cava's Profile

Vatican tamps down report that Pope Francis denies existence of hell | Fox News

cava comments on Mar 31, 2018:

Francis is a radical Pope who has come under much criticism from the large conservative contingent in the church. It is not surprising that the Vatican has rushed to deny what the reporter said. The reporter is 93 years old atheist who does not tape interviews nor take notes. He reconstruted his interview, making it easy for the Vatican to deny what he reported. But I think Francis may have to clarify what was said himself, or face another uprising from within the church.

Rene Descartes: “I think therefore I am”.

cava comments on Mar 31, 2018:

Descartes said "I think, I am", it's not an inference it's an immediate intuition. Sam Harris is only derivatively correct, he could have as easly said therefore my heart still functions.

Art & Culture in a truly agnostic or atheist society?

cava comments on Mar 31, 2018:

I doubt that there ever has been a non-religious society, and I doubt there ever will be such a society. Religion is more about a systematic manner of behaving than it is about a mystical powerful creator. Here is a well known and regarded definition of religion: " a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic." Clifford Geertz There is no mention of god in his definition. This why Confuscinism can be considered a religion, as a civil religion. Here is an interesting conception from Oscar Wilde's 1905 "De Profindis" "When I think of religion at all, I feel as if I would like to found an order for those who cannot believe: the Confraternity of the Faithless...Everything to be true must become a religion. And agnosticism should have its ritual no less than faith"

The Parkland Students are proving them selves to be very media and culture savvy.

cava comments on Mar 31, 2018:

Fox News show host Laura Ingraham announced on her show late Friday that she is taking next week off, after almost a dozen advertisers dropped her show after the conservative pundit mocked a teenage survivor of the Florida school massacre on Twitter.

Ever Heard Jesus Christ Superstar?

cava comments on Mar 30, 2018:

OK Superstar, and I raise you some some hair! https://youtu.be/PgrIAIHTho8 https://youtu.be/oPK7ZF6jfJE https://youtu.be/fhNrqc6yvTU

Thoughts on Jordan B Peterson's distinction between religion and ideology?

cava comments on Mar 30, 2018:

https://youtu.be/_KP_G4VB0UI

Just got asked what atheists do on Easter.

cava comments on Mar 30, 2018:

Celebrate April Fools Day!

If Pi (3.

cava comments on Mar 30, 2018:

A little different view.

What liars and hypocrites fear most is the truth.

cava comments on Mar 30, 2018:

Not so sure about that, both of them need "the truth" (whatever that is), to obscure or twist. Truths of the world are relative, situational and based on view points. The liar and the hypocrite make use of truth's relativity to enable their lies and facades. These days, I don't think they fear much.

Own my own company.

cava comments on Mar 30, 2018:

Beautiful photos, and a very calming web site to scroll through. Thanks

My first large format metal print!!

cava comments on Mar 29, 2018:

I'am into landscapes, it looks really very good. So what are the details? Did you do the print yourself or did you send it out.

How fast do you drive in a 35 mph zone?

cava comments on Mar 29, 2018:

Depends on the time of day, at busy times close to speed limit, at 2 am forgetaboutit.

In every out-thrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of ...

cava comments on Mar 29, 2018:

Great Lady: "In spite of the truly marvelous inventiveness of the human brain, we are beginning to wonder whether our power to change the face of nature should not have been tempered with wisdom for our own good, and with a greater sense of responsibility for the welfare of generations to come."

Christian extremists want Bill Maher punished for blasphemy

cava comments on Mar 29, 2018:

Maybe these people ought to move to countries where such laws are still in effect and enforced.

The art if conversation

cava comments on Mar 29, 2018:

I guess some people have no problem just taking off and talking. I have met people l who just pull you into their world, and they tend to go on and on as if you were not there. Initial conversations resemble interviews or autobiographies because we want to know what appeals to them, what they might find comfortable to talk about or not. It is in my opinion a question of consideration, not some sort of test or history lesson. Some people you just click with and you find yourself immediately comfortable with them, not sure why but its something I have experienced. Talking then becomes easy.

