When is a doll is just a doll?
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Gee, it should be easy to tell this stuff apart…
This is nightmarish theocratic dystopia:
While this is freedom of cultural expression:
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Hillel was a great sage! I first learnt of him from reading the Dr. Bronner’s label and looking up all the references when I was a teenager.
Anyway, depending on who you listen to, Hillel’s aphorism matches either the silver or the platinum rule (designating it, in the speaker’s opinion, as either superior or inferior to the “Golden Rule” of Jesus from Matthew 7:12.)
I call it the Platinum Rule, because it’s very meaningfully better than the Golden Rule. You can justify committing any number of atrocities using the Golden Rule - for example, conversion by the sword or torture.
Platinum Rules:
“What you avoid suffering, do not attempt to make others suffer.” (Epictetus Fragments 0:XLII)
“What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah, the rest is the commentary” (Hillel, shab. 31A)
“Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.” (Udana-Varga 5:18)
“Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.” (Analects of Confucius 15:23)
“This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.” (Mahabharata 5:1517)
“Do not that to another which thou wouldst not have done to thyself” (Hobbes, Leviathan)
“That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself.” (Dadistan-i-dinik 94:5)
“Lay not on any soul a load which ye would not wish to be laid upon you, and desire not for any one the things ye would not desire for yourselves.” (Gleanings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 128)
“Do not to another what you would not yourself experience.” (attributed to Manco Capoc by Pufendorf)
Golden Rules:
“None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.” (Al-Nawawi’s 40 Hadiths #13)
“A man should wander about treating all creatures as he himself would be treated.” (Sutrakritanga 1.11.33)
“And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” (Luke 6:31, KJV).
“Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself” ( Mencius VII.A.4)
Yeah, the majority of outspoken atheists are astoundingly arrogant. I’d say Dawkins is one of the least so, in my personal opinion, but I haven’t met him personally so take that with a grain of salt. 
But we have to remember that every human alive is subject to the Dunning-Krueger effect; the less one has embraced the study of something (and a human lifetime is not long enough to deeply study all religions) the more convinced one will be that one’s uninformed opinions are valid. Dawkins has legitimately studied, so he tends to be more nuanced.
@Wanderfound, are the belief systems of the Blackfellas well documented anywhere? I’ve only found two books on the subject and they were both new-age noble savage garbage, no more reliable than Blavatsky’s occultism.
The sweet tea/salt water thing was fairly clunky, sorry. I was tired.
In essence, I’ve rebutted a great deal of what you claim is absolutely true, but you aren’t willing to release your claims in the face of the independently verifiable evidence that I have presented. Instead, you are dismissive of the facts.
I’ve shown that your beliefs aren’t based on evidence, and since you won’t give them up, it appears that you are in fact relying on unreasoning faith - not reason, logic or science. You feel in your heart these things are true, so no amount of evidence will convince you, and you concoct self-falsing narratives (“a miracle would convince me”) perhaps to hide this intransigence from your own self. If you’re being honest, and not just driving trollies me, you’d have to literally shatter your illusion of self to follow what I’m saying; something I have done several times, and I can attest that it’s hard, and painful, or at least it was for me.
You think religion is something concerned with miracles, sky-dwelling supermen, prayer, afterlives, and many other things that haven’t anything to do with religion. It’s a category error; like believing all dark-skinned men smell strongly because you’ve only ever met poor field-workers who had dark skin. You’ve known religion that had these features, and you (mistakenly) believe that’s what all religion is like. You’re flat out wrong, and I already gave you the information you need to confirm this independently without taking my word for anything.
But, horses, water, drink…
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Props for quoting Bahá’u’lláh. The only religion that ever appealed to me.
The Baha’i I know are very nice people, and although some of the doctrine of their faith is problematic and antique I’ve never seen them put doctrine above kindness and inclusiveness. They show up at explicitly peaceful social justice actions a lot.
This is Dawkins in conversation with Father George Coyne, S.J., who at the time was director of the Vatican Observatory. Don’t snicker, it’s well respected as an institution of astronomy. Dawkins maintains his position respectfully and humbly in this interchange. Coyne, who has lamentably passed, does so as well.
