Michael Obstinate: Before the solar system, there was a nebula in this general region of the MW. Some disturbance (a big one -- probably a relatively ...
"Identity" isn't a new concept. Births and deaths of persons have been recorded by religious and civil institutions since the medieval period, if not ...
Yes, Gandhi could have killed one man and still have been considered good. (Gandhi didn't personally save millions from oppression. He organized and l...
Good. Now, I think it is important to apply our concerns for human dignity, human rights, and minimization of suffering to the workplace where product...
CAN someone "transcend" the economic system? Wage slavery (per dclements) is an evil that is part and parcel of the economic system. There are many th...
You are very fortunate to live in a time where effective treatments are available to suppress philosophical thinking. >:) How about an old definition ...
No. Rhetorical terms such as paradox, irony, coincidence, contradiction, metaphor, simile, comparison, etc. all have specific meanings. What you are t...
It doesn't make sense as paradox. it makes sense as comparison. As you say, Hitler is worse than Oswald and Oswald is worse than you or me. But then, ...
Oswald is a bad man. Jack Ruby, who killed Oswald, is a bad man. Hitler, who directed others to kill millions, is a bad man. We don't have to weigh ho...
As for biology, as Kinsey (supposedly) put it: "The only unnatural act is one you cannot perform." Whatever humans do--not matter how appalling--is "n...
While the sun IS the source for solar energy, it isn't the immediate physical origin of the earth. already pointed this out. The disk of dust that spa...
Micah puts it this way: He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love tenderly, and to wa...
Much of the work that people do in industrialized societies is unnecessary work. A good share of the work that needs to be done is being performed by ...
Science has shown that good food is better than bad food, but good food won't cure many psychological problems. Some of the problems people have are b...
With that attitude, you may well approach your studies cynically and become disheartened. It is unclear why you would go into clinical psychology at l...
Maybe you haven't spent enough time around people devoid of a sense of humor to understand how valuable a sense of humor can be. As for philosophizing...
Their asceticism was voluntary--no one forced or coaxed them into living that way. The phrase "ascetic by necessity" is confusing. so just ignore it. ...
These guys (mostly guys) couldn't have supported and didn't have families. There are ways of helping people that don't involve money; two guys operate...
Not working a great deal frees up ones time for other pursuits -- quite possibly of considerable benefit to other people. The people I'm thinking of h...
There are people (not too many) who practice voluntary poverty who are not religious, and are quite capable of earning a decent income. It isn't just ...
I wasn't aware that monogamy had become a burning issue. Where are you coming across this groundswell of anti-monogamy? Faithful monogamy--now, that's...
People confuse change with progress, until it gets explicitly adverse. So, more cars in 1955 equaled progress. It wasn't progress, but it certainly wa...
"WISDOMfromPO-MO" is doing that. He also seems to hold the idea that progress should eliminate human problems. Lots of people expect that. "Well, with...
Well, progress is ethnocentric, because some group is responsible for each piece. Humans in all environments innovated appropriately to their settings...
What the graph shows is the frequency of appearance in the corpus of words extracted from all the books Google has scanned. It does not, by and large,...
Some people think progress is punctuated, others think it is continual. The punctuated theory makes more sense to me than continual progress. Change i...
But why? When was this differentiation made? Here's a Google Ngram showing the difference of use between 1800 and the present. Why the decline in peop...
Outside of alcohol, I can't claim much experience with mood altering substances. The last time I had a couple of hits of cannabis ... 27 years ago, it...
Artificial stimuli? What would artificial stimuli be -- alien-operated brain probes? Is an alcoholic fast or a worthy cause natural or artificial? And...
Everyone says this kind of thing because their experience bears it out. Alcohol is alcohol is alcohol, but there is other stuff in the bottle that var...
I've only gotten sick (really horrible hang overs) from wine. Some of it was good, some of it was rotgut. Didn't seem to make much difference. Never g...
It would be bad faith if you drank a quart of gin and believed that you wouldn't get drunk. God recommends "strong drink". Deuteronomy 14: 22-26: You ...
Beer: Safe and effective when used as directed. Cruisy gay bars are no place for sobriety. As a soft ball Methodist faggot I can't generate the requis...
Of course it depends on how you define and measure "progress". If "progress" is material developments that make a major difference in daily life, then...
It seems intuitively obvious, but perhaps that is not the case. The problem (as I see it) is that untangling mood (which is biological) and belief (wh...
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