Nothing surprises me these days.....

The exodus of six hundred thousand men and children…and the women? No mention.

Yuyutsu.

Dear Dan,

According to the book of Exodus, 600,000 was the number of men alone:
"The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Sukkoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children." [Exodus 13:37]

By God's grace, they came out already, but the refugees on Nauru, kidnapped by the Australian pirate government on the high seas, still languish there. I would not expect any mercy from the Australian government, so I pray to God to arrange for their exodus too and soon.

Yuyutsu

Let’s stick to my point, it’s more interesting.

Exodus 12:37. KJV (not as you quote 13:37)

12:37:
And the children of Israel journeyed from Ramesh to Succoth about 600.000 on foot that were MEN besides CHILDREN.
12:38:
And a mixed multitude went up also with them, and flocks and herds, even very much cattle.

Maybe the women were in the latter crowd driving the animals.

Discrimination is endemic, you may fight against it all the way with LBJ, but you won’t win.

As for bikies securing Nauru: that one sounds like a practical solution to an endemic problem of game players, playing the system to gain access to Australia ILLEGALLY.

I’d be much more concerned about the apparent discrimination against the Israeli women coming out of Egypt with Moses.

Dear Dan,

I checked again the original Hebrew verse and it says:
"About 600,000 the feet of the men, except for children".

I am surprised that you are so concerned about the discrimination against women thousands of years ago when people still did not know any better, women that have already gone to heaven long ago, as opposed to women who still live and suffer today.

Yuyutsu

#discrimination against women thousands of years#

It’s important to me, as the saying goes.

Your translation of Hebrew text makes no change to the KJV. Both translations omit the mention of women.
In this day and age, with a shrill of politicians screaming for equality in the workplace, while an ever increasing number of those workers are living in tents and cars on the street, with their plight ignored as a preference, every little bit of information counts.

Anyway, i thank you for your input, as you thank me for mine! ( Again).
However, I see not the slightest problem with Bikies running security at Nauru.
What is the difference between discrimination of women thousands of years ago in Moses day, to discrimination against Bikie gangs today.
I’d call this one a FIFO job for the otherwise unemployable .
Surely this example of equality, highlights inclusion and equality in the modern age, which is apparently what we’re all looking for.

Dear Dan,

What an interesting perspective...
I was thinking of women, I was thinking of the poor prisoners abducted to Nauru, but it hadn't occurred to me before to think similarly of the Finks guards.

Discrimination on the grounds of criminality, or perhaps on the grounds of sadistic inclinations, how unfair...

Such people are already prohibited from working with children and the elderly, etc., so why also deprive them of the one job they are so good at?

Given a job that no conscientious person is willing to perform, here is a perfect solution - to give it to the unconscientious, so they can express their sadism constructively and even get paid for it generously...

Well I understand it if you need to keep these people employed so they don't fall into mischief - so all it takes is to let the poor prisoners go from Nauru, then these thugs can be paid for marching up and down the island!

Yuyutsu

You are very sceptical.
Why wouldn’t the recycling of bikies, not follow the bizarre life of the Ark of the Covenant, which disappeared from Israel, to be claimed as resurrected in an orthodox Christian church in Axum Ethiopia, centuries later. Recycling at its best.

Surely, recycling bikies for a useful purpose, matches the modern trend of recycling with an array of multicoloured garbage bins. Multicoloured motor cycles indicating rank from chief fixer down maybe fits here.

Dear Dan,

«Surely, recycling bikies for a useful purpose»

Yes, you pinpointed it - the key word is "USEFUL".

Yuyutsu

Are they useful or are they not: is God the creator, or a figment of people’s imagination?

The two opposing sides to both arguments, vehemently oppose each others view.

Does Russell’s Teapot theory fit here, that it may help unravel both conundrums?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Dear Dan,

«Are they useful or are they not»

Hijacking people on the high seas, then locking them up on an island and hiring guards, costing $billions, to make sure that they do not escape, is anything but useful (regardless whether the guards are good, bad or just ugly).

Next you asked me a seemingly-unrelated fundamental question: my answer is not at all trivial and you will need to take the time and contemplate it deeply and carefully until you understand:

«is God the creator, or a figment of people’s imagination?»

Neither.

1) If God were the creator, then that would mean that before creation he was not a creator, or in other words, that God is subject to change.
Obviously "The Rock of Ages" is not subject to change!

