I suppose, but science is open to change and interested in truth, whereas religion is interested in its own truth, and controlling that truth. That's an important distinction. Religion is not objectively verifiable, science is. Religion is faith in what it preaches because they say so and they have a monopoly on salvation, science is faith in the truth of what can be demonstrated to be true. That's the opposite of a religion to me.

Yes, I agree with both the statements you open with.

The semantics discussion about what constitutes a country is interesting to me (logically), but largely meaningless. The same way the US declared independence, so too did the Confederate States. The only difference is whether the newly declared independents won their revolutionary war. If the Confederate States had won, they would have been an independent nation. Before they were defeated, I would argue they were as well, though what does this really matter? The US teaches they never were, that the Union was preserved. But they had their own government and all the functioning of a de facto state, and had declared their independence from another country. They just lost their war. Interestingly, Texas did the same thing: declared independence from Mexico, and the US government diplomatically recognized it as an independent nation for the purpose of sending military aid. That was the US entrance into the Mexican-American war. Texans are proud of the fact that they were the only state to be their own country, but functionally, how much of a nation were they ever really? It was a diplomatic ploy to go to war with Mexico for more land; in my book entirely "technical" and yet their declaration of independence is regarded as legitimately creating a new nation, whereas the Confederate States' declaration is not. Has to do with who won the following wars. On that note, Palestinians have declared independence, but there was no war fought to enforce the declaration, and no war by Israel to deny it. So these other comparisons don't translate exactly. It's an interesting semantic gray area, but ultimately, what does it matter? The bottom line to me is that Palestinian representation in the UN presents political problems for Israel, and that's why Palestine isn't formally recognized by the UN, despite functioning as a state anyway and being recognized by a majority of the world (not merely Muslim nations, either, btw):

 

I do want to vehemently disagree with the prospect of a global referendum for the extermination of anybody passing. I see a very large disconnect in the amount of Jew Hatred I believe exists in the world and the amount you seem to represent as existing in the world. I don't believe the majority of any population would support the systematic murder of innocents. There is a lot of hatred in the world, no doubt. But people are, on balance, more good than bad. And there are more good people than bad as well.

-->This is a little bit of a tangent, but I think it's relevant and important. People have a natural instinct to avoid killing other people. There are outliers (clinically, psychopaths), but we are naturally born with the instinct not to kill other people, as is almost every species on the planet born with a natural instinct not to kill its own kind. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a soldier and a psychologist, published a book called On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (http://www.amazon.com/On-Killing-Psychological-Learning-Society/dp/0316040932). It's a fascinating read. It details the history of firing rates in various US wars dating back to the Civil War. What the military has found is that the firing rate (the rate at which soldiers would fire at enemy soldiers) was surprisingly low. I think it was 25% in the Civil War. Many soldiers would intentionally fire over the heads of the enemy so it would look like they were doing something, but also so they wouldn't have to kill anybody. This was supported by commonly finding rifles that were loaded with 16 or more bullets on the battlefields post-battle. Remember, this was a time when 99% of the time was spent loading the single-shot rifle, and 1% firing. So men would continuously go through the motions of loading the rifle and never fire them to look like they were participating. (Conscientious objectors wasn't a thing back then, people who refused the draft were shot for cowardice.) When one side would retreat, they would just abandon the overloaded rifles, which were couldn't be fired anyway. It was far too common an occurrence to be the case that a couple of soldiers were confused in the heat of battle and overloaded their rifle. The most logical conclusion was it was a deliberate stalling tactic to avoid killing anyone.

-->When the military identified the low firing rate as a problem, it sought correct the behavior to make more effective soldiers, but despite changes to training, the firing rates did not improve as late as WWI, where it was still estimated to be around 25% of soldiers attempting to hit any enemy soldiers. After WWI, the army's tactics started incorporating psychological study and tactics to desensitize soldiers to killing. And that's largely what military training is about to this day, overcoming the natural instinct not to kill through desensitivity training. By WWII, firing rates were up to 50%, and by Vietnam I think it was 90%. Grossman's point though is that in Vietnam, you start to see collateral damage of desensitized soldiers (My Lai Massacre, etc.) and today, there are societal costs of desensitizing soldiers to killing. Soldiers rejoin society, and this has ripple effects for the society at large and he provides data to support the claim that domestic violence rises as soldiers come home. Further problematic, many of the desensitivity techniques the military uses are inadvertently replicated by the news, or Hollywood, or video games, and these have further effects. (The book is really fascinating, I highly recommend it.)

