Been out so don’t know if we’ve already done the weather yet today, but it’s getting serious.
This is a week on Monday on this evening’s GFS run:
The previous Sunday hits 43C widely too. Midnight temperatures above 30C in between.
Freak? Maybe, it’s at the top of the ensembles but there are not dissimilar peaks showing up in the European model too. And peaks at 45-46C in Northern France.
Needless to say 40C, let alone 44, would be a catastrophe in our non air conditioned, sparsely irrigated country.
All good, but one model at at long range. It will moderate as we approach t=0. We are heading for a decent heat wave, but I doubt the U.K. will see anything approaching 40.
Lucky UK! Some of us saw 45ºC today.
I've experienced that level of heat in Egypt and it was ok because the humidity was zero. 45C plus humidity would knock me sideways
45C with humidity is actively dangerous. You can’t lose heat and you die of hyperthermia.
We were in Lisbon in 2018 during a heatwave when it was 44C. The breeze, such as it was, was like the blast of hot air you get when you open the oven door. Under 40C is bearable in the shade if you don’t need to be active. Over 40C, not so much.
Once approaching blood temperature things get difficult. Using the latent heat of evaporation works up to a point.
One thing I hope the Tories have learned from Labour is not to lend support to fringe candidates in order to get them on the ballot.
Look what that did for Labour
Hasn't been an issue, since the Tory system was low threshold for nominations, but MPs still retain control of the choice of the final two. So it's ok to lend support to fringe candidates as the selectorate knows them all already and is unlikely to switch en masse to some fringe loony.
Labour's problem was the threshold being met then took it out of the hands of MPs, so their lending of support sacrificed their control.
Been out so don’t know if we’ve already done the weather yet today, but it’s getting serious.
This is a week on Monday on this evening’s GFS run:
The previous Sunday hits 43C widely too. Midnight temperatures above 30C in between.
Freak? Maybe, it’s at the top of the ensembles but there are not dissimilar peaks showing up in the European model too. And peaks at 45-46C in Northern France.
Needless to say 40C, let alone 44, would be a catastrophe in our non air conditioned, sparsely irrigated country.
All good, but one model at at long range. It will moderate as we approach t=0. We are heading for a decent heat wave, but I doubt the U.K. will see anything approaching 40.
No no no. It’s not one model at long range. It’s 3 of the 4 major models (ECMWF, GFS, UKMO, the Canadian GEM is the only dissenting voice) and most of their ensemble members.
In the ECMWF ensemble of 50 members this evening the mean “peak day” across all runs is over 20C at 850hPa (that equates to 37-38C at the surface in full sunshine), and the median peak day is 21C.
Only 10 out of 50 have a peak below 18C (35C at the surface).
It’s perfectly possible it will moderate and dissipate as we get closer but not an iron law of physics. This is 7-8 days out - not long range by modern modelling standards.
If we’ve learned one thing in the last few years it’s that freakish and previously worst case scenarios (global pandemic, 50C in Canada, Russia mounting a full scale invasion of Ukraine etc) can and do happen.
7 days is still long range. I spend a lot of time on weather chats too. It’s a consistent pattern that extremes are moderated as we approach the time. This weekends heat is an example. Last weekend some were forecasting mid thirties which did not happen.
They move in both directions. Up and down. Granted the setup next weekend is currently a coming together of almost perfect conditions, so any move is probably mord likely to be down, but these have been modelled for a long time and down still potentiallynmeans high 30s.
I think long years of anticipation and disappointment (especially in winter) lead to people assuming it’s a one way street, but it really isn’t. None of the major models has a statistical bias either warm or cold.
You first paragraph is my point really. This will moderate, it almost always does. It’s not about a statistical bias, it’s more that prediction/model at 8;days plus, even using ensembles, is still not that accurate. I think you triggered me a bit by posting the GFS pub run.
Isn’t the pub run the 18z? Which is glitching currently and showing yesterday’s run, annoyingly.
I assumed that was the 18z. Yes, 18z = pub
The 18z brings 38c Saturday, 43c on the Sunday widely! and high 30s SE corner only Monday as the heat is squeezed away
Low 20s Tuesday which would feel like mid winter! A 20c drop in 2 days
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
Mathew's Gospel, though I sm not sure which translation.
Note though it is angels that do the dirty work, not humN followers.
NIV
It's really no leap at all for people to see themselves as having a duty to fulfil that role themselves. After all, "angel" means messenger, and evangelists = ev (good) angel (message) ist (doer) = bringer of good news. Evangelism is literally people doing the work of angels. And if sometimes angels throw the evil into the furnace then that is a job some people will happily do.
And the Bible is already replete with explicit sacrificial themes and tales. It's really quite psychotic when you get into it.
What's the most important religious festival in Berwick?
Been out so don’t know if we’ve already done the weather yet today, but it’s getting serious.
This is a week on Monday on this evening’s GFS run:
The previous Sunday hits 43C widely too. Midnight temperatures above 30C in between.
Freak? Maybe, it’s at the top of the ensembles but there are not dissimilar peaks showing up in the European model too. And peaks at 45-46C in Northern France.
Needless to say 40C, let alone 44, would be a catastrophe in our non air conditioned, sparsely irrigated country.
All good, but one model at at long range. It will moderate as we approach t=0. We are heading for a decent heat wave, but I doubt the U.K. will see anything approaching 40.
No no no. It’s not one model at long range. It’s 3 of the 4 major models (ECMWF, GFS, UKMO, the Canadian GEM is the only dissenting voice) and most of their ensemble members.
In the ECMWF ensemble of 50 members this evening the mean “peak day” across all runs is over 20C at 850hPa (that equates to 37-38C at the surface in full sunshine), and the median peak day is 21C.
Only 10 out of 50 have a peak below 18C (35C at the surface).
It’s perfectly possible it will moderate and dissipate as we get closer but not an iron law of physics. This is 7-8 days out - not long range by modern modelling standards.
If we’ve learned one thing in the last few years it’s that freakish and previously worst case scenarios (global pandemic, 50C in Canada, Russia mounting a full scale invasion of Ukraine etc) can and do happen.
7 days is still long range. I spend a lot of time on weather chats too. It’s a consistent pattern that extremes are moderated as we approach the time. This weekends heat is an example. Last weekend some were forecasting mid thirties which did not happen.
They move in both directions. Up and down. Granted the setup next weekend is currently a coming together of almost perfect conditions, so any move is probably mord likely to be down, but these have been modelled for a long time and down still potentiallynmeans high 30s.
I think long years of anticipation and disappointment (especially in winter) lead to people assuming it’s a one way street, but it really isn’t. None of the major models has a statistical bias either warm or cold.
“Granted the setup next weekend is currently a coming together of almost perfect conditions”. Yes.
And I agree with Tubbs, don’t think current record of about 38 will be broken.
By way of qualification I am a farmers daughter. 🚜 Jades Tractor Forecasts for rest of July
As I understand it the problem is short lived and very South East, as the coming weeks high retreats east next weekend, Thames, Humber, German Bight, and a low pushes north to South East across the country, the south east of UK could from the anticyclone (clockwise) older hotter high, pull the Spain France weather onto it. What is then supposed to happen, as cyclone follows away after old high, is a younger so not as hot high builds over us from the southwest, so rest of July should be nice but not much extreme heat. The last weekend 30th 31st wear a bra under t-shirt in case it rains. Hope this helps.
It’s that we have yet to have a forty, which is why even on low confidence models before it’s averages out, it newsworthy.
Ooh. Does PB have a new Met Girl? ⛅️ 🌧 ☀️
I ❤️ Weather watching. I can’t resist looking at long range stuff everyday.
