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Yes, yes and yes.
If you ever find yourself driving on a highway in Greece there’s an exodus sign every few kilometers.
After 9/11, not only did Americans not punish George W. Bush, they rewarded him with a second term. And that’s after he got US involved in the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The term ‘Karen’ has nothing to do with being a prima donna. It denotes a sanctimonious rule-follower and a scold, e.g. someone who would call the health department to report an ‘illegal’ kids’ sidewalk lemonade stand.
@yungermans To date, there were a total of 6 Halachic jewish astronauts/cosmonauts on space missions two of whom died (one, not making in it to space). And that’s the fact and truth. Not sure what it does to your argument.
Welcome to epistemology, @coffeeaddict! Philosopher Donald Davidson famously said that the reason for a belief is just another belief. While a belief can be justified by the awareness of a sensation, the awareness of a sensation is “just another belief.”
@Always Ironically, The institute founded by Fritz Haber, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung mbH (Degesch), developed Zyklon A and later Zyklon B, directly based on his prior research.
Since when has SCOTUS nomination been about the most qualified individual? How would one even go about determining what/who the most qualified jurist is? To think that presidents nominate the most qualified and impartial person to be on the Supreme Court is a laughable notion that is historically inaccurate or at best – wishful thinking.
What Yaakov Doe said. Anyone who has lived in NY and paid even a modicum of attention to this clown’s antics would feel the same way. The man is a joke. A gross, dangerous, cruel joke.
@Red Eliezer Crossing the Atlantic from Western Europe to NYC took 7-14 days on a steamship and anywhere from 40 to 90 days under a sail. Many observant Jews undertook this journey. How was that allowed?
One pretty good definition of racism in my book is: racism=prejudice+power. It is safe to say that prejudice exists across all populations, whether it is based on skin color, educational attainment, or political leanings. The in-group/out-group prejudice seems to be well baked in and perhaps used to confer some survival advantage. Having said that, the concept of biological race has no scientific basis whatsoever. Across all studies of “races” the individual variations within the given population are always greater than between different populations. Additionally, there’s no way to untangle what traits are genetic and what is caused by circumstances of one’s upbringing. It is also important to understand the history of the concept of “race” and its much more recent counterpart of “biological race”. The former has its origins in 14th century Iberian Peninsula, the latter – 19th century eugenics movement. I am sure that I need not remind anyone how Eastern European Jewish “race” was viewed by the American eugenicists at the turn of 20th century. Back then, “everyone knew” that Jews were filthy, criminally inclined undesirables with below average intelligence. Ditto Irish, Italians, Chinese, etc., etc.
@ujm and you wonder why there’s anti-semitism!
Even taking creation out of it, it’s always been a silly question. An egg is just a stage in chicken’s process of self-replication, not vice versa. The whole question is only possible because birds gestate/incubate their embryos outside of their bodies. That’s why no one asks what came first, a human egg fertilized by human sperm or a human.
Yep, Orechdin, there are infinities and then there’re infinities. The great German mathematician, Georg Cantor, created a whole new branch of mathematics called Set Theory that among other things deals with one-to-one correspondence of numbers in different infinite sets. Set Theory is one of the fundamental theories of modern math. There’s even (perhaps) an infinite set of infinite sets that is infinitely larger than the each infinite set contained therein. The problem lies in the word ‘infinity’ and the way we use it without making distinctions between different infinities.
Dear ShimonNodel, thank you for illustrating my point so beautifully and eloquently! I couldn’t have said better myself. Have a wonderful Pesach!
@Shimon Nodel To be sure, I would never impugn anyone’s faith, trust, testament, emunah (whatever word you want to use, the essence is the same). I was merely pointing out the difference between a faith-based and scientific method of inquiry. Without getting too much into the epistemological thickets, let’s take a famous and neutral example. In the Classical world it was assumed that all swans are white. So what is one to do when confronted with a black swan (yes, they do in fact exist)? A follower of the scientific method will have to admit that the fundamental postulate (all swans are white) is no longer tenable and will discard it thus shifting the paradigm. However, someone who believes in the infallibility of the fundamental postulate (whether through faith or testimony, etc.) will have to explain away the black swan, e.g. the postulate is metaphorical, admits an exception, the black swan is not really black, etc., etc.. It is similar to your example of trusting the pilot will land the plane safely–it only takes one plane crash to demolish this supposition (problem of induction). All of this is to say that scientific method and religion are fundamentally incompatible and cannot be reconciled without making a category mistake–never twain shall meet. To someone with emunah it should never matter that science claims that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, or that Paleo-Hebrew looks suspiciously similar to the much older Phoenician or Proto-Canaanite, or whether there are textual inconsistencies or scribal errors in ancient texts. This category mistake is why the word ‘talmudic’ acquired the pejorative connotation in the secular world–the function of Talmud is not to overturn the testament that is assumed to be infallible but to reconcile it with any fact that is contrary to it.
@mindful Adulation is a lifelong pursuit. There’s ALWAYS more adulation to be had –– an advanced degree, learning to proofread, using proper vocabulary and spelling (it’s called Master’s degree. You’re welcome.), proper argumentation (straw man, red herring, appeal to false authority, etc.). I’m only saying this as someone who is friends with a few masked oncologists who are busy saving lives when they are not committing genocide.
@torahvaluesoverparty see above@rightwriter I believe your questions are valid, however I don’t think this isn’t the right forum for them. One can ask questions, do research and evaluate evidence no matter where it leads you in the end – that’s called scientific method, or one can have a predetermined answer and explain away the questions in order to fit it – that’s called faith. You can have rationality or you can have faith, but you can’t have both.
That’s a head scratcher… Not really. Just like dinosaur bones, Paleo-Hebrew artifacts were buried to confuse the nonbelievers.
@ResidentMortal: FAKE NEWS! Or is it fake fact? Unless you are the one that did the cheating or witnessed it with your own eyes, take it easy with your ‘facts’. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And that goes for a lot of things.
@UJM It is perfectly reasonable for a Black person to not vote for a dyed-in-the-wool racist white supremacist. Conversely, it is perfectly reasonable for a racist to vote for Trump.
@RebElieizer Funny, that’s what people were saying in 1939.
True story: when Germans invaded USSR in June 1941, frum Jews in the Belorussian shtetls would welcome the Wehrmacht with bread and salt as liberators. They remembered WWI when Germans were merely anti-Semitic but not yet genocidal. Needless to say it didn’t end well.
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@1 “When the facts change, I change my mind – what do you do, sir?” (variously attributed to John Maynard Keynes
What’s wrong with Harris being the president? Just look at the leadership of Angela Merkel, Jacinda Ardern, Katrin Jakobsdottir, Mette Frederiksen, Sanna Marin to name a few. Steady, competent executives doing their jobs better than the pathetic US and UK clowns and with close to zero drama. We should be so lucky!