RicOlie_2

canofhumdingers said:

If I had to invent a new force power… hmm. I don’t know if I can come up with one that hasn’t already been at least touched on in official media. Maybe something like the ability to put your enemies to sleep? I could see that being a cool scene for a hero hopelessly outnumbered in a critical situation to reach out with the force and watch a whole platoon of stormtroopers start feeling very drowsy and struggling to stay focused and awake until they give in and all fall asleep. Has something like that been done before?

I like this. I also feel like hypnosis would be a natural extension of the mind trick power.

In response to the OP, I hate the force-projection thing. I thing it would have been better if it was a bit more limited. Like if it was instead a “force hallucination” power. Luke could have caused Kylo Ren to think Luke was there, without anyone else being able to see it, and it would have undermined Kylo’s credibility a bit as well as providing just the right amount of confusion needed for the Resistance to get a leg up.

jedi_bendu said:

RicOlie_2 said:

Well, maybe I should just avoid Star Wars forums until I watch the episodes. I just thought our normal policy here was to keep things in the spoiler threads until at least two or three weeks had gone by.

You’re right, including a spoiler warning just slipped my mind. It’s hard not to notice somewhere that [redacted] is it the season, but I’ll definitely put a warning for the episode posters.

Thanks! Don’t worry, you didn’t ruin anything for me. But if I had been one more episode behind, it definitely would’ve spoiled some things…

Well, maybe I should just avoid Star Wars forums until I watch the episodes. I just thought our normal policy here was to keep things in the spoiler threads until at least two or three weeks had gone by.

Those of you posting stuff from recent Mando episodes, mind including spoiler warnings? 😛

benduwan said:

hey guys.i got some questions.

1. in this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ua2v64mh9o at 4:19 the han and leia scene,is this part of
   the movie,deletet scene?
   and can someone say what the dialog is?

Han: Watch out!
Leia: And what precisely am I supposed to know!?

(I think)

2. and in this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yix_9g_Ob74 3:30 the han and leia scene,i like the dialog too please.

thanks

Han (calling to Chewie?): Don’t touch anything!
Leia: Problems?
Han: Thanks for your concern.

Thanks! He’s pretty cute–if only he’d grow up a little slower!

DuracellEnergizer said:

RicOlie_2 said:

How are you doing these days, Duracell?

These past three years have been something of an emotional spin cycle. Father passed away last January, my mother’s been chronically ill due to complications with COPD and kidney disease, my sister’s an utter mess, and the political landscape … yeah. In spite of all that, I’m in a much better place, emotionally and spiritually, than I was many years ago, though somedays I have to make a concentrated effort to see the good things in life. Thanks for asking.

I hope you’ve been doing well for yourself.

I was aware that your father had passed away from catching up on various threads a while ago, but I’m sorry to hear that you’re family’s going through such a tough time. I’m glad that you’re doing better personally. I imagine the pandemic doesn’t help though. Hang in there!

I’ve been doing pretty well overall. I’m still in seminary, so not much has changed since I stopped frequenting this forum, with the exception of a new little brother, who is currently 2 1/2. I’m quite fortunate to be a seminarian with everything that’s going on, since I get to live with 30 other people. We have various restrictions and COVID-protocols, but I don’t feel cooped up and isolated like so many people do.

It was meant semi-ironically. My impression is that pretty well everyone involved was at fault in some way. And I was trying to be somewhat diplomatic given that the Random Thoughts thread got locked over this issue.

How are you doing these days, Duracell?

I miss the old Off Topic…before everyone started treating each other like crap and getting themselves banned. This place used to be so much fun.

Warbler said:

SilverWook said:

If our goals aren’t met, we will have no choice but to resort to…

Remember, the mods know what you did, who you did it with, and where you got the Ric Olie costume.
😉

I do hope this is a joke. Even if it isn’t, it doesn’t matter. I have no money.

Enter Ric_2.

Whenever you see a winky face, that’s a pretty good indication someone is joking. Pretend all winky faces say “THIS IS A JOKE!”

Exit Ric_2.

I just noticed we passed one million posts. I wonder which one the millionth was.

I’m with you on that one. This place is pretty depressing sometimes. It’s not nearly as fun as it used to be, and now that my love for Star Wars has waned a bit, I imagine it’s only a matter of time before I take off.

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

RicOlie_2 said:
… ultimately, in order to enter into a loving relationship with him, we have to have faith. If God is God, and he gave us empirical evidence directly demonstrating his existence, we would not have faith and would simply know in a more absolute sense that God will always keep his promises. But that’s not how human relationships work. Because we are not gods, we can fail to keep our promises, and every human relationship therefore requires trust and faith that the other person will not turn their backs on us. God wants us to have that same trust and faith, otherwise there will be a certain coercion involved in following him.

