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Despite the santorum splattered about, the Pontiff of the Church Universal and Triumphant [EDIT: This is actually referring to the Roman Catholic Church, not the Church Universal and Triumphant] is going to agree with the climate change consensus in an encyclical to be released on Thursday. Early leaks give some idea of the content.
Pope Francis is preparing to declare humans as primarily responsible for climate change, call for fossil fuels to be replaced by renewable energy and decry the culture of consumerism, a leaked draft of his much anticipated statement on the environment suggests.
The source for this somehow concerns Australians, but we will take any indication of infallibility where we can get it.
So the humble submitter has to wonder, does this mean that climate-change deniers are now to be considered heretics, rather than just Petro shills or anti-environmental conservative conspiracy theorists? It does add a entirely new dimension to the debate, and I hope that God will forgive your Conservative asses for screwing up Her creation in the quest for profit.
UPDATE - janrinok 18 Jun 12:36UTC
is it possible to update/append aristarchus' post "Pope Affirms Anthropogenic Global Warming" (https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/06/17/0317256), as follows:
Update: The encyclical can be read and downloaded here.
I am not affiliated with the submitter, aristarchus, or the pope. I have a slightly paranoid reason for asking for this update; it is my experience that, whenever politically important documents are published, the actual document often gets overshadowed by an enormous load of blog commentary, providing a bit of "damage control" and "spin". It is my fervent opinion that the readership of Soylentnews deserves to read the actual source documents. (It's only 82 pages long, in this case, anyway).
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday June 17 2015, @02:18PM
are now to be considered heretics
Don't the Catholics already consider the most extreme of the evangelicals to already be heretics?
I mean, the Catholics are in theory and practice not cool with "Jesus hates poor people" "Jesus only loves certain skin tones" "Jesus only loves certain nationalities" "Jesus only loves rich people" so once you've accumulated a long list of reasons to be excommunicated, adding one more isn't going to change much.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:18PM
I thought that technically all protestants are heretics? But in recent centuries the different sects have decided they can at least live with one another existing.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:24PM
Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same;
Emphasis mine. You have to be a Baptized Catholic, and affirmatively deny the more "fundamental" truths to Catholic faith. So being a protestant is just not being Catholic. Refusal of submission to the Pontiff is a separate crime against the faith called "Schism".
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday June 17 2015, @08:52PM
Note that I'm not a Catholic but Santorum is.
I found the definition on EWTN to be helpful (this is just the relevant part, it continues on for some time)
http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/heresy_schism_apostasy.htm [ewtn.com]
Thus, prior to the Second Vatican Council it was quite common to speak of non-Catholic Christians as heretics, since many of their doctrines are objectively contrary to Catholic teaching. This theological distinction remains true, though in keeping with the pastoral charity of the Council today we use the term heretic only to describe those who willingly embrace what they know to be contrary to revealed truth. Such persons are formally (in their conscience before God) guilty of heresy. Thus, the person who is objectively in heresy is not formally guilty of heresy if 1) their ignorance of the truth is due to their upbringing in a particular religious tradition (to which they may even be scrupulously faithful)
I don't read much modern Catholic stuff, compared to how much old/ancient stuff I read, so thats where I got my peculiar pre-vatican2 attitude, where I'd be wrong by the modern post vatican 2 interpretation.
(Score: 3, Informative) by stormwyrm on Thursday June 18 2015, @01:33AM
It seems though that the Church has learned its lesson about mixing science and religious doctrine from the Galileo affair, most clearly in recent Popes' declarations about the matter. Even then, do remember that while the Church back in his day did give Galileo a hard time, they never actually excommunicated him. They excommunicated Giordano Bruno though, not so much for his scientific beliefs, but more for denying core Catholic doctrines like the Trinity and transubstantiation. The excommunications in recent days have mostly been over matters of doctrine (including abortion-related ones) and over the authority of the Church (there have been a number of these, mostly involving traditionalist Catholic groups and organisations like the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association who do things like consecrate bishops without papal approval).
It is extremely doubtful that the Francis will make some sort of pronouncement invoking papal infallibility on the matter of AGW. Official invocations of infallibility are very rare: in fact, it's been invoked only once since its solemn definition by the First Vatican Council, by Pope Pius XII on the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary in 1950.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday June 18 2015, @02:17AM
I'm not sure how relevant it is to the conversation, but Nicolaus Copernicus was a monk.
I don't think the church had any problem with his work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @08:45AM
Galileo was friends with the Pope. After discussing his ideas with the Pope, he wrote a book that included a character using the Pope's arguments with the name of Simplicio (simpleton or idiot). It was just feuding.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2015, @03:03AM
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday June 18 2015, @11:36PM
Conversely, many branches of the Protestant church view the Pontiff as an office of the Anti-Christ. So, it would make sense that the Catholic Church accepts climate change as it is a lie from the devil. Don't make me look up sources, I don't have time to google them for you. Just my personal experiences, this opinion is held by many Southern Baptist and non-denomination churches that would easily deny science and require rewriting of public text books.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @02:30PM
Religious conservatives used to believe that we had a responsibility to care for the environment because God gave us dominion over it:
Genesis 1:16 "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
But now they believe that it is hubris to think that man can ruin God's creation:
Genesis 8:22 "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."
Who says the bible isn't something that people pick and choose from?
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Also, fix the "REPLY TO ARTICLE" button which does not work, I had to fuck with the URL to make this post
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @02:52PM
I think they get the message about the reply to article button. Seems to be a complaint in every story today - just give it some time.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Wednesday June 17 2015, @02:57PM
Very few people think the bible isn't something that people pick and choose from. It's just the more "devout" side tends to turn a blind eye to their own selective reading, while calling others "Cafeteria Christians". The less literalist side of Christianity tends to accept that they're picking and choosing and have various excuses for it.
As a smug, self-satisfied atheist, I view it as an inevitable artifact of taking a long, complex, common-language book as your most fundamental truth.
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While your request to fix the button is valid, the plain 'ol reply button in the lower left of the page still works. You don't need to handcraft urls.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:36PM
I view it as an inevitable artifact of taking a long, complex, rambling, self-contradictory, mistranslated, incomplete, politically-edited, cryptic common-language
bookcollection of plagiarised, half-remembered fantastical folk tales as your most fundamental truth.FTFY.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:49PM
Well, I mean, even if you took something relatively sensible and accurate, like say, a well researched sociology textbook, and declared it your universal truth, you'd suffer from the same problems of contradictions, selective reading, and things that you got wrong.
Specifically disparaging the bible is always fun(I'm still a smug atheist), but the point I was trying to make is that a book can't be a universal font of truth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:57PM
Do you not trust the dating of the dead sea scrolls? If you do, how do you explain how consistent they are with the bible? That is at least evidence that these stories can be transmitted with little corruption for thousands of years.
Personally I suspect carbon dating may not be so reliable. It was calibrated to tree rings and egyptology, much of which was calibrated to the bible (check out Joseph Scaliger). Tree rings are also calibrated to pre-existing "accepted" chronology. It is an interesting subject. For example, if knowledge of this century is lost sometime in the future they will carbon date it to far later than it was due to nuclear testing. There are other phenomenon that could cause similar effects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls#Physical_characteristics [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Justus_Scaliger [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday June 17 2015, @04:40PM
>> half-remembered fantastical folk tales
> Do you not trust the dating of the dead sea scrolls?
Once the folk tales were written down, they remained pretty static (apart from the political changes and dodgy translations, obviously). It's the fact that these stories were passed around exclusively by word of mouth for hundreds or thousands of years before ever being written down that made me write "half-remembered". That said I guess in the long run it doesn't make much difference whether it was an "original" folk tale or a "half-remembered" one that eventually mutated into some biblical story and got written down. You can forget I wrote that bit if you like.
> Tree rings are also calibrated to pre-existing "accepted" chronology.
I'm not sure this is true. I'm not an expert but as I understand it, you cut down a hundred year old tree today, and measure the rings back to 1915. You then examine a piece of wood used in a building suspected to have been constructed somewhen in WWII. Because you know what the rings 1915-1945 look like, you can match the rings from that period and confirm that the wood was alive in that period, and see exactly when that tree was felled, let's say 1938. If that tree was a hundred years old at felling as well, so now you can see what the rings 1838-1938 look like, and in this way you can go back in time indefinitely, as long as you have a supply of old bits of wood that fit into your jigsaw. Obviously all this is re-confirmed every time a new piece of wood is found to fit with the record, and there are countless thousands of bits of wood in the record. No Egyptology or bibles required.
According to wiki, dendrochronology has a "fully anchored" chronology of the northern hemisphere going back 13900 years - that's well beyond the old testament.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @06:45PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Dendrochronology [wikipedia.org]
The paper cited doesn't offer evidence of that. Following that reference eventually got me to this:
http://www.radiocarbon.org/IntCal13%20files/intcal13.pdf [radiocarbon.org]
So it appears they have something, but we need to see how many trees are available for each year, how questionable the overlap is, etc. I don't know where to find this data.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2015, @06:57PM
That is at least evidence that these stories can be transmitted with little corruption for thousands of years.
