Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I know people who think COVID is either extraterrestrial or divine sent. A healthy debate could be had whether it is entirely natural or might have been engineered off of a natural virus base in a lab. I don't think aliens brought it in and I don't think it's a plague from the Lord.
Possible but unlikely. The speed limit was 50 mph and I suspect that either it wasn't really ice, or a total fluke.
Thanks and I never knew that story. There have been plenty of cases of totally inexplicable events, especially to the outside world. For example, why did a former friend, at 59, develop pancreatic cancer? He was a non-smoker and a healthy eater. His mother died untimely, but of an unrelated form of cancer. Some things are in hands mightier than ours.
Your former friend developed pancreatic cancer because a single cell mutated into an abnormal cell and began to rapidly replicate itself. No one may ever know why. Sometimes this mutation can be linked to diet and smoking, and sometimes not, but that's what cancer is. A cell that mutated and began to replicate itself.
problem is the bastardization of science for political gain.
Science cannot exist without challenge.
Science is only true for a moment.
People who embrace the political version of science are alien to the scientific method, scientific research, statistics. Data changes constantly, interpretation is revisited.
What some media hack or politician calls a lie, is a dated conclusion based on information available at that time.
Because science constantly changes upon the addition of new information is the reason approved drugs get pulled off the market. A human vaccine for lyme disease was approved and eventually pulled.
Political agendas are the enemy of science.
Fauci when asked about hydroxy as a covid Rx, said there are no studies that show its effectiveness. TRUE! Because fauci failed to give perspective, he left the public with bad information and the media with political ammunition.
Fact is, pharma and federal agencies cannot promote an approved drug for anything other than its approved labeling and indications. It would be a crime.
What fauci failed to mention is the common practice of 'OFF LABEL USE". A doctor can legally use any approved drug for any indication he see fit. Many doctors had been treating covid with hydroxy.
when it was announced J&J stopped it studies because of a death, that signaled a public relations disaster. Instead of providing perspective and explaining how clinical research works or having an inquisitive journalist do some research, people were stigmatized by the J&J drug.
when a drug company conducts clinical research on an antibiotic for instance. It must demonstrate the drug is effective against very specific bacteria. The FDA approval and resultant labeling restricts the marketing effort to include only the approved bugs. when was the last time a doc ran a culture before assigning an anti-effective for your ailment????? Whether a UTI, puncture wound, sinus infection or biopsy post infection, a hierarchy of drugs will be tried. With the proviso, " if you don't feel better in 5 days come back and we will try another drug'.
The governmnt still cannot get the food pyramid right.
The government scientists advocated smoking to reduce stress.
In 1946 mainstream scientists wanted to explode an atom bomb on the arctic to melt the snowcap, reduce violent weather and produce more usable land.
Obamacare limited access to physicians because the government felt any doctor with a degree had equal skill and ability. As medicine is an art and a science, choosing a physician with whom you feel comfortable, is critical to your health and recovery. The placebo effect is real and depends on the relationship and trust between you and your chosen doctor.
The FAA, airports, and airlines rejected the airport security recommendations that were drafted by the commissioned formed after the Lockerbie airline bombing in Scotland. It was rejected under both the Bush and Clinton administrations. Many of those recommendations are implemented today and would've prevented 911 from being successful, at least the Operation Bojinka attack planned by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Sars-Covid-19 is difficult to detect before it becomes a local outbreak since most don't show symptoms. The big failing was not procuring large orders for mask, gloves, cleaning supplies, and other medical equipment. That contributed to excess deaths at ill-equipped hospitals and nursing facilities. It's possible that it stays around in mutations that are infectious or it could become dormant again like SARS. Unlike SARS, there is extensive testing so it'll get noticed even if it's not a present threat.
