Can someone explain what I just read?
If you're interested, they also have some interesting things to say about the upcoming decorative gourd season.
Cynical attitude aside, I’m not sure why this is on HN. It doesn’t seem particularly insightful, interesting, or funny.
>Cynical attitude aside, I’m not sure why this is on HN. It doesn’t seem particularly insightful, interesting, or funny.
The average HN reader does probably know enough about philosophy to know the differences between Bentham and Mill but not enough to make that seem trivial.
If I’ve misjudged the HN audience and enough do appreciate this link, I can’t/won’t argue with their upvotes!
I won’t say that the allegorical reading is more “correct,” but if you’d like some clues leading to it, look for the breadcrumbs like this: “And, even though Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are ideologically similar, I refuse to let my son believe in Bentham’s very-slightly-different version of ethics.”
My point is, don’t take it too seriously.
This made me wonder how many kids are switching to a different branch of religion. I've seen a bit of moving to a completely different faith / no religion, but almost changes of denomination.
The first thing that came to my mind was the local liberal and "materialist" (that is, Marxist) contingents fighting over definitions. (And that does involve a few parents!) But it's equally reminiscent of childhood Catholic versus Protestant conflicts. I only have more recent experience of one to privilege it over the other.
I may be projecting a little bit.
Religion/Philosophy (really many parts of the human experience), is often like DNA - 99.9% the same but it’s the 0.01% difference that gets all the attention
On the Christian side, some Seventh-Day Adventists apparently see the Catholic church as the "Whore of Babylon" and the pope as the antichrist. [0]
Maybe the closeness between two groups just means they can be really detailed and exact about why they hate each other.
That’s probably not too far off. My impression is that the Hebrew Bible was written by nomadic shepherds who despised cosmopolitan city-dwellers who they thought had loose morals. And similarly for the authors of the New Testament, who despised the Roman Empire of the day (“Babylon” here is thought to be a stand-in for Rome).
It is quite ironic that this became the holy teaching of the state religion of the Roman Empire a few centuries later.
(Disclaimer: I am not a religious person and am by no means an expert on the Bible.)
Ah the good old:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...
Also:
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
Denominations that don't practice infant baptism would allow those adults to be baptized because they don't regard the first one as authentic.
It's true that denominations that practice infant baptism usually don't allow adults who were baptized as infants to be re-baptized, because they consider the person to be already baptized, so there's no need.
But even in cases where denominations try diligently to avoid the case where they're conferring baptism on someone who may have already been baptized (as in the case of the Catholic church and conditional baptism), there are no penalties for baptizing someone who was already baptized. It's just sort of a pointless thing, unless you reject the idea that infant baptism is legitimate, in which case why belong to a denomination that practices infant baptism?
Maybe there were penalties in the past that I'm not aware of, so I'd love to learn more about the executions.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2004/06/19/aton...