It reminds me of the ending to Keats' Ode to a Grecian Urn. Not sure I agree. Beauty is subjective, highly subjective. Truth can be (the old joke "there's my side, there's your side, and then there's the truth"), but there is also objective truth. 2 + 2 = 4. Like sparrowdown says, whether I like it or not, it's always going to add up to 4. And some truths really aren't all that pleasant to have to accept and face.
Mephis
JoinedPosts by Mephis
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" Truth is the Most Beautiful Thing " ..... debate.
by Phizzy in"truth is the most beautiful thing" is a quote from andrea camilleri, author of the montalbano novels among many other writings.. what do you think about that statement ?.
is there anything more beautiful ?
or do other things top it, or come further down the list of beautiful things ?.
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Evolution is a Fact #17 - Belyaev's Silver Foxes
by cofty inin stalin's ussr the science of genetics was deemed "reactionary and decadent".
scientists were sent to the gulags or simply disappeared.
dmitri konstantinovich belyaev lost his job at the at the central research laboratory of fur breeding in moscow because of his commitment to classical genetics.
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Mephis
Imagining the crazy world of resurrecting that species somehow , I think a certain amount of natural selection tends to weed out the human gene pool when it comes to trying to domesticate animals which view humans as dinner... -
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Things JW's and Atheists have in common
by juandefiero ini was just thinking about something someone said on another thread.
to paraphrase, 'jw beliefs like there being no hellfire, immortal soul, the condition at death...have the ring of truth.'.
i realized, atheists believe these things too!.
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Mephis
@prologos - I'm agnostic on such things (as in I know I don't know), but if you're positing a God existing outside of spacetime, then that God is also unable to influence spacetime. To intervene in this universe requires a process and a duration (time). So a God therefore exists outside of his creation. The absent parent of all eternity. But I'd certainly agree such a God could exist. -
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Will the GB ever do this?
by why144000 inhi, not sure if this has been covered.. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-13/peter-hollingworth-says-sorry-to-victims-child-abuse-brisbane/6939804.
i don't have much time for peter hollingworth.
he has always acted like a pompous prick when i have met him or seen him on tv however he humbled himself and made an apology for his actions and the actions of the church.. any bets on if the gb would ever do this?.
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Mephis
Do they even recognise there's a problem which needs to be addressed by the WBTS as an organisation? Will they ever recognise that they have a moral responsibility from the position in which they've placed themselves?
It may be late, but other religions are starting to face up to the problem and the failures of their own leadership to address the issue sooner and better, as well as how much they failed the kids who should have been protected and the survivors who should have been cared for.
I will be genuinely surprised if the WBTS ever manages more than grudging restitution to survivors. And then only when there is no other alternative. They don't have the moral courage to face things like this. They are cowards of the worst kind because they love telling people what to do, but they want nothing to do with the consequences.
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Illustrated Stephen Hawking lectures on Black Holes
by Mephis ini loved these.
not only the drawings, but the lectures themselves are on something right at the limits of our ability to test, and in parts well beyond.. do black holes have no hair?.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03gl17j.
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Mephis
Bless. He's actually quite nice about God in those you know? He says we can safely ignore him. Just as he ignores us. I think that's sweet. -
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do we have issues with the site or is it my mac or firefox?
by sowhatnow inim on a mac-book, and when im at the site, often my mac runs real slow, im typing and the letters are not there, and pop up a few seconds later.
weird stuff.
it sometimes freezes up on me.
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Mephis
If you haven't already, I'd run a scan for viruses and malware on your mac-book as it sounds like something funky is going on there.
If you've not got a program to do that, I did a quick look and Avast seem to have a free version for Macs which should work. (Avast is a resource hog of an anti-virus, so uninstalling after is a good option.)
Been a while since I touched Mac for a work though, so can't help much beyond that I'm afraid.
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Illustrated Stephen Hawking lectures on Black Holes
by Mephis ini loved these.
not only the drawings, but the lectures themselves are on something right at the limits of our ability to test, and in parts well beyond.. do black holes have no hair?.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03gl17j.
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Mephis
I loved these. Not only the drawings, but the lectures themselves are on something right at the limits of our ability to test, and in parts well beyond.
Do black holes have no hair?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03gl17j
Black holes ain't as black as they are painted
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Is a piano inevitable?
by slimboyfat ini was at a concert last night and the presence and stature of the piano struck me.
and i thought: if the piano wasn't invented when it was, would it have been invented by someone else instead?
or if there was a world the same as our, except with a different history, would it have pianos now too or would it be modern world, similar in many respects, only without pianos?
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Mephis
Ullysses by James Joyce on the other hand... If Joyce hadn't been born and lived the life he did this book would never have existed.
I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Beckett's Molloy trilogy (and a few other things). No Joyce means no Beckett, or at least not as he became.That curious butterfly effect of alternate histories. But it's arguable that there would have been equivalent movements with other expressions or even the same forms even if not in the same words. You have to tear out the influences by the roots to stop that. The beginning is Homer I suppose. -
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Things JW's and Atheists have in common
by juandefiero ini was just thinking about something someone said on another thread.
to paraphrase, 'jw beliefs like there being no hellfire, immortal soul, the condition at death...have the ring of truth.'.
i realized, atheists believe these things too!.
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Mephis
Do you honestly belief that all theist and Christian scientists really want to prove God doesn't exist? Scientists couldn't care less about that, because it's not a subject they investigate.
Stephen Hawking made that point in one of his recent Reith Lectures. God is only relevant to science if someone insists that their god interferes with scientific laws. And then they have to prove it. -
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How the Internet is Destroying Mormonism
by slimboyfat ininteresting video, shame it wasn't about jws.
http://youtu.be/-1bdbkjbzzy.
what a would be your top 5 shocking things you found out about jws on the internet?.
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Mephis
1, The scale of the child abuse. Not just the odd 'bad apple' I'd been told. Still makes my blood boil.
2. The nature of judicial committees for sexual 'sins'. Compounded when it is a survivor of a serious crime being asked those questions. Deeply disgusting and shameful they do that to anyone.
3. The number of people who trod the 607 path without knowing they weren't alone.
4. The extent of the deceit required to write a sourced WBTS article. (eg the quotations in the Creation book).
5. I'd not checked on JWs for a long time, so the difference between the religion I walked away from and the overtly culty 'listen, obey, be blessed' really shocked me.