> when the realignment caused ten days to be subtracted from the year, mobs across Europe attacked Jesuit houses to protest the time stolen from them
The outrage over the implementation of the Gregorian calendar had more to do with landlords in some areas charging a full month of rent for a month that lacked 11 days.
Almost invariably when large groups of people did something really dumb in the past, we just don't have the full story. Not wanting to pay 11 extra days for nothing is completely reasonable, as opposed to the portrayal of dummies going around with pitchforks because someone stole 11 days from their lives.
That has nothing to do with religion, beliefs or any validity of those. Just a phrase burned too deep into cranium over decades to dispose of it easily even if wanted. 'What the fuck' or other fuck variants are in same category.
Maybe this is a good place to post it because its about religion.
I didn't think you could have 2 existential crisis, but I did. First one was Religion -> Agnosticism... Second was:
Platonic Realism to Pragmatism.
I used to think there was something special about circles/Pi, I thought there was some force of nature that caused Capitalism, Darwinism, and IR Realism to win... No, these platonic forms/universals don't actually exist. I hear people talk about Love, Happiness, and Justice like there is a perfection available to us humans. They are under the platonic religion.
Today I realize these are constructs of human language, from Pi to Justice, there is no universal. Monism is a religion.
I highly recommend William James's Pragmatism. Its only a 2.5 hour audiobook and it basically created the idea of metaphilosophy.
But within any civilization that develops within the more than hundred billion plus galaxies (or even within the uncountable number of simulated universes), they’d discover circles, spheres, triangles, the Platonic solids, normal distributions, etc.
The notation and ascribed meaning will vary — but civilizations will likely discover natural numbers and specifically binary numbers and even use them (at least for some time in their development) for computation. Basic operations would also likely be discovered - just as they were on different sides of our own planet.
There would also be cybernetic feedback loops, where goals are measured and optimized for—- that’s a sort of platonic form.
These intelligible forms seem more basic to life and intelligence than even carbon or water.
What makes circles more special than a bunch of crumbs? Humans decided circles are interesting.
I am not denying analytical philosophy doesnt make true statements, but rather that there isnt anything mystical about these true statements. They are constructs of human language. There was no God that typed pi=3.14, but rather humans made 2pir = c true by developing a linguistical logic system where we have radius = 1 and c= 6.28.
But Pi seams to be a property of the universe, because it's occurring in a lot of statements about behaviours of the universe?
There is a longing in people for love, happiness and justice which seams to be universal through the earth population? And people think they would like it if the world was more like that, so they try to influence others so that it is more like that, what's wrong with that? Some people conclude that there must be an origin for that desire outside of humans and that gets the name god.
So I don't know what you mean? Where do you conclude from that this is not real?
If you also agree 1 = 1 is a property of the universe, sure... But these are really just linguistic notations stacked upon each other until statements like 2pir = c are true.
I can write plenty of other true statements, I can make some strange irregular shape and prove the area of it.
>There is a longing in people for love, happiness and justice which seams to be universal through the earth population?
At a minimum moral relativism, between cultures, people, eras, organizations vs individuals seems absolutely true. At one point, being a pirate was honorable because it helped your community.
Sure mathematical expressions are expressions of a language, but the name of constants and how we describe them, isn't what matters.
It's the fact that a shape that has perfect symmetry in infinite directions, the effects of same weather phenomena we called lightning and the limit on information propagation (and million other things I just forgot about) all have a thing in common.
And all this is totally unrelated from our perception or even the existence of humans.
> just linguistic notations stacked upon each other until statements like 2*pi*r = c are true.
You can totally make sound linguistic notations, that just have no grounding in reality. It seams like you think it's only about the linguistic statement, but the language is invented to describe something that exists outside of it.
The pirate's victim begs to differ and any pirate thinking about them agrees that they do. People choosing to act against what they know is moral and still wanting to be called moral (especially in their self-view), is very different from them thinking the behaviour itself is moral from first principles.
Buying T-shirts/other clothing not made in the first world (which is nearly every one) is, I think, totally socially accepted, I wouldn't judge anybody on that (because there is no real choice) and I'm also doing it myself without thinking I'm doing something wrong, yet I think it is immoral to support, what I would call, slave-labor and having an economy building on that. Most people creating that system probably acted rationally and sound, but failed to be moral in a fundamental way, because they think money is everything. Yet I wouldn't judge them for that, because that is just so human (and also because I think that's for me to do, but that's religion).
My country is supporting the Ukraine. I think moral politicians need to care for their country and need to act for the protection of their people. It is also good to help people in need, even if you need to defend them. It can be also the better decision to kill the dictator, then to not do that. I absolutely support politicians sending weapons to Ukraine and think I would also see myself forced into deciding that way if I were in that position. But I would hate myself for it and would see myself as committing large unforgivable (for me) sins. Because killing people is ALWAYS immoral. The correct choice would always be to surrender, but I don't think I would do that.
