The discussions are lengthy and digression-filled. Fine.

The fascinating rhetorical device unique to this site is/l

-- demanding references

-- zooming in on those references to granular detail, drilling down for "facts" and "evidence"

-- systematically rejecting everything offered

I will confess to falling prey and getting spun up in years past.

But if one steps back to observe the D-n-C methodology, all of the shrill cries for "facts" and "evidence" take on a self-mocking cast.

Possibly all of the posturing is sincere and I'm misinterpreting. If so, please forgive me, as I do you, and have an excellent weekend.

Via Legal Insurrection, it appears that, per the Biden Administration's illustrious peat muppetPress Secretary, SCOTUS decisions are tantamount to Constitutional Amendments:

âoeThis is really, really important and I know the American people are really tracking this, as they should be. Dobbs decision, that was something that was decided on a year ago. Really took away the freedoms from women. I think about abortion, I think about reproductive rights. And that was unprecedented. Now you fast-forward to what we saw last week, affirmative action. Again, taking away important constitutional rights that have been in place for a long time,â Jean-Pierre said.

One is tempted to indulge in a little bit of fremdschaemen, when one feels embarrassment on behalf of someone too thick to realize that they should be ashamed.

But, in defense of Karine Jean-Pierre, we don't declare war or budget along Constitutionally coherent lines either. So possibly she makes a good point in passing: we need to either get this ship back on course, or just scuttle the whole mess.

Hahaha: Fed Up Citizens Disable San Francisco's Self-Driving Cars With Traffic Cones

via https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=22928926&cid=63608908

Emphasis mine:

Life remains ambiguous, yes.

And yet (emphasis mine, echoing that above)

Roadmaps for me, but not for thee.

My "Maslow-3D" hypothesis, which you ignore, seeks to let faith be faith, and knowledge, knowledge, by treating the two as orthogonal. By being clear about which things are of Earth, and "provable" (even if the reactions have not always reach 100% completion) vs. those of heaven, which even those claiming faith continue to thumb-wrestle over, we can at least have an intellectually honest exchange.

Indeed, if one buys off on a Creator, then everything we experience is a subset of that creation. So the example of mountains that you offer is a data point that says more about humans than that Creator.

Stipulating that you are correct and reality "just sort of happened", all I can say is that belief in random stuff is a far larger mountain of faith than I can muster. But do preach on, as the amorality drives the societal destruction currently in view. And lest you think me smug, I would blame the church for failing to carry out the Great Commission first and foremost for these woes.

. Glad that you had a great vacation, sir. We were just at Mt. Ranier

I said, regarding the status quo: "...standing athwart it..."

Fustakrakich says: "But you aren't, you're just flowing down the river..."

And here is our standard dilemma: stipulating that Fustakrakich is correct, how would he show the homework? From what context emerges the "you're just flowing" judgement?

The best I've been able to extract is "[smitty is] just being obtuse" and "[he] just feel[s] things".

OK, guilty on the "obtuse" charge, but the question stands: what's the rule? Do we scuttle the Western tradition that brought us here in favor of Wokery?

Fustakrakich seems to demand the juice without applying the squeeze, as far as I can tell.

UPDATE: Oh, my fault. Who knew that Slashdot was a proxy for a conversation with my wife?

I've done nothing of the sort.

I've pointed out that, for all of the sweeping, dogmatic assertions that you have offered, human knowledge is far from complete. You can no more offer a repeatable experiment going from inorganic chemistry to self-replicating life than you can state the precise age of the universe, or what occurred before T-nought.

Therefore, we can be humble, rather than go around warlording as though we were so much wiser than is actually the case.

Trump Names Hunter Biden As His Running Mate So DOJ Will Stop Investigating Him

A fine monologue

RNC Announces Debate Qualifications for Approved "Republican" Candidates, Including Loyalty Pledge

The CTH website analysis mostly rings true. The funny part is the overt pro-Trump bias. In a rematch with Biden, I would certainly vote for the fully-alive candidate. The only genuinely interesting candidate at the moment is https://www.vivek2024.com/ but I deem him only slightly more likely to prevail than, say, Bernie Sanders, for reasons alluded to in The Famous Article.

https://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=22907005&cid=63562831

I confess that I have not loved everyone else at the same fidelity level that Christ self-sacrificially loved all humanity for all time, or even that more finite fidelity that fellow veterans afforded the ideals (if not always the implementation) of the U.S. Constitution.

Lord, have mercy on this benighted country, and especially the young falling prey to the fresh evils of our day.

And, since I have some mod points, let me go bump up the posts of my fanboi, in stark contrast with the way he did for fustakrakich.

If we object to letting our children be brainwashed into the transsexual cult, then...

My preferences, in this context are as externally forced as genders on tender young victims, as far as I can tell. I have "yelled at" others of any age concerning Biblical content precisely zero (0) times. I should probably mention having taught Suday School for children in grades 3-6 for the last decade or better. They appear to be thriving.

I guess that inchoherent invective carpet bombing is a rhetorical tactic. Possibly implying surrender, here. d_r is already on my prayer list.

When all other arguments 'splode, pretend the perfectly simple, coherent statement (e.g. you were you when your genetic material was complete and initialized, at conception), "makes no sense whatsoever".

There is a beatiful passage in Job40 that silences all mortal tongues:

When we can fully re-create reality from scratch, then we are equipped to compare notes with the Creator.

Short of that, we are well-advised to keep it humble.

Which brings us to Covid:

The Pottery Barn Rule applies: "You broke it; you bought it." The need to point the finger externally is understood; "Your Team" is absolutely unaccountable for anything at any time under any circumstances. May the Lord have mercy on you.

https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=22897783&cid=63546959

It's not clear who ever claimed that DNA alone is the sum of life.

I contended that life is initialized when the DNA is complete, i.e. conception.

In software terms, this somewhat similar to a constructor function for a class.

There is absolutely no subsequent, post-DNA-complete moment when one can be said to transition from "not-life" to "life".

THAT is my argument.

The fact that, post the initial cell division, cells continue to divide, virii contaminate the DNA, neurons grow and memories form, is completely true.

I would like to thank all of the strawman interlocutors for manning the straw and slaying copious tangential arguments that I never proffered.