Coming from the dales I have sat on hillsides watching over sheep. I listen to the wild intelligence of my body - I know the living universe, I do weather I know weather as well as landscape and the sky, I feel it, the moon mothering my watery body and the fatherly sun enriching my blood. 👢👢
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
Been out so don’t know if we’ve already done the weather yet today, but it’s getting serious.
This is a week on Monday on this evening’s GFS run:
The previous Sunday hits 43C widely too. Midnight temperatures above 30C in between.
Freak? Maybe, it’s at the top of the ensembles but there are not dissimilar peaks showing up in the European model too. And peaks at 45-46C in Northern France.
Needless to say 40C, let alone 44, would be a catastrophe in our non air conditioned, sparsely irrigated country.
All good, but one model at at long range. It will moderate as we approach t=0. We are heading for a decent heat wave, but I doubt the U.K. will see anything approaching 40.
Lucky UK! Some of us saw 45ºC today.
I've experienced that level of heat in Egypt and it was ok because the humidity was zero. 45C plus humidity would knock me sideways
45C with humidity is actively dangerous. You can’t lose heat and you die of hyperthermia.
We were in Lisbon in 2018 during a heatwave when it was 44C. The breeze, such as it was, was like the blast of hot air you get when you open the oven door. Under 40C is bearable in the shade if you don’t need to be active. Over 40C, not so much.
Yes. I was cycling in France - the Loire Valley - a couple of years ago when it topped 40°C. It was like riding into a hairdryer. I got into the habit of setting off at 6am and trying to get as many km in before it got unbearable.
Of course, that plan was rather upended by the air-conditioned, out-of-town, modern hotel I booked myself into on the hottest day; turned up at the door at 2pm; encountered a sign saying it was fermé until 6pm. My French is not as good as it once was but I think my exact phrase was "ras le cul de cet hôtel de merde".
As I bid goodnight, may I just say how much I'm enjoying the (impending) Tory Civil War? Let's hope it lasts at least a couple of years.
If they were in Opposition, I might share your hopes.
But they're not.
For the good of country it needs to be sorted in a fortnight.
To hell with the members in other words.
My hunch is that the fact that the members will make the final choice will be what loses them the next election.
Of the last 3 general election majority winners, Blair, Cameron and Johnson, all 3 were picked by Labour or Tory members.
Tory MPs alone however picked general election losers Hague and Howard and May who lost her majority in 2017. Labour MPs alone meanwhile picked Gordon Brown who lost Labour its majority in 2010
None of which proves anything, all the circumstances were entirely different.
Currently the Tories are behind in all the polls, they face a torrid couple of years economically so if they are going to survive the 2024 GE they are going to need a candidate with wide appeal but the members will go for the candidate that puts their own narrow financial and ideological interests first.
Well if Tory members prefer 2 or 3 years of dry as dust, hard right Conservatism to 6 or 7 years of wet soggy centrism that is their affair.
That would be a fair point if it were not for the fact that members will actually be choosing the Prime Minister of this country for the next 2 years and there is sod all 99.9% of us can do about it.
Well tough, that was the prize Tory members got when the party won a majority of 80 in 2019
Weird, just the other day you were very adamant that the minority of Tory members still backing Boris deserved and indeed it should be required to have their views taken into account.
Why is that, if someone else's faction wins the 'prize'?
It seems political minorities only need listening to sometimes.
If you think we are “hollowed out” then there is sone structural inefficiency compared to what we have done in living memory.
I think there is a huge amount of spending that just happens because someone once thought it was a good idea and it is hard to challenge
You have to account for the demographic burden which is “worth” a percent or two per decade in pension spending, health pressures etc.
Like for like we are probably at a 50 year low, and the candidates are proposing to slice further.
Do you have any convincing maths on that?
Pensioners now contribute for an extra 3 years before getting any state pensions, compared to 15-20 years ago.
Whilst life expectancy is up by 5 years or so since 1990.
Which sounds quite balanced.
If you think the demographic burden is a fiction, you are living in a hole.
I found this at the ONS site.
…As a result, State Pension spending has continued to rise in recent decades. It amounted to almost £92 billion in 2017 (equivalent to 5.1% of GDP), up from £26 billion in 1992 (3.6% of GDP). Based on current population projections, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts that state pension expenditure will rise to 6.1% of GDP by 2042.
That latter figure accounts for the rising pension age, too.
This figure does not include health burden arising from an elderly pop.
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
Been out so don’t know if we’ve already done the weather yet today, but it’s getting serious.
This is a week on Monday on this evening’s GFS run:
The previous Sunday hits 43C widely too. Midnight temperatures above 30C in between.
Freak? Maybe, it’s at the top of the ensembles but there are not dissimilar peaks showing up in the European model too. And peaks at 45-46C in Northern France.
Needless to say 40C, let alone 44, would be a catastrophe in our non air conditioned, sparsely irrigated country.
All good, but one model at at long range. It will moderate as we approach t=0. We are heading for a decent heat wave, but I doubt the U.K. will see anything approaching 40.
Lucky UK! Some of us saw 45ºC today.
I've experienced that level of heat in Egypt and it was ok because the humidity was zero. 45C plus humidity would knock me sideways
45C with humidity is actively dangerous. You can’t lose heat and you die of hyperthermia.
We were in Lisbon in 2018 during a heatwave when it was 44C. The breeze, such as it was, was like the blast of hot air you get when you open the oven door. Under 40C is bearable in the shade if you don’t need to be active. Over 40C, not so much.
Once approaching blood temperature things get difficult. Using the latent heat of evaporation works up to a point.
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
Mathew's Gospel, though I sm not sure which translation.
Note though it is angels that do the dirty work, not humN followers.
NIV
It's really no leap at all for people to see themselves as having a duty to fulfil that role themselves. After all, "angel" means messenger, and evangelists = ev (good) angel (message) ist (doer) = bringer of good news. Evangelism is literally people doing the work of angels. And if sometimes angels throw the evil into the furnace then that is a job some people will happily do.
And the Bible is already replete with explicit sacrificial themes and tales. It's really quite psychotic when you get into it.
Well if you are not evil no need for you to worry then, if you are evil we will be after you however!
I do have to worry if you're also the one who decides whether I'm evil. The religious mindset leads a lot of people to seeing themselves as judge, jury, and executioner.
Been out so don’t know if we’ve already done the weather yet today, but it’s getting serious.
This is a week on Monday on this evening’s GFS run:
The previous Sunday hits 43C widely too. Midnight temperatures above 30C in between.
Freak? Maybe, it’s at the top of the ensembles but there are not dissimilar peaks showing up in the European model too. And peaks at 45-46C in Northern France.
Needless to say 40C, let alone 44, would be a catastrophe in our non air conditioned, sparsely irrigated country.
All good, but one model at at long range. It will moderate as we approach t=0. We are heading for a decent heat wave, but I doubt the U.K. will see anything approaching 40.
Lucky UK! Some of us saw 45ºC today.
I've experienced that level of heat in Egypt and it was ok because the humidity was zero. 45C plus humidity would knock me sideways
45C with humidity is actively dangerous. You can’t lose heat and you die of hyperthermia.
We were in Lisbon in 2018 during a heatwave when it was 44C. The breeze, such as it was, was like the blast of hot air you get when you open the oven door. Under 40C is bearable in the shade if you don’t need to be active. Over 40C, not so much.
Once approaching blood temperature things get difficult. Using the latent heat of evaporation works up to a point.
Net Zero? Nah, burn baby burn!
It’s the wet bulb temperature that’s important.
I now check the wet bulb temperature quite often. It’s a lifesaver, though someone should come up with a better name because it sounds confusing.
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
Mathew's Gospel, though I sm not sure which translation.