All of that is a lot of background for my main point: people are generally good, and will not condone murder and killing, but over very long periods of time and under very harsh living circumstances, people become desensitized to it and to violence. If you think about the people with political power in Palestine, preaching to the abject poor that the only way to bring about change is through violence and to defend yourself from the aggressors who have taken your land, smashed your houses, killed your neighbors, and these are the things you personally witness all the time... I do not find it surprising that the message of violence resonates so strongly where sensitivity to killing has been so diminished.

That's not at all to justify it. If these people had any interest in using the poor as anything other than an instrument to protect their own political power, they would teach peace, but I think you have to look at the political aspect to derive the motivation. The leaders of the PLO for so long have sought to maintain their positions of power as much establish a Palestinian state, and in order to remain in power, you have to have popular support, and the easiest way to have it there is to marshal the hatred and victim-hood that so many people feel.

And I think the same is true on the Israeli side. There are enough fundamentalists (the policy "hawks") on that side politicians have to appease to stay in power that peace is never a serious consideration. Look how Netanyahu pandered to them before the last election when he said there would never be a two-state solution with him in power, and then he backed off that statement once he won reelection. That's just an indication that on both sides there is popular support not to have peace, and the politicians pander to this for their own gain instead of leading. It has to start at the top, and the leaders have to stop the violence, and ostracize people who call for violence. I think much credit could be established by Palestinians if they establish a proper police and court system and start going after people who fire rockets into Israel like a proper damn crime, but just the notion of how ridiculous that sounds tells you how far away we are from peace. How desensitized this area of the world is to violence.

I've written a lot more than I thought I was gonna, but just my last note: no way Obama recognizes Palestine. It would doom the next democrat running for President, and that's the only consideration that ultimately matters because fucking politics.

DNA tests can exclude with 100% accuracy and include with 99.99% probability. That's enough in my book. (My book is science.)

In follow-up to my previous post, would just like to address this a little more. The US does have more influence than you let on. The US has been quite obstructionist in Palestine's attempts to gain international recognition.


Someone made a point earlier about the US "controlling the UN" or something along those lines, and you dismissed it. Perhaps controlling is too harsh a word, but influencing is not, and the US has been instrumental in influencing a lack of UN-recognition for Palestine as a state, even as a majority of the nations on this planet have recognized it.

This is a losing argument. You're trying to play semantics about what is a "country." If Palestine is not a country, then to which country does the land belong? If the land belongs to no other nation, and the people of that land organize their own government, hold elections, and have a self-identity as a nation, and appoint ambassadors who are received by the world governing body and other nations, is that not a de facto nation?

If de facto status- the fact that no one else claims the land is part of their country, and the people there have a functioning government which speaks for the people- isn't enough, how about diplomatic recognition? More nations on this planet than not have formally recognized Palestine as a country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_the_State_of_Palestine

I say yes, Palestine should be regarded as a state. Only most of the western world tries to pretend otherwise, and the US has directly worked to prevent UN-recognition.

Take this argument at face value, I am not extending it beyond what I have wrote to make any arguments about Israel, or "occupation" by Israel, etc. I am only arguing that the semantic definition of a "country" is ridiculous given that Palestine functions as an country and the land is not claimed as part of another nation, and the US seems to be the only reason it's not recognized by the UN as a nation.

I can't buy into this without your explanation of the reasoning which brought you here. Care to explain?

I don't think this is accurate. Catholicism and Christianity are not different religions because Christianity is just the broadest category of the subset. Catholicism is a type of Christianity, as is Protestantism, Presbyterianism, Mormonism, and many others. The same way as there are many sects of Islam: Sunni, Shia, Sufi, etc.

This sounds like the Dr. Strangelove twist of MAD where the Russians develop a Doomsday machine that will end the world if a nuclear weapon is ever detonated in Russia, which of course leads to one of my favorite lines of the movie:

"Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, EH?"
"It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises."

Yes, body cameras will cut down on police behaving badly, but it does not alleviate the risk to taxpayers when they make "mistakes," either accidental or cases of unjustified uses of deadly force. The taxpayer is still on the hook when there is a settlement. And of course cops wouldn't do this voluntarily, they're getting a free ride right now in terms of risk. They make a mistake, someone else (taxpayers) pay the costs of that mistake. We are essentially already underwriting insurance on their actions, the point would be to legislatively make it a requirement for cops to have liability insurance to cover their actions on the job, the same way doctors or lawyers have to have malpractice insurance. The same way you have to have liability insurance to drive. It puts the responsibility for the risk created on the people who create it, instead of the taxpayers.