The FAA, airports, and airlines rejected the airport security recommendations that were drafted by the commissioned formed after the Lockerbie airline bombing in Scotland. It was rejected under both the Bush and Clinton administrations. Many of those recommendations are implemented today and would've prevented 911 from being successful, at least the Operation Bojinka attack planned by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Generals have a tendency to fight the last war because it's difficult to predict tactics that sick minds invent. Even if they can be predicted, such as crashing planes into buildings, where, when and how that is to be done is unpredictable except for the clairvoyant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lchoro
Sars-Covid-19 is difficult to detect before it becomes a local outbreak since most don't show symptoms. The big failing was not procuring large orders for mask, gloves, cleaning supplies, and other medical equipment. That contributed to excess deaths at ill-equipped hospitals and nursing facilities. It's possible that it stays around in mutations that are infectious or it could become dormant again like SARS. Unlike SARS, there is extensive testing so it'll get noticed even if it's not a present threat.
Also the problem is the only way to have wiped out Covid at the get-go was a worldwide lockdown in place, with no notice. Thus people who were sick would have, instead of sheltering in place, died in place. The collateral damage, including a multitude of fatalities, is beyond imagination. This would have come from starvation by those trapped without a month's food without notice, suicides, violence, etc. In short totally impractical
Quote:
Originally Posted by lchoro
Climate change is not a plague.
I agree. Many others do not.
What is in common?
The solutions to each of these problems is visionary and impossible. Just as shaman's solutions for earthquakes, drought, fire, floods, blizzards, cold and heat. Joseph somehow did better for Pharaoh. But not many have those abilities, and we don't even know his last name.
The solutions to each of these problems is visionary and impossible. Just as shaman's solutions for earthquakes, drought, fire, floods, blizzards, cold and heat. Joseph somehow did better for Pharaoh. But not many have those abilities, and we don't even know his last name.
This is why sincere scientists and engineers have a humility and skepticism, about the art of the possible. They realize that all solutions have trade-offs. Medicines that resolve symptoms have side-effects, and sometimes these effects go unobserved before horrific consequences result. This can be spun to mean, that either the medicines (and the apparatus that developed them) are evil and pernicious, or inversely, that side-effects don't matter and that the medicines should have been released even earlier.
Practical and useful knowledge is indeed possible. But it is approximate. The approximation gets successively better with accumulated and documented experience. When religion or politics enter the fray, they make one of two mistakes. The first mistake is to over-emphasize the approximate nature of the knowledge, dubbing it a fraud or a scam or a mere guess, because yes, occasionally it gets things wrong. The second and opposite mistake is to bless the knowledge as being perfect and unassailable, so that no objection could ever have merit.
Generals have a tendency to fight the last war because it's difficult to predict tactics that sick minds invent. Even if they can be predicted, such as crashing planes into buildings, where, when and how that is to be done is unpredictable except for the clairvoyant.
I just gave you the name of the plot. The intelligence services were aware of the plot. They were tracking the cells as they were traveling the world. Either there was a failed handoff to domestic intelligence when they let the Al Qaeda cells enter the United States, a failure of domestic intelligence to continue surveillance of the cells as they moved in the states, a failed attempt to convert the perpetrators into informants, or a decision to just let the terrorism act occur because of its political benefits.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbgusa
Also the problem is the only way to have wiped out Covid at the get-go was a worldwide lockdown in place, with no notice. Thus people who were sick would have, instead of sheltering in place, died in place. The collateral damage, including a multitude of fatalities, is beyond imagination. This would have come from starvation by those trapped without a month's food without notice, suicides, violence, etc. In short totally impractical
Covid won't get wiped out since testing can't be 100% accurate and its spread can go undetected. More people will develop immunity. It will become less of a factor. Some years, it will be weak strains and cause little concern. The hard part is that strains can originate anywhere so that vaccinations have to be available all year round.
In ancient times there were pantheons of G-d's, and fables, myths, and books to go with them. [Snipped remainder of OP]
There are in fact risks for which we have no defense – the extinction of the sun, for example. Every year, scientists posit 25 or 50 realistic scenarios that could exterminate the human race almost overnight. When the sun begins to expand into a red giant, it will scarcely matter whether anyone alive at that time believes it’s a purely naturalistic event or an act of God.
The ancients’ attribution of many natural events to a god or gods wasn’t irrational. It was consistent with the science and cosmology of the time. For that matter, who is to say that many events don’t have both a naturalistic dimension, which makes them susceptible to scientific investigation and explanation, and a supernatural dimension? As a Christian, I believe some do. World-class scientists, including some Nobel laureates in the hard sciences, believe likewise.