Note though it is angels that do the dirty work, not humN followers.
NIV
It's really no leap at all for people to see themselves as having a duty to fulfil that role themselves. After all, "angel" means messenger, and evangelists = ev (good) angel (message) ist (doer) = bringer of good news. Evangelism is literally people doing the work of angels. And if sometimes angels throw the evil into the furnace then that is a job some people will happily do.
And the Bible is already replete with explicit sacrificial themes and tales. It's really quite psychotic when you get into it.
Well if you are not evil no need for you to worry then, if you are evil we will be after you however!
I do have to worry if you're also the one who decides whether I'm evil. The religious mindset leads a lot of people to seeing themselves as judge, jury, and executioner.
Well you were the one who suggested we Christians would be doing the work of the angels!
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
Mathew's Gospel, though I sm not sure which translation.
Note though it is angels that do the dirty work, not humN followers.
NIV
It's really no leap at all for people to see themselves as having a duty to fulfil that role themselves. After all, "angel" means messenger, and evangelists = ev (good) angel (message) ist (doer) = bringer of good news. Evangelism is literally people doing the work of angels. And if sometimes angels throw the evil into the furnace then that is a job some people will happily do.
And the Bible is already replete with explicit sacrificial themes and tales. It's really quite psychotic when you get into it.
Well if you are not evil no need for you to worry then, if you are evil we will be after you however!
I do have to worry if you're also the one who decides whether I'm evil. The religious mindset leads a lot of people to seeing themselves as judge, jury, and executioner.
It depends very much. My own church is pretty laissez-faire on these things. It is for God to judge not us. We are pretty much opposed to evangelism too. If God wanted people to join us, he would send them.
Johnson has nowhere to live after No 10 reports Telegraph.
His two former homes are rented out.
There are plenty of cheap hotels in Rwanda....
Are there? I heard they were block booked by the British Government for asylum seekers.
Isn’t that policy completely dead now?
Will be interesting to see if any candidates happily tie themselves to it, or do best not to endorse it without getting into the obvious “no? What instead then?”
Johnson has nowhere to live after No 10 reports Telegraph.
His two former homes are rented out.
There are plenty of cheap hotels in Rwanda....
Are there? I heard they were block booked by the British Government for asylum seekers.
Isn’t that policy completely dead now?
Will be interesting to see if any candidates happily tie themselves to it, or do best not to endorse it without getting into the obvious “no? What instead then?”
Perhaps Her Majesty could accommodate Boris? I find it hard to believe that the rather sweeping offence of "Misconduct in Public Office" could not be applied...
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
Yes, I can. If you're willing to accept parsimony as a principle of science (see William of Ockham, David Deutsch, and many others). There has never been any phenomenon where Satanic witches offer a simpler, more parsimonious explanation than some other explanation.
And it's that simple. Witches add nothing but questions to any world view.
And I would turn it around. If you're going to burn someone at the stake, I expect more than "well how can you be sure she isn't evil?" as a justification. Burden of proof, admissibility of evidence, hearsay, and reasonableness of views are all legal concepts for good reason. The idea of witches is an insult not just to the scientific mind, but the very foundations of British justice.
Oh, and if you want to tie the Bible conceptually to the Quran, be my guest. They're both works of evil.
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
Yes, I can. If you're willing to accept parsimony as a principle of science (see William of Ockham, David Deutsch, and many others). There has never been any phenomenon where Satanic witches offer a simpler, more parsimonious explanation than some other explanation.
And it's that simple. Witches add nothing but questions to any world view.
And I would turn it around. If you're going to burn someone at the stake, I expect more than "well how can you be sure she isn't evil?" as a justification. Burden of proof, admissibility of evidence, hearsay, and reasonableness of views are all legal concepts for good reason. The idea of witches is an insult not just to the scientific mind, but the very foundations of British justice.
Oh, and if you want to tie the Bible conceptually to the Quran, be my guest. They're both works of evil.
If you believe in the concept of evil, as I do, then it is perfectly possible if not probable that there are people of both sexes doing Satanic works.
Interesting you also think not pursuing murder, not committing adultery, not stealing, loving thy neighbour as thyself, being a good Samaritan etc as the Bible also commands are works of evil. Which gives a concerning thought as to what you do think as a work of good!
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
Mathew's Gospel, though I sm not sure which translation.
Note though it is angels that do the dirty work, not humN followers.
NIV
It's really no leap at all for people to see themselves as having a duty to fulfil that role themselves. After all, "angel" means messenger, and evangelists = ev (good) angel (message) ist (doer) = bringer of good news. Evangelism is literally people doing the work of angels. And if sometimes angels throw the evil into the furnace then that is a job some people will happily do.
And the Bible is already replete with explicit sacrificial themes and tales. It's really quite psychotic when you get into it.
Well if you are not evil no need for you to worry then, if you are evil we will be after you however!
I do have to worry if you're also the one who decides whether I'm evil. The religious mindset leads a lot of people to seeing themselves as judge, jury, and executioner.
Well you were the one who suggested we Christians would be doing the work of the angels!
Yes, and the works of angels are sometimes evil. Such as throwing people into fires. Luckily, angels don't actually exist to do that work. If only stupid people didn't take it upon themselves to pick up the slack, we'd have a lot less grief in the world.
As I bid goodnight, may I just say how much I'm enjoying the (impending) Tory Civil War? Let's hope it lasts at least a couple of years.
If they were in Opposition, I might share your hopes.
But they're not.
For the good of country it needs to be sorted in a fortnight.
To hell with the members in other words.
My hunch is that the fact that the members will make the final choice will be what loses them the next election.
Of the last 3 general election majority winners, Blair, Cameron and Johnson, all 3 were picked by Labour or Tory members.
Tory MPs alone however picked general election losers Hague and Howard and May who lost her majority in 2017. Labour MPs alone meanwhile picked Gordon Brown who lost Labour its majority in 2010
None of which proves anything, all the circumstances were entirely different.
Currently the Tories are behind in all the polls, they face a torrid couple of years economically so if they are going to survive the 2024 GE they are going to need a candidate with wide appeal but the members will go for the candidate that puts their own narrow financial and ideological interests first.
Well if Tory members prefer 2 or 3 years of dry as dust, hard right Conservatism to 6 or 7 years of wet soggy centrism that is their affair.
If you think we are “hollowed out” then there is sone structural inefficiency compared to what we have done in living memory.
I think there is a huge amount of spending that just happens because someone once thought it was a good idea and it is hard to challenge
You have to account for the demographic burden which is “worth” a percent or two per decade in pension spending, health pressures etc.
Like for like we are probably at a 50 year low, and the candidates are proposing to slice further.
Do you have any convincing maths on that?
Pensioners now contribute for an extra 3 years before getting any state pensions, compared to 15-20 years ago.
Whilst life expectancy is up by 5 years or so since 1990.
Which sounds quite balanced.
If you think the demographic burden is a fiction, you are living in a hole.
I found this at the ONS site.
…As a result, State Pension spending has continued to rise in recent decades. It amounted to almost £92 billion in 2017 (equivalent to 5.1% of GDP), up from £26 billion in 1992 (3.6% of GDP). Based on current population projections, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts that state pension expenditure will rise to 6.1% of GDP by 2042.
That latter figure accounts for the rising pension age, too.
This figure does not include health burden arising from an elderly pop.
My own view is there is only one way to deal with this - funding wise - somehow the property wealth of the boomer generation has to be tapped.
No way will any of the 200 Tory leadership candidates own up to that though.
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
Mathew's Gospel, though I sm not sure which translation.
Note though it is angels that do the dirty work, not humN followers.