Right, but again, that’s what pretty much every religion says. How do I pick? How do I know which one is right?

No, that’s actually what a minority of religions say: namely, the major monotheistic religions and religions they’ve influenced. Most Eastern religions have no conception of relationship with god (at least not a relationship based on trust and love), and neither do most religious systems indigenous to the Americas, Africa, and Australia, as far as I’m aware. They don’t all emphasize the importance of trust and faith. They don’t all recognize a single higher being.

Christianity is also fairly unique in having documents (many of them independent from each other) dating back to about the time when a divine power is supposed to have revealed himself (to many different eyewitnesses). In Islam, the Qur’an wasn’t written for centuries after Mohammad lived, and he was conveniently the only one who received this divine revelation. Hinduism’s texts evolved and developed over time, but none go back to the time of a divine revelation. Buddhism’s texts don’t go back to Buddha. Most indigenous religions don’t have any such documents to speak of.

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

I would count as tangible something that is measurable and repeatable under controlled conditions. I cannot understand why a benevolent god would be so cruel as to deny that, while requiring our belief, as a prerequisite to salvation.

What would this look like in your opinion? I gave the example of Eucharistic miracles.

Also, you’re presuming that empirical, scientific knowledge is the only reliable source of knowledge. What about reason? Or intuitive knowledge? You can probably know that someone loves you without scientifically measuring it under controlled conditions. It isn’t as if we believe in God without any sort of evidence whatsoever. We have texts and numerous people throughout history who attest to personal encounters with the divine, including some that speak about God as having revealed himself to us in the person of Jesus. The question isn’t whether we have evidence or not, it’s whether the evidence is convincing enough. It is only in the last hundred years or so that people have begun to see “science” and empirical, testable evidence as the only acceptable form of proof. That’s just bad philosophy.

Christians have believed since the beginning that if someone doesn’t know about or believe in the Christian God but is sincerely seeking the truth, that person will be saved. So God doesn’t necessarily require belief.

As far as process theology goes, that doesn’t sound too different from mainstream Christianity. I would say the main difference is that God could impose his will on us, and does provide us with some degree of empirical evidence in the form of Eucharistic miracles, incorruptible saints, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, etc., but that ultimately, in order to enter into a loving relationship with him, we have to have faith. If God is God, and he gave us empirical evidence directly demonstrating his existence, we would not have faith and would simply know in a more absolute sense that God will always keep his promises. But that’s not how human relationships work. Because we are not gods, we can fail to keep our promises, and every human relationship therefore requires trust and faith that the other person will not turn their backs on us. God wants us to have that same trust and faith, otherwise there will be a certain coercion involved in following him.

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

RicOlie_2 said:

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

RicOlie_2 said:

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

RicOlie_2 said:

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

Ok, thanks for pointing out the clarification, and sorry for directing my comment specifically to you. I’ll change my “YOU” to point towards a larger swath of zealous missionaries, you specifically not necessarily included. (although some of your other posts do seem to fit the 2nd sentence - that is, being the lucky bearer of ultimate truth).

Thanks, and apologies, as I realize some of my posts were unclear. And I do in fact believe I am the (very) fortunate bearer of ultimate truth…I wouldn’t be Christian if I didn’t.

BTW, this is exactly why science is not a religion. Scientists do not claim to know the truth; they only argue what they believe to be the current best explanations for things, given the limitations of available measurement technology. Being proven wrong is how science advances. By contrast, religion claims absolutely to know the truth (sometimes in spite of measurements and scientific reasoning), and those truths are immutable - like axioms in a mathematical system.

Certainly, but we don’t claim to know the truth about absolutely everything either. Out of curiosity, what scientific reasoning and measurements do you think contradict Christianity (and specifically Catholicism)?

Well, for one, the power of prayer. Scientific studies have repeatedly failed to find any evidence that prayer has any effect whatsoever, while Christianity (and other religions) insist that it does.

I’m curious to know what they looked at specifically in those studies. In Catholicism, we believe a number of things about prayer that may not have been taken into account: (1) prayer is primarily about conforming one’s will to God’s will, not about obtaining favours, (2) intercessory prayer is more effective when one has conformed oneself to God’s will (because one is not praying for something that contradicts God’s will), and (3) that means that if someone decides to pray to God all of a sudden because they need help, God might not answer that prayer because they aren’t really asking because they have faith in a friend, but because they want to avoid pain and suffering.

That being said, I’m not sure I can refute that argument. I will say, however, that if we think of the way a human parent might seem inconsistent to a child, it can be easy to see why God might seem inconsistent from a limited human perspective. For instance, a kid might ask their mom if they can have a friend over on a certain day, and the mother might say no (for example, because she won’t be home and doesn’t feel comfortable leaving another person’s kid with their babysitter), despite having encouraged the kid to be more social and invite friends over more often. It seems inconsistent to the child, but perfectly reasonable from the point of view of the mother.

