check out "Change.org". But that is about starting web-based petitions and drives for a number of specific causes---animal rights, vet rights, women's rights, mass shootings, racial justice, etc. It is about changing something, and not change itself.

That's a good example. They call themselves "The World's Platform for Change" as if change is obviously a good thing. Once again, the implicit idea that history has forward and back directions and that change will drive everything forward towards a bright and wonderful future.

The Marxists thought that that they could draw down the Kingdom of God (except without the annoying presence of God). Come the Kingdom/Revolution, everything will be wonderful, the world a paradise, all injustices addressed and everyone Saved. To achieve it, the slow pace of history needs to be forced even if a few heads have to be broken.

It's the dream of the French enlightenment in its most crude and brazen form (that coughed up the hairball of the Terror and the failed French Revolution), and there's obviously a strong religious tone to it. Despite draining reality of the supernatural, and despite wearing atheism on its sleeve, it's still pretty obviously a Path to (secular) Salvation.

I'm skeptical of most things, but that kind of idea more than most.
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#22
Secular Sanity Offline
(Apr 14, 2018 04:40 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: "It’s scary, isn’t it?" "Yes, yes, it is."

I was thinking of the fanatics.

Quote:"I am David Buckel and I just killed myself by fire as a protest suicide," he wrote. "I apologize to you for the mess."

"Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result — my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves," another section read.

"Many who drive their own lives to help others often realize that they do not change what causes the need for their help," he continued.

Mr. Buckel discussed the difficulty of improving the world even for those who make vigorous efforts to do so.
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#23
Syne Offline
Even though I know MR will blow a fuse, it seems coincidental that he was a gay/trans rights lawyer (don't know his orientation), considering the recent lesbian family murder/suicide.
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#24
Magical Realist Offline
(Apr 16, 2018 12:18 AM)Syne Wrote: Even though I know MR will blow a fuse, it seems coincidental that he was a gay/trans rights lawyer (don't know his orientation), considering the recent lesbian family murder/suicide.

Yep..pick out a few of the 3630 suicides every month in America and you can make a case for anything. Were they gay? Must be because they're gay. Were they female? Must be because they're female. Did they live in a western state? Must be because they lived in a western state. etc.
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#25
Secular Sanity Offline
Men have higher suicide rates than women. Maybe the courts should take that into consideration when granting child custody. Maybe there should be a custody preference for women over men.
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#26
Magical Realist Offline
(Apr 16, 2018 02:30 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote: Men have higher suicide rates than women.  Maybe the courts should take that into consideration when granting child custody. Maybe there should be a custody preference for women over men.

Males are also overwhelmingly child molesters. Maybe that should figure into the decision as well.
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#27
Syne Offline
(Apr 16, 2018 01:16 AM)Magical Realist Wrote:
(Apr 16, 2018 12:18 AM)Syne Wrote: Even though I know MR will blow a fuse, it seems coincidental that he was a gay/trans rights lawyer (don't know his orientation), considering the recent lesbian family murder/suicide.

Yep..pick out a few of the 3630 suicides every month in America and you can make a case for anything. Were they gay? Must be because they're gay. Were they female? Must be because they're female. Did they live in a western state? Must be because they lived in a western state. etc.
Maybe you missed the part where I "don't know his orientation". So it could just be extreme leftist ideology, considering the suicide note.
Actually, men are more likely to commit filicide (and even familicide), even more so with step-children, and more likely to follow it with suicide than women. https://news.uoguelph.ca/2015/10/new-stu...-children/
So are you saying the lesbian's more masculine brain caused her to act more like a man?
(Apr 16, 2018 02:30 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote: Men have higher suicide rates than women.  Maybe the courts should take that into consideration when granting child custody. Maybe there should be a custody preference for women over men.
Seems the courts already favor granting primary custody to mothers. And men only succeed at suicide more than women, while women attempt it more.

In straight men and lesbians, the amygdala fed its signals mainly into the sensorimotor cortex and the striatum, regions of the brain that trigger the “fight or flight” response. “It’s a more action-related response than in women,” says Savic.
- https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1...osite-sex/


So the lesbian's success may have been due to her lesbianism, and all the arguments not to grant custody to men may apply equally to lesbians. Interesting.
So women and gay men may be better...except:

Previous investigations have indicated that the ratio of sex offenders against female children vs. offenders against male children is approximately 2:1, while the ratio of gynephiles to androphiles among the general population is approximately 20:1. The present study investigated whether the etiology of preferred partner sex among pedophiles is related to the etiology of preferred partner sex among males preferring adult partners. Using phallometric test sensitivities to calculate the proportion of true pedophiles among various groups of sex offenders against children, and taking into consideration previously reported mean numbers of victims per offender group, the ratio of heterosexual to homosexual pedophiles was calculated to be approximately 11:1. This suggests that the resulting proportion of true pedophiles among persons with a homosexual erotic development is greater than that in persons who develop heterosexually. This, of course, would not indicate that androphilic males have a greater propensity to offend against children.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1556756

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#28
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:So are you saying the lesbian's more masculine brain caused her to act more like a man?

