On Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:13:25 +0100, Stephen wrote:

>>Some people honour those who create things that demonstrate a high
>>degree of knowledge or experience, so why not?
> 
> I suppose it depends on the meaning of honour. You can honour elders for
> their age and wisdom which is a good thing, mostly 

True....

> but I would not
> honour someone like Hussein or Hitler if they had reached an old age.
> Except maybe out of fear. ;)

Agreed. :-)

Jim

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On Sat, 11 Jul 2009 09:50:49 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:11:02 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>> 
>>> In the best of worlds, both government and religion are in the same
>>> business.
>> 
>> Very true.  The fundamental difference is that the Government deals in
>> your life today, religion typically deals in your eternal life.
> 
> No, that's what I'm saying. Religions don't tell you about your eternal
> life. They tell you about what you have to do *today* to get your
> eternal reward. I can't think of any religion that tells you about your
> eternal life without telling you how to behave in this one.

But most of the major religions do use "eternal life" as the carrot to 
get you to follow the rules or directions of the leadership.  I'm not 
sure I understand what you're saying here, but I suspect we might be "in 
violent agreement" again. ;-)

> My point was that to break up a prisoner's dilemma situation, you can
> either increase the reward for cooperating or increase the punishment
> for refusing to cooperate. And government and religion are both in a
> good position to do one or the other of those.

Oh, I see....

Jim

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On Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:37:23 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Darren New wrote:
>> My point was that to break up a prisoner's dilemma situation,
> 
> Or, to clarify with an example:
> 
> Cheating:  I get $100, costing you $200. Government: I fine you more
> than $100 for cheating, so it isn't worth it. Religion: I reward you
> with more than $100 for not cheating, so it isn't worth it.
> 
> The idea comes from my attempts to write a constitution for my own
> little island empire based on sound reasoning and logic. :-)

Oh, that makes sense to me, yes, we're talking about different things, 
but I think agreeing on the same principle.

Jim

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On Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:58:25 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> They turned into a means of controlling the people a long time ago. IMO.

I don't know that that's a matter of opinion, though - I think that's 
pretty well established fact....

Jim

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On 11 Jul 2009 16:55:28 -0400, Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:

>On Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:13:25 +0100, Stephen wrote:
>
>>>Some people honour those who create things that demonstrate a high
>>>degree of knowledge or experience, so why not?
>> 
>> I suppose it depends on the meaning of honour. You can honour elders for
>> their age and wisdom which is a good thing, mostly 
>
>True....
>
>> but I would not
>> honour someone like Hussein or Hitler if they had reached an old age.
>> Except maybe out of fear. ;)
>
>Agreed. :-)
>

That's another world problem solved.
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On 11 Jul 2009 16:58:28 -0400, Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:

>On Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:58:25 +0100, Stephen wrote:
>
>> They turned into a means of controlling the people a long time ago. IMO.
>
>I don't know that that's a matter of opinion, though - I think that's 
>pretty well established fact....
>

Drat! I just reinvented the wheel.
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On Sat, 11 Jul 2009 22:16:26 +0100, Stephen wrote:

>>> but I would not
>>> honour someone like Hussein or Hitler if they had reached an old age.
>>> Except maybe out of fear. ;)
>>
>>Agreed. :-)
>>
>>
> That's another world problem solved.

If we keep going, we could probably solve world hunger, too, along with 
all the other major problems out there. :-)

Jim

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On Sat, 11 Jul 2009 22:18:40 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 11 Jul 2009 16:58:28 -0400, Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> 
>>On Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:58:25 +0100, Stephen wrote:
>>
>>> They turned into a means of controlling the people a long time ago.
>>> IMO.
>>
>>I don't know that that's a matter of opinion, though - I think that's
>>pretty well established fact....
>>
>>
> Drat! I just reinvented the wheel.