Regarding your first paragraph, I don’t think that any of that is measurable, so science would have nothing to say about it. That’s convenient – by always couching things in ways that aren’t measurable, religion is thus able to demand faith. And this is why I have a hard time understanding how anyone would go about choosing from amongst the hundreds of religions – all of them require faith, and none of them offer anything tangible on which to give confidence in that faith. Thus most people follow the religion in which their parents raised them, or whichever religion they happen to be exposed to. Isn’t that odd, given that God is supposedly everywhere, one of the religions is supposed to be correct, and yet religions are so localized?

Regarding your second paragraph, I agree with you. However, I don’t think that has anything to do with scientific study of prayer. Studies haven’t shown that the effects of prayer are inconsistent. Rather, science has yet to find any effect whatsoever.

This scientific article does a good job explaining the difficulties involved in the scientific study of prayer:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2802370/

It also indicates that all studies to date have been inadequate. Note that the data are far from conclusive. It mentions studies in which the group that was prayed for did in fact show significant improvements compared with the group that was not prayed for (fascinatingly, one study did this with bush-babies). That doesn’t necessarily rule out a placebo effect though.

Wikipedia also has a pretty good article on this, overlapping a lot with the one I mentioned above. Here’s a link to a section on a study that found prayer to have positive effects on people undergoing treatment for AIDS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_intercessory_prayer#Sicher

I think whether prayer is efficacious or not involves too many variables, including many that cannot be quantitatively measured, and as such, I doubt science will ever be able to answer the question.

I understand why you might think this “convenient,” but I don’t think Catholicism is beyond the reach of science. We have things like Eucharistic miracles which can and have been scientifically analyzed. Reason can also be used to determine whether certain philosophical aspects of a given religion make sense or are probable. Then, there is the testimony of hundreds or thousands of people who claim to have had direct experience with the divine (and which, as far as I can tell, is much more reliably documented in Christianity than in other faiths).

As for religions being localized, I don’t think that’s true of Christianity anymore. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_by_country (the Catholic Church is a bit more localized, but if Orthodoxy, which is almost identical, is included, we’ve got most of the world covered).

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

RicOlie_2 said:

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

RicOlie_2 said:

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

Ok, thanks for pointing out the clarification, and sorry for directing my comment specifically to you. I’ll change my “YOU” to point towards a larger swath of zealous missionaries, you specifically not necessarily included. (although some of your other posts do seem to fit the 2nd sentence - that is, being the lucky bearer of ultimate truth).

Thanks, and apologies, as I realize some of my posts were unclear. And I do in fact believe I am the (very) fortunate bearer of ultimate truth…I wouldn’t be Christian if I didn’t.

BTW, this is exactly why science is not a religion. Scientists do not claim to know the truth; they only argue what they believe to be the current best explanations for things, given the limitations of available measurement technology. Being proven wrong is how science advances. By contrast, religion claims absolutely to know the truth (sometimes in spite of measurements and scientific reasoning), and those truths are immutable - like axioms in a mathematical system.

Certainly, but we don’t claim to know the truth about absolutely everything either. Out of curiosity, what scientific reasoning and measurements do you think contradict Christianity (and specifically Catholicism)?

Well, for one, the power of prayer. Scientific studies have repeatedly failed to find any evidence that prayer has any effect whatsoever, while Christianity (and other religions) insist that it does.

I’m curious to know what they looked at specifically in those studies. In Catholicism, we believe a number of things about prayer that may not have been taken into account: (1) prayer is primarily about conforming one’s will to God’s will, not about obtaining favours, (2) intercessory prayer is more effective when one has conformed oneself to God’s will (because one is not praying for something that contradicts God’s will), and (3) that means that if someone decides to pray to God all of a sudden because they need help, God might not answer that prayer because they aren’t really asking because they have faith in a friend, but because they want to avoid pain and suffering.

That being said, I’m not sure I can refute that argument. I will say, however, that if we think of the way a human parent might seem inconsistent to a child, it can be easy to see why God might seem inconsistent from a limited human perspective. For instance, a kid might ask their mom if they can have a friend over on a certain day, and the mother might say no (for example, because she won’t be home and doesn’t feel comfortable leaving another person’s kid with their babysitter), despite having encouraged the kid to be more social and invite friends over more often. It seems inconsistent to the child, but perfectly reasonable from the point of view of the mother.

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

RicOlie_2 said:

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

Ok, thanks for pointing out the clarification, and sorry for directing my comment specifically to you. I’ll change my “YOU” to point towards a larger swath of zealous missionaries, you specifically not necessarily included. (although some of your other posts do seem to fit the 2nd sentence - that is, being the lucky bearer of ultimate truth).