2) If God were a figment of people’s imagination, then that would mean that the world is controlled by a figment of people's imagination. Oops, so what then controlled the world before humankind?

However, God can still be seen as creator for all practical purposes, since He is the material cause of the universe.

Think about this:
Nobody can properly understand those two words of Genesis 1:2, "tohu vavohu", which were loosely translated into "chaos".
Yet one could also read it as "[o]to hu vavo hu", making the verses read:
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth; and the earth was the same Him and in Him..."

«Does Russell’s Teapot theory fit here»

I cannot see how.

Yuyutsu

«Does Russell’s Teapot theory fit here»

I cannot see how.

I question not your belief system, but Russell’s Teapot theory stipulates the necessity for proof from an objectively unprovable perspective, or position of scepticism.

I know and believe, the two subjects I’ve raised as example, that are both positions of bias, firmly believed to be “true” by their exponents, “seem” unrelated, but I think they are actually compatible examples to be compared equally.

Your a musician by admission, then what strange phenomena creates in people a differing like towards musical harmony which gives a bias for the individual to choose, ( if in fact he does), one type of music over another as more acceptable to himself, which may be abhorrent to another.

How can you then, demand your conclusions as rock solid proof of reality common to all.
And isn’t such a demand a precursor towards Authoritarianism, forcing a particular view upon others who may disagree with a given position in an argument devoid of proof, and simply unprovable, to comply.

What is truth Yuyutsu? Truth is based on evidence.

There are opinions, and there are truths, opinions without proof a unbelievable!

Dear Dan,

Proofs are required only in particular types of settings where they do have a use, yet that use is limited.

Expecting proofs in other settings, including in the appreciation of art and music, is just foolish.

«How can you then, demand your conclusions as rock solid proof of reality common to all.»

I don't!

«What is truth Yuyutsu?»

That which never changes and is the same at any time, past present and future, in any place, in any world and in any mental state, including in waking, dreaming, dreamless deep sleep, coma and death.

«Truth is based on evidence.»

Quite the contrary - evidence is based on Truth!

«opinions without proof a unbelievable!»

Really? What can possibly stop you from believing in anything?

Yuyutsu

#Proofs are required only in particular types of settings where they do have a use, yet that use is limited.#

Of course: For example, proofs in science demand evidence, but truth stretches far beyond science, and in that stretching exercise, truth can be a vapours thing.

Or it could also be argued that the grey zone of truth is exactly where truth is deformed to its greatest extent.
Why did God command the Ark be stored in the darkest of dark places. If God is truth, why is his preference for the darkest places. Maybe that is where truth shines the brightest. (You’d argue that I bet).

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as is truth; why isn’t it likewise that truth also passes through the eyes and ears of the beholder, for the individual to process what is truth?

It is true to say that bikie gangs are in place at Nauru detention centre, but it is not true to say that that is a bad thing.

This approach only further muddies the water, since the case for and against can only be argued from a position of moral interpretation when using your logic, since an argument for and against can only rest on a morality based on God and his edicts: Since God and his edicts can’t be relied on to fashion an answer with universal agreement based on truth, because his existence can never be proved to hold truth in its hand, then neither can truth be determined to satisfactorily conclude the argument using a God focused morality argument.

Cont.,
.

Cont.,

Ethics likewise cannot help with the answer either, as ethics based on no morality which is universally acceptable, can be classified as a point of truth on which to stand any argument for and against.

The truth is then, that it is a perfectly acceptable position for a Government to take, to employ Bikie gangs as security guards, based entirely on pragmatic conclusions.

Seems to me, that since God prefers to dwell in the darkest of places, (such as Nauru for example), some good may transpire from it; only if you are a believer though

It is only truthful to conclude, that as the truthful saying goes, one man’s meat is another man’s poison, truth is not a universally accepted norm at all, and if it were, then there would be no wars nor need for wars: That would be a state of total Authoritarian domination by either God or man.

Preferences are what we are left holding on to, in order to exercise our personal judgements.

Dear Dan,

Gödel's first incompleteness theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems) proves that even within the simple world of natural numbers (1,2,3,4,...), the vast majority of mathematical claims about them can be neither proven nor refuted.

That said about the limited and synthetically well-defined small world of natural numbers, how more so about determining the truth or otherwise of statements about the whole physical world and beyond?!

However, this does not mean that there exist arithmetical statements which are neither true nor false: each arithmetical statement MUST be either, true or false, only that our human intellect may not be equipped to tell which it is.

