Robin Ince quits working for the BBC over his support for men in dresses and terrorists

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

Shame really he’s a nice guy, a huge bibliophile, met him a few times at book signings, the last live show of his I saw he did shoehorn in “and of course trans women are real women” or some such nonsense.

guessing the infinite monkey cage is cancelled now, that was in my top five podcasts.

can’t do a popular science show and think women can have a penis though. Wonder what Brian thinks?

the video of his love resignation , presumably at the end of a monkey cage recording, is here
https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1plg02g/bbc_presenter_robert_ince_claims_he_has_been/

notably he doesn’t say how men in dresses are being treated badly. Everyone has a blind spot.

I blame my Catholic upbringing, when I was told that if I didn’t believe in what I was told I would burn in Hell for all eternity. This seemed stupid, cruel and unfair, so I rejected it and am very glad I did so.

For me it was a religious friend who asked me to actually read the bible. So I did. Pain in childbirth through history as punishment for Eve was my first massive stumbling block.

This is the backstory of Time Bandits, so it must be true.

'One person's lack of faith is also another person's delusion, though.'

😂... yeah, okay.

Absolutely. I'm not denying that believing in something that doesn't exist can't at times be a positive for the human condition. But (imho) that doesn't make it any less of a delusion.

I wouldn't go that far.

Of course, the cosmology of different faiths can get a little funky
Mormons Attempt To Distance Beliefs From Plot Of 'Battlestar Galactica' | Babylon Bee

It was a joke.

Small nitpick re the distinction between "faith" & "confidence" here. Sure, in common speech we often conflate the two but in this discussion it seems worthwhile to distinguish between them.
One can have sufficient confidence in an hypothesis to deem it worthy of testing without that requiring faith. (I'm fond of Kierkegaard's view of faith as a conscious leap into the absurd.)

Edited for dyslexia - some may remain

I do mean faith, not confidence.

Obviously many things done by scientists are step by step processes that are completely rational, but the decision to invest large amounts of time and money in new research sometimes requires a leap of faith.

Do you work in scientific research? Because I don’t remotely recognise what you assert.

My job is actually far more bean countery, so I'm used to being asked to make predictions. But whatever the enterprise there is always a question mark, and the bigger the risk the more faith is required. At some point you have to just jump. I suppose you could call this gambling, but gamblers have faith that they will win, often against the odds, and most successful businesses started with a gamble.

Do you think Elon Musk knows that manned flights to Mars are possible? (No idea why anyone would want to go, but apparently some people do).

Do you think that everyone who funds cancer charities knows that they will find a cure for lung cancer?

Faith is belief without proof, so where knowledge is lacking, the gap must be filled by faith.

Faith can be bat shit crazy, so it isn't always positive, but it does have power.

I haven't had to cross a continent with a hand cart, but I have been in situations, that, to quote Deborah James, require 'rebellious hope', and if that is all you have, that is what you use.

I appreciate that TQ & the hopelessly misnamed "critical theory" have very recently bled into the science & medicine faculties but as FWR threads repeatedly show, those are abnegations of the scientific method.

I am distinguishing between the science itself and the decision to invest time and money in research and to take risks.

In both the examples you cite - manned missions to Mars, cancer research - you can have a high probability of making progress towards your goal. They’re incremental processes. I suppose with the former the likes of musk have a belief it’s a good idea and many of us can’t see the benefit. Idk if that’s ‘faith’ or more like ‘obsession’.

You know, people say that about religion being based on faith all the time like it's definition, and particular to religion, but it isn't particularly.

There are a lot of people who are theists and idealists for what they would consider rationalist reasons, and that has been the case since philosophy was invented. It's sill the case, there are plenty of philosophers who are Christians or platonists etc for philosophical reasons.

And every thought system in existence rests on unproovable first principles, that's not particular to religion.

There are also many people who would say they are religious for reasons of direct experience.

Some religions, like Christianity, but not all, talk about faith as being a necessary component - what they mean by that however is more like trust. Very much like the idea that you trust, but can't know by rational argument, that your spouse loves you.

With regard to free will - it's worth knowing, I think, that from a Christian perspective, although humans have free will by nature, in fact we mostly don't have it at all.

I think 'faith' and 'belief' are two different things. For me 'faith' is steadfastness of the heart, whereas 'a belief' is more the construction of a narrative in which one may place one's faith. We can place our faith in any number or type of narrative or belief system.

We can only make choices within the set of conditions in which we live or inhabit...so we are always bound, to some degree, by that we have not chosen.

Though when one does have faith there can often be accompanying 'signs' which verify one's choice/commitment/endeavour. 'Signs' verify the path one is on, or perhaps warn one against something. Human beings tend to seek 'meaning' in life and in life's events and to that end we construct narratives.

So, if a Spacex craft bursts into flames upon take off - then if one has enough faith in the project one will take that as a lesson or as a mere hurdle; but if one does not have faith then one might be tempted to give up and stop wasting money on such an indulgent project.

Hm. the idea that something is possible can be based on various things - a scientific view would suggest looking at context and history to assess likelihood, a faith based view may rely more on hope and feelings.

I'm inclined to think that was also a leap of faith. You had to trust the people who said it was unclaimed, and in your right to have it (as against the Native Americans who were already there) and in your ability to work the land.
Most people didn't migrate across America - they stayed in the Eastern cities/farms. Most of their forbears didn't emigrate to the Americas.

this is getting a long way from ‘faith’ in a religious context imo. People will give credence to what suits them.

Yes… I’d say cancer research and SpaceX are the former type. The prime example of the latter which occurs to me is Theranos.

Back to the religious aspect of trans activism , they also are hot on blasphemy against the identity caste.
I've seen in another thread that Sainsbury's have had to withdraw a Christmas card which pictures a man (did I assume his gender) identifying as the Grinch.

An episode of TIMC is just about to start on Radio 4 but I stopped listening a while back out of sheer irritation at Ince.