More of my food for thought: Several years ago, when I was in the Army, I and a few of my army ...

cava comments on Mar 29, 2018:

I wonder if it was a "perspective" issue that caused Darvin's being oblivious to the threat posed by the bear based on your description. Some people become so enmeshed in doing what they are doing that they forget everything else. Generally becoming fully immersed in the flow of an activity is a good thing, but perhaps not when it comes to close encounters with potentially dangerous things such as bears.

Alan Watts.

cava comments on Mar 29, 2018:

"It is a mistake to always watch your flaws in hopes of improvement, for if you are flawed so are your observations." Key word is "always". We are all flawed in someway or the other, we all have biases. While "always" obsessing about these flaws is nonsensical, I think it makes pragmatic sense to change ourselves in ways that we may find beneficial. It is almost like saying that there is no sense in being virtuous, just, or moral if you don't know what virtue, justice or morality are.

Finchi's Theory of Relativity: We are all one eternal being.

cava comments on Mar 28, 2018:

Does he play Parcheesi?

Monogamy vs. Polygamy

cava comments on Mar 28, 2018:

I suppose this involves how you define monogamy. If divorce is prevalent in a society then can it be really characterized as a monogamous culture?

Making whites white again.

cava comments on Mar 28, 2018:

Bring it to a dry cleaner?

Rim Banna - The Absent One ريم بنّا - الغائب - YouTube

cava comments on Mar 28, 2018:

Haunting voice and music.

Do you prefer using a fork or a spoon mostly?

cava comments on Mar 28, 2018:

No spork tines like a fork No spork clatters like a spoon Sporks are for dorks

Good morning, big fella!

cava comments on Mar 28, 2018:

Dino: Hey chadrool you don't-a have to go to the school Just make it with a big bambino It's like Vino Kid you good-a looking but you don't-a know what's cooking 'til you

Bluegrass and Rap Who knew? [youtu.be]

cava comments on Mar 28, 2018:

"Rench and his friends have done nothing short of creating a new form of music. Gangstagrass takes two types of music that are opposites and mixes them together brilliantly in a way that is natural and enjoyable." — Elmore Leonard

I've noticed a trend since I've been on this site and wondered if it is true amongst the people ...

cava comments on Mar 28, 2018:

The following is from a study published Frontiers in Psychol., 19 December 2017 This was a very big study. Note the last sentence. "It is well established that religiosity correlates inversely with intelligence. A prominent hypothesis states that this correlation reflects behavioral biases toward intuitive problem solving, which causes errors when intuition conflicts with reasoning. We tested predictions of this hypothesis by analyzing data from two large-scale Internet-cohort studies (combined N = 63,235). We report that atheists surpass religious individuals in terms of reasoning but not working-memory performance. The religiosity effect is robust across sociodemographic factors including age, education and country of origin. It varies significantly across religions and this co-occurs with substantial cross-group differences in religious dogmatism. Critically, the religiosity effect is strongest for tasks that explicitly manipulate conflict; more specifically, atheists outperform the most dogmatic religious group by a substantial margin (0.6 standard deviations) during a color-word conflict task but not during a challenging matrix-reasoning task. These results support the hypothesis that behavioral biases rather than impaired general intelligence underlie the religiosity effect."

I once stuck a crayon, the color sanity in my ear, to see if I could paint a better picture of what...

cava comments on Mar 28, 2018:

People with synesthesia related to music may also have perfect pitch because their ability to see/hear colors aids them in identifying notes or keys. The colors triggered by certain sounds, and any other synesthetic visual experiences, are referred to as photisms.

I heard a story that back in the 1980’s an inventor designed a handheld language translator.

cava comments on Mar 27, 2018:

We have come a long way. I really like Google Translate, enabled me to have a conversation with a person who spoke no English. A little awkward at first and some misses like the one your inventor had, but very few. We spoke for over an hour, it was fantastic. I was also able to read menus it has a viewing function, which again take a little effort but works.

