The horror! The horror!

buzsaw writes:

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Biblical morality is subjective to the Ten Commandments. Fundamentalistic Biblical morality, foundational on the Ten Commandments, seems to be what works best, when you look around the world and look at history.

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(*snort!*)Can you give me an example of a single society that was ever founded upon "fundemantalistic biblical morality, foundational on the Ten Commandments"? The only one we can seem to find would be the supposed tribes of Israel written about in the Bible, but they didn't last very long. The Roman Empire, the Greek Empire, the Phonecians, Japanese, Chinese, Aztecs, Mayans, all of these and more have lasted much, much longer than Israel did.And even in the modern era, where are these "Ten Commandments" societies? Even here in the US, we don't follow them. The first four are all about how to worship god and the very first, explicitly listed right granted to the people in our Constitution indicates that that is a load of crap. You get to worship any god you want or even none if you so choose.Honor thy father and mother? Why? There's no crime in giving your parents the finger. Sometimes they need to be told just what pains in the asses they are (Mary Cheney? Are you listening?)Thou shalt not kill? Well, actually, you can. And the state will do it for you and not consider it cruel or unusual, even if you do it to the mentally ill or to those who committed their crime while underage.Adultery? Well, it's grounds for divorce, and there are some states that still make it a crime, but it isn't really handled that way.Stealing? Well, that sorta depends on how one defines "stealing." "Emminent domain" is pretty much stealing, but we don't complain about it too much unless it happens to you.Bearing false witness? You mean like "We know where the weapons of mass destruction are"?Thou shalt not covet? You mean like "Manifest Destiny"?My word...it seems like the US made itself what it was by deliberately breaking pretty much every commandment. But, we've only been around for a couple hundred years. We're kids.So do, please, tell us. Where are these "Ten Commandments" societies? I can't find any.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

robinrohan writes:

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Therefore, we should all be nihilists

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Oh, hell...not another "atheism = nihilism" thread.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

RAZD, you are confusing so many mathematical terminologies that it is hard to know where to begin.From what I can gather, you are conflating orthogonality with correlation. I gather this because while you do correctly state that orthogonal can mean perpendicular, you suddenly switch to a discussion of "a scattering of points with no discernable correlation."The two have nothing to do with each other except where one might say that two variables that have 0 correlation are "orthogonal."

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but you also seem to indicate that a high "free-will-ness" will correlate with a high "deterministic-ness" ...

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No, not "correlate." "Can exist with." You seem to be wanting to say that you think there is a negative correlation between free will and determinism. That is, the more you have of one, the less you have of the other.But what the others are saying is that the two are disconnected. Free will and determinism both function and are compatible. You can have both, they are saying.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

buzsaw writes:

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That's not the case with most free and blessed nations historically and today.

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And as I asked you directly, where is this "most free and blessed nation"?You certainly can't mean the US because the US is not based upon the Ten Commandments. The first four are all about worshipping god and the First Amendment trumps that.The other six are routinely broken by the government and the populace without consequence.So where is this mythic society that is based upon the Ten Commandments?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

RAZD responds to me:

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the point being that there are several definitions in and out of math for the term

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I know, RAZD. I'm a mathematician, remember? Do you really think the discussion that is going on can be reasonably correlated to a matrix whose transpose equals its own inverse?Of course, that use of the word conceptually translates to "perpendicular" when viewing the world as a matrix, so it isn't as if we're talking about "inflammable" meaning "unable to burn" and "inflammable" meaning "capable of burning."Similarly for a linear transformation preserving length. Essentially, you're just rotating everything...which is another way of visualizing the concept of "perpendicular" in matrix theory.

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insisting on clarity of vision is good. insisting on only one version of it is bad.

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Indeed. And there is what you said and what you meant. "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."There is no contradiction between two variables being orthogonal and the existence of third axes that also have an effect. Three dimensional space is a perfect example. The x- and y-axes are orthogonal and the function of the z-axis is orthogonal to both of them and is important in locating yourself in three-space. Go ahead and add your randomness. That does not affect the non-correlation between free will and determinism.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

schrafinator writes:

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The Bible has rules about how much your slaves are worth and how you should treat them.

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And how to go about selling your daughter into slavery, don't forget.And how to deafen through violence a slave of yours that you are setting free but does not wish to go because you are retaining ownership of his wife and children. And then you get to keep him forever.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!