Similarly, it's easy to show that one can wildly change a story with a single rewriting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @11:07PM
I've a book on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it has an interesting note on how some of the scrolls show differing versions of the tales in the bible. So yeah, no so much on the consistency.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:56PM
You have to, given the large number of outright contradictions in it.
Also, it's very illegal in a lot of places to stone people to death for working on a Saturday (Exodus 35:2), or for being raped in a city while a woman engaged but not married to a man (Deuteronomy 22:23-4).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @07:16PM
Maybe neighbors were packed together enough and it was the custom to run in the house/etc if a woman was heard screaming. Then if you didn't scream that meant it was not rape. Also perhaps it was unusual for an unmarried woman to ever be left alone with a man. That would explain the "in a city" part. I have no idea, but it may have made sense back then (at least if you believe that extramarital sex is a crime).
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:42PM
Ezekiel (23:20) was likely jacking off to this as he wrote it, and this valuable passage is proof that fetishizing huge cocks pulling tight twats inside-out like pink-sock concertinas has been going on for thousands of years.
(Score: 1) by fritsd on Wednesday June 17 2015, @06:01PM
If you'd meet prophet Ezekiël in the street, would you call the police? He didn't like Jerusalem very much, did he..
A good thing then that Nebuchadnezzar II was king of Babylon, and not the UK's Theresa May [soylentnews.org]... she would have definitely taken prophet Ezekiël's drugs away, and put him on a forced rehab course :-) maybe an A.S.B.O. to stay away from Jerusalem.
But, honestly, I also found that paragraph rather odd. I find most of the prophets' books are not very readable. I imagine they weren't meant to be pleasant and agreeable people, rather the contrary.
Also: make sure you don't ply your neighbour with your wine, ethanol-fueled! (Habakkuk 2:15), or there shall be shameful spewing of some kind.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday June 17 2015, @07:07PM
+1 disturbingly vivid metaphor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:53PM
There's absolutely no need to do that. The reply "button" (link) at the very bottom works fine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @09:14PM
> There's absolutely no need to do that. The reply "button" (link) at the very bottom works fine.
Other than being being practically invisible because it is three whole screen-fulls down, yeah works great.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @04:06PM
That button labelled 'end' on your keyboard works wonders... are you that lazy?
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Wednesday June 17 2015, @08:40PM
Now the button has been fixed. Mostly fixed since about 15:00 UTC, but there was one minor bug left, which just got fixed.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @09:19PM
FYI, now the button gets a line-break right in the middle.
Here's a screen cap:
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=34q5i77&s=8 [tinypic.com]
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Thursday June 18 2015, @12:05AM
Fixed, thanks for letting me know.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Fishscene on Wednesday June 17 2015, @02:31PM
How in the world would climate-change deniers be considered heretics? Your article betrays your ignorance of what Christianity is all about, and for whatever reason, you've decided to blame it on conservatives (because conservatives are ALL the same!). To top it all off, you refer to God as a "Her" - whereas in the Bible, God is *Always* referred to as "Him" or "His". Props for capitalizing (respect) though.
Please don't attack 2 different groups of people based on generalizations - I thought SoylentNews was better than this. :\
I know I am not God, because every time I pray to Him, it's because I'm not perfect and thankful for what He's done.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @02:43PM
Agree, it's a trollish summary posted by someone who sounds atheist or agnostic.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:20PM
I normally condemn these kind of editorializing statements in the article summary, but I have to admit that this time it made me laugh, so thank you, and curse you.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:14PM
While I agree that in this case it is not true that climate change deniers are heretics, the idea is that since the Pope is infallible in Catholicism, anybody who identifies as Catholic but does not agree with the official pronouncements of the Pope, which become Catholic doctrine, is engaging in heresy.
The reason deniers aren't heretics in this case is that the Pope is not speaking ex cathedra in issuing this encyclical. Had Francis done so, Paul Ryan and the like would have some 'splainin' to do.
It's more complicated than that. If we are taking the Bible as literally true, the only people to have ever seen God while alive are Adam, Eve, Lilith (if you follow the view that there were two creations of woman), and Enoch (who "was not" shortly thereafter), and none of them report any particular gender identifying marks such as a beard. The reason that masculine pronouns would have been used has a lot more to do with grammar than any particular interpretation: the Hebrew "Elohim", "El", and "Adonai", as well as the Latin "Deus" are all masculine nouns. But the Greek "Theos" can be either masculine or feminine, the Latin "Deus" was used for both male gods and mixed groups of gods and goddesses prior to the Christians, and one of the first Hebrew phrases used to describe God, "Ruach Elohim", is feminine.
There are also phrases that suggest God either has no gender or both genders. For example, God creates humans in his own image, male and female.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Funny) by M. Baranczak on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:50PM
God is a ladyboy.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Wednesday June 17 2015, @04:30PM
Please... God prefers He/She!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Thursday June 18 2015, @01:51AM
Everyone knows that God prefers non-shes!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @09:23PM
> God is a ladyboy.
Bakla God?
Sounds like baklava.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:21PM
> To top it all off, you refer to God as a "Her"
I thought it was common knowledge by now that God looks like Alanis Morrissette.
But let's be serious. The correct pronoun for god is "it." We are talking about an omniscient being with the power to build an entire universe in less time than it takes me to redecorate my lounge [1] and magic up at least one world full of life from less than thin air. You really think something like that is going to be restricted by piddling little mortal labels like "male" or "female"? You really think god couldn't spontaneously transmogrify upon a whim into a woman, or a man, or a protozoa, or a quad-sexed semi-sentient fishoid from a water moon in the outer reaches of the Andromeda galaxy, or all four simultaneously? In that case, where god's form is as fluid as its needs or wants, what's the point in attempting to define it by any particular form (like male or female)?
Furthermore, I would argue that one of the defining characteristics of being "male" is that you are part of a species that has a corresponding "female" gender, and vice versa. According to all the dogma [2] god is unique, that there are no others gods of any kind, and it has always been so. Therefore there can be no complementary God(dess) of the other gender, ipso facto god cannot have a gender itself.
I suppose one could try to bypass all of the above and ascribe god a gender by personality characteristics rather than physical characteristics. That's tricky, given the somewhat schizophrenic and contradictory character described in the bible, but I think in the end that rather plays into my argument above about god being able to switch on a whim. The god of the old testament is certainly very patriarchal: Vengeful, warlike, jealous, authoritarian. I can see a definite argument for masculinity there. But then again, it is also a creator: Bringing life and order to the void, which seems to me a far more feminine trait. In the end it's a wash. God is male, and female, and both, and neither, and everything else besides.
[1] Fucking textured wallpaper.
[2] Actually, I've read arguments that the ten commandments tacitly admit the existence of other gods by forbidding their worship, but I'm not going there.
(FWIW I am an atheist and find the whole thing rather silly. This whole post is an exercise in argumentation for the sake of it. )
(Score: 1) by Fishscene on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:46PM
Excellent Observation. This is why I specifically referred to the Bible always referring to God as "Him" instead of saying God was male. I would hope that God, being who He is, would be able to direct the contents of the Bible just fine. :P
Now, I can wager why the Bible refers to God as a "Him" or "Her", but those would strictly be my opinions.
I apologize for not clearly expressing that in my original post.
I know I am not God, because every time I pray to Him, it's because I'm not perfect and thankful for what He's done.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by BasilBrush on Wednesday June 17 2015, @10:01PM
If he/she/it could direct the contents of the Bible, you would have though he/she/it wouldn't have put so many contradictions in it.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tftp on Friday June 19 2015, @03:36AM
If he/she/it could direct the contents of the Bible, you would have though he/she/it wouldn't have put so many contradictions in it.
If he/she/it could direct the contents of the Bible, they would put some information there that would be provable only some time later. For example: "a kaon, made of an up and anti-strange quark, decays both weakly and strongly into three pions, with intermediate steps involving a W boson and a gluon. You will understand what it means once you figure out what small particles of matter are made from." That would prove that the Bible is a word of god - or, to be exact, not the work of priests. One could insert several such revelations and target them for key phases of development of the society. Even just the formulation of Fermat's theorem would be beyond abilities of ancient scribes to invent on their own. Or the god could have used the four color theorem - it is easy to formulate for ancients, and pretty hard to prove :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @04:23PM
Wasn't Man made in God's image, then God made a woman later (apparently because God thought Man was too comfortable and he needed a lot of stress in his life)? So wouldn't God be male by definition?
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday June 17 2015, @04:54PM
> Wasn't Man made in God's image
That's what the book says, but "In god's image" is pretty vague. Google up an image of "the creation of Adam". From that you can see that most christians (or catholics at least) seem happy enough to accept that at the moment of creation Adam is a young dude with curly blonde hair, while God is an old guy with white hair and a big beard. Hard to tell, but I think the eye colour is different too. Point is, god did not create an identical copy of itself. Therefore the phrase "In God's image" seems to permit certain discrepancies between the original (god) and the image (Adam).