NIV
It's really no leap at all for people to see themselves as having a duty to fulfil that role themselves. After all, "angel" means messenger, and evangelists = ev (good) angel (message) ist (doer) = bringer of good news. Evangelism is literally people doing the work of angels. And if sometimes angels throw the evil into the furnace then that is a job some people will happily do.
And the Bible is already replete with explicit sacrificial themes and tales. It's really quite psychotic when you get into it.
Well if you are not evil no need for you to worry then, if you are evil we will be after you however!
I do have to worry if you're also the one who decides whether I'm evil. The religious mindset leads a lot of people to seeing themselves as judge, jury, and executioner.
Well you were the one who suggested we Christians would be doing the work of the angels!
Yes, and the works of angels are sometimes evil. Such as throwing people into fires. Luckily, angels don't actually exist to do that work. If only stupid people didn't take it upon themselves to pick up the slack, we'd have a lot less grief in the world.
Angels also save people too and if are not evil or you repent and find Christ you avoid the fires
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
If you think we are “hollowed out” then there is sone structural inefficiency compared to what we have done in living memory.
I think there is a huge amount of spending that just happens because someone once thought it was a good idea and it is hard to challenge
You have to account for the demographic burden which is “worth” a percent or two per decade in pension spending, health pressures etc.
Like for like we are probably at a 50 year low, and the candidates are proposing to slice further.
Do you have any convincing maths on that?
Pensioners now contribute for an extra 3 years before getting any state pensions, compared to 15-20 years ago.
Whilst life expectancy is up by 5 years or so since 1990.
Which sounds quite balanced.
If you think the demographic burden is a fiction, you are living in a hole.
I found this at the ONS site.
…As a result, State Pension spending has continued to rise in recent decades. It amounted to almost £92 billion in 2017 (equivalent to 5.1% of GDP), up from £26 billion in 1992 (3.6% of GDP). Based on current population projections, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts that state pension expenditure will rise to 6.1% of GDP by 2042.
That latter figure accounts for the rising pension age, too.
This figure does not include health burden arising from an elderly pop.
My own view is there is only one way to deal with this - funding wise - somehow the property wealth of the boomer generation has to be tapped.
No way will any of the 200 Tory leadership candidates own up to that though.
No I would not expect them to, but it’s sad to see them peddle fictions.
She is for Brexit and cutting the state, and against asylum seekers and the woke…and that’s why she loves the United Kingdom.
Clearly couldn't afford a Cass or a Tristan of this world and their PR agency to do the video like Richi Rich.
Deliberate choice I expect. Everyone in politics already knew Rishi had slick PR, opponents weren't go to beat him at that game anyway. A more natural, humble presentation (eg don't have a windscreen) helps differentiate, at least for the first video (which is what most will see before making up their mind).
Instead they'll go hard on authenticity, policy, and understanding ordinary voters I expect. Whenever someone is slick their opponent claims that means they have no substance, it is the default attack.
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
Yes, I can. If you're willing to accept parsimony as a principle of science (see William of Ockham, David Deutsch, and many others). There has never been any phenomenon where Satanic witches offer a simpler, more parsimonious explanation than some other explanation.
And it's that simple. Witches add nothing but questions to any world view.
And I would turn it around. If you're going to burn someone at the stake, I expect more than "well how can you be sure she isn't evil?" as a justification. Burden of proof, admissibility of evidence, hearsay, and reasonableness of views are all legal concepts for good reason. The idea of witches is an insult not just to the scientific mind, but the very foundations of British justice.
Oh, and if you want to tie the Bible conceptually to the Quran, be my guest. They're both works of evil.
If you believe in the concept of evil, as I do, then it is perfectly possible if not probable that there are people of both sexes doing Satanic works.
Interesting you also think not pursuing murder, not committing adultery, not stealing, loving thy neighbour as thyself, being a good Samaritan etc as the Bible also commands are works of evil. Which gives a concerning thought as to what you do think as a work of good!
You know it's quite possible to reject a body of work as evil because it contains just a bit too much wrong, without having to disagree with absolutely everything in there.
If you have any doubts about this, consider this charmingly uplifting quote: "Never lose hope, be persistent and stubborn and never give up. There are many instances in history where apparent losers suddenly turn out to be winners unexpectedly, so you should never conclude all hope is lost."
Now a lot of people would agree with that. Then you tell that "actually that quote's from the Unabomber." Does that mean the Unabomber suddenly not evil? No. Does that mean you have to reject the above quote? No.
If you think we are “hollowed out” then there is sone structural inefficiency compared to what we have done in living memory.
I think there is a huge amount of spending that just happens because someone once thought it was a good idea and it is hard to challenge
You have to account for the demographic burden which is “worth” a percent or two per decade in pension spending, health pressures etc.
Like for like we are probably at a 50 year low, and the candidates are proposing to slice further.
Do you have any convincing maths on that?
Pensioners now contribute for an extra 3 years before getting any state pensions, compared to 15-20 years ago.
Whilst life expectancy is up by 5 years or so since 1990.
Which sounds quite balanced.
If you think the demographic burden is a fiction, you are living in a hole.
I found this at the ONS site.
…As a result, State Pension spending has continued to rise in recent decades. It amounted to almost £92 billion in 2017 (equivalent to 5.1% of GDP), up from £26 billion in 1992 (3.6% of GDP). Based on current population projections, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts that state pension expenditure will rise to 6.1% of GDP by 2042.
That latter figure accounts for the rising pension age, too.
This figure does not include health burden arising from an elderly pop.
My own view is there is only one way to deal with this - funding wise - somehow the property wealth of the boomer generation has to be tapped.
No way will any of the 200 Tory leadership candidates own up to that though.
I have rather startled myself by thinking that public ownership of utilities may be needed. I cannot help thinking how much the costs of electricity, gas, water, rail, etc could come down if the profits paid to shareholders were simply reduced to zero.
The problem is, of course, that when this has been done in the past, the industries in question become highly inefficient.
But somebody has to pay for all the billions paid out to shareholders and for public utilities that somebody is you, me and everyone we know....
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Taking a wild stab, reducing our (already comparatively very low) carbon emissions at a speed that doesn't impoverish the citizenry and wreck the economy. Weren't you complaining about the cost of living the other day? Join the dots.
This is at least a proper thing to be discussing at this juncture, regarding policy direction for future leadership.
A lot of Conservative thinking, and the General Public are very much on the side of Net Zero 50 (pushed through by May in her Lame Duck Period?) and Labours position, in Millibands hands is Tory’s are not going quickly enough? (Nick Palmer May be the one to correct me if I have that wrong).
That's right. We note the pledges but are sceptical whether the Government is doing enough to achieve them. You might, if feeling uncharitable, call them hot air. Some Tories are perfectly sincere and trying hard; others see it as more of a slogan. Kemi is at least honest in opposing even pretending to be in favour.
We differ somewhat in nuance from the Greens in emphasizing the potential for Britain to lead a green industrial revolution - better wind turbines, better carbon capture, etc., creating new industries, job and exports; the Greens place the emphasis more on reduced consumption.
The Greens' policy regarding economic growth (or the reversal of it) is utterly insane. Sad, mad people. One hopes that at some point they recover.
It is the notion that economic growth can continue unhindered forever that is utterly insane.
Capitalism is one giant Ponzi scheme and at some point it will all come crashing down.
Yes, it's only been growing since the dawn of time, why would it continue?
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
God didn't marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son, did he?
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
You can find plenty of Christians on Grindr
So what, you can even find openly gay Church of England vicars now
She is for Brexit and cutting the state, and against asylum seekers and the woke…and that’s why she loves the United Kingdom.
"They want us to take a firm line on state spending"
Unless of course it is for the NHS for their hip replacements and heart ops or triple lock pension uplifts or social care caps to protect the kids inheritance.
