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The Hazards of Belief

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  • #8702
    silverharp
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 18,854 ✭✭✭✭silverharp


    oscarBravo wrote: »
    Reporting a rape isn't exactly a bed of roses over here either, but sure: it's a lot worse there.

    I still felt a lot safer walking along Sheikh Zayed Highway late at night than I ever have on O'Connell Street during the day.

    woah there rocking your male privilege :D

    A belief in gender identity involves a level of faith as there is nothing tangible to prove its existence which, as something divorced from the physical body, is similar to the idea of a soul. - Colette Colfer



  • #8703
    oscarBravo
    Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 28,848 Mod ✭✭✭✭oscarBravo


    recedite wrote: »
    Hmmm... so if you are straight and male, you have nothing to fear.

    Ah, I see you're busy reading between the lines again. You've never met a negative preconception about Muslims you didn't like, have you?


  • #8704
    recedite
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,989 ✭✭✭✭recedite


    Preconceptions? Its your anecdote, not my preconception.


  • #8705
    oscarBravo
    Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 28,848 Mod ✭✭✭✭oscarBravo


    recedite wrote: »
    Preconceptions? Its your anecdote, not my preconception.

    ...and the conclusions you jumped to were your own.

    My sisters felt equally safe walking the streets of Dubai at night. The fact that you extrapolated anything different from what I posted is on you.


  • #8706
    recedite
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,989 ✭✭✭✭recedite


    oscarBravo wrote: »
    My sisters felt equally safe walking the streets of Dubai at night...
    They are lucky they had a brother to chaperone them :pac:
    Jesting aside, I don't wish to have a go at Dubai. My impression of the place is that it is a cross between Saudi Arabia and a US style shopping mall. A destination that Saudis residents go to when they want to lighten up and spend a few bob.
    So although not really "my kind of place" at all, it would not be my example of choice if I wanted to complain about Islamic fundamentalism.


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  • #8707
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 37,153 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    Charged with drinking alcohol... in a bar?!

    I'm partial to your abracadabra,

    I'm raptured by the joy of it all.



  • #8708
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,902 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    oscarBravo wrote: »
    ...and the conclusions you jumped to were your own.

    My sisters felt equally safe walking the streets of Dubai at night. The fact that you extrapolated anything different from what I posted is on you.

    Worked over there myself for a bit. Certainly safe for European professionals of either sex. The native Emiratis make a small part of the population that you have to be quite unlucky to fall foul of them. You also see Emirati women in senior positions quite regularly, e.g. the head of planning for Dubai Municipality was an Emirati woman when I was last working there. Where I saw the discrimination and bad treatment of people was on the basis of wealth rather than gender or race. A lot of people from poorer countries (e.g. Pakistan and Sudan) doing menial work in terrible conditions, and from my understanding, without and access to socialised health care and other services. If you head down to Al Ain and on to Oman things become way more conservative and treatment of women is noticeably worse.


  • #8709
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,457 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    "Deliver Me", dubbed from the Italian "Liberami", is a new documentary which looks at the RCC's support for exorcism, and what this actually means in practice for people with mental health issues, or people who believe they do.

    Looks like a 10/10 for "wtf?"

    IT review here.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3KK1wJceIY


  • #8710
    recedite
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,989 ✭✭✭✭recedite


    I see the Dubai hip-pervert has returned to Scotland.
    Happy, but £32,000 poorer, and 4 months older since his arrest.
    http://metro.co.uk/2017/10/24/jamie-harron-arrives-back-home-after-being-released-from-jail-in-dubai-7025053/
    (warning; in this link there is a picture of two men hugging)


  • #8711
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,902 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    recedite wrote: »
    I see the Dubai hip-pervert has returned to Scotland.
    Happy, but £32,000 poorer, and 4 months older since his arrest.
    http://metro.co.uk/2017/10/24/jamie-harron-arrives-back-home-after-being-released-from-jail-in-dubai-7025053/
    (warning; in this link there is a picture of two men hugging)
    Not a country you want to get arrested in while drunk, particularly if there are claims of public indecency involved. Glad the lad got home, could have been quite a bit worse.


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  • #8712
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,457 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    smacl wrote: »
    Not a country you want to get arrested in while drunk [...]
    Can't speak for Mr Harron, but from personal experience, an excess of beer never caused problems in Dubai.


  • #8713
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,902 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    robindch wrote: »
    Can't speak for Mr Harron, but from personal experience, an excess of beer never caused problems in Dubai.

    Depends very much how you behave with beer on board. If you tend to get loud or any way messy when jarred things can get unpleasant when you annoy the wrong people. Its been some time since I was there, but last time over there were a lot of decidedly dodgy pubs which bordered on being brothels, no doubt because at that time the bulk of the population in those bars and in Dubai in general were men working away from home. I reckon the Emiratis were entirely aware of this and turned a blind eye as they considered it a necessity to keep the place ticking over. At the same time, if you were to become a visible nuisance you'd get hauled off. A strange enough town in many respects, while liberal by Muslim standards my feeling was there was the law and a separate unspoken set of rules that those in the know stuck to, where if you broke the rules you faced the law. Easy to stay out of trouble if you're sensible but easy to get into trouble if you don't get the underlying set-up.


  • #8714
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,457 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    smacl wrote: »
    [...] there were a lot of decidedly dodgy pubs which bordered on being brothels, no doubt because at that time the bulk of the population in those bars and in Dubai in general were men working away from home.
    Somebody once described it as the world's largest bar conveniently situated next to the world's driest state - it's a good business model :)


  • #8715
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,457 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    As fark notes, er, "Medium well done".