The nazis (the real ones from Germany in world war 2) absolutely thought that killing humans is horrible and completely immoral. They didn't try to change this perception at all. What they instead did, was declaring that Jews aren't humans. And that it is good to kill them, because they are a larger threat to the real better humans. The soldiers and special forces didn't disagreed that what they do was horrible. They think they were heros FOR doing the immoral thing, because it was necessary. They coerced each other into doing it, because not doing it was cowardly as it meant claiming to be able to stay moral while letting all the others own doing bad stuff.
As you may have already imaged I think moral relativism is wrong. What is good or bad is independent of what people do or think it is. I also think law positivism is not what morale is about.
Perfection is available to us. Jesus Christ is the way; the Incarnation is the bridge. God became man (taking on like nature) so that we could become like Him and participate in His divine nature.
Surprisingly, not a single mention of Georges Lemaître - the Catholic priest who made significant contributions to cosmology and is credited with originating what became the Big Bang theory.[0]
> Surprisingly, not a single mention of Georges Lemaître
The article:
>> Pius XII stopped suggesting that the big bang required the orchestration of God after he had a conference with Georges Lemaître, the Belgian scientist and Catholic priest who had laid the groundwork for the theory with his hypothesis that the universe had expanded from a “primeval atom.”
Alas, I missed that part: 'Pius XII stopped suggesting that the big bang required the orchestration of God after he had a conference with Georges Lemaître, the Belgian scientist and Catholic priest who had laid the groundwork for the theory with his hypothesis that the universe had expanded from a “primeval atom.”'
https://archive.ph/i6KDU
“when the realignment caused ten days to be subtracted from the year, mobs across Europe attacked Jesuit houses to protest the time stolen from them.”
Do we see these people among us today?
This resonated too:
“ He said, “Even scientists who don’t believe in God have to believe in ‘Oh, my God.”
> when the realignment caused ten days to be subtracted from the year, mobs across Europe attacked Jesuit houses to protest the time stolen from them
The outrage over the implementation of the Gregorian calendar had more to do with landlords in some areas charging a full month of rent for a month that lacked 11 days.
Almost invariably when large groups of people did something really dumb in the past, we just don't have the full story. Not wanting to pay 11 extra days for nothing is completely reasonable, as opposed to the portrayal of dummies going around with pitchforks because someone stole 11 days from their lives.
Amusing how some tendencies never really change no matter how much the superficial world changes.
Classic landlords!
Were their taxes due later? I would not be surprised if they also lost all 11 days of scheduled annual maintenance.
That has nothing to do with religion, beliefs or any validity of those. Just a phrase burned too deep into cranium over decades to dispose of it easily even if wanted. 'What the fuck' or other fuck variants are in same category.
I took it to mean that religious and non-religious scientists are drawn by the same sense of wonder at the cosmos.
Maybe this is a good place to post it because its about religion.
I didn't think you could have 2 existential crisis, but I did. First one was Religion -> Agnosticism... Second was:
Platonic Realism to Pragmatism.
I used to think there was something special about circles/Pi, I thought there was some force of nature that caused Capitalism, Darwinism, and IR Realism to win... No, these platonic forms/universals don't actually exist. I hear people talk about Love, Happiness, and Justice like there is a perfection available to us humans. They are under the platonic religion.
Today I realize these are constructs of human language, from Pi to Justice, there is no universal. Monism is a religion.
I highly recommend William James's Pragmatism. Its only a 2.5 hour audiobook and it basically created the idea of metaphilosophy.
But within any civilization that develops within the more than hundred billion plus galaxies (or even within the uncountable number of simulated universes), they’d discover circles, spheres, triangles, the Platonic solids, normal distributions, etc.
The notation and ascribed meaning will vary — but civilizations will likely discover natural numbers and specifically binary numbers and even use them (at least for some time in their development) for computation. Basic operations would also likely be discovered - just as they were on different sides of our own planet.
There would also be cybernetic feedback loops, where goals are measured and optimized for—- that’s a sort of platonic form.
These intelligible forms seem more basic to life and intelligence than even carbon or water.
Super happy to hear arguments otherwise!
What makes circles more special than a bunch of crumbs? Humans decided circles are interesting.
I am not denying analytical philosophy doesnt make true statements, but rather that there isnt anything mystical about these true statements. They are constructs of human language. There was no God that typed pi=3.14, but rather humans made 2pir = c true by developing a linguistical logic system where we have radius = 1 and c= 6.28.
My argument is that ALL civilizations will discover circles. They aren’t human arbitrary. They are discoverable mathematical forms.
Discover? You mean name circles and claim that 2pir = c?
Do you think there is something special about 2*111 = 222?
