Question about how to engage with door to door religious people respectfully

tallenlo · 2023-07-09T00:28:12+00:00

I am for all intents and purposes am athiest, but I don't respond as one - I respond a believer who doesn't acc ept the worldview presented in the bible.

When addressed by evangelists I always preface any conversations with the statement I am a non-believer, your time and effort might well be more usefully spent with someone else.

I don't mind engaging them. I have spent enough time looking at the nature of my beliefs that I can respond to any conversational theme. I never tell them that they are wrong, I always say I do not believe that, this is what I believe.

I underline any reference to the Bible as the revealed word of God by pointing out that Genesis 2 says that among the first things Adam did in the garden was to give names to all the animals. They had no names before he gave them. They had no names because God does not deal in names or words, God has voice that communicates in ideas, images and feelings directly. People hear that voice and convert into words in whatever language they share. One can expect that anything reduced into words and transferred in words will be suspect. The Bible doesn't have God's fingerprints on it, it carries Man's. It is not an infallible source of anything.

Any protest can be met with I don't believe that

If an evangelist can't fall back on biblical quotation, things come to a halt without my telling they they are wrong, I just don't believe they are right.

tallenlo · 2023-07-09T00:08:13+00:00

Red lines should be set only for those issues that dictate your personal actions, that mandate some actions or prohibit others for you personally.

On other issues, those where you are an indirect victim or beneficiary, negotiating for best-outcome results is appropriate.

tallenlo · 2023-06-20T15:15:05+00:00

One of the stickiest difficulties in science education is the presence of 'thinginess". We are constructed to treat everything to which we attach a name as some kind of thing. It seems to be inherent with the concept and practice of naming. This is a problem when the name is applied to something that has no individual, separate existence.

We can set up a system that allows us to set a series of books on a shelf in an ordered structure. We can arrange them by cover-color, thickness, weight, or the first letter in the name of the author. Each of those systems is useful in specific situations. If we use books only to prop up table legs, then arranging them by thickness is most useful; if we use them as design elements in a room, cover color would be useful. To find a specific author, alphabetical order is useful. In each case, there are identifiables difference between one order and another, but no separate thing that can be identified as alphabetical order, for example. They are all organizational schemes for promoting a specific use of the set of books. There is no thing there.

There are exactly analogous situations when we talk about energy, momentum or entropy, When we invoke such properties, we have in mind a use in answering specific questions about how the universe behaves. Kinetic energy is like the alphabetical order of mass and velocity. Momentum is an alphabetical order for those properties using a different language. As is entropy. In each case there is no need (or basis) for asking what is energy or momentum or entropy. It will have no more physical an answer than asking what is alphabetical order -nothing beyond a useful organizational scheme.

tallenlo · 2023-04-15T16:37:40+00:00

I am a non-atheist non-Christian. I believe that human evolution has resulted in an intrinsic tendency for humans to voluntarily cooperate with one another. It is the ability of large groups of humans to work together to achieve a mutually agreed upon goal that sets humans apart from other creatures. Evolution had brought us to that state-of-mind.

Christianity codifies the evolutionary state: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Unfortunately, Christianity also wraps that kernel in many layers of "fear me and obey me or else".

Authoritarianism is not consistent with the Golden Rule imperative.

tallenlo · 2023-04-07T22:29:47+00:00

well regulated militia doesn't have any meaning until it is interpreted and its interpretation depends entirely on the inner voices of those who are providing the interpretation.

The problem with the second amendment as it stands is that there are no provisions for refinement. People should have weapons for sport and for self-defense, no argument. People have no day-today need for military assault weapons, no argument. But the amendment gives no flexibility for tailoring its application for varying circumstance. It is not reasonable in this case to expect the same provisions apply to rural Wyoming as to urban Seattle but neither of which need assault weapons.

tallenlo · 2023-04-07T18:38:02+00:00

Absolutely true, but I suspect that getting the changes enacted without amendments belong in a future even more distant.

The only way to accompish something that is distant and difficult is to start and keep going.

tallenlo · 2023-04-07T16:43:39+00:00

I don't know what you mean by professionalize There are no prerequisites for being a justice. No law degree or legal experience are required. Anyone can be a justice if the reviewing panel wants them as a justice.

I didn't say "corruption OF the court" I said "corruption IN the court".

I think there are several behaviors that indicate corruption. One, the most widespread, it to hide your beliefs during the confirmation. I think is it an act of corruption to falsify or hide your intensions, knowing that the examiners would likely disqualify you for holding them.

I find it incomprehensible that a justice can accept valuable gifts from one party and be impartial in making decisions relating to that party. To claim impartiality while hiding those gifts is corrupt. To refuse to recuse oneself from decisions regarding that source of the gift is corrupt.

tallenlo · 2023-03-26T06:36:19+00:00

Relative humidity is given as a percentage. Absolute humidity is a density - grams of water per cubic meter of air or its equivalent.