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Not in a way that is accessible to non-indigenous people, except for very shallow descriptions. The Aboriginal community has good reason to distrust white anthropologists, so nosy outsiders are generally not well recieved.
Also, it isn’t one, unified belief system. It’s a whole continent’s worth, with all of the diversity that implies.
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I only lasted for 34 minutes but I will revisit it another time!
I have to agree with you that Dawkins is very respectful here (and don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of snickering at the VO, which is mostly in Arizona these days).
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You’ve shown nothing of the sort.
No you haven’t.
These things have lot to do with the abrahamic religions that the majority of the world’s religious people follow. That there are religions where these things don’t feature, don’t make that untrue. Admittedly, we might have different definitions of “religion”. Your definition might exclude beliefs in these things and the associated rituals. Mine doesn’t.
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AKA moving the goalposts. Or just generally not discussing ingood faith
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There’s a somewhat contentious, but fairly well accepted language for discussing these things.
If you choose not to use that language - if you are redefining words to suit the conclusions you want to reach - it’s hard to have a meaningful conversation.
And if you reject facts whenever they conflict with your pre-existing dogma, that makes it impossible.
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We certainly also have different definition of “facts”.
I use the rules of thought and discourse laid down by the ancient Greeks, as is generally required by the modern scientific method.
By those rules, if you make a categorical statement, I only have to provide one example that does not conform to that statement, and I have proven your statement false.
For example, if you propose that “religion has such and such characteristics” and I can provide a single example of a religion that does not, I have disproved your thesis. That’s how formal reasoning works in scientific communications (and in most interpersonal communications, other than certain types of religion and poetry).
“All fish live in the sea” is proven false by the existence of a single walking catfish (Clarias batrachus).
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Sure, because its not like the hijab could be viewed as symbol of a religion known for its frankly barbaric oppression of women…oh wait.
The Star of David can be viewed as a symbol of racist oppression and forced dispossession. Does that mean we should never use it and should discriminate against Jewish people who have nothing to do with the policies of the modern state of Israel? Mattel shouldn’t make any product that includes the symbol?
I have Rudyard Kipling books emblazoned with swastikas, and the local library is literally ringed with them. Is people’s assumption that these symbols belong to the alt-right a problem that needs to be addressed by something other than education?
Do the people who use something in a way that makes it notorious get to dictate culture to those who don’t? What about pedobear and pepe the frog? I have no answers, unfortunately. ¯\_（ ・(ｪ)・ ）_/¯
PS: Thanks for dragging the topic back on track!
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Unless they see through the bullshit and reject it.
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No.
You do not get to play that card because in the end what the argument boils down to is that Mattel is accepting that the hijab is normal. This must not be. It should not be normal that a woman would be harassed if she is seen in public without a head covering in many middle eastern countries. To the point where she may even fear for her life. It should not be normal that women are regarded as less than men.
When I see a woman in a hijab there is always that thought in the back of my mind, is she wearing it by choice or is it because she is compelled or feels compelled to conform? Until that thought is finally silenced I will continue to see the hijab as a symbol of oppression.
So when I wear the identical outfit for fencing (which I do, basically, for double-wides and schagers) I’m wearing a hijab, then, and it’s not acceptable or normal?
EDIT: and all the other Barbie outfits amount to Mattel making statements about what is “normal?”
Picture of my fencing coif, from Zen Warrior Armory. I wear an XL and am not the person pictured. It has a velcro closure and blade trap - the model has it unclosed, but it fits tightly up under the chin.
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What’s your point? That I failed to use qualifiers like “the majority of”, “almost all” or “in general”? My beef with “religion” will have exceptions for sure. Sincere apologies. My beef with woo that rejects evidence and replaces it with belief does not have exceptions. Some philosophical-meta-notion that our experience and acceptance of evidence requires some sort of underlying belief is an interesting word-play and perhaps a philosophical debate, but in the “real” world it is just a distraction.
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