Now, the Sun could go nova, but that is very, very unlikely - again a judgment based on a vague understanding of astrophysics. Not the right conditions for that. And I could imagine that the Sun would decide to go nova just to spite us all, but that would neither a judgment nor even an opinion, a guestimate or a gut feeling but something I just pulled of my arse in a flight of anthropomorphic fancy applied to a stellar body.
I also watch Bill Hicks and no, I don't want to be cognitively impaired. We do that easily enough by default to actually want it. You'd have to be really knurd to actually want that with a good reason.
And no, it's not just a silly semantic argument.
Belief does mean something. It is the tool of the builders of systems, of the seekers of absolutes. It is the excuse of all human evils, the ever-handy absolution for those too lazy and too vain to simply say "I don't know".
It is a sickness and a sickening word, one of the vilest words in human language.
And that is a judgment. Facts, selfish little bastards. They don't even care about your feelings.
;) Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
'Broad church' - note the small 'c' - is idiomatic English. It means having a wide spectrum of values and different ways of looking at the world.
It doesn't suggest the creation of a church, of a belief system, or any affiliation with religion.
'Broad church' has as much to do with religion as 'big tent' has to do with circuses in US politics.
[pause for thought]
Okay - maybe that wasn't the best example. Never mind.
Seriously - I can understand that people might be offended by the use of the word 'church', but in context it's nothing more than a widely used idiom, which atheists use regularly without implying that they're steering themselves a course back to the bosom of Jesus.
I might ask, how can anyone stay sane in what are still nominally 'Christian' societies if the mere word 'church' offends even when mentioned in a secular idiom? What does the sight of real existing cathederals, bishops, parishioners and so forth occasion?
It's a perfectly normal and inoffensive English idiom and Sven is correct to defend his right to use it.
From the link:
For me that's part of it, but cognitively impaired is having four beers with your mates. At the end of the session, I--and not just I--am cognitively impaired. I despair of ever getting rid of all those people who need to drive at night, when the streets are fully of happy cognitively impaired individuals....
My experience tells me that "sober" is a most dubious state in which to permanently reside--it seems that most moral authorities are sober, or pretend to be maybe. I'm thinking of cognitively impaired in the sense that the rational mind has been stopped in its relentless forward motion. obstacles appear, paths to the left and right--
But maybe I'm reading "impaired" skew-wiff, I'm seeing humour that maybe isn't there.
Online Etymology Dictionary
impair c.1374, earlier ampayre, apeyre (1297), from O.Fr. empeirier, from V.L. *impejorare "make worse," from L. in- "into" + L.L. pejorare "make worse," from pejor "worse." In ref. to driving under the influence of alcohol, first recorded 1951 in Canadian Eng.
But, flipping it round, a very sober person is impaired in other environments--I dunno, can you be sober and fall in love? There's an approach to sober that sounds like knurdness with all the emotions switched off...for me!
Re: belief
belief c.1175, replaced O.E. geleafa, from W.Gmc. *ga-laubon (cf. O.S. gilobo, M.Du. gelove, O.H.G. giloubo, Ger. glaube), from *galaub- "dear, esteemed." The prefix was altered on analogy of the verb. The distinction of the final consonant from that of believe developed 15c. Belief used to mean "trust in God," while faith meant "loyalty to a person based on promise or duty" (a sense preserved in keep one's faith, in good (or bad) faith and in common usage of faithful, faithless, which contain no notion of divinity). But faith, as cognate of L. fides, took on the religious sense beginning in 14c. translations, and belief had by 16c. become limited to "mental acceptance of something as true," from the religious use in the sense of "things held to be true as a matter of religious doctrine" (c.1225).
I can get a better sense of what (I think) you mean from the word "faith". Do I have faith that the sun will come up? To be honest, I don't ponder it. Never have. I mean I can ponder it, but it takes no faith for me and the sun to move through the days.
But belief as "dear, esteemed", then yes--I think it is impossible to live without belief, because to act there must be beliefs about the world. Some people believe the world has just passed a tipping point where climactic changes will do away with our current modes of living. Others believe that we may be perhaps heading in that direction, better stop our bad habits now.
And another person thinks, "What are the facts? What do we know?" But we don't know enough, maybe, and an offer comes through the door for an eco house in a place where they're growing their own food...and the person thinks, bah, hippies!
If there is no pause for thought, then I ascribe to that person the belief that we have not passed a tipping point. As none of us can know the future, but we can make ever more shrewd guesses about it, our beliefs are honed, fine tuned, so that "old" beliefs seem strange, until one examines what we did and didn't know back then, and how...way back when we ascribed personality to non-human places, events, objects....I dunno. I liked the part where "faith" went roaring ahead while belief developed with the latest knowledge.
So by Shakespeare's time it meant 'mental acceptance of something as true'
(Francois, I hope you don't mind me talking to you like this, it's not everyone's cup of tea I know!)
I just wanted to find a Shakespeare sonnet with the word belief in it, see how it sounded. So here goes:
(Well, it turned out that 'belief' doesn't appear in any of them. But as I was typing belie--"believe" turned up.
Shakespeare's sonnets. The text 101 - 154.
CIX O! never say that I was false of heart, Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify, As easy might I from my self depart As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie: That is my home of love: if I have ranged, Like him that travels, I return again; Just to the time, not with the time exchanged, So that myself bring water for my stain. Never believe though in my nature reigned, All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, That it could so preposterously be stained, To leave for nothing all thy sum of good; For nothing this wide universe I call, Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all.
But, flipping it round, a very sober person is impaired in other environments--I dunno, can you be sober and fall in love?
Love? Good biochemistry and its existence makes perfect sense from an evolutionary point given that us humans are just furless, clawless, long-gestating, slow-growing and generally rather meek and defense-self mammals who just happen to benefit of a handful of somewhat unusual cognitive abilities that tend to manifest themselves pretty late in life. Without love, none of us would be there to talk about it for cause of devastating infant mortality and the subsequent complete inability to survive as a specie :>
That being said, being sober about something doesn't mean you can't appreciate it... Facts, selfish little bastards. They don't even care about your feelings.