Why shouldn't gender be another such discrepancy? Maybe just having two arms and two legs is enough to be "made in god's image". Maybe the ability to think and reason is what is meant by "in god's image". Where does it say that a cock and balls are a necessary part of the package any more than a big beard is?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @07:30PM
Children who draw stick-men are drawing images of themselves and people they know. "In His image" doesn't mean an exact replica, just representatively similar.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @05:34PM
This whole post is an exercise in argumentation for the sake of it.
No it isn't.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Wednesday June 17 2015, @06:58PM
This whole post is an exercise in argumentation for the sake of it. )
You say that as if it were a bad thing! The comments so far, including yours, have been quite interesting, and not really what I expected. Thanks.
(Score: 4, Funny) by isostatic on Wednesday June 17 2015, @08:05PM
If god was female, and Mary was female, would that mean that religions are pro-gay-marriage? Or doesn't it count because Jesus was a bastard?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BasilBrush on Wednesday June 17 2015, @10:03PM
Jesus a bastard and Joseph a cuckold.
Or to be more realistic, Joseph fucked Mary, and they lied about it to avoid being stoned.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday June 18 2015, @10:00AM
I thought that this "Gabriel" person did Mary, and she was stoned (in the fun way) hence believed his story.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday June 19 2015, @03:27PM
Could even be true. There are documented cases of virgin births where the male didn't quite stick it in before cumming and some sperm still managed to swim up and find the egg.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by penguinoid on Wednesday June 17 2015, @09:17PM
Considering the Israelites used to honor God by building Asherah poles to honor His consort, the goddess Asherah, I think it is fair to say that God is male (or a lesbian!). Asherah poles were built in His temple, and some historical artifacts indicate the people thought this would please Him. Of course, that was back when God was the ruler of the pantheon. God may have lost any gender once he became monotheistic.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Friday June 19 2015, @01:41AM
by the old testiment, god is more of a destroyer and mean son of a bitch than a warm caring woman.
I'm not biblical scholar but every chraracter trait that is attributed to god points to the notion that if there was such a being, it would not be femle-like, as we understand females.
what characteristics does god have (in either testiment) that suggests that he's a woman?
and why even THINK in terms of animal sexuality. then again, I stopped believing in god in my teens and I could never buy that bullshit set of stories that has more internal inconsistencies than the combined republican and democratic parties...
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:22PM
Try reading the summary... Ignorance about ignorance is a good thing. The two groups greatly overlap...
god (note the capital you silly ass) is a black woman.
(Score: 1) by Fishscene on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:55PM
The reference to capitalization was specifically to point out that the author of the summary knew exactly what they were doing when they referenced God as a "Her" - directly contradictory to what He is referred to in the Bible and communicates disrespect. Seems like it was flamebaiting and I bit. :)
I know I am not God, because every time I pray to Him, it's because I'm not perfect and thankful for what He's done.
(Score: 3, Informative) by BasilBrush on Wednesday June 17 2015, @10:08PM
You do realise the bible wasn't written in English, right?
Do you realise that as well as different gender rules, Hebrew and Aramaic don't have any capital letters?
Clearly not. Christianity, a religion built on ignorance.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by ralphhogaboom on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:48PM
It's funny how hung up on form we get. It's like either God is an elderly man with kind eyes and a beard, or nothing makes sense anymore. And if we don't agree on what he looks like, then you're on that side and I'm on this side.
I've come to believe God is that which answers me when I call for it. And that doesn't have to look like anything to be a presence in my life. The more time I spend getting hung up on the appearance of my diety, the more distraction I put between myself and my spirituality.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:49PM
To top it all off, you refer to God as a "Her"
Interesting... God is all powerful but puny little humans get to boss him around and tell him he can't be trans if he wills it. I find this a common social pattern to declare their God as all powerful and then turn around and tie him down and limit him always coincidentally matching the limiters own beliefs. If your god is all powerful, why can you limit him to such narrow tiny weak little ranges? On the other hand, if the proposed god is not all powerful and is completely under the control and limitations and utter domination of some contemporary rich old men, why not ignore the wimp, and if you're ignoring the old men too, well...?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_of_God_in_Christianity [wikipedia.org]
I find it interesting that the more I research this the more likely God is a she or an it. The type that thinks the bible was originally written in modern american english is 100% certain their god is a he, but original texts seem to disagree.
When you factor in the legendary misogyny of later ancient, middle, and modern cultures, any evidence at all of their god not being a total 100% pure bro is staggering and would imply the truth is likely pretty far the other way. Given an extreme filter, if the output of the filter looks kinda girly, the input must look rather extreme, like... maybe a woman?
Lets just be honest here based on practical human behavior. Most dudes are pretty mellow on average, nut cases and roid rage aside, etc. If you really want to see a human going all "old testament" on someone or something, you are far better off finding a (angry) woman. Its probably an evolutionary adaptation for being small wimpy and often pregnant, once you get one fired up theres not much to do but get out of the blast radius, like an angry tasmanian devil... or like a momma bear protecting her cubs. If the old testament god did the bro equivalent of getting drunk and punching a dude in the face once and then making up and becoming besties again, like once, just because of all that beer, then I'd say thats evidence of stereotypical male behavior. But no the old testament fire and brimstone stuff reads like only a scorned woman on the warpath could act. You talked to another chick, I don't care if she was your waitress, you get a plague of locusts... I mean seriously, you're still not talking to me for three days because I left the toilet seat up? That's total female behavior, gonna scorch the earth no matter how long it takes and how bad it looks. Women, not men, behave like old testament god. I don't think it a stretch to claim that might imply old testament god is a girl.
(Score: 5, Funny) by isostatic on Wednesday June 17 2015, @08:03PM
The type that thinks the bible was originally written in modern american english is 100% certain their god is a he, but original texts seem to disagree.
I thought that the bible was written by Adam and George Washington as they sailed their ark with dinosaurs on 4000 years ago at the dawn of the American protectorship of the planet?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 17 2015, @08:45PM
Thats just what the illuminati want you to think.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday June 17 2015, @11:19PM
Blasphemy! Xenu had a part too...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @11:27PM
I was under the impression that Jehovah was a local tribal war god who was later adopted by the Israelites. I should have bookmarked my source on that, because now (of course) I can't find it...
(Score: 2) by VortexCortex on Wednesday June 17 2015, @06:50PM
To top it all off, you refer to God as a "Her" - whereas in the Bible, God is *Always* referred to as "Him" or "His".
Well, you're plainly wrong. First off, the English language Bible is an interpretation. Etymologically, in English he, him, his, and man are gender neutral terms. "Man" meaning human, the other masculine form lost their masculine qualifiers while the female forms retained their gendered significance. Thus those translations of the Bible are not referring to God as masculine, excepting of course Jesus being male.
Secondly, the modern Bible was formed slowly over the ages from what was once a polytheistic belief. Let us consider The Holy Trinity (presupposing we're not Benedictine): If we suppose "The Father" is male, and "The Son" is a child, then "The Holy Ghost" is.... what? What would make the most sense here? Perhaps The Holy Ghost is a Female to complete the holy family unit. Indeed, many Bible scholars agree there was a female Goddess among the desert nomads' pantheon. She was later absorbed into the The Holy Trinity.
Finally, Wisdom is personified as Female in the Bible. [google.com] But who is the Spirit of Wisdom? Isaiah 11:22: And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom... Yes, that would be The Holy Spirit AKA The Holy Ghost, which is the Spirit of Wisdom which is personified as female, having many female qualities such as nurturing, teaching, and greatly impassioned.
Alas, it seems to be the curse of atheists to know more of a religion than the majority of its believers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Pslytely Psycho on Thursday June 18 2015, @06:24AM
"Alas, it seems to be the curse of atheists to know more of a religion than the majority of its believers."
(Speaking anecdotally, as I have no hard facts to back this up.)
The majority of people I know who self-describe as atheist or agnostic, did not start out so. Nearly everyone I know in this category came to their beliefs (myself included) from actually studying the Bible, as apposed to 'biblical study groups' such as my religious wife attends who study only selected verses and simply self-censor anything unpleasant or contradictory by ignoring or not 'studying' them. Examples being Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and others which they conveniently ignore. These books I found horrifying, and the idea that you could pick and choose what to follow if it is all 'Gods word' confounded me. Not that you could follow all of it, as there are so many contradictions. (Love your neighbor, but kill him if he works on the wrong day or gets a haircut....)
Many (most?) of us became atheists because of actually studying the Bible.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 5, Informative) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2015, @02:31PM
the Pontiff of the Church Universal and Triumphant
The Church Universal and Triumphant [wikipedia.org] is a Montana-headquartered fundamentalist Christian sect which I gather claims to be a spiritual successor of Christian Science founder, Mary Baker Eddy. They have nothing to do with the Roman Catholic Church. According to Wikipedia, the Roman Catholic Church some considerable time back popularized [wikipedia.org] the phrase "Church Triumphant" as referencing to the faithful in Heaven. The "Church Militant" refers to those who reside on Earth. So at best, Pope Francis is the pontiff of a significant portion of the Church Militant.
climate-change deniers [...] Petro shills [...] anti-environmental conservative conspiracy theorists [...] God will forgive your Conservative asses [...] screwing up Her creation [...] quest for profit
It's good that we're going to approach this all scientific-like, you commie, Luddite bastard.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:20PM
Yeah, this should be tagged as "seriously misleading summary". I am going to guess intentionally so.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NoMaster on Wednesday June 17 2015, @11:19PM
I'm looking forward to the ability to moderate posts - not just comments - in a forthcoming version of rehash.
Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
(Score: 2) by NoMaster on Thursday June 18 2015, @12:34AM
Read the original submission [soylentnews.org]:
Your guess is correct.
Really, Eds, this sort of deliberate trolling belittles SoylentNews, and does nothing to promote intelligent discussion. As I said in a comment to a very similarly-styled post 6 months ago, "it's a pretty weak-sauce dumb non-story for SN - at best, it's trolling the theists; at worst, it's outright mocking them. Neither is a particularly mature attitude". That goes double when the poster tells you they're deliberately baiting the hook...
(No, I'm not a Catholic, Christian, or a theist. Not even an agnostic. I'm just not a militant anti-theist arsehole...)
Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday June 18 2015, @01:22AM
I am an anti-theist, but not militant about it, and I am still highly against the wording of the post and especially the original post. The poster might not think he was deliberately trolling, but I can't see this as anything else.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Touché) by Appalbarry on Friday June 19 2015, @12:10AM
Really, Eds, this sort of deliberate trolling belittles SoylentNews
I for one genuinely appreciate a well trolled submission.
Or at least the oh so earnest people who argue with it.
(Score: 1) by Alyssey on Wednesday June 17 2015, @04:02PM
I thought it had to do with a bad joke done with the Emberverse series, who have serious issues with the C.U.T.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday June 17 2015, @11:51PM
It's good that we're going to approach this all scientific-like, you commie, Luddite bastard.
Love you too, khallow! By the Way, I thought the Prophet cult went out of business after the apocalypse didn't happen and Elizabeth Claire passed.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2015, @11:58PM
Love you too, khallow! By the Way, I thought the Prophet cult went out of business after the apocalypse didn't happen and Elizabeth Claire passed.
The apocalypse business never ends. There's always a new date. For example, one can trace the roots of modern Seventh Day Adventists to a doomsayer from the early 19th century whose predictions (SPOILER ALERT) failed hard repeatedly.
(Score: 1) by darnkitten on Thursday June 18 2015, @12:36AM
Naw, there's still a few around, though they've spread out--even one or two families in my town, judging from the lit that gets donated to the library I run.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @02:50PM
Is he going to invoke Ex Cathedra on this topic? That would pretty much seal the deal for the church if the temps cycle down for a decade or two.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:47PM
Same AC. This could end up a two-fer. This AGW thing may end up discrediting both one of the largest religious institutions in the world along with many scientific ones in the eyes of the public.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @05:10PM
Discredit only in the minds of idiots who look at any day-to-day decline and scream "SEE! I TOLD YOU!!!" Look at the stock market. What is your expert analysis over the last 80 years or so? It's been going up. There are regions where it goes down for a year or so, but over the long haul, it has been going up. But that doesn't stop fuckwads from proclaiming cause/effect for every little up and down. I remember Rush Limbaugh blaming the typical daily decline in the stock market the day after Obama on the '08 election on some grandiose economic statement being sent by "Wall Street" on what they think of Obama. Same thing here. An unusual cold spell hits and the fucking idiots start spouting off like morons "Huh! Where's this SUPPOSED global warming? Just look outside!" Any fucking moron can take a bucket with a spout in it, and they can tell that if they are putting more water into the bucket than can flow out, that the bucket will overflow. Why don't you look at that and say, "we really can't say if the bucket will overflow despite the fact that "they" want to claim that the "science" of bucket filling is settled."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @05:38PM
Sure, is the numerator increasing or the denominator decreasing. In fact we know it is policy to constantly decrease the denominator. Bad example.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2015, @07:57PM
Look at the stock market. What is your expert analysis over the last 80 years or so? It's been going up.
I predict that the past won't change and that a whole century from now, the stock market will still have gone up over this 80 year period. The problem comes in when you start making predictions about things that are unknown rather than things that are known.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @09:26PM
Woah.
I assume that made sense in your head. But to everybody else living in their own heads, that is just some whacked out meaningless drivel. Are you tripping on some DMT today?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @09:49PM
There was some sloppy use of the word prediction, but it made sense to me...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2015, @10:05PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @10:10PM
> There's two obvious factors you ignore.
That's cute you think I'm disputing whatever meaning you've imbued to your ramblings.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2015, @11:52PM
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday June 17 2015, @08:12PM
This could end up a two-fer. This AGW thing may end up discrediting both . . .
So then there would be nothing we could rely on, but Fox News. Now the connection to Australia becomes clear! This is all about Murdoch!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:02PM
I thought mods didn't approve submissions with clear flamebait paragraphs such as this article's foot note.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:06PM
That is pretty flambaity....
If you want to end up with an echo chamber that is a very good way to go about it.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:11PM
And it doesn't help the side that's right when our position is presented in such a manner.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:14PM
Fuck pope and fuck "aristarchus". Who do they think they are, climate science phds or something? Hur-hur.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Bill Evans on Wednesday June 17 2015, @05:32PM
Well, the Pope was a chemist before he turned to the priesthood. So he at least understands science in general and the scientific method in general. True, he's not a "climate change" specialist, but ...
(Score: 0, Troll) by kaszz on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:30PM
Great now we can finally assemble those stakes with wood below for that "local warming prognosis". Just need some supply of heretic climate deniers but I heard there's a lot of them in certain groups. Those few upper case letter organizations have already prepared the inquisition. Otherwise there's always that Spanish tradition of "knock on the door at late night" and later confession. Because we know the truth!
One problem that remains is how to make these burning at the stakes carbon neutral? shall we whip the heretics to plant trees before feeling the heat? or would that just be cold? ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2015, @01:59AM
For the record, burning wood is carbon-neutral. You should really flex your brain on that. If you burn something that is part of the carbon cycle, then that is carbon neutral. If you burn something that is sequestered carbon, that is additing carbon to the cycle (like burning fossil fuels). If you bury carbon from the carbon cycle, that is called sequestration and it removed carbon.
So, planting trees, burning trees, is all carbon neutral activity. Burning people is also a carbon neutral activity, unless you start adding natural gas to the mixture. Using garbage heap methane, on the other hand, would be carbon neutral.
Burning coal, bogs, oil, gas or draining swamps and burning those, those are not carbon neutral activities.
This is not that difficult to understand. It's all about the carbon cycle. Learn it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @09:12PM
Any carbon that is trapped in wood is sequestered. It is not all released into the atmosphere immediately after the tree dies, burning is the only way to achieve that, and decomposition doesn't release all the carbon, nor does it release it quickly. Burning wood is no more carbon neutral than burning charcoal or even coal. The burning of plants which decompose quickly would be carbon neutral, but the carbon in wood can stay sequestered for centuries, millennia even. Forest fires occur naturally, yes, but the don't burn everything.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:37PM
What does netcraft have to say about the issue?
(Score: 5, Funny) by MrNemesis on Wednesday June 17 2015, @04:06PM
It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: Earth is dying.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Terran community when the Vatican confirmed that global temperature had risen yet again, now up to more than one degree per antipirate. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that earth has lost yet more polar ice, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Earth is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Farnsworth "Most Liveable Planet" test.
You don't need to be Al Gore to predict Earth's future. The hand writing is on the wall: life on Earth faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for humans because Earth is dying. Things are looking very bad for the world. As many of us are already aware, Earth continues to lose habitable land mass. Carbon credits flow like a river of blood.
The West is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its emission controls. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time humans Terry Pratchett and Leonard Nimoy only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Earth is dying.
All major surveys show that Earth has steadily risen in temperature. The world is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If humans are to survive at all it will be among NASA dilettante dabblers. The world continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Earth is dead.
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 5, Informative) by Immerman on Wednesday June 17 2015, @04:17PM
Well, the Pope has an estimated 1.2 billion self-identified followers (Roman Catholics), roughly 17% of the world's population. Many of whom take his statements far more seriously than a netcraft post. Regardless of your opinions of the religion or the man, if you want to actually work a change in the world that requires the cooperation of the masses he is probably the single most powerful advocate you could hope for.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @02:57PM
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: Meme knowledge is dying
One more crippled bombshell hit the already beleaguered Meme community when AC confirmed that meme mind share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all posters. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that memes have lost more mind share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Memes are collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Comment Poster comprehensive whooshing test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict meme knowledge's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Meme knowledge faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for meme knowledge because meme knowledge is dying. Things are looking very bad for meme knowledge. As many of us are already aware, Memes continue to lose mind share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
The Netcraft Meme is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core knowers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Netcraft meme developers Anonymous Coward and Anonymous Coward only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: The Netcraft meme is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Whoosh meme leader AC states that there are 7000 users of the Whoosh meme. How many users of Insensitive Clod are there? Let's see. The number of Whoosh versus Insensitive Clod posts on web forums is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Insensitive Clod users. RTFA posts on web forums are about half of the volume of Insensitive Clod posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of RTFA. A recent article put the Netcraft meme at about 80 percent of the meme market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Netcraft meme users. This is consistent with the number of Netcraft meme web forum posts.
