Religious Texts: … that text was written by some half literate guy living in a desert who heard tenth hand folk stories from his community from people who had died about a hundred years before his time, mixed in with legends, myths and fairy tales that are thousands of years old … but it’s all true because it came from God, believe it or you will burn in hell forever.
The hypocrisy of any religious book being the words of their all powerful master while they give themselves the option to cherry pick which rules they wish to follow is astounding.
It’s one of the first things that convinced kid me that it’s all made up bullshit to control gullible people.
The funny part that is … which book are you talking about? … Christian bible? Jewish Tanakh? Islamic Koran? … and if its Christian - is it just the Old Testament? New Testament? … which version of the Christian bible? - King James? New Standard? English Standard? Anglican? Baptist? Lutheran? Methodist? Presbyterian? Roman Catholic? Mormon? Protestant?
Yes
Mormons use the King James version. Or at least used to. Wouldn’t surprise me if they started rewriting their own version, though… it’s kinda’ 99% of religions’ MO.
Don’t forget about all the apocrypha.
I reminded your mom of the apocrypha last night, if you know what I mean…
I don’t see any difference between cults. It’s all a way to control uneducated people with fake magical thinking and the threat of eternal damnation.
well the joke is that each book claims to be written by God
Same here … and they’re all cults as far as I’m concerned
The only difference between a cult and a religion is time
Time and mass acceptance
Whichever one best justifies the lifestyle and decisions.
Also rewritten, heavily translated with a large variety of biases, and with whole sections taken out or added in depending on the version AND there has been lord knows how many instances of stacking errors because new interpretations often come from already dubious later versions and not the original texts.
But it’s also all the undeniably word of god and you better not question whatever version you grew up with.
You, a loser Christian, reading from a 2000 year old book of morality fables.
Me, a sophisticated Scientologist, reading from a 70 year old Sci-Fi/fad health trilogy.
Maybe L. Ron Hubbard was a time traveller that had already started everything 3,000 years ago and decided to restart it all again 70 years ago.
Maybe the real religion was the profit we made along the way.
Always was
Or maybe he just copied the successful indoctrination practices of existing religions…
Q: How can you tell if a Lemming is an atheist?
A: Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
You saw a meme about science and math and your first thought was “how can I make this about religion”?
excuse me, but this is a meme about history and religious mythology is definitely a big part of history
I would just expect someone who doesn’t like religion to not want to have conversations about it, instead of bringing it up at every vaguely related opportunity.
sounds like you haven’t had much experience of having to sit through religious people spout bullshit at you every single day. it’s not the least bit surprising to me that it’s on someone’s mind. or maybe you just don’t understand why religion would matter to someone? even to challenge/deny it is to engage with its importance no?
sounds like you haven’t had much experience of having to sit through religious people spout bullshit at you every single day.
You mean like what’s happening in this thread? Someone had a joke that had nothing to do with religion, and here we are talking about religious bullshit because someone can’t let any opportunity pass without mentioning religion.
Again: if you’re tired of people spouting religious bullshit at you all day I would expect you to not try to steer even more conversations towards religion.
I didn’t steer shit, first of all. I’m not the one who posted the original comment. I’m just telling you to shut the fuck up. Let us enjoy our thing.
Second, do you really believe that if you just ignore things they go away? As if people are not out there bible thumping every single day? and we come in here and try to enjoy a moment of reflecting on the ridiculousness of those beliefs and you have to come in here and bitch about it. hence, I’m here to tell you to shut the fuck up.
I’m sorry if this comes across as rude, maybe cussing will send me to hell or whatever, but i really feel like your input has been the truly rude part of this conversation.
I didn’t steer shit, first of all.
First of all, never said or implied you did.
Let us enjoy our thing.
So you do enjoy bringing up religion in every possible conversation?
(and can I just point out the irony of you saying “let us enjoy our thing” when your thing it literally shitting on other people’s thing?)Second, do you really believe that if you just ignore things they go away?
Sir, this is a
Wendysmeme about math.As if people are not out there bible thumping every single day?
and we come in here and try to enjoy
a moment of reflecting on the ridiculousness of those beliefsmemes away from all that bullshit and someone has to come in here and bring it up to bitch about it anyway. hence, I’m here to tell them to shut the fuck up.i really feel like your input has been the truly rude part of this conversation.
My input has been the simple fact that people who insist on making every conversation about religion are fucking exhausting to everyone else.
I have not subbed to any religious or anti-religious communities, and yet people seem to think it needs to be a part of every discussion. You’d think out of all people atheists wouldn’t be the ones doing that shit yet here we are. If you want to talk about that shit go those communities and you will find plenty of like minded people.
