Sunday, October 30, 2005

"Save lives. Kill all the stray cats currently on the streets so you won't have to kill their descendents in 2 generations' time"

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Someone: you are the only joker who starts msn conversations with a deluge of philosophical thought, moral and social analysis and commentary as well as advanced musings on the gender equalities and the state of our society politically, economically and spiritually

Someone else: There's a new bash called sashay. Looks like posting in your blog stops pple from giving odd names

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[Buss on the base-rate and conjunction fallacies] The extensive literature showing how foolish people are is, of course, great fun.

Birth order differences show up strongly among scientists: Later borns tend to be strong advocates of scientific revolutions; first borns tend to strenuously resist such revolutions (Sulloway, 1996)


Maybe I'll put up more choice quotes and snide remarks by him after the quiz. Or the exam.


"According to Feuerbach, religion is harmful because it divests humanity of the full knowledge of its moral power and ethical qualities by locating them in God alone. Love, for example, is for Feuerbach divine in itself, not because it is a "predicate" of God. Ethical relations for Feuerbach are as well religious per se, and life "in its essential, substantive relations" is "of a divine nature". However, by allocating human possibility and achievement in God, humanity deprives itself of a "genuine sense of truth and virtue", and remains in an immature, humanly incomplete state."

"Students of religion sometimes expect or ven hope that academic neutrality means that what they learn about the variety of religious phenomena will not affect their beliefs in any way. But simply because the academic study of religion is neutral vis-a-vis competing religions' claims does not mean that it is value-free. The study of religion can never be value-free because the very existence of the discipline depends on this value: the development of a worldview that cherishes a neutral position vis-a-vis the various religions as well as an ability to see the internal coherence and logic that empowers each of them. This value is emphatically rejected by at least some segments of all major religions."