Humans had to define every step from length of a line to the significance of roundness. Its all language.
As for your last sentence, compare semantics and semiotics. They are not the same thing.
As for the others, consider "mathematics invention vs. discovery".
There certainly is something special about doubling and halving quantities. See "meiosis".
This isn't true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoperimetric_inequality
I'm not sure what point you are making. This is language too.
But Pi seams to be a property of the universe, because it's occurring in a lot of statements about behaviours of the universe?
There is a longing in people for love, happiness and justice which seams to be universal through the earth population? And people think they would like it if the world was more like that, so they try to influence others so that it is more like that, what's wrong with that? Some people conclude that there must be an origin for that desire outside of humans and that gets the name god.
So I don't know what you mean? Where do you conclude from that this is not real?
>Pi seams to be a property of the universe
If you also agree 1 = 1 is a property of the universe, sure... But these are really just linguistic notations stacked upon each other until statements like 2pir = c are true.
I can write plenty of other true statements, I can make some strange irregular shape and prove the area of it.
>There is a longing in people for love, happiness and justice which seams to be universal through the earth population?
At a minimum moral relativism, between cultures, people, eras, organizations vs individuals seems absolutely true. At one point, being a pirate was honorable because it helped your community.
Sure mathematical expressions are expressions of a language, but the name of constants and how we describe them, isn't what matters.
It's the fact that a shape that has perfect symmetry in infinite directions, the effects of same weather phenomena we called lightning and the limit on information propagation (and million other things I just forgot about) all have a thing in common.
And all this is totally unrelated from our perception or even the existence of humans.
> just linguistic notations stacked upon each other until statements like 2*pi*r = c are true.
You can totally make sound linguistic notations, that just have no grounding in reality. It seams like you think it's only about the linguistic statement, but the language is invented to describe something that exists outside of it.
> pirate was honorable
The pirate's victim begs to differ and any pirate thinking about them agrees that they do. People choosing to act against what they know is moral and still wanting to be called moral (especially in their self-view), is very different from them thinking the behaviour itself is moral from first principles.
Buying T-shirts/other clothing not made in the first world (which is nearly every one) is, I think, totally socially accepted, I wouldn't judge anybody on that (because there is no real choice) and I'm also doing it myself without thinking I'm doing something wrong, yet I think it is immoral to support, what I would call, slave-labor and having an economy building on that. Most people creating that system probably acted rationally and sound, but failed to be moral in a fundamental way, because they think money is everything. Yet I wouldn't judge them for that, because that is just so human (and also because I think that's for me to do, but that's religion).
My country is supporting the Ukraine. I think moral politicians need to care for their country and need to act for the protection of their people. It is also good to help people in need, even if you need to defend them. It can be also the better decision to kill the dictator, then to not do that. I absolutely support politicians sending weapons to Ukraine and think I would also see myself forced into deciding that way if I were in that position. But I would hate myself for it and would see myself as committing large unforgivable (for me) sins. Because killing people is ALWAYS immoral. The correct choice would always be to surrender, but I don't think I would do that.
The nazis (the real ones from Germany in world war 2) absolutely thought that killing humans is horrible and completely immoral. They didn't try to change this perception at all. What they instead did, was declaring that Jews aren't humans. And that it is good to kill them, because they are a larger threat to the real better humans. The soldiers and special forces didn't disagreed that what they do was horrible. They think they were heros FOR doing the immoral thing, because it was necessary. They coerced each other into doing it, because not doing it was cowardly as it meant claiming to be able to stay moral while letting all the others own doing bad stuff.
As you may have already imaged I think moral relativism is wrong. What is good or bad is independent of what people do or think it is. I also think law positivism is not what morale is about.
Perfection is available to us. Jesus Christ is the way; the Incarnation is the bridge. God became man (taking on like nature) so that we could become like Him and participate in His divine nature.
Surprisingly, not a single mention of Georges Lemaître - the Catholic priest who made significant contributions to cosmology and is credited with originating what became the Big Bang theory.[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
> Surprisingly, not a single mention of Georges Lemaître
The article:
>> Pius XII stopped suggesting that the big bang required the orchestration of God after he had a conference with Georges Lemaître, the Belgian scientist and Catholic priest who had laid the groundwork for the theory with his hypothesis that the universe had expanded from a “primeval atom.”
There's a single mention of him in the article.
This is what I call self-sacrifice.
It’s literally mentioned in the article
Alas, I missed that part: 'Pius XII stopped suggesting that the big bang required the orchestration of God after he had a conference with Georges Lemaître, the Belgian scientist and Catholic priest who had laid the groundwork for the theory with his hypothesis that the universe had expanded from a “primeval atom.”'
So you didn’t read the article you are commenting on? I’m having a hard time understanding how this was missed.
> I missed that part
So he did read the article. How did you miss that? :p