Aelwydd
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Posts posted by Aelwydd
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No. He does it to no one else.
Ladies I don't WANT anyone to be able to just walk up and into my house. What is the point of having a German shepherd living out in a rural location?
I want people to stay in their car. And they do.
We've been here for a year. He does not cross the boundary.
My ds was recently attacked and bitten by a GSD, and this dog had on a shock collar. Like you, his owners specifically wanted a dog that would provide protection and a deterent to potential incursion or invasion by individuals intending harm.
The problem is, discerning who is safe and who is a threat is a complex and difficult process for an animal. Even humans frequently misjudge or misunderstand other humans' character and intent. That is why if you expect your dog to know who and when to attack, you are placing a lot of expectations that are not really reasonable. Dogs judge threats differently than humans do.
My ds is the fifth or sixth person who's been bitten by this dog. He is the third child. All previous bites were extended family members and one friend, who were in the home visiting.
Yet, when his owner staged a mock break in to test this same dog's willingness to attack a home invader, he cowered and ran away.
If you are the dog's parent and pack leader, you are the one tasked to defend the pack, not the dog. And leaving such a responsibility to a dog means you open yourself up to liabity if the dog makes a mistake.
I would treat the dog's attack on the mail person's vehicle as an indicator this dog does not always know how to discern a dangerous individual from a benign individual, and take steps to curb all aggressive behaviour.
Otherwise, sooner or later your dog will bite someone, and what happened today along with your attempts to divert delivery persons away from your property will be regarded as a known history of the dog to be dangerous. And you will liable.
I'm sorry if this sounds harsh. But my child suffered terror and physical injury due to the inability of humans to grasp the understanding that dogs assess threats differently.
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There are many things people don't agree with or believe in whether they do or do not have experience with it.
I've never cheated on my husband, but I still view adultery as wrong too. .
The presumption that knowing someone means people would change their opinion to agree with this is also in error.
Orignally, you rejected Moxie's statement that you were basing your opinions of transgendered individuals as derived from religious beliefs.
Now, you are not discussing the topic in terms of mental illness or mental health, but moral terms of "right" or "wrong."
Reading both posts, I'm left with thinking you either do not derive your sense of morality from your religion (which seems to contradict what I have read in your many posts regarding your Catholic faith).
Or, you were being disengenuous in your dismissive response to Moxie.
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This is what I was thinking. Years ago, coverage was a big complaint, but (at least in this part of the country), I don't hear much complaining about dead zones or dropped calls.
That said, I have heard for years about the virtues of the verizon monoploy, which makes their coverage very reliable. Still...hate verizon. Don't expect it to be a serious problem here with any carroer.
In most metro areas, you're going to have good signal. I read a recent report that showed T-Mobile and Verizon and AT&T were were basically neck and neck in the big cities for things like 4G download speeds.
It really all depends on how close you are to a particular carrier's cell tower, do you have line of sight, and how many people are using that tower and so forth. These things affect your signal strength.
So, if you are not in a good signal area for whatever carrier you use, the type of device can heavily impact whether you are able to get good calls, or whether you are constantly having dropped calls, static, screech, and just generally poor audio quality. If the device is really substandard, it can have these issues even in good coverage.
In rural areas, where signal is much more variable, antenna issues are just that much worse.
If you are going to get an iPhone, I wouldn't buy it unless I had a guarantee I could return it and either get my money back or get a different model device within a certain amount of time. Then, I would test that thing everywhere and constantly, both with and without a case.
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All carriers have areas where they have good coverage and areas of weak coverage. Phones are not at all equal in their ability to pick up and maintain signal in less than strong signal. IME, Apple devices have an issue with poor quality antennas, so that if these devices are in less than great signal, they drop calls or can't pick up signal at all.Isn't coverage more of a carrier problem than an equipment problem?
For example, my sister has an iPhone 4S. She used to live in an area with poor signal. She could only make calls from one room in her home.
