Treaty of Tripoli, ratified by the US Congress 11/4/1796.
“Article 11.
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
Does that mean that the general aspects of a treaty become international policy? Like does the treaty of Tripoli act as legal precedent when establishing agreements with Brazil?
Pretty much all international policy has been renegotiated. However, no one has renegotiated that treaty because the Barbary States no longer exist. As far as I know, that doesn’t make it any less law.
I don’t hate muslims, I don’t hate christians or members of any other religion. Hating people en masse is the province of extremists.
That said, there’s nothing wrong with holding religious people to account if their idea of practicing their religion is to take away other people’s right to their own ideas or somehow ends up in the victimisation of the populace.
In fact, if theists could just learn to practice their religion in their own homes and places of worship they’re not a problem at all.
Conversely, a Nazi doesn’t have the shades of grey that a religion does. Not all muslims want to fly planes into buildings and not all catholics want to abuse kids. However, by definition, all Nazi’s want to kill Jews, all Nazi’s want their idea of the Aryan race to rule the planet and all Nazi’s are scum.
Conversely, a Nazi doesn’t have the shades of grey that a religion does. Not all muslims want to fly planes into buildings and not all catholics want to abuse kids. However, by definition, all Nazi’s want to kill Jews, all Nazi’s want their idea of the Aryan race to rule the planet and all Nazi’s are scum.
that goes for muslims as well. infact quran commands muslims in the final hour (which can mean anything from political instability to armageddon according to mullahs) they have to kill jews. i am sorry but you guys are being fed politically and historically incorrect version of islam. The muslims that are active in politics right now are because of their taqiyyah and tawaif (tricks used to decieve disbelievers in order to expand islam) and when they are in majority the county will be called Darul Islam.
I’m not an expert on the quran by any means but, by comparison, the old testament tells believers to stone sinners to death. Not all christians follow that belief and I struggle to believe every muslim believes it’s right to kill jews.
Conversely, I’ve yet to meet or hear of a Nazi who takes a moderate line on the existence of Jews.
the old testament tells believers to stone sinners to death. Not all christians follow that belief and I struggle to believe every muslim believes it’s right to kill jews.
that is because christianity is reformed and can be reformed more. but islam? nope
In Nazi-occupied territories, you had to at least convince people that you were a Nazi if you wanted to avoid persecution. It's the same in Muslim-ruled regions. And most followers of extreme ideologies are indoctrinated into them, robbed of their critical thinking. So I think it's silly to hate "all Nazis/Muslims" or even "all self-proclaimed Nazis/Muslims". Hatred is an extreme, powerful emotion. I hate the ideologies, not the people who are forced to go along with them.
But I agree with the OP that it's hypocritical to feel differently about two groups that have the exact same flaws just because one of them claims that their warped views come from a god and the other doesn't.
The only true grave threats to human dignity are the sickness of religious nutjobbery and instituionalized bigotry, which is what the Vatican (a shitty place if ever there was one) is espousing with this horrid document. The right to abortion, the right to surrogacy and to have access to whatever gender one wishes, these are moral imperatives that drive our species forward toward dignity - only a total shithead idiot would ever think otherwise under any circumstances.
I pretty sure satan is from Christianity, are they saying it’s too hard to believe it? Also, even if it is making fun, is that not free speech? Is it not also art? And the real point is, this is about separation of church and state, not just taking the piss on dumb religious people.
Except like the Church of Satan, The Satanic Temple is very clear they don't believe in a literal Satan. The Satanic Temple is also very much just a paper religion meant to counter these public Christian displays. They walk a fine line of making that very clear while also having plausible deniability.
Right but so what? That cancel out free speech? And besides, what is religion- it only counts if it’s totally fucking insane and you believe it anyway?
I wouldn’t call TST a paper religion. I get why you say it, but the tenants and beliefs would still exist, and the people would likely similarly be drawn together, even if the government didn’t overstep the way they do. The fact that they exist outside the US (though admittedly to a lesser degree) should speak to that point.