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
There is no magic. There is no Satan. There is often, however, inadequate learning of understanding of things with a perfectly normal explanation. Of course, this does require the difficult technique of learning and understanding rather than the rather lazy memorising of dogma. It is always easier to destroy what you do not understand.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
Well, only heterosexual reproduction can generate offspring unless humanity becomes parthnogenic in which case we can dispense with men....
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
God didn't marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son, did he?
And Lot offered his daughters to a crowd to be raped. The bible calls Lot a "righteous man"
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
You can find plenty of Christians on Grindr
So what, you can even find openly gay Church of England vicars now
So what I'm saying is that your tiny postage-stamp window on reality leads you to issue idiotic proclamations like "Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity", when in reality Christians are considerably more diverse and relaxed about everything. It's just people like you who are the problem, clinging to dusty bronze-age books and trying to distil something coherent from the jumble, and (most of all) going around trying to push this messy nonsense onto other people.
If you would just stop messing with people's lives with your metaphysical static and half-remembered metaphors, that would be really splendid. Go to your church and kneel and pray, but fuck off from outside of abortion clinics and get your goons out of the House of Lords because the rest of us are really not interested.
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
There is no magic. There is no Satan. There is often, however, inadequate learning of understanding of things with a perfectly normal explanation. Of course, this does require the difficult technique of learning and understanding rather than the rather lazy memorising of dogma. It is always easier to destroy what you do not understand.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
Well, only heterosexual reproduction can generate offspring unless humanity becomes parthnogenic in which case we can dispense with men....
In your opinion. In my opinion there very much is magic and Satan. Of course being an ideological secular left liberal you have little respect for those of us who are conservatives with faith like me. Do we care less? No.
She is for Brexit and cutting the state, and against asylum seekers and the woke…and that’s why she loves the United Kingdom.
If it ends up Braverman v Sunak that goes to the membership, Braverman could win it with that platform
As I have posted earlier.
FFS don't let the membership decide the next PM.
No, we are a democratic party and they will have their say.
If Braverman gets to the final 2 with Sunak it will go to the membership, she won't withdraw
You also said Wallace would run and win.
Had he run he may well have won, I was disappointed he didn't.
Yes but you said that he would run and that he would win.
When you refuse to talk in anything but absolutes prepare to be reminded.
He didn't, maybe for family reasons who knows.
Braverman however has already declared and is close to the numbers already needed to be nominated, so completely different.
If she got to the final 2 v Sunak the membership could well vote for her, not absolute certainty but very possible
May well be family reasons. It is always forgotten I think but if you run and then become PM you have to explain to your spouse or partner that they will have at least two armed protection officers within yards of them for the rest of their lives.
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
I'm afraid this as a summary is vulgar and simplistic tripe.
Many women who practised witchcraft may also have been skilled in medicine, with more beneficial outcomes than the male physicians who put them out of business, but there is still a big issue with the practise of witchcraft in that it attempts to use spitirual forces to manipulate people and events. That is why it is considered dark and harmful.
When you pray in a Church, you use God as the intermediary between you and your desires. You wouldn't pray for your boss to die in a fiery car crash, because you know that that is counter to God's teachings, and so your prayer would not work. In metaphysics, its fundamental to realising your desires to be free from resentment and have faith in only good outcomes for everyone. There is no similar safeguard in witchcraft. If you look into the actual history of witchcraft, it's not particularly nice - though of course the poor women involved did not deserve what befell many of them.
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
You can find plenty of Christians on Grindr
So what, you can even find openly gay Church of England vicars now
So what I'm saying is that your tiny postage-stamp window on reality leads you to issue idiotic proclamations like "Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity", when in reality Christians are considerably more diverse and relaxed about everything. It's just people like you who are the problem, clinging to dusty bronze-age books and trying to distil something coherent from the jumble, and (most of all) going around trying to push this messy nonsense onto other people.
If you would just stop messing with people's lives with your metaphysical static and half-remembered metaphors, that would be really splendid. Go to your church and kneel and pray, but fuck off from outside of abortion clinics and get your goons out of the House of Lords because the rest of us are really not interested.
Tough, we won't. I don't have a problem with gay Vicars, though I am Anglican and Roman Catholics or Baptists or Pentecostals would. I am no fan of abortion on demand however and if the SC decision in the US is some movement in the culture wars against the likes of you in a more conservative direction and at least reducing the time limit for abortions in time here too all to the good.
I also remain as committed to the Church of England being the established church as ever.
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
You can find plenty of Christians on Grindr
So what, you can even find openly gay Church of England vicars now
So what I'm saying is that your tiny postage-stamp window on reality leads you to issue idiotic proclamations like "Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity", when in reality Christians are considerably more diverse and relaxed about everything. It's just people like you who are the problem, clinging to dusty bronze-age books and trying to distil something coherent from the jumble, and (most of all) going around trying to push this messy nonsense onto other people.
If you would just stop messing with people's lives with your metaphysical static and half-remembered metaphors, that would be really splendid. Go to your church and kneel and pray, but fuck off from outside of abortion clinics and get your goons out of the House of Lords because the rest of us are really not interested.
Tough, we won't. I don't have a problem with gay Vicars, though I am Anglican and Roman Catholics or Baptists or Pentecostals would. I am no fan of abortion on demand however and if the SC decision in the US is some movement in the culture wars against the likes of you in a more conservative direction and at least reducing the time limit for abortions in time here too all to the good.
I also remain as committed to the Church of England being the established church as ever.
"You've stopped us burning women but we're not going to give up controlling their reproduction though!"
If you think we are “hollowed out” then there is sone structural inefficiency compared to what we have done in living memory.
I think there is a huge amount of spending that just happens because someone once thought it was a good idea and it is hard to challenge
You have to account for the demographic burden which is “worth” a percent or two per decade in pension spending, health pressures etc.
Like for like we are probably at a 50 year low, and the candidates are proposing to slice further.
Do you have any convincing maths on that?
Pensioners now contribute for an extra 3 years before getting any state pensions, compared to 15-20 years ago.
Whilst life expectancy is up by 5 years or so since 1990.
Which sounds quite balanced.
If you think the demographic burden is a fiction, you are living in a hole.
I found this at the ONS site.
…As a result, State Pension spending has continued to rise in recent decades. It amounted to almost £92 billion in 2017 (equivalent to 5.1% of GDP), up from £26 billion in 1992 (3.6% of GDP). Based on current population projections, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts that state pension expenditure will rise to 6.1% of GDP by 2042.
That latter figure accounts for the rising pension age, too.
This figure does not include health burden arising from an elderly pop.
My own view is there is only one way to deal with this - funding wise - somehow the property wealth of the boomer generation has to be tapped.
No way will any of the 200 Tory leadership candidates own up to that though.
I have rather startled myself by thinking that public ownership of utilities may be needed. I cannot help thinking how much the costs of electricity, gas, water, rail, etc could come down if the profits paid to shareholders were simply reduced to zero.
The problem is, of course, that when this has been done in the past, the industries in question become highly inefficient.
But somebody has to pay for all the billions paid out to shareholders and for public utilities that somebody is you, me and everyone we know....
Have you divided the headline-grabbing profits through by the number of households, or expressed them as a percentage of revenue? And if so, do they still seem excessive?
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
I'm afraid this as a summary is vulgar and simplistic tripe.
Many women who practised witchcraft may also have been skilled in medicine, with more beneficial outcomes than the male physicians who put them out of business, but there is still a big issue with the practise of witchcraft in that it attempts to use spitirual forces to manipulate people and events. That is why it is considered dark and harmful.