Whereas my phone, an LG G2, could make calls in any part of her home. We both got 1 to 2 bars signal, but her phone was mostly useless.
Samsung has some phones with crappy antennas, too. If you live in an area with a good coverage, and rarely go anywhere, then get whatever pretty phone you like.
For me, actual functionality of the phone to make and receive calls in all kinds of signal strength is more important. If you do research on this issue, you'll find there is a definite trend of some manufacturers to go cheap on antenna quality and placement in their phones.
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If you live in anything but excellent coverage, do not buy an iPhone. That's all I got to say about that.
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The question is, what is good and evil if those things have no intrinsic or metaphysical reality? Clearly, the material world alone, if we look to it to teach what we might call morality, is going to give us something that most would not regard as moral.
Does it matter if you and I, or even many people, agree on what we think good and evil are? Does that make it true? can we really look on people or groups of people who disagree as being somehow wrong or sub-human, or immoral? Why should my feelings about value - peace or kindness or fairness - outweigh those of any other person or group? Something that has its origins in me is no more true or valuble than what has its origins in someone else.
Theists of various kinds - and I am being quite broad here and looking at those who have personal or impersonal ideas about God or even pantheists and such - think morality is real because it is fundementaly part of the fabric of reality. Moral principles grow out of metaphysical facts - that is part of what it means to talk about God, or the Good if you want to use an impersonal word. What is the underlying nature of reality and how is that instantiated in right behavior?
I actually posed the question earlier in the thread, what about those of us who do not hold to a metaphysical idea of "good" and "evil." Like Rosie, I tend to think of human behavior in terms of healthy versus unhealthy, social versus anti-social, balanced versus unbalanced, etc.
For example, the crimes I mentioned earlier being committed by Islamic and Christian fundamentalists in the Middle East and in Africa -- when I think of these heinous activities, I do not think in terms of "They are evil." I do not think they are motivated by metaphysical "darkness" or evil. I think they are motivated by a combination of regressive social influences, unfettered base hostility and aggression, animalistic drives to fight others over resources, etc. Of course, these actions are given sanction by the larger community using metaphysical morality as the underlying reason for why they are doing these things.
By the same token, other opposing communities condemn them and appeal to the same authority -- it's evil, it's morally wrong, it's an offense to God and the heavens for them to kill, rape, torture, and commit endless other war crimes.
To me, it's like 15 different groups tell me they all believe that the animal, the unicorn, exists. But, one group says unicorns are just glorified goats with a single horn. Another says unicorns are 6 - legged creatures that breathe fire. Still another says unicorns are horse like creatures, with horns, but are winged and completely elusive. Another group says unicorns have no form at all, and it's a sin to imagine what one looks like. And so on.
That is what "objective morality" looks like to me. Supposedly, because so many people claim it exists, it must therefore be real. But, when one attempts to determine what its shape and form and characteristics are, there is no universal definition. It's amorphous.
I believe that theists and atheists are actually dealing with exactly the same problem. Both are trying to define something -- what is morality, what does it look like-- but one group claims to know what it is based upon spiritual/ supernatural/ metaphysical evidence that cannot be examined or tested by human senses.
The other group claims to base morality upon human nature -- which although it is observable -- is still a very deep and barely plumbed. We don't really know ourselves yet, and so we don't have definite, hard lines defining what is "good" and what is "evil." We have a range, a scale of "positive/ affirming" to "negative/ destructive," and a lot of grey in between.
I know many theists would jump on my last statement and say, "Ah ha! So, since humans really are just mucking about, trying to figure out what's up from down, don't you think it's wiser to look to something above/ outside yourself for reference?"
And my reply is, my senses do not perceive anything out there to look to. There is no unicorn there. I can't see any evidence of any objective morality being written in the heavens or here on earth. What's more, perhaps the one characteristic distinguishing humans from other mammals on earth is our developed rationality. To me, surrendering my judgment to the auspices of another, to determine what and how it is I should conduct myself in relation to other human beings, is to give up the the thing that makes me human.
