Jump to content

Peregrinator

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    744

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Peregrinator

  1. Peregrinator
    Oscar Wilde was jailed because of his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas (thanks to an ill-advised libel suit he brought against Douglas's father), whom he met when the latter was 20-21. Wilde was in his late 30s at the time. And while Wilde does seem to be something of a "gay icon," it really is astonishing considering he converted to Catholicism at the end of his life.
  2. Peregrinator
    You don't really believe that Scouts Canada is securing the future, do you? Now, I am not so naive to think that the gay issue or the co-ed issue is what is causing the decline of Scouts Canada all by itself, other Canadian scouting associations are also facing a decline in numbers, but Scouts Canada is 1/3 the size it was in 1990 and just over 1/4 the size it was in 1965 (its peak year).
  3. Peregrinator
    Assuming that the peak year for the BSA was 1970, membership has already dropped almost 48%. Membership would have to drop 43% from its current number to fall to 30% of the 1970 membership (a 70% drop from 1970). At the current rate of decline that would take about 8-9 years.
  4. Peregrinator
    Oh, I totally believe that what is termed "gender dysphoria" or "gender identity disorder" exists. But I disagree that treating someone as something he (or she) isn't is a good course of action.
  5. Peregrinator
    I was just reading today that only 1/3 of millennials identify with the term. How will modern psychiatry treat them in their generation dysphoria?
  6. Peregrinator
    The town neighboring mine has a scout cabin. Not owned by scouts any more and people can rent it for parties and such.
  7. Peregrinator
    Right Interestingly, the fact that the surface of a sphere is non-Euclidean is why we can't just use the Pythagorean Theorem to calculate the distance between two points on Earth, given the latitude and longitude of each. Of course we can get a good approximation if the points aren't too far apart.
  8. Peregrinator
    Let's take something simpler. The sum of the interior angles of a triangle drawn on the surface of a sphere (a "spherical triangle") won't necessarily be 180 degrees. It can be as much as 540 degrees. As an experiment you can take a ball and draw a triangle on it.
  9. Peregrinator
    Whoops, sorry, didn't mean to jump on the bandwagon
  10. Peregrinator
    Yes, but the Pythagorean Theorem holds in Euclidean geometry, not non-Euclidean. In fact, if one takes the first four Euclidean axioms and assumes the Pythagorean Theorem, one can derive the Fifth Postulate.
  11. Peregrinator
    FYI, Pascal didn't actually write that. "Religious conviction" is a mistranslation of the French "par un faux principe de conscience" ("by a false principle of conscience"). http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17776/did-pascal-write-men-never-do-evil-so-completely-and-cheerfully-as-when-they-d The idea that Pascal was some kind of foe of religious belief is ... comical.
  12. Peregrinator
    Nero, according to Suetonius, entered into two homosexual unions, once playing the part of the husband, the other time the part of the wife. And that is why we refer to gang rape as "sodomy" even to this day.
  13. Peregrinator
    What is preventing them from doing so outside of the BSA? One would think that an association like the BPSA would be a haven for such people.
  14. Peregrinator
    I don't think that James' and Peter's teaching on homosexuality is inconsistent with that of Paul. Unless you're making an argument from silence?
  15. Peregrinator
    Even tiny San Marino has a WOSM/WAGGGS member association, even though its membership is less than 300: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associazione_Guide_Esploratori_Cattolici_Sammarinesi
  16. Peregrinator
    Russia has many scouting and guiding associations. The WOSM/WAGGGS members aren't even the largest if the numbers on Wikipedia are to be believed.
  17. Peregrinator
    Because unlike, say, the dietary laws, it was never explicitly abrogated and in fact is restated in the letters of St. Paul.
  18. Peregrinator
  19. Peregrinator
    Yes, thank you, I should have been more precise. It can't be proven that the universe has a beginning in time.
  20. Peregrinator
    Um, no.
  21. Peregrinator
    Not to defend Merlyn or anything, but it can't be proven philosophically that the universe actually has a beginning. There might be overwhelming scientific evidence that it does, but that is not the same thing. Of course that is distinct from the question of whether or not God exists. The Prime Mover and First Cause arguments don't depend on the universe having a beginning.
  22. Peregrinator
    That's true but in this case, at least initially, the scientists weren't selecting for physical attributes but only for tameness and friendliness to humans. For some reason those traits seem to go hand-in-hand with other attributes of domesticated animals (e.g., droopy ears).
  23. Peregrinator
    True. The domestic dog has been classified variously as Canis canis, Canis domesticus, and Canis familiaris. But nowadays (and for the last 20 years), it's been classified as Canis lupus familiaris, a subspecies of the wolf Canis lupus. And the successful Russian program to breed a domesticated fox shows that extreme selective pressure can produce "evolutionary" results in a species in just a few generations.
  24. Peregrinator
    If you think you had a larval stage then I worry about your scientific literacy
  25. Peregrinator
    Actually April 23 is the feast day of St. George.
×
×
  • Create New...