Do these Buddhist gods hint at the purpose of China’s super-secret satellites?

irockash

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The early Semites had a pantheon called the Elohim which included Ba'al, Rimmon, perhaps a couple of female divinities, and two cults centred on Sinai and Zion. Moses came along, probably a follower of the religion of Akhnaten, expelled with his followers from Egypt, managed to persuade a couple of tribes that one particular god was their tribal god and was top god of the Elohim, and it went on from there. Over the next millennium the Ba'al worshippers got control for a bit (the Omrids), and Elisha tells Naaman it's OK to support his king at the temple of Rimmon. The Mosaics managed to control 12 tribes at one point but ten of them escaped, as it were, back to some other observances.
Then the Ori arc kicked in and Daniel Jackson went all crazy eyed, but hey, SG-1 showed them in the end!
 
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Yes, they believe something that's not true, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. There is often more truth to be found in works of fiction than in works of nonfiction. Not "facts" per se, but valuable knowledge speaking to the human experience. And I'm not talking religious texts. To Kill A MockingBird, The Bluest Eye, and so on. Works of fiction can contain truth -- I'd argue that it has to if it's going to be considered any good. It just doesn't necessarily contain facts. I'd personally put all religious texts into the fiction section of the library, and that's not as an insult. The fiction section is my favorite section.

People tell themselves lies every day. If the lie helps them get through their day, and doesn't hurt anyone, I see no reason to dissuade them from what seems to be working for them. Hell, if it inspires them to write some beautiful poetry or create some other great work of art, I can even benefit from their belief in something that's not true.
Terry Pratchett's Death proposed that one must learn to believe in the small lies, such as the Tooth Fairy and the Hogfather in order to be able to believe in the greater fantasies, such as Justice, Duty or Mercy.

Edit:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPS5Yw_YsHA
 
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The early Semites had a pantheon called the Elohim which included Ba'al, Rimmon, perhaps a couple of female divinities, and two cults centred on Sinai and Zion. Moses came along, probably a follower of the religion of Akhnaten, expelled with his followers from Egypt, managed to persuade a couple of tribes that one particular god was their tribal god and was top god of the Elohim, and it went on from there. Over the next millennium the Ba'al worshippers got control for a bit (the Omrids), and Elisha tells Naaman it's OK to support his king at the temple of Rimmon. The Mosaics managed to control 12 tribes at one point but ten of them escaped, as it were, back to some other observances.

I think some of the confusion above is because we have got so used to the evolution of the Hebrew god from primus inter pares of the Elohim to be the supreme, all-controlling god of the entire universe. The very meaning of the word has changed so much that one Anglican theologian suggested that the Church of England should take seven years off using the word "god" at all, and see what came out at the end of it.

When we talk about Buddhist "gods" we are talking not about a Western or Islamic concept of the creator and ground of the entire universe who somehow has time to bother about what two people do in the bedroom. We're talking about an indefinite order of beings that are much more powerful than humans, fulfilling a need in the human psyche that USA people seem to fill with entertainers and superheroes. Don't ask me why we have this need, I'm just a one time student of sociology of religion, not a psychologist or a real theologian,

Buddha himself, and Zen Buddhists, regard our perceived world as illusory anyway, as is frequently noted a bit like physicists do. In Buddhism, if you like, theology is entertainment but it is not important. When the Buddha becomes enlightened, he spends the night before with a courtesan, and then as he sits under the Bo tree his concentration is assailed by the gods and demons, but he overcomes them and achieves nirvana. In other words, the gods and demons are distractions from the search for ultimate reality, and these patches are perhaps closest in meaning to Superman, Batman, Green Lantern and Captain America. Good entertainment for the simple people (and two of them are associated with leading people to a better understanding of Buddhism), but not what actual Buddhism is about.

(Edit - current dating for Moses is around 1200BCE based on Assyrian and Egyptian records. The time of the collapse of the Knossos civilisation, in fact. Like The Spring and the Autumn (the Chinese official history), Hebrew chronology is a bit unreliable.)
I often imagine that future archeologists will find depictions of Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and the Avengers in various artifacts, and then conclude that our civilization worshipped these gods that were part of a shared mythology.
 
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Derecho Imminent

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I often imagine that future archeologists will find depictions of Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and the Avengers in various artifacts, and then conclude that our civilization worshipped these gods that were part of a shared mythology.
and the xray glasses!
 
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Divers

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The difference between Buddhism and Monotheistic religions is that Gods in Buddhisms eventually do die with the rest of the Universe and get reincarnated, depending on their karma.
Even Hinduism, out of which Budhism developed has a god or two that supposedly create and unmake the universe together with the rest of the gods.