If morality is indeed a human construct, it can only ever be fully developed, fully realized when humans are living with an unfettered, unhindered rationality.
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Out of curiosity, for albeto, since I can see and respect how much effort you have spent in formulating your beliefs (for lack of a better word ;-) ) or anyone else who cares to respond!, how do you see this worldview playing out in society at large? The world is never static but always changing and ideas held a century or two before strongly influence how people live afterwards. At some point this worldview has to be acted upon rather than it being a reaction to another worldview. So I'm curious what you think society would or could be like if everyone, or most everyone, views the world in the same way as you. If everything is reduced to matter, how is any life more precious than another? Some have stated above that, to sum up, humans already have a higher opinion of themselves than they should. How is life better than non-life? How do you judge any thing or idea better than another if there is no higher ideal that actually exists rather than being something we make up in our minds? I don't see how there could be an ideal because then something would exist outside of ourselves, an ideal we could appeal to, but yet couldn't exist because it wouldn't be composed of matter. What influence do you think that would have on our daily lives, on our form of government, on our personal relationships, on everything? If you don't think there would be much change, why not? (This thread has me thinking a lot!)
Out of all the trillions of possibilities out there, somehow you and I came to exist. That doesn't necessarily mean life will be wonderful or fulfilling. There are people who have never known any life but the most degrading, impoverished existence. Some people have or will end their lives, because they feel that non-existence is a better option than living. That is a travesty and a waste of human potential, IMO.
However, any discussion of meaning involves different measures. There is the measure of how an each life relates to the whole of the species, and the overall story of the world. There is also individual measure, the way an individual chooses define meaning to his or her life. Ultimately, though, there is no big meaning or purpose to the species, or to each individual life. Anymore than there was any meaning or point to the countless extinct species that have existed on this planet. Humans very nearly became extinct in the past, and based upon our over-inflated sense of self-importance to the planet and the universe at large, we seem to be headed that way in the future. Humans just can't seem to grasp that we are totally capable of wiping out our species.
Ideals and morals and ethics are dependent upon the people and societies who formulate them. They each have a different measure for what constitutes harm to another, what is allowable, what is justifiable, etc. Thus, right now in the Middle East, there is a "society" of people who believe it is moral and good to chop off the hand of starving child who "steals" bread.
This is a society that proposes there is a God, and that God calls for such judgment. In another part of the world, the Lord's Resistance Army has been carrying out its marching orders from a "higher power" over the past several years. One of its highlights is when it hacked people to death on Christmas and burned others alive, killing hundreds.
I already recounted a very brief, and incomplete history of the RCC's dealings. The Protestants have their own bloody history as well. Hindus and Buddhists and Jews and other religious people have theirs, too.
What do they all have in common? A repeated history of willingness to murder, steal, rape, lie, commit fraud, mount war campaigns, and generally use whatever means possible to control other groups and people. And all of them--all of them--will state that they are obeying the ideals or edicts of a higher, divine power or powers.
Now, tell me, what exactly do these religious groups offer in terms of an evolved ethos that atheists and agnostics can't figure out on their own? What superior code of conduct can they point to as evidence that believing in a higher power means less killing, less war, less death and suffering?
I submit to you that we have had various ideations of a higher power, or powers, since Homo erectus developed the first glimmerings of self-awareness and reflection, but none of them has ever managed to inspire anything less than typical human behavior. It turns out, that both theists and atheists will do things that can harm others if they feel that a situation requires it, and can be justified.
Sometimes, though, the theist goes one further though, and actually claims he's got a divine power ordering or commanding him, or giving him special protection. Which, IMO, introduces a whole new level of malignancy to the more animalistic side of human nature.
I believe that human beings are actually incapable of achieving higher ideals unless and until they assert rational and scientific thought over atavistic craving for superstitious belief. Such desire for an all powerful god that can deliver us from death, sickness, etc., is simply the drive to attain safety. It's the lowest rung on Maslov's hiearchy of needs, the need to feel safe. And religious beliefs are rooted directly to that.