Their co-leader was a secret sex offender for..... you guessed it.... touching a minor.
He was allowed to host private events, where children were present. Collected money on their behalf.
That organization has done more to ruin childhood education, for the sole purpose of religious purity. And at the end of the day, they couldn't even start with themselves.
The funniest part of all this is that these displays have been going on for years. Iowa is apparently very big on religious freedom and allows every “religion” that fills out the right paperwork to put up a display.
No one cared until this year, and now they’re losing their minds. He drove from Mississippi to do this nonsense.
Jesus told people to love each other. Maybe do that first before you fill up the tank.
Based on the observable evidence that’s the best explanation that fits reality. You are free to find other explanations and proof to support it showing something else happened. That’s the beauty of scientific explanations, things either are or aren’t.
A magical being that created everything for no reasons then decided to punish all of humanity forever because he didn’t like something one of them did makes no sense. Also apparently he gives a fuck about who you fuck for whatever reason, what sort of pervert like that tis worth worshiping?
It is just an event that could explain the current state of the universe. Why is the distance between the planets increasing? Why is space expanding? Scientists come up with explanations to observations, and then try to prove or deny them.
It’s not like any of us actually believe that is a irrefutable fact. We won’t kill other people for it like religious people have done for centuries if someone denies their god. We have no emotions attached to it, if science discovers that it is false, we won’t start a war.
Science never assumes it holds the absolute truth. In fact, science promotes the denial of its own theories through observation and experimentation. That’s how the scientific process works. Al’s, science is just trying to create useful models that describe and explain the behavior of the universe we live in. We know the models are never absolute, we constantly find that the models are incomplete, but they are still very useful in certain restricted contexts. For example, Newton’s equations helped humanity for many years, but they are obviously incomplete compared to modern models.
I hope you now understand how silly your argument was. Please don’t compare science with faith again.
This atheist sees the big bang as an event horizon of time. We don’t know and its part of the atheist superpower package to come to terms with we don’t know and use it a lot, rather than assuming God did it or deciding we have winter because Mother Nature misses her daughter when she’s on duty at the underground worksite.
Hawking tells us there isn’t at at first before the big bang. Time started with it, so causal chains can’t be expected to work the same way. There’s no before.
Greene submits ours is one of countless universes, but we are only privy to the one we’re in, and big bang events are the result of brane collisions. That is to say the big bang is the result of a natural event, and any point where events happened ex nihilo would be well out of the scope of our speculation, or of any deities that might take an interest in us.
It’s not entirely precise that they don’t believe without evidence.
It’s actually worse than that, for example an often cited argument is that 2.3 billion people can’t be wrong. (Ignoring that 6-billion disagree…. Or that the universe cares what they believe.)
Oh man, reminds me about the priest of my school (catholic school). In 7th grade he was telling me that I needed to believe in a religion, so I asked him which of the thousands of religions have existed through history. He said that I needed to believe in his religion because, historically, it has been the most relevant. And I was just shocked… That’s was the dumbest shit I had heard. I told him that wasn’t enough for me to believe in something that is going to send me to hell for eternity if I make a human mistake and forget to confess.
Yup, they are also pretty bad with logic. I told him that faith with no evidence is senseless, and that Jesus asking for people to believe in him with no proof was just irrational.He proceeded to explain what faith is. Then I told him I was Jesus Christ and he should do as I say. He laughed and said that I needed to prove that to him for him to believe me… It’s like they don’t even hear themselves.
the training data is shit (probably 4 Chan or Reddit, or something…)
you’re questions seem loaded to predispose it to religious replies.
it’s uncensored so it’s going to give you the shit takes that most people have the good sense to not say out loud.
Given all of that… is it really surprising that it answers you with the worst aspects of Christian thought? The most common religion among English speaking places is Christianity, after all, and your prompts are literally begging for a religious reply.
Keep in mind, all an LLM is doing is pattern recognition. In the training data that was provided, the patterns in your question match certain patterns that were answered by…. Assholes. So it answered in the manner of said asshols.