I gotta know.

cava comments on Mar 27, 2018:

When I was a kid we used to try to hit trees and other things to see who could do it the best, "hocking a lunger'. "I really HAVE to know" oral fixation?

Does 'turning the other cheek work'?

cava comments on Mar 27, 2018:

"You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you." New Testament over throwing the Old Testament. Jesus' Sermon on the Mount must have sounded alien to those who listened. I think the idea is that this and his other teachings on the Mount are presented as Ideals to be aimed at even if they are beyond the scope of most.

While last week I noted I was saddened to learn about the alleged activities of Lawrence K, last ...

cava comments on Mar 27, 2018:

I was not enthused about Krauss to begin with his idea of something from nothing, which were not really nothings, strained his credibility long before the #MeToo allegations.

Republicans Impeach Judges Who Blocked Their Gerrymandering What happened to the rule of law?

cava comments on Mar 27, 2018:

Here is sorta republican response: http://thefederalist.com/2018/03/22/republicans-right-impeach-pennsylvanias-rogue-supreme-court-justices-gerrymandering/ "Pennsylvania Republicans, controlling 59 percent of the House and 68 percent of the Senate, are not just making noise: they have the votes to finish the job."

Sort of shakespeare ? [youtu.be]

cava comments on Mar 27, 2018:

Looks more like Kafka to me.

Does anyone have any thoughts on heuristics versus strong induction?

cava comments on Mar 26, 2018:

A heuristic technique (/hjʊəˈrɪstɪk/; Ancient Greek: εὑρίσκω, "find" or "discover"), often called simply a heuristic, is any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals. Inductive reasoning (as opposed to deductive reasoning or abductive reasoning) is a method of reasoning in which the premises are viewed as supplying strong evidence for the truth of the conclusion. While the conclusion of a deductive argument is certain, the truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument may be probable, based upon the evidence given. They seem very much the same although I suppose that heuristic suggests an invented technique and induction suggest a way of reasoning, which may be heuristic but perhaps need not. I like to read about babies learning: A Gopnik https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/wcs.1330 suggests that a prelinguistic baby approaches the world inherently using a Bayesian methodology to understand its causality.

Happiness

cava comments on Mar 26, 2018:

" ... 40% of highly religious U.S. adults describe themselves as “very happy,” compared with 29% of those who are less religious" PEW Research 2016 http://www.pewforum.org/2016/04/12/religion-in-everyday-life/

Do we have free will?

cava comments on Mar 26, 2018:

There is an argument about this, which assuming you believe in the Abrahamic god's powers such as omniscient, all powerful and so on...goes something like this: God know everything... all of time, the present, the past and the future, but if this is so then his knowledge of the present is a memory for him, one that he can't change because it has already occurred for him. That means that all our actions are our own free choice from our point of view, because god can't change what he already knows without contradicting himself.

To me if your religious you don't deserve the title scientist & I don't trust your expertise.

cava comments on Mar 26, 2018:

While scientists are more skeptical than the public as a whole there are still a lot of scientists who express some religious affiliation: "Nearly half of all scientists in the 2009 Pew Research Center poll (48%) say they have no religious affiliation (meaning they describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular), compared with only 17% of the public." What a person personally believes, does not necessarily effect the public work they have trained for and do.

Kinky

cava comments on Mar 26, 2018:

It is funny how many novels are about road trips. The road has become our path to adventure, where we must stay normatively involved but insulated from the outside, where we also sing, peer, rage at times letting go of our inhibitions in ways we would never dream of in a normal public setting. I think fantasies of all kinds, especially shared fantasies, such as S&M must be traveled like a road trip with normal good sense to keep safe by watching what you are doing. It is only by taking the trip alone or together with another that you can reach your destination.

"Philosophy & Meaning" is lacking in both. Where are the Arguments?

cava comments on Mar 26, 2018:

"Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance" is an assertion it is not an argument.

