Your line: "If you guys are so right then surely every Jew would have converted by now."

You seem to be suggesting that Jews actually care about having a religion that is right, and would convert to a religion that is. But if they care about their religion being right then why are they Jewish?

Please understand the sense of my question. If Jews don't believe in Christy's religion because it does not seem true, then what is convincing them to believe in theirs? You said it could very well be wrong. So is there some better reason to believe yours than hers? If not, then why do you believe yours but not hers?

That is not the same as caring if you are actually right. From what you said originally, it sounded like Jews cared about being right and would be willing to change their ideas if they thought another set of ideas was right.

So it sounds like Jews do not actually care about being right, they just care about continuing to believe what they have always believed whether it is right or not. Which is typical of the religious of course, but that doesn't make it good.

If that's the case, then your contention that if Christy was right, then Jews would convert, is just in error. Jews would not embrace different ideas even if they were correct because Jews would rather be Jews than right.

Ditto any faith. Which in part explains, I think, why faith religion still exists.

Thanks, I'm familiar with the argument. I'm really not concerned with the specifics. Suffice it to say, Christy has her beliefs that could very well be wrong about the messiah, you have your beliefs that could very well be wrong about the messiah, etc.

Well that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about being actually right. That is, believing things about reality which are actually true....having ideas about what is which are useful to have because they correspond accurately to what they describe.

Of what use is being "right" about what your religion claims if what it claims is wrong?

I think it's a shame that religious Jews (and Christians, Muslims, etc.) are not concerned with being actually right. If they were, they could stop worrying about maintaining all these conflicting explanations which could very well be wrong. They could concentrate on having ideas about reality which are actually true...including the understanding and acknowledgement that none of them actually knows anything about God.

I didn't say anything about logic or science. I am talking about the ordinary, observable truth, observable by ordinary people, including the truth that you do not actually know anything about God.

That would be very convenient if it was true, however, there is no evidence to support non-overlapping magisteria. It is no more than a social convention.

In fact I think claiming to know things about God is far more of an affront to the limits of human knowledge.

This is claiming to know lots of things about God, like knowing what God wants humans to do, and that the commandments have something to do with God, and that obeying them creates a connection with God.

There is no reason to think any of this is true. You said yourself, it could be wrong. Acting like you "know" these things about God, when you are perfectly aware that it could be wrong, makes no sense.

Claiming to know even a little about God, like you have a cell phone-style contract with Him, or that you know what He wants people to eat, etc., is extremely silly.

Wow, take that up with someone who is recommending it. I said people should get real, not "remove religion."

I don't agree that everybody needs to be wrong in order to be different.

It matters that you do not care about the truth. The truth matters.

Yes, faith is putty in our hands. It can be anything, anything we wish, our greatest dreams, the answers to our deepest fears, our own fairy godmother.

This is why it is an extremely poor basis for claims of truth about reality. It has no necessary correspondence.

Unfortunately, that is what people mainly use it for - to assert claims of certainty about reality where the actual truth is that they don't know.

Of course people have the right to ignore the truth but that doesn't make it a good idea.

Humanity would be better off if people would stop ignoring the truth and pretending to know things that they do not know. These conflicting sets of unsubstantiated claims about what God "wants" are harming society because 1) they are making claims of knowledge which are simply not true, and 2) they are causing unresolvable conflict.

However I am not suggesting "giving up religion." There are religions which don't claim to know anything about gods. That, at least, is honest. I think it could be possible to have honest religion.

That is why we invented a marvelous process called checking. If you want to find out if someone's claim is true, you check. If you can't check, then you don't know.

In any case, there is no way to define knowledge so that claims about God's 613-point cell-phone plan or one-year martinizing of the soul qualify. Nothing is known of gods or souls.

Is that a good reason for continuing to exacerbate this particular one?

It already has. For example, taking out institutionalized slavery tangibly improved the human condition. It is a form of error correction.

We could use more of that kind of correction.


Thanks, Jana and Christy!

They are obligated to make the most money.

If they don't, their competitors will. If they don't stay competitive they go out of biz. It's the free-market race to the bottom.

They are being massively incentivized to do the wrong thing.

Of course they do, but for the most part, they are NOT doing that. The question is, why?

I don't agree with your suggestion that they act this way because they are personally evil (ie, they can crush others and still "live with themselves".) I do agree that there is something wrong with this country but I don't agree the problem is too many psychopathic CEOs.

The actual problem is the incentives of the system. People will mostly do what they are incentivised to do. You could pull these individual "psychopath" CEOs out and put "better" ones in, but they are still incentivised to stay competitive and maximize shareholder value. Any slip in competitiveness will be pounced on by their competitors. Any slip in maximization will be pounced on by shareholders.

The entire system is set up to reward only competitiveness. Sooner or later the other values get thrown under the bus by some player, and everyone else has to do the same to compete, or lose to their advantage.

