Posts by Paul Litterick
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I like the way you're thinking, David; all you need to do is factor in some private sector involvement and we could promote this to National as a corrections policy.
While we are on the subject of removing body parts, I was not surprised that all the namby-pamby liberal do-gooders were shocked and horrified when Barzan Ibrahim lost his head when they hanged him. The liberal media talked about a botched execution. But it did the job, didn't it? He went in alive and came out dead.
Besides, losing his head probably taught him a lesson that a normal hanging would not. I think you should look into the stats and see how many decapitees are clogging up our prisons, taking Sociology degrees, and living the life of Riley at the expense of hard-working Kiwi battlers.
I think you will find there are none.
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Russell: great post.
It's true that bin Laden's motives are a reaction to his perceived threat of Western liberal values. So to that extent liberals are "to blame".
So why doesn't Bin Laden say that? The only Americans to whom he objected before 9/11 were the US troops in Saudi Arabia. And why does he keep talking about "crusaders?" If he is worried about gay rights activists and feminists, he is keeping very quiet about it. What he does talk about is American military, economic and political power in the Middle East.
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What did that White House aide say about people who live in the reality-based community?
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Russell, thanks for the kudos.
Hamboy, you are the first to tell me about a posting problem, but then I suppose if you can't comment then I wouldn't know about it. I can't see any cause but everything has been a bit strange since the new version of Blogger went out of Beta.
I wrote a letter of complaint to Urban Dictonary at their feedback page. You can select the definitions that bother you. Go on, you know you want to.
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I find myself feeling sympathy for Yamis, whose cat died. I do not know Yamis and I never knew the cat but the knowledge of another's suffering saddens me.
Such feelings are pretty fundamental to us humans and I think we should recognise them more. As Yamis says, we do not need to explain our feelings but those that relate to others should be given more precedence than those about spirituality etc. Spiritual feelings are mostly about oneself; feelings for others are our common bond.
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Agreed. Christianity also has an evangelism gene built in - Christians are told to spread the word (by Paul, mostly).
In the mythical story of the captivity in Egypt (for which there is absolutely no documentary or archaeological evidence, incidentally) Pharoah wants to be lenient to the Isreaelites, but God hardens his heart. Once again, God is Jew-bashing. But he is still their God and nobody else's.
Christianity escaped the confines of being a Jewish sect and spread throughout the Roman world, among the Gentiles. We are still living with the consequences.
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The "we should be nice to each other" aspect of the New Testament is a reflection of Greek influence, of Stoicism. That is why it is radical. The God of the Old Testament is the Israelites' own god, who fights their battles but punishes them when they let him down (which is often). He is also, as Rob Hosking observes, very much present, at least in the earlier Books, and fallible. The New Testament God is distant, but also non-partisan; you did not have to be Jewish to believe in him, which is one reason why Christianity became so successful.
Ben, I agree with you about scientists and philosophers of Science. When scientists make statements about the big questions outside Science, they get a lot of attention but really have no more to say than the rest of us. However, the media is always hungry for opinions about Science and Religion.
Philosophers of Science construct theories such as falsibility and pardigm shifts but scientists seem to just get on with the business of doing science, which seems to be a far more creative process than the philosophers will admit. Of course, if the scientists had listened to David Hume, they would not bother doing science, since you cannot prove causality.
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...both science and religion are just frameworks to be treated with skepticism at all times.
Most religions have shown themselves to be capricious and cruel at times. And most scientific theories end up debunked.
Scientific theories are debunked by other, more convincing scientific theories, which may be debunked in their turn. Science does not claim to have all the answers. It is skeptical about itself. All scientific theories are provisional.
Religions on the other hand, provide answers with certainty to questions that properly are unanswerable: where do we come from, where are we going and how should we live. The trouble with these 'big' questions is that they don't have answers, so people have invented religions to provide the certainty they desire.
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At school we were taught that the Jewish captivity in Egypt was an historical fact but there is no archaeological or documentary evidence to support it. It appears to have been invented.
Fundamentalist Christians are determined to find archaeological evidence to support their claims that the Bible is literally and entirely true. In doing so, they do damage to archaeology. If you google for research in this area, you are more likely to find fundamentalist websites that distort the facts than genuine academic research.
There is a parallel debate among Jews.The leading Archaeologist in this field is Professor Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University who says:
In some subjects, and with regard to some eras, local finds are unambiguous and make clear that the biblical account does not comport with the reality. In other subjects, everything is open to interpretation.
The leading edge of the dispute today is the question whether the United Monarchy of David and Solomon was a large and glorious kingdom. Confrontation with the archaeological finds raises argument whether one should read the Bible literally. When all is said and done, the biblical text is highly ideological, and so one must learn to read between the lines.
Most people just don't want to hear all this and are not comfortable with it. For scholars the matters are clear enough, and they know where there is, and is not, agreement, but they cannot compel the public to listen. By and large modern research is respectful of religious faith and has no wish to compel anyone to change his or hers; for that reason they have not forced anyone to pay attention to our discoveries. Today more than 90% of scholars agree that there was no Exodus from Egypt, 80% feel that that the Conquest of the Land did not take place as described in the Bible, and about 50% agree that there was no powerful United Monarchy.
Professor Finkelstein's comments can be found at the end of this paper, which is worth reading.
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I love how middle-class people talk about erosion of civil rights whenever the Government restricts any of their pleasures, but talk about necessary public health measures whenever the simple pleasures of the poor (fags, booze, fatty foods) are restricted.
The reason why behavoural tests for drugs are being introduced is that there are no roadside equivalents of alcohol tests at present. The reason why tests are needed is that there are too many stoners on the road. Being stoned makes them a danger to other road users.