So you're saying it wasn't her being a lesbian, which is a woman, that caused the suicide, but her being like a man? Do you have some evidence for this besides you're own stupid bullshit fantasies?

Quote:Previous investigations have indicated that the ratio of sex offenders against female children vs. offenders against male children is approximately 2:1, while the ratio of gynephiles to androphiles among the general population is approximately 20:1. The present study investigated whether the etiology of preferred partner sex among pedophiles is related to the etiology of preferred partner sex among males preferring adult partners. Using phallometric test sensitivities to calculate the proportion of true pedophiles among various groups of sex offenders against children, and taking into consideration previously reported mean numbers of victims per offender group, the ratio of heterosexual to homosexual pedophiles was calculated to be approximately 11:1. This suggests that the resulting proportion of true pedophiles among persons with a homosexual erotic development is greater than that in persons who develop heterosexually. This, of course, would not indicate that androphilic males have a greater propensity to offend against children.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1556756

"As an expert panel of researchers convened by the National Academy of Sciences noted in a 1993 report: "The distinction between homosexual and heterosexual child molesters relies on the premise that male molesters of male victims are homosexual in orientation. Most molesters of boys do not report sexual interest in adult men, however" (National Research Council, 1993, p. 143, citation omitted).

To avoid this confusion, it is preferable to refer to men's sexual abuse of boys with the more accurate label of male-male molestation. Similarly, it is preferable to refer to men's abuse of girls as male-female molestation. These labels are more accurate because they describe the sex of the individuals involved but don't implicitly convey unwarranted assumptions about the perpetrator's sexual orientation."----- http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/ht...ation.html
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#29
Syne Offline
(Apr 16, 2018 04:44 AM)Magical Realist Wrote:
Quote:So are you saying the lesbian's more masculine brain caused her to act more like a man?

So you're saying it wasn't her being a lesbian, which is a woman, that caused the suicide, but her being like a man? Do you have some evidence for this besides you're own stupid bullshit fantasies?
I already posted it in my response to SS. And gays tout many studies that show such similarities all the time. It's part of their whole "born that way" argument. Funny that you seem completely unaware of it. Maybe you should get out more...socialize a bit. Wink
Quote:
Quote:Previous investigations have indicated that the ratio of sex offenders against female children vs. offenders against male children is approximately 2:1, while the ratio of gynephiles to androphiles among the general population is approximately 20:1. The present study investigated whether the etiology of preferred partner sex among pedophiles is related to the etiology of preferred partner sex among males preferring adult partners. Using phallometric test sensitivities to calculate the proportion of true pedophiles among various groups of sex offenders against children, and taking into consideration previously reported mean numbers of victims per offender group, the ratio of heterosexual to homosexual pedophiles was calculated to be approximately 11:1. This suggests that the resulting proportion of true pedophiles among persons with a homosexual erotic development is greater than that in persons who develop heterosexually. This, of course, would not indicate that androphilic males have a greater propensity to offend against children.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1556756

"As an expert panel of researchers convened by the National Academy of Sciences noted in a 1993 report: "The distinction between homosexual and heterosexual child molesters relies on the premise that male molesters of male victims are homosexual in orientation. Most molesters of boys do not report sexual interest in adult men, however" (National Research Council, 1993, p. 143, citation omitted).

To avoid this confusion, it is preferable to refer to men's sexual abuse of boys with the more accurate label of male-male molestation. Similarly, it is preferable to refer to men's abuse of girls as male-female molestation. These labels are more accurate because they describe the sex of the individuals involved but don't implicitly convey unwarranted assumptions about the perpetrator's sexual orientation."----- http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/ht...ation.html

Hence the "phallometric test sensitivities to calculate the proportion of true pedophiles". Try reading what you reply to.
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#30
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:Hence the "phallometric test sensitivities to calculate the proportion of true pedophiles". Try reading what you reply to.

Sounds real reliable. I could get an erection just having wires hooked up to my thing.
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