For the examples you posit, it seems to me that humanity did respond in a manner consistent with the science of the time. The responses to 911 and Covid may have been overkill in some respects, but they weren't irrational or entirely ineffectual. With both 911 and Covid, the full magnitude of the risk wasn’t objectively known, and thus erring on the side of caution was a rational response.
The scapegoating of the Jews, Chinese and other convenient targets, or the cynical exploitation of 911 or Covid for social, political or economic reasons, is simply part and parcel of human nature. It seems to me that it bears no relation to the ancients’ weaving of myths or attribution of natural events to gods.
As a Christian, I may believe that there is or may be a supernatural dimension to something like the Covid pandemic; this is something for me to puzzle through theologically. But even if I thought the pandemic was “an expression of God's wrath,” that wouldn’t prevent me from thinking that the situation should be approached as rationally as possible, the best scientific techniques should be used to identify and defeat the virus, and that society and individuals should take all available measures to protect themselves.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lodestar
Thinking. . .
I've reframed your question as, "When will education and reason supercede human nature? Correct me if I misinterpret. [Snipped remainder of post]
I may not be following what you're saying. How would humans rise above human nature? Are you saying “human nature” is on one side of the equation and “education and reason” are on the other? Education and reason are somehow distinct and isolated from human nature?
I don’t think it’s true that “When people can't find an answer then there must have been a powerful force beyond human understanding that caused the problem.” Quite the opposite seems true to me. Ever since naturalism became the governing scientific paradigm, most people strenuously resist the notion that there is any transcendent mystery, any powerful force beyond human understanding.
There is, of course, the familiar "conspiracy mindset" of people who see dark and mysterious forces behind events that most people think are explainable in mundane terms. There has been a great deal of sociological and psychological literature about this in recent years, and I've made a mini-study of it. It isn't a mental illness, but there is a distinct psychological profile of people who are prone to see conspiracies where most people do not.
Human nature is extremely complex. Even the best scientists are not free from its flaws and quirks (and worse). Some problems are best approached in a hard scientific manner, others are not. Emotions aren’t necessarily irrational. Otherwise good people sometimes succumb to greed and lust. The truth can be twisted, perverted and misused. This side of the Second Coming, none of this is going to change. Perhaps this is what you're suggesting?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801
The "Fall of Man" (and related concept of "original sin" is a Christian belief), not a Jewish one, as are the "Principalities and powers and fallen angels".
Dr. Michael Heiser (https://drmsh.com/), who is surely one of the premier living scholars on the ancient Jewish worldview and the context of the OT, has shown convincingly that the OT Jews had a complex cosmology that included Yahweh and a Divine Council of lesser elohim. Some members of the Divine Council rebelled and were assigned dominion over the pagan nations. Most Christians attempting to dialogue with a Jew of 1000 BC would come away completely bewildered. Even the Jewish Virtual Library, which takes no notice of Dr. Heiser, acknowledges that the doctrine of fallen angels was well-established by the Second Temple period (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org...d-angelology-2).
It’s always dangerous to attempt to state what “the Jews” believe or believed. As is clear from the NT itself, where the Pharisees and Sadducees held fundamentally different beliefs, Judaism has always been an evolving and fragmented religion.
Regardless of what Paul had in mind in Ephesians 6:12, the language to the effect that we struggle “against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” would be a fair description of ancient Jewish cosmology according to Dr. Heiser and others.
Quote:
To answer the OP's question, we see now, just as we did with 9/11 and AIDS, that there will always be some people who view these happenings as punishment from a god or at least a god having a hand in it and others who roll up their sleeves and get to work to find solutions. Then, of course, there will always be those who work to exploit such events for their own agendas.
As you seem prone to do, you posit a false dichotomy. There is no inherent disconnect between “believing God had a hand” in AIDS or Covid and “rolling up their sleeves and getting to work to find a solution.” It’s a dichotomy that you might like to believe exists but that in fact does not. The 2000-year history of Christian contributions to all scientific disciplines makes this clear. Indeed, Christian churches’ social response to the AIDS crisis and Covid pandemic makes this clear. Do your homework. Your obvious bias is as apparent here as in your position on the Religion & Spirituality forum that there is some inherent disconnect between holding a biblical position on homosexuality and treating homosexuals with kindness, respect and value as human beings who are precious to God.
