DestroyerOfSophists

@Knightfall21 @Devon_Eriksen_ @justalexoki So again, you could imagine what it might be like to *be* a different person, but that different person would fundamentally not be *you*

@Knightfall21 @Devon_Eriksen_ @justalexoki This is not true by classic Christian metaphysics. Aquinas for example would say that each soul is created for a specific body, and there is no pre-existing soul prior to its particular embodiment. The person is a body-soul composite, not a soul that incidentally has a body

Put a 100 marbles in a jar, 14 blue marbles to represent the population of the West, and 86 red marbles to represent everyone else. If you draw a marble, blindly and at random, from the jar, you have a 14% chance of drawing a blue marble. This how @justalexoki sees the moment of conception. He thinks he is a random generic soul, fresh from the Well of Random Generic Souls, drawing a marble from the jar. 14% blue, 86% red. But you don't draw the marble. You are the marble. A blue marble only has a 14% chance of being selection in a random draw. But, in or out of the jar, a blue marble has a 100% chance of being blue. This is the Seagull Test, which is an inversion of the Breakfast Test. The Breakfast Test requires you to describe a hypothetical timeline where you skipped breakfast this morning, to prove you can imagine hypotheticals. The Seagull Test requires you to reject the question "What if you were a seagull?" as a nonsense question, to prove that you understand the difference between valid and nonsense hypotheticals. You can skip breakfast and still be you, but there is no version of you that can be a seagull, and no seagull that can, in any meaningful way, be you. To pass the Seagull Test, you must reject the question and refuse to answer, or, better yet, reframe the question so that it asks for the intended information in a coherent way, i.e. "What does it feel like to be a seagull?" Which is a very, very different question. I can, with good observational data and some intelligent speculation, possibly understand the thoughts and feelings of a Pakistani brick layer. But I cannot be one in any coherently possible universe, because I am, by definition, me. A blue marble.

Study finds significant model bias in favor of minority races and religions, women, and Democrats. Self evidently true, but the statistics are interesting

This post seems like pure cope to me. If you are a young person who attends the Latin Mass you are "pious, but theologically unsophisticated", and we just need to explain the reforms to you better, and then you'll finally get it. Total misread of the situation.

You come across a lever. If you pull it, you create dozens of lives, most of which are either frozen indefinitely or destroyed, but a small number of which will survive. Is the lever pro-life?

@OVTweetmarck There is *some* intrinsic value to crypto, but not in the meme coin realm. The (fiat) dollar has value because the government lets you pay them with it. A cryptocurrency has value because it simultaneously has secure transactions and a lack of centralized authority.

When I say crypto is a pure speculation, that doesn’t mean its price will crash. It may very well go up a ton. A speculation can be successful. Its speculative quality is in its lack of intrinsic value and lack of establishment as a means of exchange.

Put me on the walls of Constantinople in 1453 I promise it’s going differently

@Bertie201503 @pegobry_en I can't tell for sure if it's a rosary, but his wife is Catholic.

My God

He was anti-abortion - I guess you want me dead too He said men can’t be women - I guess you want me dead too He said we should have the right to bear arms - I guess you want me dead too He took a firm stance on inner city crime -I guess you want me dead too

@padrechico @josephnollasj @poperespecter1 Section 2, paragraph 43 of the GIRM also says: "Where it is the practice of the people to remain kneeling after the Sanctus until the end of the Eucharistic Prayer and before communion when the priest says, 'Ecce Agnus Dei', it is laudable for this practice to be retained."

@josephnollasj @poperespecter1 The GIRM says we just kneel for the consecration.

Kneeling must not be reduced to penance. It is first and foremost an act of devotion. Do loyal subjects kneel before their king as penance? No. Do men kneel as penance when proposing marriage? No. These are acts of devotion. And even penance is, fundamentally, an act of devotion.

@IgorNaverniouk @SarahPPerry In the circuit courts, cases are typically head by a panel of 3 judges. If the case is considered particularly important, the court may sit "en banc", meaning all the judges hear the case.

@SarahPPerry What do you mean by "entire"?

BREAKING LEGAL NEWS: The entire 11th Circuit, in an 8-5 vote, held that an insurance policy excluding transgender gender-affirming surgical care doesn’t violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Judge Brasher wrote for the court on behalf of himself & 6 other judges that the exclusion doesn’t violate Title VII — following the reasoning of SCOTUS in U.S. v Skrmetti - "it does not treat anyone differently based on a protected characteristic." Today, the Constitution won storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

For some reason, many Boomers have an inexplicable love of the rejected 1998 Missal translation. It is inferior to the current translation. It's not even close. Stop trying

I need to write a piece on “Legal Conservatism as Masochism,” the deviant psychological condition in which the legal conservative displays “principle” by falling on the sword, over and over, in order to defend some crazy doctrine made up after World War II.

@menhguin @jrysana Predicting solar eclipses is probably not something that would particularly impress them. By the time of the Roman empire, astronomers had been able to generally predict the timing, if not the exact moment of eclipses.

@jrysana Depends on level of believability. Assuming you can oneshot a roman emperor, prolly a paragraph describing a spinning jenny + steam + coal+printing press a least. Without a dedicated follower, you prolly need an extra paragraph describing predicted events like solar eclipses

I wonder what's the smallest amount of today's knowledge you'd need to give to the Romans back in 27 B.C. in order to spark industrialization/modernity roughly equivalent to our own but two millennia earlier

@hubertmusz72753 @ShitpostRock There have been some more complex historical versions: #Evolution" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_a…

@ShitpostRock Ngl Polands coat of arms could use a bit of an upgrade as i feel like it lacks a bit compared to others here

Massive props to that priest. Massive. Props.

As I told Pope Leo, he’s Catholic and I’m Jewish, but the 2005 White Sox World Series victory is a miracle we can all agree on.

The tax bill passed by the House would bar Medicaid coverage of all transgender care and prohibit plans offered under the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges from covering such care as an essential health benefit. nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-po…

Protestantism and liberalism go hand in hand. They will die together.

And finally, legendary pool hustler Minnesota Fats passed away Wednesday. You know, now he's probably up in Heaven, racking them up for a game with Saint Peter. Or maybe he's in Hell, where demons gnaw at his flesh, and the agonies of the damned never cease. Either way, he'll be missed!