tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post4177037162929448040..comments2024-03-28T11:33:16.271-05:00Comments on Adventus: All others pay cashUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-20853071336682869502014-11-17T13:30:45.822-06:002014-11-17T13:30:45.822-06:00A few comments.
Although somehow these critiques ...A few comments.<br /><br /><i>Although somehow these critiques are not anti-Semitic. Criticizing Israel's foreign policy is anti-Semitic; declaring the foundational beliefs of Judaism a relic of the Iron Age is not. Go figure.</i><br /><br />Reminds me of Jewish neo-cons comfort with receiving "support" for Israel from Evangelical Christians and discomfort with any liberal critique of Israel: somehow theological anti-Judaism (the only reason why I escape hell is some special "dispensation") coupled with opposition to policies and cultural changes that are by and large good for Jewish people in America is not unfriendly to Jewish but critiques of Israeli policy, which critical views are shared by at least 40% of Israeli Jews are anti-Semitic?<br /><br /><i>One another note, one thing I learned in seminary is how similar life today is to the nomadic life of the time of Abraham.</i><br /><br />OTOH, a lot is different today than it was in Abraham's time (which was pre-iron-age, was it not). But that is one of the functions of what we in Judaism call "midrash", isn't it? Even by the Roman era, urban Jewish merchants had trouble relating to nomadic shepherds, so the midrash has Abraham's father being an idol-maker/seller (see Abraham was a merchant's kid, just like me!) and Isaac ends up, after the Akedah, studying in the yeshiva of Shem and Eber (see Isaac was a student, just like me!). <br /><br />I guess the tl;dr point is that just because a religion's formative years were in one era, doesn't mean religion cannot evolve to fit the era it's in.<br /><br /><i>As for "belief," it is only trust (i.e., faith) that makes me take seriously the claims of quantum mechanics [...] I have to trust the reports of them, in other words. If I don't, does my computer stop working? If I do, does my computer work any better than it does now?</i><br /><br />Certainly I can say that quantum mechanics is based on more than just math and reasoning, because I have seen (and in some cases performed) experiments whose results are best explained with quantum mechanics. And I could tell you how quantum mechanics is involved in computer design (briefly, quantum mechanics allows us to predict how different dopants affect semiconductors and explains how semiconduction works in the first place). But still, you would have to trust me on some of this wouldn't you? I think Carl Sagan, an atheist himself, did a pretty good job in exploring <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_US_film)" rel="nofollow">how science, no less than religion, requires faith</a>.<br /><br />As to your example of how your belief in quantum mechanics affects (or dare I write "effects") a computer's working, I have long had a germ of a science fiction story in my head (which you are welcome to write if you can figure out how to make it into an actual story) involving a biochemist who figures out that the energy required to make metabolic enzymes (etc) is more than the energy produced from the metabolism catalyzed by those enzymes ... and once this discovery is made and published, everyone starts wasting away (the story is told in the first person by the scientist who makes the discovery ... that scientist having gotten into the field because of his/her slow metabolism, which suddenly becomes the reason why the scientist is able to survive longer than everyone else).alberichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03852752646926946626noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-2811187232031642032014-11-17T12:58:31.449-06:002014-11-17T12:58:31.449-06:00Zuckerman and Paul are both part of the Paul Kurtz...Zuckerman and Paul are both part of the Paul Kurtz alphabet soup groups pushing "secularism" and "skepticism" for which you can safely substitute the word "atheism". They are about as likely to look for information that could falsify their ideology as the Koch bros. funded Cato Institute is to falsify their market religion. <br /><br />I have come to the conclusion that anyone who has an association with those groups founded by the late Paul Kurtz can safely be considered to be dishonest and to misrepresent virtually anything impinging on their war against religion. And it is all about the promotion of atheism. The current war against religion was largely planned by Kurtz and his sugar daddy, Corliss Lamont. The Thought Criminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01381376556757084468noreply@blogger.com