(that said, in theory, some quantum computer could one day determine the truth or otherwise of such statements, but then quantum computers do not produce proofs nor operate on the pure basis of rational conclusions. Also, such theoretical computers could require so many atoms to build that there are not enough in this universe)

Employing Bikie gangs as security guards on Nauru is not necessarily a bad decision relative to keeping them making trouble within the continent of Australia - that is a matter for personal preferences, yet what is wrong is that Australia holds kidnapped prisoners in Nauru to begin with.

Yuyutsu

The theory of the dense order.

#For total orders this can be simplified to "for any two distinct elements, there is another element between them", since all elements of a total order are comparable.#

Makes sense.

What are the “unknown” factors in any decision which affect outcomes?

OK. So one of the factors affecting the Government decision to employ a Bikle gang as security, may have been their ethnic origin.

There exist Bikie gangs which are predominantly Muslim.

This is the question to answer:
#If the ethnic mix of illegal immigrants is Muslims, why would you not decide to utilise this feature#?

Dear Dan,

«OK. So one of the factors affecting the Government decision to employ a Bikle gang as security, may have been their ethnic origin.»

So in summary, you think that Bikies and Muslim Bikies in particular, are so dangerous to the community that government sent them away to Nauru, and paid them handsomely too from our taxes, just to not be here, on the pretext of guarding there some hapless hostages?

Why weren't they similarly employed to just march up and down that island?

Yuyutsu

Long quote:
———————————————————————————————————————————-
#So in summary, you think that Bikies and Muslim Bikies in particular, are so dangerous to the community that government sent them away to Nauru, and paid them handsomely too from our taxes, just to not be here, on the pretext of guarding there some hapless hostages?

Why weren't they similarly employed to just march up and down that island?#
————————————————————————————————————————————
Firstly, nobody is guarding “hostages”. What the guards on Nauru are guarding, are illegal immigrants. Marching around the Island would be pointless, and serve no positive ends. The residents of Nauru are not illegals, so don’t qualify to be harassed

Second question: Muslim Bikies considered so dangerous to Australian communities, they are sent to Nauru to rid society of the risk.

No…I don’t agree with that premise. They maybe dangerous in our communities, but I believe their danger to our communities is not reflective of any additional danger they may pose to inmates in the detention centre, or any reason behind the decision to employ them as guards on Nauru.
I believe the decision to use them as guards for this purpose, was one based on pragmatism, with a smattering of naive ignorance on the Governments part.
Is it even an embarrassment to the Government? Probably not.
Is it morally wrong? Not in my view.

What seems wrong in this discussion, is your view on the status of inmates on Nauru, being hostages: They are not hostages when in fact they may return to their original destination as an alternative to detention. This is a detention centre, not a prison for the purpose of punishment; even though the detention may be punishing, and extra so, in light of the recent information of the origin of the guards being Muslim Bikies.

Dear Dan,

«Firstly, nobody is guarding “hostages”. What the guards on Nauru are guarding, are illegal immigrants.»

How else can you describe people who were captured by force when sailing on the high seas?

Some of them may have happened to also be immigrants - so what? What's that to do with you?
And as for title "illegal", that is laughable - they were never subject to your laws in the first place, nor the birds that flew over them, nor the fish under!
In fact they were nowhere even near the continent you [wrongly] consider to be yours, but much closer to the Indonesian shore.

The Australian navy had no valid business out there to begin with, near the shores of Indonesia: it came there deliberately to hunt down these sailors, confiscate their boats and lock them up on some island.

People who commit such cruel atrocities have a notorious name: PIRATES.

«They are not hostages when in fact they may return to their original destination as an alternative to detention.»

So you assume the power of mind-reading?
They have no duty to disclose to their kidnappers what is on their minds, which are totally private,
so who then told you they had any destination(s) to begin with, original or otherwise?
Perhaps they were just happy where they were out at sea before you came and disturbed them?!

And now they cannot go anywhere because you confiscated and/or destroyed their boats!
Even New-Zealand offered to take them, and they indeed wanted to go... but the pirate bastards of the Australian government did not allow it.

Australia should stand trial in the ICJ for this crime against humanity, and be forced to return the boats to these people along with many $millions to each of the prisoners in compensation for their trauma, humiliation and lost years of life.

Want to add to this bill also the cost of harassment by Muslim Bikies?