As you seem prone to do, you posit a false dichotomy. There is no inherent disconnect between “believing God had a hand” in AIDS or Covid and “rolling up their sleeves and getting to work to find a solution.” It’s a dichotomy that you might like to believe exists but that in fact does not. The 2000-year history of Christian contributions to all scientific disciplines makes this clear. Indeed, Christian churches’ social response to the AIDS crisis and Covid pandemic makes this clear. Do your homework. Your obvious bias is as apparent here as in your position on the Religion & Spirituality forum that there is some inherent disconnect between holding a biblical position on homosexuality and treating homosexuals with kindness, respect and value as human beings who are precious to God.
Actually, there is a difference when that "kindness, respect and value as human beings who are precious to God" that you mentioned takes the form of condescension and an attitude of: "I respect you, even though I know that you're probably going to Hell."
If MQ and others appear to you to have expressed any "bias" in this regard, it may be due to having experienced the so-called "kindness" of those who are convinced of their own moral superiority.
Last edited by Rachel NewYork; 03-24-2021 at 12:39 PM..
There are in fact risks for which we have no defense – the extinction of the sun, for example. Every year, scientists posit 25 or 50 realistic scenarios that could exterminate the human race almost overnight. When the sun begins to expand into a red giant, it will scarcely matter whether anyone alive at that time believes it’s a purely naturalistic event or an act of God.
The ancients’ attribution of many natural events to a god or gods wasn’t irrational. It was consistent with the science and cosmology of the time. For that matter, who is to say that many events don’t have both a naturalistic dimension, which makes them susceptible to scientific investigation and explanation, and a supernatural dimension? As a Christian, I believe some do. World-class scientists, including some Nobel laureates in the hard sciences, believe likewise.
For the examples you posit, it seems to me that humanity did respond in a manner consistent with the science of the time. The responses to 911 and Covid may have been overkill in some respects, but they weren't irrational or entirely ineffectual. With both 911 and Covid, the full magnitude of the risk wasn’t objectively known, and thus erring on the side of caution was a rational response.
In the area of security, the contrast between the way we handled terror back in the day and now is telling. During the late 1960's Richard Nixon's "special operatives" later known as the Plumbers, along with the FBI, destroyed the Weather Underground and Black Panthers from inside. Some of their tactics were unsavory. There were wiretaps, internal infiltration and probably some violence. But organizations that were indisputably targeting police offers, and general social order were destroyed. In Israel, to this day, terror leaders are targeted and killed.
In the U.S. our approach is security theater. We make people go through tangled lines at airports and lobby entrances to buildings, in the name of "security. This is political correctness, plain and simple. We are strangling critical parts of our cities rather than smashing the terrorists. We should have been disrupting cells, the way we infiltrated and disrupted Puerto Rican nationalist groups in the 1980's, Croatian separatist in the early 1990's and more recently radical Islamic cells. There is no "right" to organize a violent cell. Profile if necessary; the law abiding in profiled groups will feel safe, not "demeaned."
In other words we wanted people to feel safe, but seemed indifferent as to whether people were actually safe. No terrorist is going to hand over his bomb or gun to a security officer with a GED. In Israel, they use highly educated people to do security, not just a person who might as well be part of the scanning equipment. With regard to Covid, I have also written upon Draconian but unfocused efforts:
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbgusa
In the case of Covid, the early focus, in heavily stricken areas was "flattening the curve" so that hospitals wouldn't gel up and cease functioning. I get that. But when we padlocked outdoor tennis and basketball courts, something is wrong. Same with closing many businesses which can operate socially distanced.
We learned by mid-April that serious illness from Covid was largely, though not entirely, related to known risk factors. Yet governments persisted in tightening restrictions, until veritable rebellions in places such as Michigan and Wisconsin forced at least limited reopening.
In other words, government officials needed to be seen "doing something" and didn't have the time or likely intellect to evaluate the effectuality of those actions. This reminds me a lot of the ancient practices.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