I didn’t like covid either but I sure ranted at people online about it!
Do you reply to memes about video games with your thoughts on covid?
And don’t worry, it definitely wasn’t completely written a thousand years later to push the preferred political agendas of the time.
That wouldn’t be true for Christianity as 3 of the 4 Gospels were cribbing off the 4th one. Heck the Gospel of John and the Revelation unto John were written by at least two different people and the Revelation likely was included at the Council of Nicea because they both had John in the name. Christianity would be very different without revelations.
The prevailing consensus is that the gospels of Matthew and Luke were cribbing from the gospel of Mark and a text that is lost to us that is referred to as Q. The gospel of John is original as far as we know.
Also, a lot of the Pauline epistles weren’t even written by Paul.
As a kid I thought Pythagoras was silly for making a math cult. Now that I’m older I get it.
That’s an interesting angle on it, can you say more? Sorry to be obtuse.
Well Pythagoras lived during the Greek era. Buildings like the Temple of Artemis were the greatest projections of power and grandeur the world had to offer at the time. Those great structures would’ve dwarfed anything seen out in the country. The only way those buildings could ever be erected is with the help of mathematics.
Furthermore mathematical truths are about as true as anything can be in the world. A triangle’s angles are always perfectly in harmony for instance. Way back when, when the world was much darker and more chaotic, those mathematical truths must’ve seemed like a great light in the darkness.
Mathematics is applicable truth.
Programming: that book was printed a month ago, and it’s already obsolete.
Newspapers printed yesterday are already in the bin.
Tiktok posts last seconds before being discarded.
Have you met a bayesian guy? All prof on statistics in my uni keep talking how “traditional” approach is stupid, inferior, blah blah
Psh, what do professors know
Mathematics teacher: That textbook was written thousands of years ago, and it is still as useful and relevant as ever, but I want you to buy this one I co-authored instead for the mere sum of $120, otherwise you won’t pass.
Conflict of interest detected
This really happened?
I took an environmental science class in college, and the professor was a former president of Shell. As part of the curriculum, we had to read his book, Why we Hate the Oil Companies. Predictably, it’s a corporate non-apologia, which—hilariously—completely avoids engaging with why we actually hate the oil companies.
environmental science class … the professor was a former president of Shell
Do they also invite Nazis to teach the elective in human rights?
Iirc, it was an energy/environment focus, so it was all about analyzing and comparing different energy sources wrt their usefulness, feasability, environmental impact, etc. This was in Houston, so the oil industry plays a huge role in the local economy, and funds the university endowments.
But yeah, the whole thing was pretty farcical.
Did people stand up to call the bullshit? I guess in this kind of situation you feel threatened that if you talk, you get penalized heavily
Not that I recall. I didn’t know anyone else in the class, and I don’t remember anything coming up in the class group chat. I did get quite heated with him at a couple of points, but I’m pretty sure he still gave me an A.
I admit I exaggerated a bit. It hasn’t happened to me, but I’ve had some teachers that strongly suggested buying their textbooks and frowned if you didn’t.
Fucking disgusting behavior
Not the original commenter, but I briefly had one professor in college that did that (their book was $50, though). It was an elective course for me, fortunately. I was able to switch for a different class that fit the same requirement without being forced to buy a book the professor wrote.
Indeed. There is a reason I gifted my son, who studies math, Euclids book ‘Elements’. It is still relevant.
Theres a lovely scene in Star Trek where Picard is captured, then finds an exposed wire on the cell panel. He takes it and begins tapping out prime numbers, to show to the aliens’ mathematicians that they’re sentient and capable of thought, independent of language.
2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31 37 39
39 is not a prime number
Out the airlock they go.
Math is a thought game with axioms as rules. It’s much more stable since the rules are “self-evident”.
Fuck you professor, its a 35 line proof, and it isn’t as trivial as you think it is!
I’m getting undergrad flashbacks. “It’s trivial so I won’t be going over it…”
It’s actually a 36 line proof, so this question is wrong and you score a 50 on the test.
Professor = Bozo and therefore wrong Q.E.D.
Philosopher to the right of the mathematician: “You’re welcome for the axioms”
Computer Scientists: Physics is just the application of discrete state machines.
The other way around. Computer Science studies the implications of physical laws - the relation between space and time, what’s ultimately knowable given the make ups of our universe, etc.
The correct way to learn math is chronologically
Start with set theory. After about 300 pages you’ll be able to show what 1+1 equals.