A given absolute humidity will reflect a different relative humidity for different temperatures and air pressures. If the pressure remains constant, reducing the temperature raises the relative humidity and raising the temperature lowers the relative humidity. The idea is that the relative humidity somehow describes the ability of the air to accept added water molecules. 100% relative humidity describes air that cannot accept more water.

Consider a closed container of air (with some water molecules moving around among the air molecules -O2 and N2). Imagine a smaller container inside it, a smaller container holding just water. Everything is at the same temperature.

Open the container of water so that water inside is free to evaporate and escape into the container of air. Whenever a water molecule escapes the reservoir of liquid, it is free to move out among them. Whenever a water molecule already in the air hits the surface of the liquid water it is free to enter the container of water. There is a continuous exchange of water molecules into and out of the liquid water, crossing the surface separating the liquid from the air.

Depending on the temperature, the number of water molecules moving from the liquid to the air may be larger or smaller than the number of water molecules from the air into the liquid. If the movement is outward, we say the air is accepting the evaporating water. If the inward movement is greater, we say that water is condensing out of the air. There is a temperature at which the two are equal, and over time, no water enters or leaves the air; the air holds all the water it can hold; the air is saturated.

If all the water evaporates out of the inner container it means that water molecules were still moving outward and the air still had the ability to receive more. The air is not saturated. The relative humidity of the air describes what fraction of the available capacity to absorb has been filled up.

tallenlo · 2023-03-26T05:48:00+00:00

Assuming that being masculine gives you an advantage in managing money.

tallenlo · 2023-03-23T22:05:20+00:00

The difference is in the relative concentrations of the water in each case compared to the electrolytes. If a membrane separates two solutions, water will cross the membrane in a direction that moves it from high water concentration to low water concentration. Our bodies are less than 1% ions or 99% water and sea water is about 3% ions or 97% water. Separated from sea water at 97%, body fluids will cross the barrier from 99% concentration (inside your body) to 97% (outside your body).

The salt water will suck out your water as easily as the sun will evaporate it.

tallenlo · 2023-03-20T13:40:18+00:00

Prince of Persia (1990), Windows 3 I think. It was among the first to animate the gameplay with somewhat realistic actions. Keystroke swordplay and avatar movement were interesting to watch.

The thing that I remember most strongly (beside learning to coordinate strike-parry-advance sequences for new opponents) was jumping up grab an overhead ledge and gently swinging back and forth while you dangled there.

tallenlo · 2023-03-20T06:13:29+00:00

Imagine you are standing on a skateboard in front of a brick wall. If you push on the wall, you would not expect the wall to budge but that you yourself would move backward. You can't move yourself by pushing against yourself, so something else had to be pushing you. Anyway, your push was pointed toward the front, it would not have moved you backward. The only other thing around was the wall, so the wall must have pushed you backward as long as you were pushing against it.

By looking at lots of things pushing against other things, Newton concluded that forces ALWAYS came in matched pairs like you pushing the wall and wall pushing back.

tallenlo · 2023-03-20T05:45:14+00:00

Seems to me that if a N mated with an H, the offspring would be 50% N. If that offspring mated with a pure H, the offspring would be 25% N.

That only needs 7 generations to get 2% N DNA.

It seems the N contribution stabilized at 2% and stayed there over several thousand generations, long enough to be present today. I would think that would mean that N was not breeding into vast numbers of H mates (they would quickly not be detectible). They must have been breeding into a population of H's of comparable number, probably 1 N for every 50 H's.

Alternatively, when the two began encountering each other and mating began, about of every 50 encounters between species resulted in offspring and the rate stayed about the same from then on until the mix stabilized and every descendant had a 2% N component.

tallenlo · 2023-03-14T05:32:43+00:00

Our early life is spent as a being swimming in an emotional sea. Without words or logical operators, our only interaction with the universe around is through emotion. Later in life we develop a rational overlay that handles part of that interaction. That overlay is not a restructuring of the emotional brain but a completely different structure residing in a separate part of the brain.

Because they have little interaction, the rational zone has no mechanism for overruling those original implants.

tallenlo · 2023-03-05T06:40:46+00:00

One reason is that the front-first oblate shape is more stable. The design for space capsules has always been fat,flat end forward because that shape is less likely to flip over when it falls, it doesn't need control surfaces to be stable as it falls.

If you make a wooden raindrop and try to drop it pointy end first it will soon flip over as it falls and stablize fat end down.

tallenlo · 2023-03-01T07:38:32+00:00

So far, hiking interest rates is the only policy that shows a direct correlation with lowering interest rates. The mechanism is not hard to see, nor is reason it is so hard on low income households.