When you pray in a Church, you use God as the intermediary between you and your desires. You wouldn't pray for your boss to die in a fiery car crash, because you know that that is counter to God's teachings, and so your prayer would not work. In metaphysics, its fundamental to realising your desires to be free from resentment and have faith in only good outcomes for everyone. There is no similar safeguard in witchcraft. If you look into the actual history of witchcraft, it's not particularly nice - though of course the poor women involved did not deserve what befell many of them.
All of that is nonsense, not least because the idea that prayer is only directed to God is clearly a fiction. Multiple monotheistic traditions, including the majority of Christian sects, believe in saintly intercession. When you can't even offer an accurate description of the hocus pocus you are trying to defend, it really doesn't bode well for any defence of the overall metaphysics
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
She could do something here…
Certainly shows she knows what area is considered her biggest weakness.
This is pretty accurate so far as I can see. Kemi would be sitting alongside Braverman.
It does rather lack nuance though. I suspect they've almost totally given up trying to characterise economic positions and are basically ranking them by how woke they are. And what is economically right wing nowadays? Fiscal responsibility or lowering taxes?
On Kemi - interesting that her endorsements come largely from the red wall seats - Mansfield, Ashfield, Walsall North. Interesting to see if this trend continues.
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
There is no magic. There is no Satan. There is often, however, inadequate learning of understanding of things with a perfectly normal explanation. Of course, this does require the difficult technique of learning and understanding rather than the rather lazy memorising of dogma. It is always easier to destroy what you do not understand.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
Well, only heterosexual reproduction can generate offspring unless humanity becomes parthnogenic in which case we can dispense with men....
In your opinion. In my opinion there very much is magic and Satan. Of course being an ideological secular left liberal you have little respect for those of us who are conservatives with faith like me. Do we care less? No.
You seem to care about what people say about it a very great deal - you get noticably angry and lose your cool when faith is raised, which you very rarely do on other subjects even when getting many insulting comments thrown at you which might make an intemperate reaction understandable. Your unruffled reactions in the face of torrents of criticism is legendary. Yet on this you get very ruffled and emotional.
So you protestation of not caring about the secular left liberals not having respect for conservatives with faith is not very persuasive. No judgement on that, we all have triggers.
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
She could do something here…
Certainly shows she knows what area is considered her biggest weakness.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The British public are not evil on this, but nor are they willing to agree with demonstrable nonsense. Her line combined with “for God’s sake be polite, address people how they wish to be addressed, and let them act as the gender they wish to when it affects no one else’s rights” is where the public are.
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
There is no magic. There is no Satan. There is often, however, inadequate learning of understanding of things with a perfectly normal explanation. Of course, this does require the difficult technique of learning and understanding rather than the rather lazy memorising of dogma. It is always easier to destroy what you do not understand.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
Well, only heterosexual reproduction can generate offspring unless humanity becomes parthnogenic in which case we can dispense with men....
In your opinion. In my opinion there very much is magic and Satan. Of course being an ideological secular left liberal you have little respect for those of us who are conservatives with faith like me. Do we care less? No.
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
I'm afraid this as a summary is vulgar and simplistic tripe.
Many women who practised witchcraft may also have been skilled in medicine, with more beneficial outcomes than the male physicians who put them out of business, but there is still a big issue with the practise of witchcraft in that it attempts to use spitirual forces to manipulate people and events. That is why it is considered dark and harmful.
When you pray in a Church, you use God as the intermediary between you and your desires. You wouldn't pray for your boss to die in a fiery car crash, because you know that that is counter to God's teachings, and so your prayer would not work. In metaphysics, its fundamental to realising your desires to be free from resentment and have faith in only good outcomes for everyone. There is no similar safeguard in witchcraft. If you look into the actual history of witchcraft, it's not particularly nice - though of course the poor women involved did not deserve what befell many of them.
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
That’s good. I’m switching back to Penny!
She knew she had to clarify her opinions on this subject. A lot of Tories on Twitter were saying "We like everything about you but we're not sure about your views on what the definition of a woman is".
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
There is no magic. There is no Satan. There is often, however, inadequate learning of understanding of things with a perfectly normal explanation. Of course, this does require the difficult technique of learning and understanding rather than the rather lazy memorising of dogma. It is always easier to destroy what you do not understand.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
Well, only heterosexual reproduction can generate offspring unless humanity becomes parthnogenic in which case we can dispense with men....
In your opinion. In my opinion there very much is magic and Satan. Of course being an ideological secular left liberal you have little respect for those of us who are conservatives with faith like me. Do we care less? No.
You seem to care about what people say about it a very great deal - you get noticably angry and lose your cool when faith is raised, which you very rarely do on other subjects even when getting many insulting comments thrown at you which might make an intemperate reaction understandable. Your unruffled reactions in the face of torrents of criticism is legendary. Yet on this you get very ruffled and emotional.
So you protestation of not caring about the secular left liberals not having respect for conservatives with faith is not very persuasive. No judgement on that, we all have triggers.
OK, I do care but either way I am not going to agree with them
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
She could do something here…
It’s absolutely brilliant from Penny so far 👍🏻
And it’s exactly the same as I have been dismantling Casino and MISTY with the last couple of days of PB. You can’t daub Penny as woke for her onslaught on It Ain’t Half Hot Mum when she is stood next to Daley and Sharon on transgender in sport, you just can’t, it’s ridiculous if you try to, because truth is politicians, and all of us, are allowed to have a range of views across these issues - falling foul on just one test or measurement in your opinion means they are woke, thus daubing them as woke, is no different to making Jews wear ribbons - says much more about your own prejudices and idealogical immaturity than it does about Penny’s!
(Her opening statement begins about 15 minutes in. And, following that, under questioning she sticks to her estimate that 130,000 lives could have been saved during the Trump administration, with better policies, and better execution.)
Full disclosure: I watched just the first 22 or 23 minutes, and don't plan to watch the whole thing, since I can read faster than I can watch. I hope Dr. Foxy , and other medical pofessionals, will take a look at the book, and report back to us.
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
There is no magic. There is no Satan. There is often, however, inadequate learning of understanding of things with a perfectly normal explanation. Of course, this does require the difficult technique of learning and understanding rather than the rather lazy memorising of dogma. It is always easier to destroy what you do not understand.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
Well, only heterosexual reproduction can generate offspring unless humanity becomes parthnogenic in which case we can dispense with men....
In your opinion. In my opinion there very much is magic and Satan. Of course being an ideological secular left liberal you have little respect for those of us who are conservatives with faith like me. Do we care less? No.
Sorry, you think there is magic? I’m genuinely curious. I rather thought where I as an atheist and the church agreed was what there was no such thing as magic? (In that I thought you categorised miracles etc. differently).
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
She could do something here…
She has certainly made a bold attempt to reclaim the limelight. But on this issue, I cannot support the assertion that a trans man is a man, or a trans woman is a woman.
You can create a legal framework that gives a legal equivalence but biology is not so easily overwritten.
Trans men and women should be treated as full equals in society. There should be no legal barriers that exist to full equality in terms of citizenship and the legal rights that flow from that.
But true diversity and inclusivity is about celebrating our differences and working to ensure the true equality of opportunity exists.
So let's celebrate trans men and women for being trans. It is not an easy path to tread. And we should all work to remove those remaining obstacles.
But let us also celebrate the near infinite complexity of human biology and the opportunities and challenges that that presents. Biology will, under certain limited circumstances, always have to trump gender identity.
Celebrate the individual. Don't try to force everyone to fit a new orthodoxy that seeks to deny biology and deny common sense.
We are all different and that should be celebrated
Mr Johnson has decided he cannot force a by-election in his marginal constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip.
