Vera Mont

I haven't acknowledged any 'entities', necessary or otherwise. I was going along with your criteria for the sake of argument. And, afaic, atheism is u...

I don't know what the first entity was. I will never know. What's this to do with atheism?

I know. The telling of time - when something is expected to happen vs what time something is expected to happen - was a slight detour. However, I do c...

We are also creatures ruled to a large extent by feelings of attachment, loyalty, affection, of sentiment - just like dogs, horses and geese. We gener...

I won't be here by this time next year. Until then, it's the window of my office, where a I spend much of my day. BTW, the incident of the dog who wai...

He was just faithful. Some things we do are not rational in a strict sense of the word. My favourite cat went out one night three months ago and didn'...

Konrad Lorenz wrote that crows swarmed and intimidated him on his way down to the river every morning, until he discovered the problem: he'd had a bla...

I don't doubt it, and would appreciate learning what species do this and how. But that's not luring prey. You were way ahead with the singing raven.

In the scientific observations, the problem was set by humans. It would be in the form of a maze, or human-designed containers from which the subject ...

It may only have been "ma-ma-ma-ma, mamme", but it was quite tuneful. He sang. Human-like, rather than songbird-like, but adorable, all the same. Noth...

Really? Can you point me to some footage? I know that bluejays and sometimes blackbirds imitate sounds, but I've never heard a crow sing. We don't get...

Do they? I have personally witnessed it in dogs, cats, crows, raccoons and rats and goats. In scientific experimentation, the subjects have been predo...

Neither can sing.

The people who promote unhappiness as the superior state don't seem to understand how much effort and commitment goes into maintaining a positive stat...

Sorrow all looks pretty much the same; anger all looks pretty much the same; amusement all looks pretty much the same: emotions in humans are expresse...

Continued In some communities, there was - and is - a good deal of charity. Government assistance is good and much needed, as are social workers to mo...

Well, if you look at the few remote peoples who still live as their ancestors did, close to the earth and river, fathers carry their small children on...

Time to strike up Nearer My God to Thee ? And the band played on... I know it's not a time for levity, but may well be a time for gallows humour.

It was meant as a positive echo to a negative order. Down tools and get out of the way for a while. Not theirs alone, either! Don't look east or south...

But not for the purpose of explaining thunder and lightning because they didn't know science. I don't actually care what each believer believes or pre...

Not at all. I simply mean that any merit there may have been in distinguishing the purpose and function of organized, civilized religions from grass-r...

I concede. All general comments on the nature of organized religions hereby withdrawn.

Every religion differs in some respects from all the others. And every state religion nevertheless supports the hierarchy. Chastising a king is not th...

Yes, you supplied some specifics that I hadn't known, and I appreciate it. In that instance. Which supplied a nice underpinning for the eventual king-...

We could probably trace a similar history for the pantheons of all civilizations. They didn't all need the series of prophets predicting a very predic...

Which "we" is that? I had no part in the creation of any gods. My only sources of information are documents written by men, long dead, about gods they...

From what other sources can we learn the nature and desires of God?

BTW - I believe women who have either pets or children or both should rule the world for a while. Nobody else eligible to run for any administrative o...

I don't question the value or benefits of the academic application. In fact, that's what I was trying to say: in the educational setting, philosophy b...

Could you have faith in a being who does not make direct contact with you, does not manifest in any way you recognize, is described differently by eve...

Okay. I have no problem with substance, which is just raw material. Everything that has a physical form has substance. Why raise that to some kind spi...

Beethoven took a pretty good stab at it. Vivaldi didn't suck, either. I can't see or hear that in any context except with the image of Jane Fonda and ...

While I fancied that that understood where some philosophers were coming from, and what they were having a go at, I never figured out whether Philosop...

Well, it's confusing, that's for sure! Are they on the moon? If so, what's a river estuary doing there? How come the environment suits are described i...

If it were a food flavouring, yes. I suppose you can apply it to a tool, meaning either its character (function, rather than personality) or its subst...

That is the purpose and utility of the thing. It has no 'essence' and its nature is determined by its design, the material from from which it was made...

So frickin' true! What a species!

I always tell the protagonist in a horror movie or thriller to stay the hell out of that basement; I yell and swear at them, but they never listen. Go...

I did include a citation about biological clocks. I don't see how that presupposes or requires 'thinking about own previous thought and belief'. Yet a...

We were the same with my sister-in-law. She had MS and clung to her faith till the very end. We could see that it was a comfort to her and were carefu...

I thought it was the same young woman in both - possibly with father and mother. In a religious community, obviously. If the father had been a bully, ...

Oh, not directly. My father was a bully, nothing we could do about that. But my mother equipped me with some resistance to the guilt and shame thing. ...

The same wish goes to that doctor.

That's just wrong! If you're going to print a poem, print the whole thing - else, desist. That's the gist of it for me, the power trip. If he 'raises ...

Here's one I recall tearing me up in Gr 10 - and each I've come across it since: Rudyard Kipling - The Power of the Dog

That's an interesting poem. It presents two ways in which people who seek and apprehend a truth are browbeaten and silenced 1. through authority and 2...

It is. If you wish to deny that, you can use the excuse of irrationality. Me, I prefer to be befriended, as I choose my friends, for positive qualitie...

There are different types and flavours and degrees of love. They all begin with regard: some particular person is more significant to us than other pe...

It's not all that hairless: Which relevant facts are those? From what source can you be certain that early hominids did not have a sense of time? If t...

The dog practices timekeeping in exactly the same way humans did before the invention of clocks. The dog knows when it's time to wake people, when it'...