    How on earth could anybody have thought this was a wise thing to do?

    http://news.sky.com/story/medium-steamed-to-death-as-wok-ritual-goes-wrong-11097952


  • #8716
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 27,427 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    robindch wrote: »
    As fark notes, er, "Medium well done".

    How on earth could anybody have thought this was a wise thing to do?
    I think the whole point is that it's not a wise thing to do.

    (This is not an attitude confined to Malaysia, or indeed to religious believers; example.)


  • #8717
    seamus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 68,190 ✭✭✭✭seamus


    I guess it's basically just a pretty extreme sauna; albeit one which can cause first degree burns. It's pretty well established that people with heart conditions shouldn't go into very hot saunas, their heart has trouble dealing with it.

    So this one was pretty inevitable; although he'd done it many times before, his family warned him that his heart couldn't take it. The things people do for ritual...


  • #8718
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,457 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    I think the whole point is that it's not a wise thing to do.
    Yes, but one does have to question the basic wisdom of entering what's essentially a cooker.


  • #8719
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,457 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Researchers have looked into possible correlations between religious festivals and outbreaks of transmissable diseases.

    The conclusion is that god does not seem treat his believers all that well.

    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609309/religious-festivals-linked-to-major-flu-outbreaks/


  • #8720
    mikhail
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,862 ✭✭✭mikhail


    robindch wrote: »
    Researchers have looked into possible correlations between religious festivals and outbreaks of transmissable diseases.

    The conclusion is that god does not seem treat his believers all that well.

    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609309/religious-festivals-linked-to-major-flu-outbreaks/
    Flu works in mysterious statistical ways.


  • #8721
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,457 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Take up your tinfoil hats and enter the strange world of the Flat Earth International Conference, 2017, Q+A session. Do not drink your tea while watching this.

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/13/this-is-what-the-qa-session-at-a-flat-earth-conference-looks-like/

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTbFvM6HYMA


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  • #8722
    Zerbini Blewitt
    Closed Accounts Posts: 171 ✭✭Zerbini Blewitt


    robindch wrote: »
    Take up your tinfoil hats and enter the strange world of the Flat Earth International Conference, 2017, Q+A session. Do not drink your tea while watching this.
    I find this stuff really compelling & entertaining - in a David Brent way. I just skimmed a few minutes there. One historic point he made:
    wrote:
    This is the first time we’ve had a flat Earth conference, literally, in 500 years.
    :D


  • #8723
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,457 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Islam has taken over one of Indonesia's last groups of indigenous people:

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41981430

    :(


  • #8724
    recedite
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,989 ✭✭✭✭recedite


    The officer, Budi Jayapura, took me aside to check my documents and said: "We need to watch over them.
    "They don't understand the concept of stealing. They say the fruit grew by itself on the tree so it can be taken, but it was planted by someone. Maybe in their belief system it is OK, but not in our society."
    The fact that they hunt and eat wild pigs also creates social tensions, he added.
    "This is a Muslim community. If they see the pig's blood and the leftover bits, they are disturbed," the officer explained.
    What is taboo, or haram, for the Orang Rimba directly contrasts with what Muslims eat, explains Mr Manurung.
    "Orang Rimba will not eat domesticated animals such as chickens, cows or sheep. They think it's a form of betrayal. You feed the animal, and when it gets fat you eat it. The fair thing to do is to fight. Whoever wins can eat the loser."
    Hmm... in terms of logic anyway, the Orang Rimba way seems to beat Islam.


  • #8725
    silverharp
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 18,854 ✭✭✭✭silverharp


    he doth protest too much

    DO761zNXcAAu3qq.jpg

    A belief in gender identity involves a level of faith as there is nothing tangible to prove its existence which, as something divorced from the physical body, is similar to the idea of a soul. - Colette Colfer



  • #8726
    MrPudding
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,779 ✭✭✭MrPudding


    Just wow.

    MrP


  • #8727
    recedite
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,989 ✭✭✭✭recedite


    The water diviners should be subjected to regular testing....
    by placing them in the ducking chair and dunking them in the local millpond.
    If they don't drown, they really have the special powers.


  • #8728
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,457 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Mike Hughes has built himself a steam-powered rocket, painted it red, and with it, he intends to briefly leave this cold, flat Earth.

    "It’ll shut the door on this ball earth", explained the former chauffeur and holder of a 2002 Guinness World Record for the longest jump in a limousine.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/11/21/this-man-is-about-to-launch-himself-in-his-homemade-rocket-to-prove-the-earth-is-flat/


  • #8729
    silverharp
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 18,854 ✭✭✭✭silverharp


    im sure he could book a flight on a U2 plane, at 70,000 ft you would see the curve

    A belief in gender identity involves a level of faith as there is nothing tangible to prove its existence which, as something divorced from the physical body, is similar to the idea of a soul. - Colette Colfer



  • #8730
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,902 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    recedite wrote: »
    The water diviners should be subjected to regular testing....
    by placing them in the ducking chair and dunking them in the local millpond.
    If they don't drown, they really have the special powers.

    Ah here, did they run out of witches in your village? )


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  • #8731
    CabanSail
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,047 ✭✭✭CabanSail


    The God Bothers have taken a couple of hits here recently.

    First their long resistance to Marriage Equality has finally been defeated. The nation wide "survey" had almost 80% participation and returned a 62% Yes vote. Only a handful of seats had majority No votes, those were places where there is large communities with strong religious influence.

    Now the Victorian Government has voted to allow Euthanasia. It will be passed into law very soon. In New South Wales a similar bill was defeated by just one vote.

    They keep trotting out the fear campaigns which have worked for so long. They are now having less effect and each time it reduces their influence.


This discussion has been closed.
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