To be fair, the first 100 pages of that was justifying the set theory definition for what numbers are. The following two hundred papers are proving that a process of iterative counting we call addition functions in a consistent and useful way, given the set theory way of defining numbers. Once we get to that point, 1+1 is easy. Then we get to start talking more deeply about iteration as a process, leading to considering iterating addition (aka multiplication), iterating multiplication (aka exponents), etc. But that stuff is for the next thousand pages.
Remember, 0 is defined as the amount of things in the empty set {}. 1 is defined as the amount of things in a set containing the empty set {{}}. Each following natural number is defined as the amount of things in a set containing each of the previous nonnegative integers. So for example 2 is the amount of things in a set containing the empty set and a set containing the empty set {{}, {{}}}, 3 is the amount of things in a set containing the empty set, a set containing the empty set, and a set containing the empty set and a set containing the empty set {{}, {{}}, {{}, {{}}}}, etc. All natural numbers are just counting increasingly recursively labeled nothing. Welcome to math.
watched a video on tensors with ‘no math’. dude lost me in analogies. matrix vectors sumthin… brain is failing. no really the math is advancing more than that with computers and better theories for the physics experimenters.
Physics books are never outdated, you just discover better models that work in a wider range of conditions.
I’m just wondering who’s using a physics textbook from before the Industrial Revolution.
Nothing I do need to account for relativistic speeds or quantum mechanics so I could get by on Newtonian mechanics just fine. Most people could get by on Archimedes.
Newton’s book is from before the industrial revolution and widely used in physics today.
We were taught highschool physics from a book published around 20 years before I was born
Electron was discovered in 1897. If you own a textbook on chemistry which is older than that, put it up on Ebay in the antiques category.
Newton lived in the 17th century, so if you got a textbook older than that give it back to the museum
I’ll drop it off for anyone if needed.
I’m very trustworthy.
Very.
I promise.
That $300 stack of the cheapest thin paper was last semester. The online code you need for class is void, and the questions won’t match the answer key.
You could make the same argument for things like mathematics before the discovery about imaginary numbers.
Ehh imaginary numbers added to the scope of mathematics it didn’t take away anything other than no’s.
“hey look, i got your no’s!”
No, it changed things like “how many roots does x² + 2x + 2 have” from “none” to “two”.
The answer to that question didn’t change, what changed is how you might interpret the question.
If I asked “what are the REAL roots of x² + 2x + 2” the answer is still “none”. And prior to imaginary numbers being widely used, that is how the question would have been understood.
Mathematics involves making choices about what set of rules we’re working with. If you don’t allow the concept of negative numbers, the equation “x+1=0” has no solution. If you give me an apple, then I have no apples, how many apples did I have before? The question describes an impossible situation, and that’s a perfectly valid way to view it.
Different sets of rules can change what’s possible but don’t invalidate conclusions based on other sets of rules. We just need to specify what set of rules we’re working with.
My entire point is that before they weren’t saying “real” versus “imaginary”. You’re proving my point. In the other fields mentioned you could make the same argument about the interpretation changing but the book still being useful.
The other fields are attempting to describe reality. While Newtonian physics is useful, as an approximation, it’s also quite clearly wrong. You can imagine a universe which follows those rules but it’s not this universe, and that’s why it’s wrong. Mathematics doesn’t care about this universe, so you can pick whatever rules you want. Imaginary numbers are not “more accurate”, they don’t invalidate any previous understanding. They are an imaginary concept with interesting properties. For mathematics, that’s enough.
Imaginary numbers are not “more accurate”, they don’t invalidate any previous understanding. They are an imaginary concept with interesting properties. For mathematics, that’s enough.
No. Imaginary numbers have the worst name. Like the Schrodinger’s Cat thought experiment it was something meant to mock the concept originally but stuck once real applications were found. Imaginary and complex numbers describe very real processes in nature and are not just some weird artifact of trying to get the square root of a negative number.
Here is an interesting video on the topic that also covers some of the applications used to describe things in nature. https://youtu.be/cUzklzVXJwo
If you prefer text here is an article listing some. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/maths/applications-of-imaginary-numbers-in-real-life/
Imaginary numbers have the worst name.
I agree, because really all numbers are imaginary. Numbers are also wonderfully useful for describing nature, and it’s amazing how what might start as a quest for completeness and elegance ends up reflecting something about the real world. Each extension on our use of numbers is an augmentation, an extended toolkit to solve different problems, but doesn’t negate anything which went earlier. For example finding the roots of a polynomial often represents a problem where complex solutions aren’t applicable, and “no solution” is the more meaningful result. One kind of mathematics may be bigger and more complete than another, but that doesn’t make it better or more true. It just depends on what you need from it.
