Rationality Quotes Thread October 2015

elharo

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

If there were a law requiring everyone to go to church on Sundays

There have been such laws in the past, but is impossible for there to be such a law in the present day. There aren't enough Christians to pass it or enforce it. Such laws were made when everyone was Christian. With increasing secularisation they fall away. Sunday trading, sale of alcohol on holy days, laws against the wrong sort of Christian and all non-Christians: in the countries of Christian traditions these have mostly disappeared. To point to a minor historical relic like the banning of alcohol sales on one day of the year (a ban with many loopholes in it) is not a good example of Christians imposing their rules on non-Christians.

Especially since alcohol is not even forbidden to Christians, whatever the day of the year.

So you're suggesting that these rules weren't a matter of Christians imposing on non-Christians when they were put in place (because everyone was Christian then) and aren't now (because they have mostly fallen into disuse)?

Ingenious, but I'm not convinced, on two counts.

First (and less importantly), I am not convinced that "everyone was Christian" when those laws first came into being. There have always been dissenters of one sort or another. It was doubtless true that almost everyone was at least nominally Christian, though.

Second (and more impo... (read more)

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Rationality Quotes Thread October 2015

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Rationality Quotes Thread October 2015

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