Due to the troubles of Alzheimer's, abysmal memory and so on, the Netcraft meme went out of usage and was taken over by Year Of The Linux Desktop who promote another troubled meme. Now Year Of The Linux Desktop is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that meme knowledge has steadily declined in mind share. Meme knowledge is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If meme knowledge is to survive at all it will be among meme dilettante babblers. Meme knowledge continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save meme knowledge from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, meme knowledge is dead.
Fact: meme knowledge is dying
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday June 19 2015, @04:43PM
Any meme that is just wordplay/bad misquotes, etc. deserves to die. Memes with actual substance ("rape is bad", "copyright infringement is theft", "the Earth is round") tend to have a lot more staying power once they've managed to spread, regardless of your opinion of their validity.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @04:06PM
This seems unbelievable that the pope would finally use his power over the ignorant army of followers he has for good.
This is in my opinion the first and only time the catholic church has taken the side of reason and whats right. vs the usual what is best for maintaining control of the masses and increasing Vatican wealth
(Score: 1, Interesting) by idetuxs on Wednesday June 17 2015, @05:12PM
The last is exactly what the pope, and hence the church, is doing. They have to give in to keep their power. Not only on climate change but also as they did on those abuse cases. Coincidentally, that side is the side of reason, as is what most people think nowadays. What do you think most people will follow, a church that hides abuse and denies climate change, or a church that condemns abuse, recognizes the situation and finally accept the reality of our contribution to climate change?
Also, is not coincidental that after a lot of revolt and commotion about child abuse cases reaching the public news, they started the process of changing their angle about that.
Don't forget this, Pope Francis is a politician. Specifically a peronist (which means anything goes).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @07:48PM
history has shown they will follow either kind of church as long as they're taught at a young age that being lied to by people you trust is the same as any provable fact
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fritsd on Wednesday June 17 2015, @07:26PM
This is in my opinion the first and only time the catholic church has taken the side of reason and whats right.
Dunno, Dignitatis Humanae [wikipedia.org] (1965, on freedom of religion) and Gaudium et Spes [wikipedia.org] (also 2nd Vatican concilium 1965, the church in the modern world) were chart-smashing hits as well. (If there is a pop chart for encyclicals, which I actually doubt).
The 1960's and 70's were a totally different world from now, and not just the bell-bottom jeans and home-knitted sweaters either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @10:41PM
Maybe you should use your power to lift yourself above your historical ignorance.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Alfred on Wednesday June 17 2015, @04:13PM
1) advice from the best counselors
2) input from the greatest contemporary thinkers of the day
3) The latest modern research
4) any data that is available at their disposal
5) who knows what else best of the best advantages
and you get scientific assertations like....
Oh wait, that was a different pope. Good thing popes have a superior track record of scientific understanding to settle a scientific debate.
Well this time is different. </sarcasm>
(Score: 2, Interesting) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Wednesday June 17 2015, @04:52PM
There is no such thing as a vacuum
Which is rather ironically correct. A vacuum as understood in classical physics does not exist under modern physics. QM has vacuum fluctuations [wikipedia.org] even when the average energy is zero.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Wednesday June 17 2015, @05:30PM
Great, so professor Casimir [wikipedia.org] isn't going to be post-humously excommunicated.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Friday June 19 2015, @03:04PM
I assume you're sarcastically implying that the Casimir effect is due to a lack of room for vacuum fluctuations between the plates? That is how I remember the pop-science version of the effect so it could be. Keep in mind that particles are points. The photons could have a big family gathering in the nanometre-scale space where we measure the Casimir effect and still have plenty of room to spare so that one isn't going to fly. We must consider their wave nature for this problem.
The Casimir effect is due to quantisation of the electromagnetic field between the two plates.
The vacuum energy between two perfect (over the whole EM spectrum) mirrors is a divergent sum over all of the different allowed frequency photons. Similarly, there is a divergent sum representing the vacuum energy outside the plates (think of it as being between each mirror and another, distant mirror). The important thing to note here is that the sums cancel out to give 0 energy difference between inside and outside BUT the terms are different, because long wave photons are not permitted in the small space between the mirrors. (That is, it is the wavelengths which don't fit in the space, and only some wavelengths).
However, real mirrors are not perfect. They are transparent to any sufficiently high energy, i.e. short wavelength, high frequency quanta. This means that each space has its vacuum energy reduced relative to the perfect mirror case because of the high-frequency photons which aren't contained in that space. The high-frequency photons make up a larger portion of the small space's vacuum energy in the perfect-mirror case, therefore the energy of the vacuum is now lower in the small space in the real-world case. This energy difference is what powers the attraction between the plates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @05:48PM
"There is no such thing as a vacuum"
Yes, correct actually. There is *no thing* which you can call a vacuum, unless you mean an appliance. Show me a thing which is vacuum! This is exactly the kind of precision you should expect from a theologist or lawyer. We call space without anything in it a vacuum, but since there is nothing there, there is nothing to affix a label to.
Besides, as we all know, the quantum foam means that no, there isn't actually any truly empty volumetric space, anyways.
So whatever your level of pedantry... you picked an example that makes you look stupid.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2015, @08:13PM
but since there is nothing there, there is nothing to affix a label to
Which is what we call a self-defeating argument. Labels adhere to anything, even nothingness.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday June 17 2015, @08:30PM
Amusingly, centuries later we have re-defined vacuum to accommodate our new knowledge that "empty" space isn't actually empty after-all.
So the pope was right for the wrong reasons and the scientists were wrong for the right reasons. :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @03:02PM
Of course there's no such thing as a vacuum. You can approximate a vacuum, but you cannot ever reach it.
Note that a true vacuum would be of temperature zero (because at every non-zero temperature, space is filled with photon gas), and thermodynamics tells us that temperature zero cannot be reached.
And please show me an extended space with no matter inside. With very little matter, you'll find a lot. But without any matter? Not so much.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 17 2015, @04:40PM
It is a predicament for people who have used religion as armor against science. It has been effective for them to pound on the Bible and disparage eggheads. Now that the Pope, one of the prime symbols of their professed faith, has sided with science, their fallback position drops off to sects like the Westboro Baptist Church. Not the same.
There are very old strains of anti-Catholicism in America that they can and probably will fall back on now, but losing Rome costs them a lot of legitimacy.
This is a tectonic shift in the climate change debate.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @09:31PM
Over half the christians in the US are protestant. A significant number of them, probably at least a simple majority, consider catholics to literally be not christian. It is a crazy-ass thing when you first hear it, but it has to do with catholics having the pope (and the rest of the catholic church) getting in the middle of their "direct personal relationship with god." It just so happens that same simple majority are the ones most likely to deny the cause, or even existence, of climate change. So "losing rome" isn't really such a big deal to them.
(Score: 5, Funny) by aristarchus on Wednesday June 17 2015, @10:38PM
When one of these asks "Are you Christian, or Catholic", I usually respond, "Are you Christian, or a Protestant Heretic?" Then the usually accuse me of being a Papist, and maybe even a Manchurian Candidate from a Papist Sleeper Cell bent on replacing the King with a Catholic Monarch. I, in return, let on that I have many kegs of powder conveniently stored beneath Parliament. And then they say, "Remember Magdeberg!" Then I say. "You god-forsaken Pricillianists! And then they say. "But you're not even circumcised!" So it is not surprising we can't come to a consensus on climate change.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @04:24AM
Don't forget Nantes! 1685, you bastards, we remember!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @05:01PM
even after centuries of well-meaning reminders to follow the "rules", scientists have conclusively confirmed that "shit is getting hotter", though the watikan is vehemently denying that humans on gods creation are actually moving closer to hell and that one has to die first before getting a chance to "go to hell".
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Wednesday June 17 2015, @05:29PM
That was pretty much the worst summary yet posted, at least as long as I have been reading. Things have almost fallen to the level of hyper progressive zaniness that infests the other place, all that is left is for the purges to begin.
Despite the santorum splattered about,
Really? Is that the new level of political discourse, promoting some stupid googlebomb by Savage? Agree or disagree with Sen. Santorum but nobody deserves that sort of abuse. I really couldn't imagine similar treatment for a Democratic candidate in an article summary, even a novelty/joke one. Simply wouldn't be within the Overton Window of possibility. So unless you guys on the Blue Team really are declaring unrestricted warfare now, and are ready for the return fire, knock that crap off. Please remember that by this time next year you guys are going to be dutifully ranked behind the most unpleasant, corrupt and unqualified person to seek the office in living memory, probably not the best time to cast away all limits in political debate. Comments come from commenters, nobody can really police them other than modding them into oblivion but the staff can and should be held to slightly higher standards of manners.
So the humble submitter has to wonder, does this mean that climate-change deniers are now to be considered heretics
Since most here aren't Catholic, no. And I doubt any of the few who claim to be obey the Church anyway. I certainly do not and have not based my objections to the overly politicized crap being peddled as Science on anything a religious organization said in the past and don't plan to start. I'll continue to argue the issue as a political one and marginally a scientific question. The ground is much more stable there. When I stick to those arguments the conversation always devolves to Ad Hominum so I know I'm on the right track.