At some point, it's time to grow up, realize the universe is indifferent to our self-aggrandizement, and get on with living our lives, hopefully in ways that are meaningful and beneficial to the species and the planet.
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Thanks. I will give that all the consideration it deserves.
I didn't offer it up to convince you. There's no logical counterpart to faith. It just is. Catholics have reasons to believe and practice what they do.
My indictment in my previous post was against the ecclesiastical hierarchy. I explained why I cannot accept the catechism, and church dogma, as credible evidence of a soul.
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What knowledge exists? To the best of my understanding, there is only belief.
My belief in a personal God ended with the issues of theodicy. Explain to me why a personal, all powerful, all holy, fundamentally good God would bless a 9 year old with a baby. So God is responsible for ensouling every zygote on the planet. He decides to green light the 38 year old-on-a-9 year old union, but meanwhile, faithful the world over can't get pregnant, or suffer multiple miscarriages.
There is no justification for that. Full stop. No excuses. No explaining that away. If God is so wise, why is it even my dog would know to stop the attack of a grown man on a child, but God stands by and uses it to create His next mini-Me?
Better an indifferent, uncaring, totally random cosmos, or a unconscious "force/ divine energy." Imagine an eternity with the Father who tacitly condoned, and even cooperated in such an event as a rape conception.
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From the Catechism:
Again, I can only answer from my faith which is why I quote directly from the Catechism.
The only proof are edicts from a male-only elite group of very powerful individuals, who claim to have derived their authority from a combination of previous elite, powerful people and a collection of books they, themselves, picked out as agreeing with their agenda (Nicea ~300 AD). This same group has had numerous issues throughout the centuries with hunting down midwives and witches (to stamp out any hint of female reproductive control), championed the Holy Wars that killed and decimated countless many, basically supplanted and almost thoroughly stamped out the native cultures of South and Central Americas, ruthlessly suppressed non-Catholic, non-approved books, persecuted Jews, competed with their savage Protestant cousins in martyring each other, employed its own miltary arm to conquer and menace non-Catholic countries, spread deadly pathogens through their missionaries and their colonists, taxed England to the bone, inflicted the Inquisition on a terrorized populace, castrated countless poor boys to sweeten the ears of the church hierarchy because women's voices were too offensive to be heard at all in church, and basically condemned the United States from the beginning, due to its so-called "American Heresy" of separating church from state. To date, the US, along with France, are the only two countries to have their very own named heresies, courtesy of the Vatican.
That's not even touching on the investigations being led into Mother Theresa's alleged abuse of poor Indians, nor the worldwide phenomenon of growing, hiding, moving around, and defending child rapists. According to the pope, only 2% of Catholic priests are pedophiles. Only. Taking into account how most rapes are never even reported, I'm betting it's a damn sight higher than that. Guess what, scientific studies disagree with the Church, stating in the US, it is has ranged from about 6% to 10%, which is still likely a low estimate. And even if it was not, if someone lined up 100 men and told me I was ok to send my child to spend time with them, because only 5 to 10 of them would molest or rape my child, I'd tell that person how many orifices they could go **** themselves.
Now, you may read all that and think, gee, I must be anti-catholic, and be a wicked hater, just completely misrepresenting an organization that has done so much, like feed the poor and build hospitals. Well, I'm not bringing this up to hate on the RCC, but to point out it has a very longstanding credibility issue.
If the Church is going to claim it has received a Deposit of Faith, from the Supreme, All Powerful, Holy and Just Ruler of the Universe, then it had better back that claim up with showing itself to be a higher standard than the rest of humanity. If all it offers is the same poor treatment of humanity that can be found everywhere, and in fact, in many cases, acts even more terribly, I ain't gonna believe shit from them.