Cops won't do anything voluntarily to increase oversight, accountability, or to take responsibility for their actions. Also, we don't have to let it be up to them.

There are plenty of posts in this forum about police shootings and police brutality, and invariably, a comment about how bad cops murder a citizen, then the tax payers are on the hook for their defense and an eventual settlement. With this in mind, should police be required to carry an insurance policy to cover payouts and lawsuits related to their behavior while on the job? Doctor's are required to carry malpractice insurance, why not cops? Protect the tax payers from bad cops.

I agree with you that they are not "Islamic," at least not the form of Islam most people would consider to be most legitimate. Does this ultimately matter though? The problem is ISIS claims to be Islamic, and they have enough people who agree with them to be the force that they are. You and them disagree about who is correct, but what does this ultimately matter as they're killing people? The fact remains they have sympathizers and supporters significant enough in numbers to make them relevant.

That's the whole thing: they're relevant because they have support. It may not be your Islam, but that hardly matters when their purpose is to spread their form of violent Islam. They have enough people who agree with their form of Islam to be relevant. If their form of Islam was so anathema to all Muslims, they wouldn't have enough support to be relevant.

It sounds like a false dichotomy. There is nothing to suggest freedom and justice are interchangeable or on a sliding scale where if one is maximized the other is minimized, even if trends you see in society suggest this to be the case. The trick is not allowing people who wield political power to use it bestow political favors; this is where the perversion of justice comes from. Eminent domain, civil asset forfeiture, police ticket quotas, privatized prison systems: these are perversions of justice where the people who make or enforce the law are incentivized to limit freedom for the private gain of their cronies. Just because that's the way the system has operated doesn't mean that's thee way it has to operate. We can have justice and freedom, if the people had the will to hold politicians responsible and quit swearing fealty to a particular political party.

u9y42, Thank you for posting a thoughtful piece in this thread. I've been lurking here reading both sides, and posts of your quality have been in short supply.

JJ Philips, some of your posts have also been high quality (when you're drilling down to analyze bias that underlies assumptions), but the way you talk down to and belittle people you don't agree with undermines your message. I hope you will take U9's message without feeling attacked for the purpose of continuing a productive discussion, because I'm looking forward to reading both of your posts as you fall on directly opposite side, and are both clearly knowledgeable and articulate. I just hope both sides remain civil, because I'm hoping to learn more and this discussion becomes wildly unworthy of following when either side is lobbing insults or being condescending.

Yes, it is practical. We can stop giving local police departments Bearcats and tanks and use those funds to equip them all with mandatory bodycams. It will require no more manpower to monitor, as it would only be to review in the case of incident, the same as dashcams now. They just run and run and the only time it matters is when there is an incident to review. Since the funding will come from things police departments are currently buying and don't need (military-grade weapons and vehicles), it will cost no further funding as well, and may even save money in the long run as police brutality complaints and lawsuits decline when officers start behaving because they're being held responsible for their actions.

You're speaking with the benefit of hindsight now knowing the cop murdered the guy and having seen video of it. In the moment, you don't have the capacity to assess the situation, and you will never possibly have enough information to make a determination that you would be justified to shoot at a cop who is pursuing a suspect. Your vigilante intervention would not have been justified. Cops are supposed to be equal under the law, but they are given the power to enforce it, which like it or not, is a superior position in society. When they abuse that power, there are channels to deal with that properly, and vigilante justice is not one of them.

It doesn't look like the courts will take this lightly, the decision to censor memes comes directly after a Moscow court already ordered a site to take down memes:




Your assertions no court will take this seriously is undermined by the fact that they already are.

Lol, no. The Koch bros are crony capitalists.

The US has given 0 nuclear warheads to other nations. From time to time, US nuclear warheads have been housed in US military bases located in foreign countries (e.g. Jupiter missiles in Turkey), but always under US control. Israel's nuclear program was self-developed, though with much help from France during the development of their nuclear program:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel#Weapons_production_1966.E2.80.93present

This rings more like a publicity stunt than anything. If it was about crypto, you'd go with the most mainstream (btc), not some worthless alt that no one has. That means it's not about crypto. (That coin has a market cap of $31,000, total.) Maybe this guy bought up a ton of this coin, and is hoping any attention he brings it will make his holdings worth something.

Like they say in the video though, even though it lasted only a short while, the documentation of it and the sharing of that documentation as a symbol cannot be undone. Well done to those guys for pulling this off.