Besides, anyone paying attention wasn't shocked by this, the College of Cardinals was corrupted enough to elect a Liberation Theologist, we knew the days of Pope Paul's time when the Church was a useful ally of Liberty and Reason were finished. What I'm waiting for is to hear what these same people cackling with glee today say when the Pope restates his opposition to other issues near and dear to their political plans. Somehow I just know the words infallible or heretic won't be included in those stories.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by rts008 on Wednesday June 17 2015, @07:39PM
In reference to your argument, the current 'Clown-car Demolition Derby' that passes as a poor excuse for the Republican Primaries, is supposed to inspire more confidence? LOL!!
Jon Stewart thanking the Republican party for saving his joke writers so much work was spot on. And the Republicans have come out with guns drawn...aimed straight for their own feet. It will be entertaining to watch the clown show this time around.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday June 18 2015, @12:19AM
Eh? I'd say that this is what an open primary is supposed to look like. We have an embarrassment of riches; a lot of quality candidates stepped up this time along with a couple of.... well not so quality ones. Ahem! Trump. Cough.
Under no circumstance could I vote for Bush or Christie in a general election. Just no. Also couldn't vote for Huck, Trump or Graham but aren't actually worried about that eventuality. Probably have to put Kasich in this list too, but haven't 'officially' done that yet, might end up dropping him down to the next one.. need to hear him out first.
I could tolerate Rubio, Fiorina (barely and with hard liquor before.. thankfully she is probably only running for Veep), Perry (still haven't forgiven him for calling me a bigot; his being high on pain meds only buys so much ignoring of past performance), and if the universe glitched and nominated Carson I'd give him a go too. Carson is way too green for my taste, good man, smart as hell but POTUS really isn't entry level. He should run for House, Senate or a Statewide office. Liked what Pataki had to say the one time I have caught him, but will likely have to end up moving him to the NO list before it is over, NY Republicans can't help themselves.
Assuming no shocking plot twists I like both Cruz and Walker. Cruz is the pure play on no compromise Conservatism but Walker sits on his Throne of Skulls made from his enemies and I find I can forgive many digressions on specific policies in the face of such a fighting spirit. And assuming hell froze over and let em get the nomination I'd probably like Jindal and Santorum as candidates too. They can both check all the boxes, Jindal not as much on foreign policy though. At least I haven't heard my gov say too much on foreign policy.
Paul is, sadly, a Paul so every day I lean more to putting him into the no list but haven't yet. Alas. He showed such promise. The Mrs. even threw him a few dollars when he was running for the Senate... she too is disappointed now.
Know I am forgetting a couple, hard for even a political junkie to keep em all straight. Should be a fun couple of months while the list gets thinned down.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2015, @08:34AM
>That was pretty much the worst summary yet posted, at least as long as I have been reading.
Says UID 4844
>hyper progressive zaniness
Please, try to be more ernest, on no account show a sense of humour.
>nobody deserves that sort of abuse.
They do if they're a fucking idiot, and he is.
>I really couldn't imagine similar treatment for a Democratic candidate in an article summary
Really? Couldnt you?! GOSH!!! Well thats convinced me.
>So unless you guys on the Blue Team
Whats this Blue Team shit? The left has been red 4EVAH you fuckhead. You know "better red than dead"?
"We'll keep the red flag flyig here!"
>really are declaring unrestricted warfare now, and are ready for the return fire, knock that crap off.
Warfare? Really? Can you fight with that stick up your ass?
>Please remember that by this time next year you guys are going to be dutifully ranked behind the most unpleasant
Look you fucking idiot, just because someone critisises a conservative it doesnt folow they're a democrat.
You do get that right? You knob.
>staff can and should be held to slightly higher standards of manners.
Bullshit, the "staff" do a fucking amazing job, maye if you'd ever submitted a story you'd know
that? Huh? Huh? Yuh-think?
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Wednesday June 17 2015, @05:45PM
The discussion is over. Because the Catholic church as we know is always on the cutting edge of science.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Wednesday June 17 2015, @10:15PM
No, it just means that rock pool that the deniers are swimming in is getting ever smaller. Dried by the heat perhaps.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hartree on Wednesday June 17 2015, @05:57PM
The topic is certainly quite newsworthy (The Pope's position on Climate Change) and should have a submission so it can be discussed here, but this submission isn't about discussion or even rational argument. It's a polemic.
It happens to be on one side of the stereotypical left-right divide, but would be just as much a polemic if it were from the right wing view of things.
I hope the mods aren't so short of material that this type of article (from any part of the idea-space) becomes the norm.
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Wednesday June 17 2015, @06:23PM
I, for one, will wait for the official speach before forming an (educated) opinion on this topic.
Unlike all you ignorant pricks ;)
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fritsd on Wednesday June 17 2015, @06:57PM
Watch this website tomorrow: http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/it/encyclicals/index.html [vatican.va], something called "Laudato Si".
From aristarchus' summary:
So the humble submitter has to wonder, does this mean that climate-change deniers are now to be considered heretics, rather than just Petro shills or anti-environmental conservative conspiracy theorists?
Betteridge says no.
Maybe, you could now rephrase it to: climate-change deniers disagree with both the scientific evidence of climate change (but what's that mean to normal, non-intellectual people), and also with the current moral call-to-arms that we have a moral duty to keep our only habitat livable for our off-spring, be they catholics or non-catholics, rich 1st worlders or poor 3rd worlders ("stewardship").
Therefore, instead of labelling those people "heretics" and focussing attention on them: just stop listening to them.
They don't count, in the larger picture. They're not interested in keeping our only habitat livable. So screw 'em.
In every group there's always a few who don't play along well. Why do you want to listen to immoral people? Of course they have the right to free speech, but that doesn't mean you have to listen to their hypocritical crap.
The Heartland Institute? gimme a break.. God wants us to plant tobacco everywhere, and douse the soil in tetraethyllead. What could possibly go wrong?
We, the rest of the 7 billion, must take more responsibility, no matter how small our individual power is. Our planet is finite, and it's our only home. *If* you believe God created our world, it's probably safest to assume we're supposed to tend it, and not safest to assume that we'll get another one after we spoilt it, and then another one, etc. (modern version of Pascal's wager).
Let's do our best to transition during our lifetime and not leave the (infrastructure-and-energy-expensive!!!) big transition to renewable fuels to the next generation. Tax the externalities to impel sector-wide production technology changes. No company would change if that would disadvantage them relative to their competitors, so government influence is necessary.
We *have* large, fossil-fuel-powered functioning steel mills now. Let's use that to build wind pylons *now*, not in 30 years when it's all wind-powered and electricity becomes more expensive, including the electricity required to produce electricity generators. Yes, in 30 years Tata and Alcoa and British Steel and Rio Tinto probably need more batch-oriented processes than continuous, for use when electricity is cheapest. Yes, Rosneft and Shell and Gazprom might need to think about degassing the Laptev sea, converting it with the water gas shift reaction followed by a Fischer Tropsch factory, so we don't shoot ourselves in the head with the Clathrate Gun (CH4 >> CO2). All of those things can be done. We are not powerless, we are a global technological civilization. Let's try to keep it working thru this century.
There were beautiful discussions on the practicalities on the now-semi-defunct theoildrum.com [theoildrum.com] website. The archived discussions can still be read.
Thank you. This was one of my better rants, IMHO. Was I as good as mr. Santorum??
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @07:45PM
Since when does Betteride's Law of Headlines apply to something that's not a headline?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @03:26PM
Let's use that to build wind pylons *now*
So you are saying we need to construct additional pylons?
(Score: 3, Informative) by VortexCortex on Wednesday June 17 2015, @08:34PM
Considering that man made global warming is frequently used among elites (e.g., Bilderberg group, Bohemian Grove attendees [wikipedia.org], etc.), to excuse heinous agendas in order to "save the planet", and considering the Vatican's part in globalist agendas, this doesn't surprise me a bit. You need the Vatican's support if you really want to push forth agenda driven pseudo intellectual propaganda as part of your plan for a new world order, A.K.A. Novus Ordo Seclorum. [youtube.com] The whole world has to get on the train and agree that all countries must give up a bit of their sovereignty (a little at a time, until no country is sovereign), this is done by global agendas promoting world wide legislation such as those which will supposedly curtail Anthropogenic Global Warming. From a propaganda standpoint the media is conquered, as are institutions of education, one of the last remaining influential and borderless institutions was organized religion, but as TFA demonstrates religion too is been co-opted.
From a purely religious standpoint, to integrate newfound evidence with one's beliefs, the the Vatican need not endorse AGW, or other hypotheses: The Pope merely need endorse science as a valid tool to examine God's creation with... This goes beyond that into the realm of propaganda. Not only are ordinary skeptics now "deniers" or "shills", and those of the military being told it is dereliction of duty to questioning the degree of man made climate change, those of the Catholic faith (a significant portion of voters) are now pressured into blind acceptance.