In Buddhism there is no such thing. There is no absolute deity which created the Universe. Basically in Buddhism all gods die too at the end. Its just that they live super long and are practically immortal while the movie plays. This is the same across all main versions of Buddhism.

The only way to get out of this whole thing is to wake up and so reach Nirvana. Like Buddha did.
Buddha - literally, the awakened one.

- Oh, Nirvana is not "nothing", because the concept of "nothing" is a part of this Universe. It is very difficult to explain what Nirvana is, because it is something outside of all possible concepts that exist or could exist in this Universe. It is unexplainable by words or thoughts. Because those are part of this Universe. And so on. (you can only beat around the bush, as it were)

As for China, Im glad they are putting some pressure on USA. After all USA was doing these same things to everyone else for decades since WW2.
So, its all good gamemanship and healthy competition, for now.
 
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kaleberg

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Isn't "Thou shalt have no god before me" rather an acknowledgment of competition in the field?
Exactly. The Jews didn't kick the other gods out of the Temple until after the Babylonian Captivity. You can learn all sorts of weird stuff by reading the Bible. As Martin Luther suggested, don't let other people read it for you.
 
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Atterus

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The difference between Buddhism and Monotheistic religions is that Gods in Buddhisms eventually do die with the rest of the Universe and get reincarnated, depending on their karma.
Even Hinduism, out of which Budhism developed has a god or two that supposedly create and unmake the universe together with the rest of the gods.

In Buddhism there is no such thing. There is no absolute deity which created the Universe. Basically in Buddhism all gods die too at the end. Its just that they live super long and are practically immortal while the movie plays. This is the same across all main versions of Buddhism.

The only way to get out of this whole thing is to wake up and so reach Nirvana. Like Buddha did.
Buddha - literally, the awakened one.

Oh, Nirvana is not "nothing", because the concept of "nothing" is a part of this Universe. It is very difficult to explain what Nirvana is, because it is something outside of all possible concepts that exist or could exist in this Universe. It is unexplainable by words or thoughts. Because those are part of this Universe. And so on.

As for Chine, im glad they are putting some pressure on USA. After all USA was doing these same things to everyone else for decades since WW2.
So, its all good gamemanship and healthy competition, for now.
As a christian... I've always felt there is a grain of truth in most faiths. A little more suspicious of religions that manage only a few years and revolve around letting a creep bed ones wife or give away your money to one "prophet"... a commonality of the "truth" seems to revolve around peace and goodwill. Like a number of related subjects, it seems unlikely such ideas and beliefs can last for so long, influencing so many, and not have some truth to it.

Naturally, I think my particular school is "most" correct. But acknowledge it is the result of thousands of years of translations. The few fanatics that think they speak for God inherently dont understand their own faith, and like many charlatans, are using faith for their own secular ends. God doesn't need defenders... especially ones that obscure that understanding of one another.

I have a lot of respect for Buddism in particular since there seems to be a fair amount of "truth" in the religion.

Good summation btw.

I also agree on healthy geopolitical competition. Far better it be China over Russia... China doesn't want to destroy the world if it cant rule it.
 
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kaleberg

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Ugh. That's capacity, not transfer rate. Always check your units.

(Even "size of a football field" is bullshit; area, length or volume of the turf? Gah.)
In American publications, size of a football field, by convention, refers to the length usually 100 yards of a US football field as in "The human infant can travel three football fields in an hour."
 
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kaleberg

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Buddhism doesn't have gods per se. Gods, especially back then, tended to be localized. They were the gods of specific regions and peoples. The Gupta kingdoms where the Buddha taught were wiped out by the Huns. Any local gods were lost as the religion was carried, mainly east, across the Himalayas. Judaism may have developed its universal god that way, shedding locality, demanding supremacy and then, under Christianity, becoming universal. Buddhism and Christianity are the two great missionary faiths.

For an interesting take on how Buddhism meets up with the traditional gods of China, read Journey to the West (Monkey Folk Novel of China). Monkey was the rational aspect of humanity who challenges the heavens but is smacked down by the Buddha and sent on a mission to help bring Buddhism to China. It's more Chaucer than religious allegory but a good place to get some cultural insight.

Those four Chinese gods remind me of the four winds: Boreus, Zephyrus, Notus and Eurus or the four angels at the "corners of the Earth" in Revelations. Maybe China is going to launch three more such satellites, but I wouldn't read too much into the mission patch.
 
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dagar9

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Lots of religious folk also have no problem with you being atheist, believe it or not!
Yet oddly, those tend not to be "religious folk" we find in politics (ranging from school boards up to national office).