So, do humans have souls? Who knows? But, I do not consider the RCC's hierarchy to be a trustworthy source of truth and transparency on the issue.
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IMO, it would only happen in the US upon pain of a populist uprising after the current system completely collapsed. That is how entrenched the current model of for-profit healthcare is in the political, financial, and industry sectors.This is one area in which conservative me is being swayed. I'm just honestly scared that we'll end up with something like the VA at its worst on a large scale. I can get behind a universal health system that still is in line with subsidiarity. I don't know how that would happen though.
It's not about what Amercicans, as a whole, desire or want. We are held hostage financially to the system, and we vote the way money dictates. Money is used to deceive, distract, and disempower us. A very effective strategy to control and harness 360 million people.
First, distract them. Them, con them into a bloated lifesyle that stupifies and sickens them. Then, scare them into helplessness and dependence. Finally, hoist them on their own petard of "freedom" and "choice" by letting select between the minefields of self-pay and ACA's leavings.
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I do think we need universal coverage and get away from insurance being associated with one's employer. If we didn't have insurance through dh's work I don't know what we would do, we would be in a bad place.
Agree. We have insurance through my work, which is a large corporation. The plan we have is not even an option, at any price, through the ACA. Heath care costs are 80% of the reason dh and I hope to retire in another country with a more sustainable model.
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Depends on what scientist you ask.
If you ask a biologist, an anthropologist, a geneticist, or a zoologist, none will postulate all humans descended from a population of two parents. No bottleneck ever reduced to fewer than perhaps 2000 individuals. If Adam and Eve existed as part of such a group, then their children mated with lower hominid lifeforms. That would constitute bestiality in modern terms.
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:) no. Just no.
Scientific evidence does not support a bottleneck population of two fully evolved modern humans acting as parents for all existing people today.
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I see the biblical god as a metaphor for some aspects of what I guess I'd call Spinoza's god ("as a way of naming universal laws and energies..."). The characteristics are contradictory but this doesn't bother me because life is sometimes contradictory - there is good and bad in the universe and I have to reconcile that in the same way that you can reconcile a god who is alternately loving and self-sacrificing (jesus) and genocidal (the ark).
In fact, understanding god in this way makes human genocide easier to process; we blame the nazis for evil behavior, and they were evil, but then we wonder (or at least I do) how a reasonable person could ever have taken part in such a thing - much less thousands of reasonable people! And the contradiction between that genocide and the good that is in most people is similar to the contradiction between the good and irrational/genocidal parts of god - I see things like war and genocide as bad, certainly, and morally corrupt/undesirable, but also as as inevitable as the Flood (or as the Indonesian flood).
What if one does not, strictly, believe in good and evil, as spiritual absolutes or morals?
I'm speaking here to the philophical concepts, not the everyday informal usage of these terms.
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God did speak directly to Adam and Eve until they disobeyed.
Adam and Eve never existed. Humans evolved very slowly from a series of indiscriminate, large, random-breeding hominid populations, diverging from a common ancestor to the Homo (human) and Pan (chimpanzee) families.
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Fortunately, that has NOT been our experience. We've walked away from poor practices, too, when necessary. Why paint all practitioners with such a broad brush?
Out of 20+ practitioners I have dealt with trained in medical schools here in TX, OK, and LA, exactly one has proved competent. I am willing to discuss my experiences in another thread. I understand not painting with a broad brush, but the last time endagered my son. I started looking for practioners trained in medical schools in the Northeast, California, places like Chicago. I'm not the only one. A friend of mine from Connecticut swore off Texas doctors when several missed very abnormal blood test results that point to lupus.
I am very discrmminating now when it comes to the medical schools my doctors attended.
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I deleted bc I thought it was just whining.
But I'm still annoyed as all get out.
And still trying to wrap my brain about being told 8 weeks instead of four, but no heartbeat and it might not be in the uterus. What the what? How could they not be sure of the location of the orb they just dated and scanned? And I need to go to another facility bc they apparently can't figure this out or treat it even if we do, but omg, don't go there until we give permission.