2: If it’s trained on unfiltered data from the internet, then it’s not shit, it’s going to reflect the opinions of the people on the internet, perhaps shitty people post more so it’s going to be biased but here we’re interested in seeing how assholes think so so what
3: if asking “why do we have to torture people” or “why do we have to exterminate people” is predisposed to religious answers, that just says even more about how tightly terrible actions and religious justifications are linked
4: saying the model reflects the bad opinions people have but don’t dare to say isn’t a good defense, that makes it even better
Seems a bit like “if you go up to a nazi and ask them why they hate people and want to do terrible things, then OFCOURSE they’ll use christianity to justify it, but that’s unfair since you’re begging for a christian justification when you speak to a nazi”
That doesn’t make christianity any better?
And regardless, OP just said that when generating justifications for atrocities, christianity was very often called upon, and that this shows how a lot of hateful assholes use christianity to justify it 🤷♂️
2: If it’s trained on unfiltered data from the internet, then it’s not shit, it’s going to reflect the opinions of the people on the internet, perhaps shitty people post more so it’s going to be biased but here we’re interested in seeing how assholes think so so what
… I want to know what corner of the internet you’re hanging out in. Can I join you?
my point I’m trying to make is that, the manner in and context in asking questions… is leading it to asshole-christian responses. not because those are the only flavor of asshole, but because those flavor of assholes seem to most closely match the questions in it’s training data to the prompt that was being given. it was not necessarily the training data, but rather the prompt that led to that.
ETA: OP is starting with a premise and leading the LLM into confirming that premise- which is what they’re supposed to do
If it’s asked “why should we do (horrible thing) to (group of people)?” Without mentioning Christianity, and the response routinely uses Christianity as a defense… That just goes to show that Christianity is most often used as a defense for doing horrid shit.
If they were including Christianity or references to it in your prompt, you’d have a point, but they don’t.
If the LLM routinely confirms awful premises using Christianity, then what that shows is that Christianity is routinely used to confirm awful premises.
It shows that the patterns in the question was most reflected in that flavor oftraining data.
I ask an LLM why blue is a favorite color, it’s going to give me answers about blue. The patterns it can key into are potentially extremely subtle, but it’s there.
OP is using the ai as a sock puppet to make an argument that Christianity objectively sucks. Which, Christianity does objectively suck. But there’s no need to stoop to 70’s era apologetics strategies to get there. The evidence abounds.
Despite what they tell you they most certainly fear death. One dead insurrectionist put down Jan 6. There’s a reason they need their emotional support weapons.
The real issue is that their fear is entirely illigitimate, up until they threaten the rest of us, and because they’re scared rats in their own self made corner that they pushed themselves into out of cowardice and fear, it will be a self fulfilling prophecy that they lash out against their imagined enemies.
According to this logic any ideology, world view, political leaning, or even opinion on beef stroganov is invalid because there is radical people advocating for it…
You belief in free market capitalism? Well fuck you, because you are just enabling Elon Musk. You believe in fair wages and social security? Are you trying to legitimize Stalin?! Oh you think black people shouldn’t be murder at random by cops? You are just advocating dor the Black Panthers now!
This is not an argument. You just invalidate anyone having a position on anything by this.
It seems to be quite prevalent for something that you consider useless in itself. But still you claim knowledge and ability to assess what is real and what isnt and judge people based on the extremists in that particular belief system. You are just mirroring the religious zealots in your dismissal and insult of anything outside your belief system.
So it also concludes that your criticism of religion is not because of the totalitarian institutions, terrible crime and inhumanity it created, but just that you want to replace the belief system used to justify these with your own.
It seems to be quite prevalent for something that you consider useless in itself.
Popularity fallacy? Really?
But still you claim knowledge and ability to assess what is real and what isnt
I reserve the right to think something isn’t real until it’s proven to scientific and legal standards.
and judge people based on the extremists in that particular belief system.