But two well-placed sources said he is now deciding whether to follow in the footsteps of his immediate predecessor, Theresa May, and remain in the Commons, or to stand down at the next election.
Telegraph
He means ask the good burghers of Uxbridge to return him to the Commons........
This race to cut taxes might end up being an own goal for those candidates .
Sunaks I won’t tell you fairytales seems a good slogan and I’m sure he will ensure taxes can be cut just before the next election.
What happens with all these tax cuts , how are they going to be paid for , more borrowing or cuts to services.
Certainly for us political junkies the normal quiet summer period looks a bit more interesting . Just how this plays out and just how ugly and bitter this leadership campaign becomes should keep PB very busy over the coming weeks.
Tax cuts don’t need to be “paid for”.
Spending needs to be paid for and justified. It’s not some immutable thing that exists
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
She could do something here…
She has certainly made a bold attempt to reclaim the limelight. But on this issue, I cannot support the assertion that a trans man is a man, or a trans woman is a woman.
You can create a legal framework that gives a legal equivalence but biology is not so easily overwritten.
Trans men and women should be treated as full equals in society. There should be no legal barriers that exist to full equality in terms of citizenship and the legal rights that flow from that.
But true diversity and inclusivity is about celebrating our differences and working to ensure the true equality of opportunity exists.
So let's celebrate trans men and women for being trans. It is not an easy path to tread. And we should all work to remove those remaining obstacles.
But let us also celebrate the near infinite complexity of human biology and the opportunities and challenges that that presents. Biology will, under certain limited circumstances, always have to trump gender identity.
Celebrate the individual. Don't try to force everyone to fit a new orthodoxy that seeks to deny biology and deny common sense.
We are all different and that should be celebrated
I think there are two things to distinguish.
Your sex is biology. Your biology is your biology. You are male or female (except for the minuscule number of cases where you are both).
But your gender is different - you can identify as another gender. And throughout history and in other cultures there have been more than two genders.
These two are often confused (sometimes deliberately). Penny stayed on the sensible side of the argument. Bravo Penny.
Taking a wild stab, reducing our (already comparatively very low) carbon emissions at a speed that doesn't impoverish the citizenry and wreck the economy. Weren't you complaining about the cost of living the other day? Join the dots.
This is at least a proper thing to be discussing at this juncture, regarding policy direction for future leadership.
A lot of Conservative thinking, and the General Public are very much on the side of Net Zero 50 (pushed through by May in her Lame Duck Period?) and Labours position, in Millibands hands is Tory’s are not going quickly enough? (Nick Palmer May be the one to correct me if I have that wrong).
That's right. We note the pledges but are sceptical whether the Government is doing enough to achieve them. You might, if feeling uncharitable, call them hot air. Some Tories are perfectly sincere and trying hard; others see it as more of a slogan. Kemi is at least honest in opposing even pretending to be in favour.
We differ somewhat in nuance from the Greens in emphasizing the potential for Britain to lead a green industrial revolution - better wind turbines, better carbon capture, etc., creating new industries, job and exports; the Greens place the emphasis more on reduced consumption.
The Greens' policy regarding economic growth (or the reversal of it) is utterly insane. Sad, mad people. One hopes that at some point they recover.
The Greens are batshit-crazy.
They still haven't caught up with the idea that economic growth does not have to be heavy, polluting industry.
"Sajid Javid and Jeremy Hunt call for massive tax cuts Ex-chancellor wants to scrap National Insurance rise, while helping businesses is former foreign secretary's priority"
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
I'm afraid this as a summary is vulgar and simplistic tripe.
Many women who practised witchcraft may also have been skilled in medicine, with more beneficial outcomes than the male physicians who put them out of business, but there is still a big issue with the practise of witchcraft in that it attempts to use spitirual forces to manipulate people and events. That is why it is considered dark and harmful.
When you pray in a Church, you use God as the intermediary between you and your desires. You wouldn't pray for your boss to die in a fiery car crash, because you know that that is counter to God's teachings, and so your prayer would not work. In metaphysics, its fundamental to realising your desires to be free from resentment and have faith in only good outcomes for everyone. There is no similar safeguard in witchcraft. If you look into the actual history of witchcraft, it's not particularly nice - though of course the poor women involved did not deserve what befell many of them.
All of that is nonsense, not least because the idea that prayer is only directed to God is clearly a fiction. Multiple monotheistic traditions, including the majority of Christian sects, believe in saintly intercession. When you can't even offer an accurate description of the hocus pocus you are trying to defend, it really doesn't bode well for any defence of the overall metaphysics
Saints are interceding to God on the asker's behalf. That makes absolutely no difference to the substance of the argument. You would no more ask a saint to kill someone than asking God.
The practise of metaphysics I am talking about here is distinct from typical Christianity - I was using it as an example of another form of spirituality, one that through a different mechanism, permits no active harmful intentions to be wrought on others.
Even white witches have acknowledged that a relatively benign spell for more money could involve (for example) an accident befalling a wealthy relative who leaves a legacy. A prayer to God (or Mary, or St George) for more money is not going to put you in a situation of responsibility for harming someone, because your prayer is being handled by a loving and all-powerful God, according to his purpose and plan.
This race to cut taxes might end up being an own goal for those candidates .
Sunaks I won’t tell you fairytales seems a good slogan and I’m sure he will ensure taxes can be cut just before the next election.
What happens with all these tax cuts , how are they going to be paid for , more borrowing or cuts to services.
Certainly for us political junkies the normal quiet summer period looks a bit more interesting . Just how this plays out and just how ugly and bitter this leadership campaign becomes should keep PB very busy over the coming weeks.
Tax cuts don’t need to be “paid for”.
Spending needs to be paid for and justified. It’s not some immutable thing that exists
Starting from where we are, much of it kind of is. You don’t get to zero base it - we are where we are and if you stop doing something, there are losers. And often they vote.
Comments
Net Zero? Nah, burn baby burn!
Labour's problem was the threshold being met then took it out of the hands of MPs, so their lending of support sacrificed their control.
Tweed Mubarak!
Coming from the dales I have sat on hillsides watching over sheep. I listen to the wild intelligence of my body - I know the living universe, I do weather I know weather as well as landscape and the sky, I feel it, the moon mothering my watery body and the fatherly sun enriching my blood. 👢👢
https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/08/next-tory-leader-whos-backing-whom-our-working-list/
Sunak 27
Truss 13
Braverman 10
Hunt 10
Zahawi 10
Badenoch 9
Mordaunt 9
Tugendhat 7
Javid 4
Shapps 2
Total 101
(28% of 358 Con MPs)
Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
Of course, that plan was rather upended by the air-conditioned, out-of-town, modern hotel I booked myself into on the hottest day; turned up at the door at 2pm; encountered a sign saying it was fermé until 6pm. My French is not as good as it once was but I think my exact phrase was "ras le cul de cet hôtel de merde".
Why is that, if someone else's faction wins the 'prize'?
It seems political minorities only need listening to sometimes.
I found this at the ONS site.
…As a result, State Pension spending has continued to rise in recent decades. It amounted to almost £92 billion in 2017 (equivalent to 5.1% of GDP), up from £26 billion in 1992 (3.6% of GDP). Based on current population projections, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts that state pension expenditure will rise to 6.1% of GDP by 2042.
That latter figure accounts for the rising pension age, too.
This figure does not include health burden arising from an elderly pop.
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
https://www.arabnews.com/news/484641
Will be interesting to see if any candidates happily tie themselves to it, or do best not to endorse it without getting into the obvious “no? What instead then?”
And it's that simple. Witches add nothing but questions to any world view.
