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Utility
I’ve always struggled to agree with economics. I have a masters in economics, but the more I studied it, the less impressed I became. Utility seems like such a weasel word. I found this table on the interwebs when trying to clarify in my mind about utility: I hate the terms ‘Kantianism’ and ‘Utilitarianism’, we…
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Steelmanning the strawman – John Stuart Mill
Lean on meI won’t fall overI’m made of steelAnd stone cold sober — Lean on me, Carter USM I discovered On Liberty (free to read via gutenberg.org) from John Stuart Mill , whilst reading about steelmanning. He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. — On Liberty, John Stuart…
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The Kingdom of Delusion is Within You
I’ve been reading Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You alongside Dawkins’ The God Delusion. I agree with almost all that Dawkins has to say, yet in my eyes he says it without any of the grace or weight or feeling of Tolstoy. They’re both attacking the church, but Dawkins chooses to attack all…
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UK priests sent people to burn
The priests and bishops in the UK sent people to burn, the highest priest in the land, the Archbishop of Canterbury very willingly went first. These new powers allowed the bishops to arrest and imprison all preachers of heresy, all schoolmasters infected with heresy, and all owners and writers of heretical books. On refusal to…
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Paradise
Background Reading about Creed because of a future post I want to write about the Nicene creed vs Sermon on the mount led me to the Islamic ‘tie’ Aqidah (as close as it gets to creed). thus the Islamic concept of ʿaqīdah (literally “bond, tie”) is often rendered as “creed”. — Creed, Wikipedia Then with…
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We’re in Hell (it’s just not that bad yet)
I keep thinking how we create hells on earth (torture, slavery, colonialism, war, pollution, sweatshops, factories, sacrifice, genocide, gas chambers, executions, mafia, gangs, poisons, concentration camps, suicide, terrorism, horror films, gladiators, nuclear bombs). Maybe this was Jesus’ point – if we don’t follow his advice hell is where we will end up. The more you…
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The Measure of Population Control
(Edit: This was initially titled The Three Dimensions of Population Control, but in honour of Martin Luther King’s Measure of a Man, referring to the three dimensions of man, I’ve changed it. I think it’s also relevant because here too we’re trying to measure population control.) Tolstoy proposed four ways that the people are controlled:…
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Infallible truth
A church is a body of men who assert they are in possession of the infallible truth — “The Kingdom of God is Within You”, Leo Tolstoy A church might say that our text doesn’t give us all the answers, but then all their science has to be linked to their infallible truth. Not every…
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Spikes at the end of the garden
The very first page of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion has this quote from the great Douglas Adams: “Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” Well, you don’t have to believe, but I counter that with deeds from…
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The Word of Gervais
I was pointing out something Ricky Gervais said to a Muslim friend of mine. “You see if we take something like fiction and any holy book, and any other fiction, and destroyed it, okay. In 1000 years’ time that wouldn’t come back just as it is. Whereas if we took every science book and every…
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Ian's Philosophy 