Thanks, and apologies, as I realize some of my posts were unclear. And I do in fact believe I am the (very) fortunate bearer of ultimate truth…I wouldn’t be Christian if I didn’t.

BTW, this is exactly why science is not a religion. Scientists do not claim to know the truth; they only argue what they believe to be the current best explanations for things, given the limitations of available measurement technology. Being proven wrong is how science advances. By contrast, religion claims absolutely to know the truth (sometimes in spite of measurements and scientific reasoning), and those truths are immutable - like axioms in a mathematical system.

Certainly, but we don’t claim to know the truth about absolutely everything either. Out of curiosity, what scientific reasoning and measurements do you think contradict Christianity (and specifically Catholicism)?

Ah, OK. In that case, I absolutely agree with you. It’s the other details that I believe God had to, and did, tell us in order for us to know them.

DuracellEnergizer said:

RicOlie_2 said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

RicOlie_2 said:

Because eternal salvation is a lot more important than 80-or-so years on earth.

This mindset is why traditional Christianity is distasteful to me. It places evangelism over compassion for your fellow man, and it paints God as an asshole; the former is dehumanizing, the latter frankly blasphemous.

I understand where you’re coming from, but why is life more important than knowing truth? Not that all possible precautions shouldn’t be taken to prevent the loss of life before spreading the truth. Christianity rejects the modern premise that truth is either unknowable or unimportant, and because Christians believe truth to be inextricably tied to eternal life, knowing and living (or dying) according to the truth is the greatest good. And consequently, a short life with knowledge of the truth is better than a long life in ignorance of it.

I also reject the premise that truth is unknowable/unimportant. Difference between our perspectives, though, is that I believe spiritual truth can be discerned intuitively, and one doesn’t need to belong to any particular religion to discern it.

I believe that to some extent (natural law, and all that), but I don’t know if I would call it “spiritual truth.” What exactly do you mean by that, if I may ask?

moviefreakedmind said:

The Westboro Baptist Church thinks they’re doing the Lord’s work, so did Al Qaeda, so did Jim Jones, etc. etc. And no, I’m not saying you’re like them, but I’m pointing out that it doesn’t matter just how fucking much you believe you’re right. You’re still wrong.

Do you believe you’re right? If so, why?

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

Ok, thanks for pointing out the clarification, and sorry for directing my comment specifically to you. I’ll change my “YOU” to point towards a larger swath of zealous missionaries, you specifically not necessarily included. (although some of your other posts do seem to fit the 2nd sentence - that is, being the lucky bearer of ultimate truth).

Thanks, and apologies, as I realize some of my posts were unclear. And I do in fact believe I am the (very) fortunate bearer of ultimate truth…I wouldn’t be Christian if I didn’t.

RicOlie_2 said:

moviefreakedmind said:
and I think that everyone, including the Christians on this site would say that it’s disgusting to disregard the lives of these people just so that you can potentially spread your ideology to them.

Ah, here is where we diverge in our opinion. I, and any missionary, see the Christian faith as joyful good news that we badly want everyone to know about. The modern conception of Christianity, having come out of a Christian society that was filled with less than exemplary behaviour, has been perverted so that most people in our society don’t really know what Christianity is all about, or why we Christians believe what we do.

It isn’t a matter of wanting people to accept our “ideology” in the way we might want people to share our political views. Not at all. We want people to know and love a person whom we know and love, and whom we believe loves everyone. And this happens to be the person we believe we will spend eternity with, whether it causes torment because you hate that person and God and close yourself off from him, or eternal happiness, because you love him.

Sorry, mfm, I see the source of your confusion regarding my views. I was specifically replying to the “just so that you can potentially spread your ideology” part of your sentence, and I wasn’t clear about that.

moviefreakedmind said:

Of course he thinks that.

I literally told you, in a post replying to you, that I don’t. Please do me the courtesy of reading everything I say in my replies to you before you put words in my mouth.

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

RicOlie_2 said:

screams in the void said:

unless of course you are a Bhuddist , or myriad other religions or belief systems who have a different point of view

In which case you don’t believe in eternal salvation, so it’s a moot point. I happen to believe in it, and so by definition, I reject the alternative point of view as false.

Basically, you think it is ok to endanger people because your religion is better than their’s. YOU are the vessel of ultimate truth.

No I don’t. As I posted above:

RicOlie_2 said:

By the way, I’m not necessarily condoning that individual man’s actions. I’m simply explaining the principle. I have mixed feelings about what he did, and I think it’s seriously wrong to take another life. If you know that what you are doing could cause innocent people to die, it had better be pretty serious. The ends don’t justify the means.

screams in the void said:

unless of course you are a Bhuddist , or myriad other religions or belief systems who have a different point of view

In which case you don’t believe in eternal salvation, so it’s a moot point. I happen to believe in it, and so by definition, I reject the alternative point of view as false.