I don't doubt that Climate Change is happening, or that lifeforms can affect the entire world (hello, O-zone layer), but I'm cautious about the politicization and sensationalizing of science to further agendas through scaremongering; Especially I question the extreme means that are eventually proposed to solve any crisis -- be it a manufactured crisis or not. "Never let a good crisis go to waste", is the battle cry of politicians. Those that instantly label skeptics as oil industry shills should consider the flip side of the coin: Who stands to benefit from AGW? AGW supporters can help to line the pockets of energy companies with subsidies for "clean energy", or with scams like the pointless Carbon Credits market. I'm not saying I don't want new tech that harnesses wind, water and sun... but I find it incredibly odd that Nuclear Energy is quite often off the table considering it's a far cleaner energy all things considered (esp. batteries), and can compliment and stabilize other clean energy productions; The real issue is that nuclear energy is heavily regulated and far more costly to expand into, so what's pushed for by AGW propaganda is primarily the other "clean energy solutions" that existing energy companies can easily expand into to make more money, esp. by receiving large government pork handouts for doing little or nothing to adopt alternative energies. See also: Scaremongering after the Fukushima earthquake, and the extreme "elimination of all nuclear" proposed -- what will take the place of nuclear power? Exactly.
IMO, the most worrisome component of the Man Made Climate Change agenda will be setting precedents via enacting Global Laws. If the TPP is anything to go by I think we should be very wary of global legislation. Given even an overview of history one should become prepared to level healthy skepticism at anything with such wide reaching support, esp. that which is "good for us" or "for the good of all" (AKA, "for our own good") -- Not merely accept it as groupthink or because a religious figurehead says to. Having seen the corresponding "too many people" depopulation propaganda, and considering that the Vatican would be against reproduction regulations, my friends and I are taking bets on when a "Final Solution" for Climate Change will be proposed...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2015, @04:39AM
Whether you agree or disagree with Mr. Santorum, this behavior of conflating his name with something else is juvenile. The submitter certainly couldn't focus on simple facts to present an interesting article and the SN editor apparently wanted to support the submitter's shameful behavior.
Tell me why SN is a quality news site that is head-and-shoulders above Slashdot? You're claims for being better are simply not credible - I can't imagine why I, or anyone, contributed to such garbage reporting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @12:05AM
> Whether you agree or disagree with Mr. Santorum, this behavior of conflating his name with something else is juvenile.
No, it is something he earned. It wouldn't be such an enduring meme - well over a decade old now - if it were only about juvenile name-calling it wouldn't have lasted so long. What you can take away from its longevity is that the whole incident characterizes his worldview.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @12:28AM
Wait, there's a Mr. Santorum? I feel sorry for that guy! Thats worse than being named I. C. Weiners or Mike Hunt.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Thursday June 18 2015, @08:25AM
No, because if they were, they would have to be burned at the stake, producing greenhouse gases, in violation of the encyclical.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2015, @09:09AM
Well there you are then. The same guy who claims to be the official representative of god on earth, though his bible doesn't support that, now also says that human caused global warming is real. I'll let you all think about that for a bit.
Some could even say that this announcement is just more proof that the Vatican is under the control of the Illuminati and as such must support their global warming agenda for control.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Rich on Thursday June 18 2015, @11:54AM
I've just last week discussed the upcoming encyclical with a PhD student in catholic theology. On the topic itself, she's done a paper on the always-quoted Genesis stuff before, where she sums up the (rather differing) opinions of scholars about the original words used in the hebrew and greek texts. This alone leaves the whole issue wide open to (opportunistic...) interpretation.
On a funnier note, she just sent me a link to this Hollywood-style trailer about Pope Francis and the coming encyclical:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76BtP1GInlc [youtube.com]
Enjoy!
(Score: 1) by darnkitten on Friday June 19 2015, @03:36AM
Link or it didn't happen...
-
Seriously, link--I'd like to read it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Rich on Friday June 19 2015, @09:55AM
I couldn't find the paper online, it's been done for the University of Vienna in 2011 and called "Gottebenbildlichkeit und Herrschaftsauftrag". The scholars referenced are Claus Westermann, Norbert Lohfink, Bernd Janowski, Walter Groß, Jakob Wöhrle, and Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger. If you're into that stuff, you'll probably find the original sources in context with "Gen 1,26-28" :)
I can't even copy/paste the hebrew as Unicode; the words in question copy to hdr/vbk (to old greek "arcein") and ~lc (to old greek "katakurieuein"). The second one means "statue" (this is in the context of images of god), and the first is the one relevant in our context and can mean anything from "rule" to "subordinate (a conquered tribe)" to "trample (the grapes)", if I got that right.
(Score: 1) by Murdoc on Saturday June 20 2015, @03:00PM
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2015, @11:49PM
Any comments on this definition? Not even whether it is true, but whether that is a good definition.
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Friday June 19 2015, @02:21AM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @03:08AM
What would it be for Venus?
(Score: 3, Informative) by stormwyrm on Friday June 19 2015, @03:48AM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @04:36AM
So the ratio between the two "no greenhouse temperatures" at the surface would be ~1.176 correct? I'm using 300/255 (in Kelvins)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @04:46AM
I'm getting at this:
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=7856&cid=194580#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
I think you guys/girls are missing something big. Most likely there is an equilibrium that is not considered.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2015, @07:37AM
Second time no response on this site. This is consistent with everywhere else.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday June 18 2015, @11:53PM
Thanks, fritsd, (and Brother Editor janrinok) for the update! But you do realize you are asking us all to RTFE (read the fine encyclical)? Probably a good idea, but it will really cut down on the santorum and Illuminati comments! I personally really like the props to St. Francis of Assisi in the first chapter.
And the video Rich linked is hilarious!
On a funnier note, she just sent me a link to this Hollywood-style trailer about Pope Francis and the coming encyclical:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76BtP1GInlc [youtube.com] [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RedBear on Friday June 19 2015, @02:22AM
EDITORS:
Please don't update articles and then have people commenting on the updated "news". That really isn't an appropriate paradigm for a site like this. Most of the new comments will be at the bottom of the page, and without carefully examining the dates/times of each posted comment it is difficult to know who is posting before or after the "update". On a site like this you run the risk of making all the initial posts seem incorrect, irrelevant, misinformed or out of context. It's like that trolling trick where you post a horrible comment to get people to froth at the mouth and then go back and edit your comment to look innocent to make the people responding to you look like they are the trolls.
If you want people to comment on an updated form of a bit of news, just post a new article, and maybe link to the previous article for context. Please. Don't do updates. It just doesn't work right in this commenting format.
Just... no. Really. Don't. Pretty please, with sugar on top. Thank you.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @02:43AM
This approach is no good. Create a new entry, with a link to the old one.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Friday June 19 2015, @02:53AM
I skimmed through Francis's encyclical and in some ways it reminds me of the Unibomber Manifesto. However, the Pope is not an insane but brilliant madman, unlike the Unibomber. And both documents have something important to say about the evils of the modern world.
Having said that, the Pope's theology is correct in my view, although I disagree with his views on cap-and-trade as stated in the encyclical.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Friday June 19 2015, @04:20PM
cap-and-trade seems to be an attempted economic solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. the right is always pushing for less governmental intervention and more economic-type solutions (eg, relying on private sector) rather than simply using taxation as a tool to reduce harmful actions, so they should be supporting it, or suggesting other economic-type solutions, yet they're the ones most against it, usually because "Its just a scam to make Al Gore rich!". well of course somebody is going to get rich from it, thats how capitalism works! so is that really the main problem with cap-and-trade, "I didn't think of it first, so fuck you"? even if its not a perfect solution, nobody is suggesting anything better (sweeping it under the rug and letting our children and grandchildren deal with it is not a solution), and about the only other option is taxation. would the right be creaming in their pants over cap-and-trade if the Koch brothers were behind it up instead of Gore? i've yet to see a criticism of cap-and-trade that isn't just an ad hominem referencing Gore.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Friday June 19 2015, @07:49PM
As I see it, cap and trade is a way to use market forces to reduce a form of pollution by making it more profitable to pollute less. However, I do see the Pope's point. Cap and trade only delays the inevitable.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Friday June 19 2015, @08:45PM
i agree that its not a permanent or even a good solution, but at least its something, as far as i know there have been no other suggestions except taxation and continuing the status quo, and its at least a step in the right direction that'll help buy time to allow businesses to create and implement policies, methods, and technologies which reduce and/or eliminate CO2 emissions. if its cheaper to reduce CO2 emissions, that should push companies to reduce or eliminate them, and its a method that relies entirely on the private sector (not taxation-based), so i can't understand why right so readily attacks it (nor can i understand why they always push the strawman that anyone in who believes in AGW is pushing for cap-and-trade; you don't need to know anything about a viewpoint or belief to know if its valid, just look at the arguments used to support it - valid ones are supported by logic and reason, while invalid ones are supported by sophistry and violence).