And I would turn it around. If you're going to burn someone at the stake, I expect more than "well how can you be sure she isn't evil?" as a justification. Burden of proof, admissibility of evidence, hearsay, and reasonableness of views are all legal concepts for good reason. The idea of witches is an insult not just to the scientific mind, but the very foundations of British justice.
Oh, and if you want to tie the Bible conceptually to the Quran, be my guest. They're both works of evil.
https://twitter.com/suellabraverman/status/1545888375848181761?s=21&t=Bdqju1iOYD48KbkxG1sIBQ
She is for Brexit and cutting the state, and against asylum seekers and the woke…and that’s why she loves the United Kingdom.
Interesting you also think not pursuing murder, not committing adultery, not stealing, loving thy neighbour as thyself, being a good Samaritan etc as the Bible also commands are works of evil. Which gives a concerning thought as to what you do think as a work of good!
Luckily, angels don't actually exist to do that work. If only stupid people didn't take it upon themselves to pick up the slack, we'd have a lot less grief in the world.
No way will any of the 200 Tory leadership candidates own up to that though.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Instead they'll go hard on authenticity, policy, and understanding ordinary voters I expect. Whenever someone is slick their opponent claims that means they have no substance, it is the default attack.
If you have any doubts about this, consider this charmingly uplifting quote:
"Never lose hope, be persistent and stubborn and never give up. There are many instances in history where apparent losers suddenly turn out to be winners unexpectedly, so you should never conclude all hope is lost."
Now a lot of people would agree with that. Then you tell that "actually that quote's from the Unabomber."
Does that mean the Unabomber suddenly not evil? No. Does that mean you have to reject the above quote? No.
The problem is, of course, that when this has been done in the past, the industries in question become highly inefficient.
But somebody has to pay for all the billions paid out to shareholders and for public utilities that somebody is you, me and everyone we know....
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
LOL
FFS don't let the membership decide the next PM.
If Braverman gets to the final 2 with Sunak it will go to the membership, she won't withdraw
Kemi would be sitting alongside Braverman.
Unless of course it is for the NHS for their hip replacements and heart ops or triple lock pension uplifts or social care caps to protect the kids inheritance.
Suella Braverman
Jeremy Hunt
Grant Shapps
https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/08/next-tory-leader-whos-backing-whom-our-working-list/
Well, only heterosexual reproduction can generate offspring unless humanity becomes parthnogenic in which case we can dispense with men....
When you refuse to talk in anything but absolutes prepare to be reminded.
She will be fecking titanic disaster for the party.
Anyone with one nanogram of sentience can see she is not PM material.
God help us all.
Braverman however has already declared and is close to the numbers already needed to be nominated, so completely different.
If she got to the final 2 v Sunak the membership could well vote for her, not absolute certainty but very possible
It's just people like you who are the problem, clinging to dusty bronze-age books and trying to distil something coherent from the jumble, and (most of all) going around trying to push this messy nonsense onto other people.
If you would just stop messing with people's lives with your metaphysical static and half-remembered metaphors, that would be really splendid. Go to your church and kneel and pray, but fuck off from outside of abortion clinics and get your goons out of the House of Lords because the rest of us are really not interested.
Which is why the MPs need to make sure there is not a members vote.
Twitter
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt
I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked:
https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt
Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes
). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
@PregnantScrewed
@CdreMelRobinson
@PN_TomCotterill
for calling it out
https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908409714835456 - That picture was a disgrace that should have been called out more loudly.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt
I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman.
Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m
All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record.
Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Many women who practised witchcraft may also have been skilled in medicine, with more beneficial outcomes than the male physicians who put them out of business, but there is still a big issue with the practise of witchcraft in that it attempts to use spitirual forces to manipulate people and events. That is why it is considered dark and harmful.
When you pray in a Church, you use God as the intermediary between you and your desires. You wouldn't pray for your boss to die in a fiery car crash, because you know that that is counter to God's teachings, and so your prayer would not work. In metaphysics, its fundamental to realising your desires to be free from resentment and have faith in only good outcomes for everyone. There is no similar safeguard in witchcraft. If you look into the actual history of witchcraft, it's not particularly nice - though of course the poor women involved did not deserve what befell many of them.
I also remain as committed to the Church of England being the established church as ever.
She could do something here…
When you can't even offer an accurate description of the hocus pocus you are trying to defend, it really doesn't bode well for any defence of the overall metaphysics
Penny seems a decent human being - therefore she won't win.
On Kemi - interesting that her endorsements come largely from the red wall seats - Mansfield, Ashfield, Walsall North. Interesting to see if this trend continues.
So you protestation of not caring about the secular left liberals not having respect for conservatives with faith is not very persuasive. No judgement on that, we all have triggers.
And it’s exactly the same as I have been dismantling Casino and MISTY with the last couple of days of PB. You can’t daub Penny as woke for her onslaught on It Ain’t Half Hot Mum when she is stood next to Daley and Sharon on transgender in sport, you just can’t, it’s ridiculous if you try to, because truth is politicians, and all of us, are allowed to have a range of views across these issues - falling foul on just one test or measurement in your opinion means they are woke, thus daubing them as woke, is no different to making Jews wear ribbons - says much more about your own prejudices and idealogical immaturity than it does about Penny’s!
We could actually have agreement across the spectrum and finally put these issues to bed - and get onto the economy and CoL.
Can I hope?
(Her opening statement begins about 15 minutes in. And, following that, under questioning she sticks to her estimate that 130,000 lives could have been saved during the Trump administration, with better policies, and better execution.)
Or, you can buy her book, as I plan to do: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/silent-invasion-deborah-birx/1141004865
Full disclosure: I watched just the first 22 or 23 minutes, and don't plan to watch the whole thing, since I can read faster than I can watch. I hope Dr. Foxy , and other medical pofessionals, will take a look at the book, and report back to us.
End of culture wars with Penny.
End of woke fascism with Penny.
Now what has she got to say on Net Zero 50.
And Rwanda sceme.
You can create a legal framework that gives a legal equivalence but biology is not so easily overwritten.
Trans men and women should be treated as full equals in society. There should be no legal barriers that exist to full equality in terms of citizenship and the legal rights that flow from that.
But true diversity and inclusivity is about celebrating our differences and working to ensure the true equality of opportunity exists.
So let's celebrate trans men and women for being trans. It is not an easy path to tread. And we should all work to remove those remaining obstacles.
But let us also celebrate the near infinite complexity of human biology and the opportunities and challenges that that presents. Biology will, under certain limited circumstances, always have to trump gender identity.
Celebrate the individual. Don't try to force everyone to fit a new orthodoxy that seeks to deny biology and deny common sense.
We are all different and that should be celebrated
Spending needs to be paid for and justified. It’s not some immutable thing that exists
Your sex is biology. Your biology is your biology. You are male or female (except for the minuscule number of cases where you are both).
But your gender is different - you can identify as another gender. And throughout history and in other cultures there have been more than two genders.
These two are often confused (sometimes deliberately). Penny stayed on the sensible side of the argument. Bravo Penny.
They still haven't caught up with the idea that economic growth does not have to be heavy, polluting industry.
Ex-chancellor wants to scrap National Insurance rise, while helping businesses is former foreign secretary's priority"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/07/09/sajid-javid-jeremy-hunt-call-massive-tax-cuts/
The practise of metaphysics I am talking about here is distinct from typical Christianity - I was using it as an example of another form of spirituality, one that through a different mechanism, permits no active harmful intentions to be wrought on others.
Even white witches have acknowledged that a relatively benign spell for more money could involve (for example) an accident befalling a wealthy relative who leaves a legacy. A prayer to God (or Mary, or St George) for more money is not going to put you in a situation of responsibility for harming someone, because your prayer is being handled by a loving and all-powerful God, according to his purpose and plan.