Vivian on 3/3/2008 at 22:58

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Really? What, further back than heidelbergensis? Sounds interesting, don't suppose you remember where you heard that, do you?

fett on 4/3/2008 at 01:07

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Right - I should qualify that. I didn't mean to say that the RC church dictates social policy in a government sense, but that they alone are responsible for the financial priorities of the Missionaries of Charity hospices. They are very strict - even paranoid at times - about handling PR and often paint(ed) Mother Teresa and the goals of the ministry to be something other than what it actually is. I got the sense the jtr7 was suggesting that "someone" go in and force them to spend the money more wisely, but they are autonomous within the Hindu culture and the considered even more so by the government of Calcutta because of the services they provide. In other words, they aren't accountable to anyone for how donations are used.

In response to your third paragraph, of course no one is being forced to be there - but where else is the lower caste going to go in Calcutta? Not a very progressive place when it comes to medical insurance.

I think it's absolutely reprehensible that they have millions that could be spent on actually helping people heal and recover physically, and instead have chosen to spend that money to simply provide a comfortable place to die - because the motive behind it is to rack up converts and thus populate the RC church. It's incredibly disingenuous, short-sighted, and in terms of their PR, manipulative. It's all great and fine that the hospital staff at Baptist in Little Rock "loves me" and have compassion on me but if I have to pick between the two when it comes time for my heart transplant, I'll take the fucking heart - they can keep their love and compassion.

You guys who are defending what's happening there are believers (I assume)? Can you not see that what they do it exactly what James condemns in his correspondence to the Jewish believers in the NT?



It would be a completely different story if the organization itself was poor, and suffering alongside these dying people, without the financial means to change their mortal fate. However - and this is why MoC and Mother Teresa are detestable - they have abundant means to do more than 'love' people (and hence, put "faith" into action) but they've purposely chosen not to because their ultimate priority is to win converts. Which in turn, according to James, Peter, Paul, and even Jesus, means their "faith" and all the supposed compassion they're doling out is complete bullshit.

And I heartedly agree.

Epos Nix on 4/3/2008 at 01:47

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Straight from Wikipedia as per their entry on Missionaries of Charity foundation:




Now, I know that by saying this you are intending two things: 1) it denies the foundation's nuns of any altruistic role and 2) you are making the Catholic church look like an organization that only cares about how many pews its sitting. But do you ever sit for a second and wonder why you are trying to deny these people their altruism, both in your mind and in the minds of others? What if Mother Teresa was actually trying to make an impact on the world, regardless of her religion or the religious views of those she was trying to help.

I don't believe for a second that Mother Teresa had any self-serving motives in anything she did for the poor, despite your claims. But then again, I kinda like seeing altruistic people in society.



You're a bright lad... you'll understand when you're older :D

Rogue Keeper on 4/3/2008 at 09:11

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I don't know if you can't read other people's text properly (what is a shame for a scientist) or you're doing that on purpose. Probably the latter. And I tend to tire of repeating myself just because somebody's not willing to understand.



Professor Colin Groves from Australian National University believes that while brain size appears to be related to intelligence between species, this does not seem to be the case within a species.
A study of The Queensland Institute of Medical Research supporting this has been presented at the 11th International Congress of Human Genetics in Brisbane. The study realizes that people who scored highly in intelligence tests did not necessarily possess versions of the genes that are expected to code for big heads and intelligence. People who did possess the suspected 'smart' versions of the genes were not necessarily the most intelligent or the ones with the biggest brains.
In article „Brain Size and Intelligence“ published by US National Centre for Biotechnology Information, acknowledges that „any program that seeks to relate brain weight, cranial capacity, or some other measure of overall brain size to individual performance ignores the reality of the brain's functional diversity.“
I'm sure there were other separate researches which have failed to come up with a link between head size and intelligence, except in extreme congenital abnormalities. Simply put, bigger brains don't make necessarily people smarter - what in turn can't make them more psychologically sophisticated.



Is this really an anthropologist speaking? That's quite shocking, since anthropology, a holist science as it is, has deep interest in research of all aspects of human societies, their cultures, their lifestyles, their cooperation, social development. But if you suggest that social and cultural aspects of anthropology are out of your personal field of view, reduced only on digging up things from soil, I can't do much with it. Forrest Gump rocks!



It seems you are, how Germans call it, a „Fach-Idiot“. What is a Fach-Idiot? Simply it's a person highly skilled in some scientific field, but to the point that he thinks his field is the MOST IMPORTANT from all scientific fields. Ego plays a big role in it. The disadvantage is that concentrated focus of a Fach-Idiot on his scientific field has made him underskilled in other fields of sciences, most likely in those for which he doesn't have talent. A Fach-Idiot is eager to prove superior importance of his chosen field, while at the same time he doesn't consider other fields to be much important. As a result, his argumenation is very autistic when it comes to communication and knowledge exchange with other scientific fields. A Fach-Idiot thinks he's highly enlightened to be justified to present his personal opinions on speculations and suppositions which are still matter of internal debate in his field, because it's not easy to resolve them with empirical research. Nonetheless, he lectures them with such zeal, as if they were the ultimate conclusions of all authorities in his field, which won't ever change.

I always liked to discover Fach-Idiots - and it's not very difficult.

Vivian on 4/3/2008 at 14:17

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Look, BR. These are the two things you said which I took issue with:



As I said before, how on earth do you know any of that? You're presenting stuff you basically pulled out of your bum as bare facts. Which pisses me off. You can call me an Idiot-Fachs whatever for that if you want to, it doesn't change the fact that you were talking crap and I called you on it.

Besides, Groves is also quoted as saying this: "And despite the development of technological advances, he says there's no evidence that Homo sapiens has become more intelligent in the last 50,000 years". Which was my point. Nyar nyar.

And all that stuff about a time machine... really. That's like telling physicists to 'just go ahead and invent cold-fusion already, sheesh'.