For the men on site. Agree or disagree?

cava comments on Mar 25, 2018:

This Be The Verse BY PHILIP LARKIN They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.

Have you ever had a frenemy?

cava comments on Mar 25, 2018:

I think it works out of necessity in certain situations such as in politics, war, business, so then in socially necessary situations where a collation is more important than enmity. Perhaps some are able to carry this idea into their personal lives, I don't think I can.

What Guides You?

cava comments on Mar 25, 2018:

We all have values, that influence the way we act, but we don't always follow these guides, many times we act against our own values. We are confronted with multiple possibilities all the time, and many times we are conflicted as to which choice to make. Do I follow values that are normatively given or do I let my desire rule my choice, do I act against myself. I guess if there is a 'guide', it is learning from one's mistakes, which is still no guarantee that desire will not overturn what was learned in the past... life is too complicated to fit into a fortune cookie.

I can't keep quiet

cava comments on Mar 24, 2018:

During the Women’s March on Washington on January 21, 2017, there were several flashmobs of women singing this song together. They had practiced on the internet, meeting for the first time that morning. https://youtu.be/zLvIw8J8sWE

How many lies was I taught in school?

cava comments on Mar 24, 2018:

And how do you assess the school system where you live in Portugal? Is it the same as the schools where you were raised. You can be the difference, you can explain and help your children separate out truth from fiction. Parents have an important role in helping their childer to learn how to differentiate fact from fiction, working with the coopertation of teachers.

Logic

cava comments on Mar 24, 2018:

Not my cupa. He suggests that all arguments must be logical, but that only works with formal logic. Logic cannot encompass the whole of knowledge because it cannot encompass the world. In order to have justified true belief, you must believe which is an atitude, which is not expressable as a logic.

So, I'm pretty sure that I have a mental depth charge (repressed memory) waiting to go off.

cava comments on Mar 24, 2018:

So then your inclination that this memory is going "to go off", how does it present itself? Is it like a bubbling up of fragments, or a profound sense of unease. People repress things that they can't handle at the conscious level. The regurgatation of whatever was experienced may be unlike what was experienced. Unless you have access to an experienced analysist it may be very hard for you to interpert what emerges because it may resemble a metaphorical rebus and not a logical recollection.

Do humans have a innate affinity for drugs & is this natural behaviour for humans?

cava comments on Mar 23, 2018:

Well cats like cat-nip, and many other animals seem to like to get stoned. It appears to be pretty natural behavior.

When you have to explain to a person the difference between Satanists & devil worshipers.

cava comments on Mar 23, 2018:

At a convention.

Shame

cava comments on Mar 23, 2018:

I think shame has to do with religion. Religion establishes normative values which are subserviant to dominant religious principals. Shame is the effect of transgression of these principles and it is utilized to control individual expression which are contrary to religious principles. Shame establishes the normative values of purity, decorum and the rest as rules to practice and to live by.

Do you feel are intrinsic moral code could be more complex then only natural selection would ...

cava comments on Mar 22, 2018:

If I understand you, moral code is the product of natural selection?

Tea

cava comments on Mar 22, 2018:

I liike all kinds of tea very much. I mix two bags in a mug, like peppermint and green tea or blue berry and black tea, and so on. 'There once was man named Twining who lived in the Strand, who would still be wining deprived of his T.'

Favorite books of fiction?

cava comments on Mar 22, 2018:

Huckleberry Finn For Whom the Bell Tolls Lord of the Rings Lolita On the Road

Scientists Have Established a Link Between Brain Damage and Religious Fundamentalism | Alternet

cava comments on Mar 22, 2018:

I gather that the purpose of the study was not an attempt to link Fundamentalism with brain damaged, but rather to link brain damage with mental flexibility & openess. "These findings indicate that cognitive flexibility and openness are necessary for flexible and adaptive religious commitment, and that such diversity of religious thought is dependent on dlPFC functionality."

Who else loves Dorothy Parker?