I hate when I do that. :-)

Jim

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Stephen wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:37:23 -0700, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> 
>> Darren New wrote:
>>> My point was that to break up a prisoner's dilemma situation, 
>> Or, to clarify with an example:
>>
>> Cheating:  I get $100, costing you $200.
>> Government: I fine you more than $100 for cheating, so it isn't worth it.
>> Religion: I reward you with more than $100 for not cheating, so it isn't 
>> worth it.
>>
>> The idea comes from my attempts to write a constitution for my own little 
>> island empire based on sound reasoning and logic. :-)
> 
> You forgot, "or you will BURN IN HELL!"  :-)
No, what he forgot is the catch-22 of religion, which is, "Someone else 
will reward you more than $100, and some unspecified time, but I can't 
and won't tell you how much, or even if its money, except that its a 
'lot' more, so, according to me, its not worth it to annoy this other 
person, by doing it."

The flaw of course being, how do you trust that a) this other person 
exists, b) tell which of the various things they claim is cheating is 
actually cheating, c) tell which of the various things people claim is 
"THE" reward, or not, and d) which one of the myriad people that make 
the claim actually know what this person will give you, why, when, or 
how much? Since none of these things are knowable, and often by the 
definition of the very people insisting that he "does" know it, yet this 
other person's plans, intentions and behavior is, at the same time, 
unknowable (always good for a groan), how do you even know that you can 
trust the person telling you not to cheat? You know the cops will haul 
your ass to jail, since you have **seen** cops. All you have is the word 
of one of million of people with tens of thousands of contradictory 
definitions of what constitutes, "Things this other guy, whose name, 
size, shape, powers, interests, dislikes, desires, and nature we can't 
even all agree on".

Its a bit like saying that the intent of someone with a fishing pole, 
and someone with a butterfly net is the same, when both are trying real 
hard to catch fish in a river. However, the question isn't if the 
"intent" is the same, its which one catches the biggest fish (or any), 
and which one just brags about the one that they "almost got, but it got 
away from them".

D&D is a different way of "knowing" in the same way religion is, and 
like religion, its only applicable to the imaginary universe that it 
describes, and then only when you premise that the world is real, and 
that "other" real world explanations for Dragons, Troll regeneration, 
and the mystical properties of bags of holding a) can't be explained by 
naturalistic methods (duh!), and c) there is something profound that 
will change reality as we know it, if scientists just stopped being so 
closed minded and took amazing spells like Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound 
seriously. The consequences for doing something wrong, in terms of both 
are similar too. Either nothing happens, or people insist that you have 
to wait to find out, or that you didn't do it right, and, in the later 
case, if you **did** the results would be, "truly profound!". If it also 
happens to be something we deemed illegal, then something entirely 
unconnected to the imaginary consequences happens, such as an arrest. 
Sadly, the sort of people that take this stuff seriously will quite 
often attribute the ability of the cops to figure out who did it, find 
their house, bust down the door, and, all without divine intervention, 
arrest them, as, "a miraculous punishment from my favorite DM." lol

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:21:10 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 
>> The whole point of religion is to control people "now", in order to save
>> them "later", in some vague sense.
> 
> Well, if I were a cynic, I'd say that the point of religion is to get 
> people to believe in an afterlife and then use that belief in an 
> afterlife to control them now (by implanting fears about how they will 
> spend eternity if they don't do the things the religious leadership wants 
> them to do).  Making people think they will spend an eternity in hellfire 
> and pain will motivate people to do a lot of things.
> 
> Jim
Actually, this is relatively recent though too. It wasn't until the NT 
that hell really became defined (not surprising since it wasn't until 
then that the Judaic faith ran into the Roman/Greek concept of Hades), 
and it wasn't until Dante that the church really had more than a vague, 
"You will go to a sort of bad place!", concept of just what "bad" meant 
in context to the idea. Early Christian mythos was rather vague as to 
what happened if you sinned too badly, and basically didn't do much more 
than state, "Ah, well.. uh, I guess you just don't get to go to church 
in the big sky any more and worship god directly, at his feet.."

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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