Only until it's time to compete with Walmart, or Microsoft. Look who is winning! If consumer preference for good business practice had any real sway, these kind of corporate behemoths would not be constantly paying fines for malfeasance. They do the malfeasance and pay the fines, year after year, because it helps their bottom line. They continue this, decade after decade, consumer sensibility be damned. And it works. They're Number One!


The reason they are all doing it is because it works. If we want to change this, we have to change how the system works. There will always be psychopaths and/or the massively incentivised to run things this way. We will never run out of them. If we want things to be different, we need to run things a different way.

Personal "necessary" gain is biologically primed, and glorified beyond Heaven in our society. I would not expect "most people" in this culture to be any different. They are acting exactly as you would expect people to respond to an environment so rich with incentives for that behavior.

So, you are different from them. That's natural, too. When humans were evolving in small tribal bands, it was extremely helpful to have some people in the group be very generous or unconcerned with things, while other people in the group were very concerned with acquisition. This diversity helps distribute humans along a status heirarchy, and ensures that there are people who can take advantage of lean times and people who can take advantage of prosperous times. Both kinds of people are necessary, along with variations all in between.


So, since humans generally are evolved for acquisition for survival - some much more than others - clearly "most people" in a consumer economy will be susceptible to the incentives of over-consumption. It's great that you are a different kind of person, but you are just you. You can't change what type of person "most people" are in this system.

What we can change is the system. Incentives can be deliberately chosen. Priorities can be deliberately chosen.

Letting the "invisible hand" of the "free market" figure out how to live is not working. It's giving priority to the outdated incentives of cavemen, and we are running out of planet which can be converted into cave-hoardings.

We should be incentivizing your attitude instead.

I actually think "most people" could go either way. In a generous, enlightened culture with lots of incentives for generous enlightenment, I think "most people" could be far less pre-occupied with the newest most expensive things, especially if we had lots of opportunity for exploration and discovery in its stead.


Since today is the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, allow yourself to imagine a world where there is no poverty or want, where people can have anything but don't need anything, and I hope you will agree that humans can do better. We are still evolving.

I have been telling you the truth about this for a year and you are still ignoring it.

I can see where your kids get it.

Yes. That is you ignoring the truth.

What you say has nothing to do with it. It is what it is.

"The Big Bang Theory" is supported by mountains of observational and experimental evidence. Every new discovery confirms it further. At this point, claiming to "not believe this" is like claiming the earth is flat. It is like claiming the moon is made of green cheese. It is that ludicrous. So perhaps you should at least look into it.


But, who said anything about the big bang anyway? As I recall, you were worrying, as you always do, about who would "go to Hell." I have been telling you for a year that you do not have to worry about this.

Even if there is a Daddy God, even if the Big Bang was not true - it is, but even if it wasn't - there is still not a shred, none, zero, zip, nada, not one tiny scrap of evidence that "Hell" is real, or that anybody "goes there," or that only Christians know how to avoid it. It's all talk.

That is the truth you are ignoring.

That is why you still really don't know the truth about this at all. But since it is by your own choice you could at least stop complaining about it.

No, not me. My practice is derived largely from Buddhism, with some other tools for truth and beauty thrown in. I'm calling the latest remix "Neoism."

My spiritual practice is delivering for me in big ways, thanks for asking! It has allowed me to live in a near-blisslike state of happiness for several years. Because of my understanding, I have an amazing relationship with my husband and kids. We are able to live like kings on very modest means because of non-materialism. We avoid much of the suffering of life's ups and downs through the use of focused attention and non-attachment. Through appreciation, we are able to constantly celebrate the beauty and delight of this amazing existence, and through reason, we are able to understand, with a high degree of certainty, our universe and our place within it.

The truth is not all sunshine, of course. Things sometimes go wrong, and I am often saddened and concerned by the state of the world, particularly with the rapid onset of climate change. The future will contain challenges beyond anything humans have ever faced before. It's scary.

But, my practice allows me to look at the big picture, and appreciate that all is impermanent. It allows me to realistically assess the situation and plan for a variety of outcomes. And, it allows me to have confidence that reason really can save the world, and gives me the passion to pursue activism for a better way.

"High Power" does NOT equal=Christianity is true.

It is silly, and it is not the opposite of believing in God, nor it is actually being proposed by anyone. Please stop pretending that this is what I am saying. What is silly is your continued insistence that this is your only option besides Christianity.

While the kids are at school, I spent my days writing, doing art or music and agitating for social justice. So you can imagine it is a lot of fun.

Then when the kids get home from school I spend the rest of the day chasing them around and trying to keep up with the housework, homework, husband, and every weird thing that comes up. Also a lot of fun!

Well that sounds a lot like groveling, and a real misunderstanding of actual cause and effect.


