Whether morality “comes from religion” depends entirely on what one means by “religion”. Absent that context, statements about “religion” are rather meaningless.

Yeah, I bet there’s an enormous amount of archaeology underwater running along the coastlines from the time when humans were spreading themselves around the globe. It won’t be long before we have the technology to work the sites too. There’s exciting stuff ahead!

Well, I was thinking of the Indian Ocean rim, and the Pacific rim, of course. But I think about anywhere we will discover interesting finds on the shelves.
There have been several cold, and warmer, spells between the ‘hot’ Eemian (about 120.000 y ago) and present. That is the period that modern humans left Africa. The earliest one, during the Eemian, into the Levant, does not appear to have been ‘successful’ (the Neanderthals, during colder periods, are more recent there). The Out Of Africa of ‘moderns’ around 90.000 years ago was probably the real deal, during a small glacial maximum. Probably via the ‘southern’ route , (the ‘Bab el Mandeb’ aka ‘Gate of Grief’, Southern Red Sea) from what is now Djibouti to Yemen.

They’ve recently made some amazing discoveries underwater between England and the Continent of settlements flooded when Britain was cut off. Such discoveries await us in Beringia.

I haven’t read the link yet, but I’d agree. It’s always a problem when moral authority is ceded to (especially conservative) religion. People are made to feel guilty, and even to be risking their admission to the afterlife, if they don’t support religious authorities, even when it’s clear they’re corrupt. It’s one of the reasons it’s so important for people to realize that morality doesn’t come from religion. That’s a difficult leap when you’ve been taught otherwise from earliest childhood, and even harder when there are few voices explaining the truth.

Somehow I have this feeling it is not going to end well in Iran. Fundamentalists, even when a minority, have this knack of succeeding in imposing their rules.
There is an interesting reference to an article by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the discussion on Quillette about that.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15
A real quandary.

Have you ever worked in a government department? You clearly have no idea how they work. I have, though in NZ of course. The Department of Labour (Employment section) and the Ministry of Agriculture. Whatever government was in power set policy and we operated accordingly. Not everything changes when there is a new or different policy and experience and continuity are important. Also, providing advice to government about how their ideas will work alongside policies already in place is important.

It is also important to tell a government if what they want to do is illegal, unworkable etc. That is not some imaginary Deep State at work. That’s just doing our job.

I also worked for the Waikato District Health Board for over ten years, which is similar to a government department.

I don’t know about the US, but these days most government departments have far lower overheads than private companies the same size, and are very efficient and effective. The staff mostly do a good job.

As for unions, where do you think workers would be today without them? Virtually all terms and conditions that workers have is because of collective bargaining, putting them on a fairer footing with employers. If you want to go back to the pay and working conditions of 150 years ago, be my guest, and don’t moan when you die of overwork or worse at 50.

I generally eschew conspiracy theories — at least the dull ones, like “collusion”. These days the most hyperactive conspiracy theorists are the members of the sore loser community. Comey’s ill-considered tweet sounds like a dog whistle to deep state conspirators, if there are any. But I concede it’s probably just carelessly worded. At any rate, incidents of insubordination have been credibly reported at various agencies, and that ought to be troubling regardless of one’s political affiliation. (Just imagine if the shoe were on the other foot.)

That being said, I wouldn’t agree that it’s vitally important to have a bunch of entrenched career busybodies. We need to reform, modernize and shrink the federal civil service, get rid of the unions, and hold our elected legislators accountable for legislating — not passing the buck to slap-happy regulators.

Thanks for that. I said in one of my most recent emails to him that I assumed O’Hare was used to dealing with this kind of weather, but he didn’t reply to that part of our conversation.

But -13 C! I don’t think I’ve ever been in weather than cold in my life!