But perhaps (as with so much related to religion) the devil is in the definitions. For example, of "lots", "atheist", and "religious". I could not tell you whether I am "atheist" or "religious" without being provided with a rigorous definition of the terms. Though I once did, during the Vietnam war, when filling out forms to apply for conscientious objector status, which limited the acceptable rationale to religion. Whereupon I discovered the truth of lawyers, that if you control the definitions, you can control the outcome of the argument.
 
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alisonken1

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Komarov

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In American publications, size of a football field, by convention, refers to the length usually 100 yards of a US football field as in "The human infant can travel three football fields in an hour."

* P.S.: That is the speed it can develop, but it usually falls asleep no farther than at the 20-yard line. So "can" in this context should more properly be "could, in theory".
 
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dagar9

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I was told there would be circlejerking in the Ars rocket article comments, please reinforce my white male reality. /s

Really though, I always found it very humorous that when rebellious young people discover atheism, they become the very thing they find so abhorrent - an evangelist!
There's some truth to that. (I have also noticed that a high percentage of those evangelists were raised Roman Catholic.)
Never seemed to be much point to me, it's like arguing that the moon is not made of green cheese or the world is not flat, except that those are questions that can actually be scientifically answered..
 
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DRJlaw

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Ok so 1. We'll see how many of you there are.

Quite a bit.

And I would argue this definitely is a kind of a zero-sum game (I may use the phrase poorly, but maybe you know what I mean):

So would the Crusaders, but don't project your arguments on to others.

If you are truly atheists you must also believe those who are not are wrong and is living a lie

Yep.

and I would assume you think that is a bad thing

I would tend to, but you're creating a false dichotomy here. Rain on your wedding day is a bad thing. A free ride when you've already paid is a bad thing. Good advice that you just didn't take is a bad thing. Alanis Morissette isn't invading lands and killing non-believers over such bad things. Neither are American atheists.

(having left off the "therefore" part of the accusation, we'll just insert it here) "and you will do something about it, up to and including seizing the mechanisms of government to enforce your will to stop people from doing 'bad things.'"

Nope. I feel very little compulsion to do that. You can live whatever lie you wish so long as you don't force me to go along with it or discriminate against me because I won't believe it.

If only Christian Nationalists, and apparently yourself, would do the same... but nope, you have to control the culture, legislate it, punish those who won't conform to your conception of it...
 
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Erbium68

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Is that the Chinese <—> Magic Eightball translation of “Doubtful” ?
Japanese. It's a Zen koan.

Ask a Chinese question, expect a Chinese answer, wu. 無. Mu is the Japanese reading of the character. One came before the other.
I don't know anything about Chinese Buddhism exept that it gave rise to Zen. Sorry about that.
 
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graylshaped

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Exactly. The Jews didn't kick the other gods out of the Temple until after the Babylonian Captivity. You can learn all sorts of weird stuff by reading the Bible. As Martin Luther suggested, don't let other people read it for you.
On that note, as someone keenly attuned to nuance and connotation in my native tongue, even then we view the text through the translator’s filters.
 
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From my perspective, religion and logic are incompatible. Everyone is entitled to their beliefs, but I have never been able to "believe" in a god. Too many inconsistencies for me. Why, yes, I am an engineer...

Still, the pantheon provides a fertile ground for project names, sometime with, and sometimes without any relationship between deity and the actual project.
 
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Atheism has indeed been a huge part of the "communist experiments" in the past. "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness." as Marx put it, and I'm just going to assume the majority of the Ars commentariat are atheists and agree with this sentiment.
I am atheist, but would not condone states banning religion. As long as it's not being pushed to others.
I do think religion is not based in reality, that doesn't mean that it has no value to folks practicing it.
I would much rather offer people what they find useful in religion without religion. That way religion will not be lost, it will just change into into mythology, similar to the Greek pantheon. Still useful, but nobody confuses it with reality.
 
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LauraW

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About 70 exabytes at 2,445.55 mi (3,935.74 km) per 6 hrs
If bandwidth (and not latency) is all that matters, then the limiting factor is probably the number of takeoff slots at LAX. Wikipedia says there are around 750 outbound flights per day. So,

70x10^18 bytes/flight x 750 flights/day / (24 hours/day) =~ 2.2 x 10^21 bytes / day. That's around 600 petabaud if I did the math right. Add maybe 50% if the other LA-area airports get in on it.

Assuming an infinite supply of SD cards, of course.
 
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Komarov

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If bandwidth (and not latency) is all that matters, then the limiting factor is probably the number of takeoff slots at LAX. Wikipedia says there are around 750 outbound flights per day. So,

70x10^18 bytes/flight x 750 flights/day / (24 hours/day) =~ 2.2 x 10^21 bytes / day. That's around 600 petabaud if I did the math right. Add maybe 50% if the other LA-area airports get in on it.