My day is full of praising my husband for his great ideas and jokes, praising my kids for their good efforts, praising other posters for their clever posts, etc.

This is the kind of praising that really delivers, because the effect of the praise on the receiver is immediate - they light up, and their gratitude and delight is obvious in the great happiness in their facial expressions and postures. They feel good about themselves, and through human biological and social response, this good feeling is contagious. We have created more joy in the world.

I even save some praise for myself, because I am fairly cool and work pretty hard, and that seems like a pretty excellent accomplishment. It also creates a gratifying feeling of success which brings joy to the world.

When I look at the big and small things, I try to determine the actual causes and effects, and when I can't, I accept that "I don't know" is a true answer too.

I enjoy speaking with you too. You seem like a very likable person and it is a pleasure to know you. However I do wish you would stop ignoring what I am telling you.

My friend, I do not think this is stupid at all. In fact I think it is brilliant. Like so many things people fear, seeing that there isn't anything to be afraid of is the antidote. Thank you so much for such a practical and effective suggestion!

For one thing, Genetically Modified (GM) crops are so different, they interact with the environment and with the human body in unforseen ways. They can cause changes in the environment where they are grown, in their interaction with the soil, pests, pollinators, etc.

But GM issues are about more than what the food consists of. It is really about who owns and controls the food system. GM crops are essentially "licensed" to farmers. They can't use other pest control systems, they can't keep the seeds for next year, they have to buy again, and the farmers remain entangled in complex obligatory financial arrangements with a few giant agricorps, who control the supply chain and see most of the profits. As industry concentration increases, farming could become little more than modern sharecropping.


Which is not to say that GM should be taboo. But I think it should be handled much more carefully than it is, and for the purpose of making good food, not huge monopolies.

Whatever.

That's all there is to it.

Yeah, well fuck what Jesus said. Jesus clearly did not know everything.

Try not to worry about what you want. It doesn't help, and it doesn't change anything. Just look at what is.

Have you actually looked?


I have examined pudding very closely. It is made primarily of milk, with gelatin or starch as a thickening agent and sugar as a sweetener.


Milk is an adaptation developed by mammals for raising young. It is a nutritious liquid secreted by special glands on the female. It probably arose from another interesting mammalian development, the sweat gland. Not only does the milk provide nourishment, but the physical closeness and nurturing of mammalian nursing creates a parent-child emotional bond which ensures that the adult will do everything possible to protect the offspring. This adaptation has been hugely successful in evolutionary terms and has allowed mammals to occupy every niche in nature across the globe.

Most milk for human consumption comes from cows. Cows were domesticated about 10,500 years ago in Turkey, and all of the 1.3 billion cattle in the world today are descended from a group of about 80 individual aurochs who were tamed by Neolithic tribesmen. The body of a modern cow is the result of thousands of years of selective breeding for desirable traits, like health and high meat and milk yield.


Gelatin is made chiefly from collagen, obtained from animal by-products, and has probably been used by humans since the Stone Age.


Sugar is a carbohydrate composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. It is produced by plants using energy from the sun. It has been cultivated by humans in the form of sugar cane and sugar beets since ancient times.


I occasionally use Jell-o instant pudding as a treat for the kids. I buy it at Wal-Mart. It is manufactured by Kraft Foods in Dover, Delaware. It is shipped around the world with the leverage of Wal-Mart's global consumer product distribution chain.



So, when I look at pudding, I see a culmination of amazingness. How wonderful that mammalian bonding has produced so many great things - nurturing food like milk, and the beautiful bond of love we share with others. How clever of early humans to have partnered with milk producers of such potential! How dedicated and vigilant of humans to have shaped this creature to provide us this versitile food to grow human populations on every continent.

Also, how magnificent of evolution to shape our love of sugar, a wonderful energy source. Again, how clever of humans to have domesticated and engineered the plants which produce this energy in such abundance.

Not to mention, how clever of human cooks, going back to the stone age, to have combined these interesting ingredients to make such pleasing and fascinating combinations! How brilliant are the many ways we have refined this technology over the centuries. How productive is our engine of commerce that makes this product available all over the developed world.

How wonderful for kids that today, modern science and manufacturing and distribution allow a mom to whip together a quick treat in about five minutes that satisfies a basic human longing for nurturing, nutrition and energy!


Houseplant, this is what you and every human being will see if you actually look at pudding too.

No, of course you didn't. Somebody told you that. You did not see it. You can't check it. If somebody hadn't told you, convinced you of it, you would not have any reason to believe it at all.

That "information" came to you from a person, like every single other thing you "think" you know about God. It all came from a person. A person who is no different from you, a person who could not see anything about "God" that you yourself cannot see.


You don't have to listen to what any person says about it, House, even me. Just try it yourself. Get some pudding. Look at it. Stir it around. What do you see?