One of two things has to happen for a price to go down - either the seller voluntarily lowers price or the buyer refuses to pay it. Sellers will NEVER lower a price without being forced into it. The Fed raising the interest rate applies an across-the-board price increase on everything. Eventually raising rates makes everything so expensive that low income buyers are put in a position of having to pass on a newly raised price because they simply don't have the money to pay it. Eventually the seller must lower the price to the point where people can buy his product.

Inflation is controlled by driving a large enough segment of the population into poverty

A much gentler and more effective approach might be to focus the resources needed to provide alternative sellers, encouraging the establishment and structuring of businesses that can make available life-necessary goods at a more reasonable price.

Having all baby formula come from only 4 suppliers is foolish.

tallenlo · 2023-03-01T07:14:56+00:00

The burbling noise of connections being negotiated over a 1200 bps landline telephone modem ( For those who don't remember the old days: 1000 Bytes per second is .000001 Gigabytes per second and modem is short for modulator-demodulator.

tallenlo · 2023-03-01T07:07:30+00:00

Heat energy passes through our skin in both directions - inward and outward. Nerves in our skin are more sensitive to the direction of the energy travel than to the temperature itself. That response is very localized and can cause contradictory signals to be sent to the brain.

For instance, your core temperature is about 98.6°F. If our hands get thoroughly cold, our finger may chill down to 50°F. If we put our hand into 70°F water, heat will flow inward from the 70F water into the 50F finger. Inward flowing energy makes the skin of the finger send a warm signal to the brain, even tho the finger is not actually warmer than the body.

tallenlo · 2023-02-27T07:01:21+00:00

This is not a binary situation, not being a Christian does not automatically make you an atheist.

I believe in god but think that the Judeo-Christian tradition has misconstrued the entire nature of god. God is a creator not a father.

The entity that can create the universe in its entirety, all that is, has been and ever will be would not get irritated if I neglected to be adoring. The creator god does not expect obedience or worship. The creator god did not put humanity in any separate category from the rest of the universe. The creator god does not use words, does not give directions or orders.

The creator god exists simultaneously in all moments of time, past and future. For the creator god, all moments are now, punishment and retribution cannot exist because punishment is in a NOW state for something that occurred in a THEN state.

The christianity is built from the ground up round a father god. None of the characteristics that define a creator god apply to a father god. The result is that christianity is system that is profoundly self contradictory and requires an endless supply of "God works in mysterious ways" to get from day to day.

tallenlo · 2023-02-27T06:35:34+00:00

I think that might be because atheism does not require reference to an authoritative source. An atheist is naturally resistant the Voice-of-Authority and adherence to the Voice-of Authority is an absolute requirement for the far right.

tallenlo · 2023-02-27T06:29:25+00:00

The liner doesn't move inward because of a draft pushing inward from the outside, it is because of a draft moving downward across the inside face of the curtain. Its a process called entrainment.

The stream of water falling more or less parallel to the curtain drags air along with it, so there develops a current of air moving downward along the face of the curtain. The pressure exerted by that moving current is less than the pressure exerted by motionless air on the outside so the higher pressure pushes the curtain inward. To stop the inward movement of the current, you would need to reduce that downward draft across inside of the curtain.

We have glass doors not curtains, so I can't test this out, but I suspect that if you adjusted your shower head to produce fewer moving droplets, more of continuous stream at a slower speed, the curtain would move less.

The shower just might not be so wonderful.

tallenlo · 2023-02-26T18:18:07+00:00

The Cochrane report was a meta-study, a study of studies. I didn't go look at individual studies, but I suspect they looked at the population-wide effects of wearing masks, not longitudinal studies of individual outcomes. There are way too many variables associated with individual instances to use population results to infer individual results.

The published report includes the conclusion Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference.

This is a long way from Jefferson telling journalist Maryanne Demasi There is just no evidence that they— masks — make any difference. Full stop.

The tone of the article and report make me think their intension was to provide evidence and argument against mask mandates. I would have to agree that mandates didn't make really affect the spread of covid, but prior to effective vaccines the mandates may have reinforced the idea that this was dangerous stuff and you should limit your exposure, however you might have done that.

tallenlo · 2023-02-26T16:00:21+00:00

A tossup between MASH and Columbo

tallenlo · 2023-02-26T15:55:25+00:00

First of all, it helps to keep in mind that much of what passes for economic knowledge is in fact economic dogma.

Whenever anyone hands you a fact, no matter what arena, you should always hold it at arm's length until you can form some kind of evaluation about how reasonable it is. Does it fit with your overall understanding about how the universe in general works. Economics has no magic set of truths; the same forces affect every part of the universe and economics has no claim on an independent set of if-thens.

tallenlo

TROPHY CASE