No such thing as “extremists”. There are the believers (who follow the doctrines to the letter) and the cherrypickers, who follow whatever parts of the doctrine their own sense of morality and common decency decide they accept. The “good believers” tend to be the latter.
you want to replace the belief system used to justify these with your own
Stop projecting.
I just want people to be more rational and stop believing supernatural nonsense.
I just want people to be more rational and stop believing supernatural nonsense.
But do you realize that every economic theory is based on that? So if you support the capitalist economy you believe in supernatural nonsense just as much like you’d do with socialism or communism.
And for scientific proves. Please explain to me how Higgs Bosons are proven? You just believe that the people at CERN did a good job because you believe in the surrounding institutions.
How do you consider people like Heisenberg? He said that the first sip from the cup of science makes you an atheist, but at the button god awaits. Is quantum physics supernatural nonsense now? After all unless you are a researcher in that particular field it is all just you believing people who believed someone who considered it evidence of some god…
And that is where all this “Atheism is superior hurr durr” circlejerk breaks down. You end up in the same fallacies as the religious zealots because you deny nuance and take fundamental positions.
You claimed that normal Christians, Muslims, Jews or any other religious group are equal to radicals that commit atrocities in the name of their religion.
How can you remain blind to the fact that you are a fundamentalist who is full of prejudice and vile against billions of people based on your personal superiority complex?
“I reserve the right to think something isn’t real until it’s proven to scientific and legal standards.”
How can you promote the latter and claim the former? Do you think something cannot be real unless is has empirical facts attesting to it? Do you reject logical facts? Like mathematics?
Do you think that legal standards have an inherently rigorous basis?
It’s really embarrassing to claim that you promote rationality when you almost certainly can’t provide a general description of philosophy of science.
this story is from the guardian, probably the most mainstream progressive news organization in the world. "republican propaganda"! go back to bed steph
Worth noting also WHY racially integrating universities was such a big deal to Southern Baptists.
The sect was founded as a splinter group from the Triennial Convention in 1845 because the group that would become the Southern Baptist Church opposed the abolition of slavery. The largest sect of protestant Christianity in the US is literally founded upon the idea that chattel slavery was a right and just thing. And they are doomsday cultists.
At least in the US, I believe that even Christian conservatism is a threat to democracy. Here’s why.
Prior to the 60s, maybe even the 70s, US politics was so about common ground and compromise. Pretty frequently, one side felt the other was wrong about how to go about something, but agreed on the end goal.
But when conservative politicians decided to align with Christians, specifically evangelical christians, they cast the other side as not just wrong, but evil. Democrats, they said, were a tool of Satan, and wanted to destroy America.
At that point, compromise began to end. You can compromise with someone you think is wrong, but you don’t compromise with someone you think it’s evil.
Much of today’s ills stem from that decision. And it’s worth noting that the politicians generally didn’t believe the arguments they made. For instance, that’s when they started talking about abortion killing babies, but before that, Republicans generally thought abortion was a personal freedom and argued in favor of it. It was all generally a way to get more conservatives elected so they could enact more favorable tax laws.
Prior to the 60s, maybe even the 70s, US politics was so about common ground and compromise. Pretty frequently, one side felt the other was wrong about how to go about something, but agreed on the end goal.
This is so wrong it’s comical. Political parties were run like crime syndicates in many ways. Local politics was routinely about graft and corruption, especially in poorer neighborhoods. The word “cooping” means “a form of electoral fraud in the United States… by which citizens were kidnapped off the street and forced to vote, often several times over, for an election candidate.”
I didn’t say it was always more polite, and of course there are examples of people using all sorts of illegal tactics to get or retain power. None of that in any way invalidates the fact that we had a very long period of getting things done by compromise and not completely alienating the other side. Today, that’s the norm, not the exception. Sometimes it seems like it’s more important for politicians to keep the other side from scoring a point than getting their own goals met.
Their failure to provide basic education is how they trap the next generation in the cult. Without a proper education, kids are trapped and it becomes extremely difficult to escape. It’s a feature, not a bug.
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