Talk politics.

Do you regularly make up your own definitions?

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Only the ones that make logical sense. Religion is nothing more than myth and superstition propagated by those who want power and prestige, or those who aren't intelligent enough to seek real answers. Don't know why the sun burns in the sky? GOD DID IT! Don't understand how a flower grows from a seed? GOD DID IT! Don't understand how genetics and evolution created biodiversity across the planet in the form of thousands upon thousands of unique species all coming from a common origin? GOD DID IT!

You accuse me of making up my own definitions? Honey, that's the essential quality of religion! Religions make up their own stuff (whether now or thousands of years ago), provide their own definitions and explanations, without any pretense of having the evidence to support it.

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So is that a yes?

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I'm sorry, I didn't realize that you needed monosyllabic answers.

YES.

And point of fact, everyone makes up their own definitions. We do it constantly, based on observation. In fact, only religious FOLLOWERS seem to refuse to make up their own definitions, because they blindly swallow the definitions that someone else invented for them! If the Pope decides to redefine a thousand years of dogma (Vatican II, anyone?), a billion Catholics are technically supposed to follow that blindly. If a megachurch pastor decides to decree that God spoke to him and told him The Way It Is, then his "flock" (how appropriate) will swallow it whole. A Muslim Imam tells women they need to cover themselves head-to-toe, or it's their fault if they get raped, and people believe that shit! How... interesting.

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As long as we've established that you make things up as it suits your purposes.

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As long as we've established that everyone does, ESPECIALLY religious folks.

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underlankers.livejournal.com

Actually you're factually wrong about Islam. It's been a cardinal point of the Sunni sects (which are 90% of the world's 1 billion Muslims) that as in Protestantism there is no priesthood or clergy to arbitrate belief and that all Muslims are equal in that sense, be they man, woman, rich, poor, or what have you.

And also the religions do not radically overhaul their doctrines so much as they adjust to the modern world.

Tell me, is eugenics really a science or isn't it? It had peer review, experiments, and a full-fledged apparatus to study it. So is it or isn't it, or like religion does science fall in and out of favor in conjunction with politics and society as a whole? Was eugenics and is eugenics still a science or was it simply rejected because the Nazis took it to its logical conclusions?

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It's odd that in response to your rather simple question about definitions, someone would launch into a tirade about phenomenological explanations.

Edited Date: 15/6/10 21:53 (UTC)

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Science hasn't defined odd, therefore you are superstitious.

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Yes it has. It defines "odd" as not being divisible by two -- which has to be empirically proven by counting pieces of fruit in a controlled laboratory environment.

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I always knew you were fruity. I have a sixth sense about these things.

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Orange you glad I commented, though?

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Comment again and you can make it a pear.

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Hey man, go use your whack puns on someone else.

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Sorry, you'll have to pay me some pale money to get me to stop.

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Shouldn't you be in ch-apple or something right about now?

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That's a good idea, it might help relieve me of some of this meloncholy.

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Plus it would put an end to this slimey thread.

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underlankers.livejournal.com

Well, if reality be defined as only that which is empirical then I can tell you right now that most sciences dealing with the past, including history are not. Because one cannot run an experiment to prove that say, Tyrannosaurus rex could or could not run at speed X. One can extrapolate from bones but the scientists themselves are forthright that it is only inference and speculation at best.

And frankly as well scientists continually re-define their terms as per the scientific metholodology. But no society turns science into an ersatz religion instead of part and parcel of society as a whole. Religion meets an entirely different set of needs and the only sciences that blend over are the so-called soft sciences, none of which (sociology, psychology and suchlike) are really science in the sense that say, history is. The soft sciences make a conclusion and warp evidence to fit it.

History does not, but by the same token there is no empirical evidence unless it is in writing that say, Cortes was really motivated to raze Tenochtitlan for Jesus.

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This comment doesn't seem to address the question at all. He asked about definitions, not phenomenological explanations.

Edited Date: 15/6/10 21:42 (UTC)

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Okay, here are some definitions:

God: Invisible, omniscient "something" that has control over everything, sees everything, and knows everything... but refuses to make his existence obvious. Often given human-like characteristics in descriptions. Is either very picky and judgmental, or very forgiving, depending on who you ask.
Also see: Gods

Gods: A lot of beings with powers far beyond those of mortals. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Capable of smiting you with lightning bolts from the top of Mount Olympus. Ferries souls to the land of the dead. Rules over the cycles of the moon and sun. Often given human-like features.

Soul: That thing that nobody can even quite define, but religious folks are SO SURE it exists, despite an absolute lack of evidence. You can't see your soul, touch it, feel it, measure it, or detect it in any way, but they tell us it exists! Kinda like God's "Mini-Me" inside us all. And if you value your soul (and for some people, it's all they've got, because they're so otherwise miserable), you have to keep your soul "clean." (Do they make detergent for that?)

Heaven: The place where your immortal "soul" goes if you behave yourself.

Hell: It's like a lake of fire, but it's frozen over, and you live in abject suffering and misery after you die for all eternity because the loving God up in Heaven disapproves of your behavior. (Irony is intentional here.)

There. THOSE are some made-up definitions. People from ancient times had no better explanations for natural phenomena, so they MADE UP STORIES and created words and definitions to explain away things they didn't understand. And here we are today, still believing those things! It wasn't true then, and it's not true now, but in our modern day, we have NO EXCUSE.

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