Assuming an infinite supply of SD cards, of course.

Make it full duplex and you only need as many SD cards as it takes to cover the latency of one round trip, plus an extra buffer to account for data read/write time at each end. In the steady state, there's a finite upper limit for the number of cards required. Not acccounting for faulty card replacement.

In any case there'd be some incentive to develop SD card recycling into a profitable sideline.

(ETA: We're well into XKCD what-if territory now.)
 
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Veritas super omens

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If bandwidth (and not latency) is all that matters, then the limiting factor is probably the number of takeoff slots at LAX. Wikipedia says there are around 750 outbound flights per day. So,

70x10^18 bytes/flight x 750 flights/day / (24 hours/day) =~ 2.2 x 10^21 bytes / day. That's around 600 petabaud if I did the math right. Add maybe 50% if the other LA-area airports get in on it.

Assuming an infinite supply of SD cards, of course.
That was before the ATC system was decimated. Now... assume one in 10 aircraft crashes...
 
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RZetopan

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There is need to worry about the military consequences. Surely a lot of progress has been made in the training of the military Psychic Warrior Monks that crackpots Puthoff and Targ championed so much in the 1970s and later. Extreme credulity is required among the perpetually perplexed, when scientific illiteracy alone is simply insufficient.

https://www.coffeeordie.com/article/psychic-spies-warrior-monks
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00789r001001420001-3

Don't you just love all the remote viewers' descriptions of Venus and Mars, among other planets, that have been shown to be fractally bad comic book levels wrong? These morons never thought to do any double-blind controlled experiments on the Earth, yet they believed the horse apples.
 
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RZetopan

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If only Christian Nationalists, and apparently yourself, would do the same... but nope, you have to control the culture, legislate it, punish those who won't conform to your conception of it...
Carlin's commandment had a greater amount of truth in it than many of the world's religions like:
"THOU SHALT KEEP THY RELIGION TO THYSELF!"

Here is the breakdown of the religious voting for Mango Mussolini, not a pretty picture:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-r...r-harris/sr_24-09-09_harris-trump-religion_1/
 
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I don't at all think it's a bad thing to disagree with me. If you tell me you like the taste of pineapple, that you're into hip hop, or that you decorate your apartment with Andy Warhol prints, I might mention that none of that appeals to me but I won't tell you that you're wrong or that that makes you a lesser person in any way. Not only will I not say it to you, I won't think it to myself. I don't understand why you would like those things, but I don't need to understand. You do you. But if you tell me that you believe in God, in astrology or in homeopathy, it's a little bit different. I'll almost certainly still not say anything judgmental to you. But I will be silently making lots of assumptions about the state and quality of your mental facilities.
The thing is, without an extensive good faith (unintended) conversation about belief with someone, you have no way of reliably determining if your assumptions are correct.
 
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Yes, they believe something that's not true, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. There is often more truth to be found in works of fiction than in works of nonfiction. Not "facts" per se, but valuable knowledge speaking to the human experience. And I'm not talking religious texts. To Kill A MockingBird, The Bluest Eye, and so on. Works of fiction can contain truth -- I'd argue that it has to if it's going to be considered any good. It just doesn't necessarily contain facts. I'd personally put all religious texts into the fiction section of the library, and that's not as an insult. The fiction section is my favorite section.

People tell themselves lies every day. If the lie helps them get through their day, and doesn't hurt anyone, I see no reason to dissuade them from what seems to be working for them. Hell, if it inspires them to write some beautiful poetry or create some other great work of art, I can even benefit from their belief in something that's not true.
People tell themselves lies every day. If the lie helps them get through their day, and doesn't hurt anyone, I see no reason to dissuade them from what seems to be working for them.

Carl Sagan said:
If it takes a little myth and ritual to get us through a night that seems endless, who among us cannot sympathise and understand?
 
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zogus

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Ask a Chinese question, expect a Chinese answer, wu. 無. Mu is the Japanese reading of the character. One came before the other.
Yes, one came after the other, but not the one you’re thinking about. The Japanese pronunciation of "mu" was directly copied from Early Middle Chinese spoken during the so-called Six Dynasties era, specifically in the area around present-day Nanjing in 5th and 6th centuries. "Wu" in Mandarin is a much later evolution. As additional evidence that 無 was originally pronounced with an "m", the character is variously pronounced as "mou" in Cantonese, "mo" in Sichuanese and "mau" in Hakka.
 
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That is what we were told +60 years ago; “the godless communists want to destroy democracy “ or some propaganda crap like that. We just let the fascist 1% destroy it from the inside.
you actually dont know what are you talking about. you have not experienced savage soviet propaganda, so stick with democracy and dont replicate the same soviet propaganda clichees.
 
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