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday June 19 2015, @04:58AM
An interesting comment elsewhere (sorry it's secondhand, I can't get at the original; effing Disqus)
http://judithcurry.com/2015/06/18/deforestation-in-the-uk/#comment-711297 [judithcurry.com]
From the comments thread: ithakavi wrote “Sorry, but I’ll take a pass on this one. The encyclical is 189 pages long, and Francis didn’t write it. Perhaps JPII or BXVI could write on a subject with intellectual depth for 189 pages, but not Francis. This encyclical was written by a committee headed by Peter Cardinal Turkson, whose expertise in both physics and economics is approximately zero. Doing as he suggests (erecting an enormous unelected irresponsible corrupt international agency to forcibly restructure global industrial policy) will result in the starvation of tens if not hundreds of millions of people in the Third World. Francis has once again made a fool of himself and embarrassed the faithful.”
http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-06-17-pope-francis-enters-climate-change-maelstrom/ [dailymaverick.co.za]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @06:28AM
Judith Miller? Yes, this sounds totally credible. (Yeah, Curry, that's better. Who is this? And it is a comment by someone else on this site? Chain of personal responsibility, AC. ) On the one hand, they cannot count. That is always a bad sign. On the second, Francis could not have written it because he is "dumb", as in less intelligent that Pope Ratz who could not even go on to die in office? Just because you were head of the Office of the Inquisition does not mean you are smart. In fact, well, we'll just let that sink in for a bit. Written by committee? OMG? What do you think most world leaders do? Spend all their time writing letters and speeches? Next you will be telling us that Pope Francis was using a Teleprompter! And establishing a corrupt global authority? I thought that was what TPP was for! No, this has no cred, it is BS, Right wing driveling santorum of the lowest quality, from someone who obviously has not, as suggested, actually read the damn encyclical. Try again, conservative American "Catholic"!
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Friday June 19 2015, @07:36AM
The encyclical is 189 pages long,
That's odd..
the one that I've been reading is 82 pages PDF English translation:
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.pdf [vatican.va]
I'm now about to start on chapter 4 but it's heavy going, and today Midsommar [youtube.com] is priority.
Thanks aristarchus and janrinok, I see it was actually useful to update the article with the proper link :-) people are more likely to read 82 pages than 189 pages.
Maybe that "189 pages" thing was the draft version or something. Italian is not twice as wordy as English.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday June 19 2015, @12:52PM
Probably depends on the font size each has it set to. If I made it a comfortable size for old eyes to read in hardcopy, it might be 400 pages!
As a more accurate measure, I checked it in a word processer, and it's about 43,000 words long. That's about half of an average paperback novel.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @03:39PM
I agree, 189 is odd. Obviously the encyclical contains at least one sheet of paper that is printed on only on one side.
SCNR
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Friday June 19 2015, @08:32AM
The original submission in outrageously flamebait, and it already did generate so much flame, it's ridiculous.
Wouldn't it be better to make a new submission with proper discussion about this? Like a followup, not an update.
Also, there are lots of news sources that are commenting on the actual news (not petty rumors). I really appreciate the step to put in the actual encyclical. Thanks for that,
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday June 19 2015, @09:46AM
No, it was not flamebait, it was an attempt to draw out the climate-deniers once again, so the drones would be sure to have the correct addresses. And there has not even been that much flaming! Or snowballing, as the case may be on the floor of the US House of Representatives. Do you imagine there could be a "proper debate" on this issue, when the deniers are impervious to rational argument, evidence, or impact of clue sticks? Santorum is our poster boy here, he disagrees with the Pope. Not a very good Catholic, then. I have no problem with that, but when 97% of scientists, and the head of your religion say you are wrong, it takes a special kind of crazy to stand by your own very idiotic opinion. But he is not alone! Pat Buchanan, JEB bush, Newt Gingrinch, five of the Supreme Court Justices, I imagine Rubio (but not Cruz, either Ted or Tom, they belong to crazy religious cults), all these conservative Americans are now lapsed Catholics. I hope this makes protestant, agnostic, atheist, or Hindu (Hi, Jindal!) deniers feel smugly superior. They are just as wrong, however, still.
Yes, it is good to have a link to the encyclical itself, and yes it might have been better to have a new submission rather than this update. But I was not going to submit it, were you? And "petty rumours"? Pray tell, what "'petty rumours" do you refer to? The original post dealt with very authentic and substantial leaks, not rumours at all. Geez, there is no pleasing some people. You put out obvious flamebait and they go for it hook line and troll sinker, and then they complain about how it was not up to "standards"! So let me repeat: Anthropogenic Global Warming is real, it is happening, and if we do not take concerted global action soon, your stock portfolio will be worth nothing, as will all those Kruggerrands you have hidden in the backyard. 97% of scientists say so, I say so, the Pope says so! There is no debate. No, you do not get an opinion on this, since you are incapable not only of rational thought, but of ethical reasoning as well. And you think "news sources" will have any better level of discussion than what we have right here on SoylentNews? I find your lack of faith disturbing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @03:20PM
That's what they said about Ignaz Semmelweis. He got thrown in an insane asylum where he got water boarded and beaten to death (as was the 'best medical practices' at the time) because he wouldn't stop telling doctors that if they would just wash their hands many fewer patients would die.
The crowd consensus can be dead wrong too. Do you have any evidence that when the individual disagrees with the majority, more often the majority turns out to be correct?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @04:31PM
Because something that happened hundreds of years ago, being asserted with exactly zero evidence, physical, published, or otherwise, is exactly the same thing happening today. Not a false analogy at all, its an exact match to today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @04:59PM
I'll reiterate:
Do you have any evidence that when the individual disagrees with the majority, more often the majority turns out to be correct?
I would guess exactly the opposite, but would not present this guess as fact like you do. I'd guess that, in all cases where there is a status quo, scientific progress can occur only by those who question it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @08:59PM
What people think has nothing to do with the facts. The evidence overwhelmingly shows that humans are causing the world to heat up due to all the CO2 we're dumping into the atmosphere. Those are the facts, facts and evidence don't depend on who "agrees" with them and whether or not they're the majority. In your cited example of Ignaz Semmelweis, he had no evidence and no scientific explanation for why washing one's hands would reduce mortality, so he was rightly mocked and ignored. Facts and evidence dictate what should be believed, rather than having one's mind already decided at the start and then cherrypicking evidence to support it. If you have no evidence to support your claim, you should not expect anyone to believe you, and if you believe something contrary to the evidence, you should expect to be called out for being delusional.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @10:30PM
You appear to be uninformed. He did have evidence:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis [wikipedia.org]
His evidence was no worse than that for vaccines (vaccine licensed this year then reported cases dropped!) which is commonly accepted.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday June 20 2015, @08:50AM
There is a certain irony, not missed by the longer term and more highly educated Soylentils, to a reiteration by an Anonymous Coward. Is this your first time re-iterating, or have you engaged in this activity before? Well, we really do not want to know. But as to the substance of your "reiteration".
Do you have any evidence that when the individual disagrees with the majority, more often the majority turns out to be correct?
Oh, dear! Could it be that the entire thesis of anthropogenic global warming is just group think run amok? Could it be "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people"? Well, yes, maybe. But it is not that the majority do not think so that makes it not. Pay close attention here, since obviously you are a bear of little brains. The minority could be correct. That is almost always true. Until, of course, the matter is settled. Could they still be right, even after the matter is settled? Yes, that is certainly possible, but the degree of possibility is much reduced. OK, here is what I think is your problem: just because an opinion is a minority opinion, that does not necessarily mean it is wrong. Fair enough. However, it does, usually, mean that it is probably wrong.
What would be the difference here? Oh, yeah, not opinion, but evidence! Do you have any idea how many minority opinions are out there? One I have heard is the the whole Global Warming thing is being promoted by carbon traders! Hmm, plausible. Any evidence? Others, however, think it is a conspiracy of Americans who were screwed by the Oil Companies with artificial $4 gasoline during the Bush Administration. That could be. Some think the earth is just getting closer to the sun. Some think the earth is the center of the universe http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/09/14/geocentrism-seriously/ [discovermagazine.com]. And some think that they are the absolute reincarnation of the God Ra!! You may be wondering what I am getting at, if you are not one of the wackos referenced above. Here it is: the minority views always, and let me reiterate, always, outnumber the majority view. So, statistically, the likehood of any one of them being correct is diluted to the point of homeopathy. Suck on it.
Now, the missing part of your argument is where the minority view does in fact have actual evidence that it's position is correct. Well, why didn't you say so? So, the climate change deniers can show that climate change is not occurring, . . . by suggesting . . . that maybe . . . there are other explanations. Well, thank you for your input. It certainly was enlightening. Could I interest you in some crystals that would show your aura, and help you stop Anthropogenic Global Warming and herpes?
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Friday June 19 2015, @01:55PM
In many paragraphs Pope Francis refers to the need to solve extreme poverty, I wonder: did any one else than me also think of the aereal photo that was published, some years ago, of the border line between the Dominican Republic (enviro-friendly dictatorship?) and Haïti (failed state)?
The Haïtians are poor. They burned down their forests for charcoal. Not much you can do, people gotta eat, and it's difficult to convince a large population to switch to only eating raw food.
Poor people are not especially environment-friendly; in poor areas in cities people recycle less, IMHO. (Of course there's the extreme opposite of slums in India where whole groups of people make a living recycling everything by living *on* the garbage dump)