Ugh. My head is killing me. And of course no aspirin or alcohol. boohoo me.
What???!!! They need to find the answer to that question, because that information is kind of, just a little bit, somewhat crucial. For reasons.
Jeez.
Martha, I've sworn off any doctors trained in medical schools in TX, OK, and certain other states/ regions. They are terrible diagnosticians, IME. (But they're great at throwing pharmaceutical samples at you!)
I have no idea if you have any options for other medical providers, but I hope you get some straight answers soon! :grouphug:
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99% of the time, dh cooks. I suffer no existential angst over this fact.
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Unsami, I hope you are able to get the help you need.
(deleted the rest of this post for privacy concerns)
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Who teaches chimpanzees and young children morality?
Oh, right, other chimpanzees and humans. Where did they get it? Did it just fall out of the sky? No, there is an inherent sense of right/wrong, justice/injustice, good/bad. It may be undeveloped/unrefined, but it exists, and it's where the foundation of our complex social morality comes from.
I agree that there is some movement recently towards relative morality instead of absolute morality in the West and I think it is a symptom of a degenerating culture/society, but we still have some basic moral tenets that are, for the most part, foundational; furthermore, the fiat law can never negate natural law.
Animal morality is a fascinating thing. Chimpanzees, whales, elephants, dolphins, among other species, even dogs, do have a sense of what's fair, what's acceptable, what's not acceptable. Very interesting stuff.
Chimpanzee morality, just like whale, dolphin, etc., is by no means universal . A sense of what is, and what is not acceptable exists, but it is heavily dependent upon the group one belongs to. Different family groups/ pods / herds exhibit different sets of acceptable behavior. Chimpanzees regularly commit rape and genocide, and these are considered acceptable forms of aggression, even while they mourn their dead. Dolphins also commit gang rape.
For that matter, humans do these things, too. In some groups, they are heavily condemned, and punished. In other groups, such as ISIS right now, these behaviors are considered to be ordered to a higher good. They are promoted and carried out en masse.
I think it's really extraordinary the parallels that exist between other mammals and humans.
ETA: Regarding natural law, I understand the concept has been hugely useful in defining and guiding Western law, including US law for many centuries. However, it is based upon a theistic interpretation of human nature, and presumes man's nature is endowed with a rational soul, and therefore a wholly different creature to other mammals. Given that human behavior follows the same patterns as other higher evolved mammals, I don't see that this presumption is founded in any empiric evidence. Therefore, the natural law is not a universal truth, and is not infallible, IMO. But, I am happy to have a discussion in another thread about this if you like!
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That would indeed be excellent. If they could limit the use of them to emergency measures I'd be fine with it. Such limitations seem highly unlikely. I really worry about people using them and discarding developing babies who aren't 'ideal', with even more ease than they already do :(
I won't go any further on this one, but the technology makes me very uneasy on this point in particular. If they were used like neonatal incubators for even earlier preemies that would be excellent.
What about if they were available as an alternative to abortion?
But, if they were available for some groups, and not others, there is the question of favoritism, agendas, etc. Who gets to decide what is a legitimate use?
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Size is only an issue if you let it become one. I would think that your ds's asthma could be more of an issue for sport than his size.
JMHO,
I agree. We live in a very hot and very dry climate. Except when it's very hot and humid. With lots of "orange" (high danger for asthmatics) ozone days during the summer. Plus, we live near fracking wells, which bleed off benzene gas.
Le sigh.
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Here's another article from Slate, that proposes artificial gestation will happen because women have become too important to the economic landscape to waste their energy and time on reproduction.
I feel for Bruce Jenner.
in The Chat Board
Posted
I'm not suggesting anything. I'm pointing out that you rejected that this has anthing to do with religion. Then, you described the issue in fundamentally moral terms.
I'm well aware that many individuals derive ethics from sources other than religion. Are you saying you are one of them?