Scientific method:

1. Look at existing evidence.
2. Make a conjecture of how a current theory could be wrong.
3. Form a hypothesis.
4. Look at more evidence and create experiments to test.
5. Form a theory with testable predictions.
6. Experiments.
7. Experts analyze all data. and try to debunk your theory.
8. Your theory is considered valid.
9. Repeat process.

Religious apologist:

1. Make a conclusion.
2. Ignore or cherry pick evidence.
3. Make excuses why the evidence doesn’t fit your conclusion.
4. Skeptic debunks their argument.
5. Ad hominem attack or obfuscation makes their conclusion true.
6. God magic makes it true.
7. Repeat process.

I have been casually studying spanish colonial friars. Over time I have come to suspect they had an unusual focus on morbidity and martydom and perhaps a pessimitic bent, as evidenced by some art, and snippets from some book and letters. I hope there is a name for the scholarly study of the inner world view of a person or group. It would assist in finding new research material. Thank you.

I understand that method is subjective; some people prefer the half lotus, some the full-, and some even prefer lying down. However, I suspect that there are methods that work best for most people. "Best" could mean anything such as decreased anxiety, depression, etc.

I found a study that demonstrates that people prefer mindfulness and mantra meditation over qigong or zen meditation, which is a good start. Is there anything comparing methods with regards to anxiety or mood tests? Something like vipissana scored X on average, while zen scored Y on average, on Bob's anxiety scale.

I am curious because some people tend to believe that methods really matter.

I'm preparing for graduate school and am looking for some more texts on the the historical method. I just finished John Lewis Gaddis' 'The Landscape of History' and I re-read Carr's 'What is History?' not too long before that. I suppose I'm looking for books that are a tad more scholarly than the two above-mentioned texts.

At the very least, what are some 'must-read' books of the historical method? Many thanks in advance.

ed. Thanks for your feedback, just to make things a little more specific: I'm a byzantinist interested in the political and military interactions between the Komnenian emperors, crusaders, and the crusader states.

Hi Everyone,

I was wondering, does anyone have any experience with the Extension School Proseminar: Research Methods and Scholarly Writing in the Social Sciences course? I'm looking at the ALM in International Relations, and this is a mandatory course you need a B in before you can be enrolled into the degree.

Specifically, I was wondering, how difficult would it be to complete it during a summer term, and if it is at all advisable to take any more courses at the same time as the Proseminar. I am from Canada, so ideally I would like to take my three mandatory on-campus courses at once, and the summer would likely be the only time that I would be able to do this.

Thank you in advance! :)

I borrowed a book years ago that analyzed Beethoven's sketches and Mozart's exercises with Thomas Attwood in order to talk about their working methods. Does anyone know the title of this book? It's driving me nuts.

As mentioned above, I'd like to know all the precautions I can take to make sure I don't lose my assets. What steps do you guys take?

I wanted to share the results of a long read through Google Scholar that I took. Hi r/loseit!

About me

Like 3 years ago I went on Keto and it was awesome, helping me go down from like 215 pounds to 170. I could do like five consecutive pull-ups for the first time without much effort beyond mixing up Keto Chow shakes each evening! (I love those things.) Co-workers commented on how great I looked! Cool.

Fast forward past a year of pretty easy maintenance, whereupon my doctor puts me on Zoloft, and I gained like twenty pounds back before ditching that for Bupropion, a much friendlier antidepressant that didn’t make me constantly ravenous. But try though I might, I had trouble getting back down to 170 with Keto-- I'm still hovering around 190.

This probably had something to do with the fact that I was living alone when I first lost the weight, and am now living with my fiancee and a number of roommates. Which makes sticking to Keto… substantially more difficult. “Hello I have prepared a delicious fruit pie”, a roommate will say, and I’ll unhinge my jaw and swallow it whole (like a python) thereby breaking ketosis. Which is a bummer.

I also have a couple of other roommates who themselves were having trouble losing weight, as was my fiancee even though she’s way more wonderful and industrious and conscientious than I am. And that inspired me to take a long, interest-fueled trip through Google Scholar, since it turns out that the efficacy of different methods of weight loss is super commonly-studied, and ours is a beautiful age where any internet asshole can search through unlimited carefully-indexed studies looking for incredibly specific nuggets of information. And I am just such an asshole.

DISCLAIMER

So, about me! I’m just a programmer, with no particular expertise in this or any other area. That means I am deeply unqualified to offer any kind of medical advice; my only qualification for doing anything is that I spent a bunch of time skimming online journal articles. So if you get inspired to try anything I talk about in this post, ask your doctor about it before you give it a shot or else you’ll die slowly, painfully, as your poor choices consume you from the inside out. And you will cry out "why did you betray me, UntrustworthyBastard" and I'll shrug and gesture at my username.

On to the studies! Let’s start out with

Non-pharmacological weight loss methods

"Non-pharmacological weight loss metho

I don't normally make posts of this nature, but I thought it could be helpful to get some of this information in the same place. I was below the karma requirement for a Superstonk post, and someone from the GME sub said you guys might be interested here. I am NO financial expert, and it's very possible that in my attempts to simplify this information for my own understanding I have made a mistake that would seem simple to someone who is. It may perhaps be better to look at the sources I have included directly and draw your own conclusions. Also, I am sure a great many of you are already aware of the information I will share, and attempts to share old information as new could be just another form of the manipulation already so rampant. So it would be helpful to view this all with a critical eye, and I would appreciate corrections. It may be best to view this as an informal PSA about possible market manipulation and those responsible, with a purpose of raising awareness. I left out some key players in the conspiracy in an attempt to be more concise and focus on the threat Citadel poses to our financial markets. This is my interpretation of the criminal conspiracy that has captured the US market, and many of those in charge of regulating and reporting on it.

TL;DR Begins here: The price is wrong. Citadel is naked shorting Gamestop, and the clearing house (DTCC) is complicit. The SEC is aware of, and even encourages it. Citadel plays by different rules than the rest of us. Citadel is still breaking every understanding of the rules, most especially by manipulating the price, and a variety of other criminal activity [enters speculation, 21], as they have done before. [11] In my view as nothing more than an individual American investor, GME is an asymmetric opportunity you should consider buying if you can, holding what you have, and DRSing (direct registering) what you are able to. I don't really have ideological orthodoxies, and prefer to deal in probabilities and possibilities as opposed to certainties. But, I do like the stock if that affects your reception of this information. This isn't really about a particular trade though, or expecting the market to work exactly as I would like every time, it just so happens the illegal manipulation has also produced a possible opportunity by weighting so heavily against retail and applying massive leverage to be the counter party in a bet against all individual investors.

1. The price is wrong.

This is t

Is it permissible to eat from kosher deli?

I’m very much an amateur in Biblical scholarship and I mainly read books by people like Ehrman, who support what (I think) is mostly the scholarly mainstream position. However, I want to make sure I’m not just trying to disprove traditional interpretations dishonestly. I want to hear the traditional view’s best arguments, so what are some scholars who don’t bring their own religious views into the mix who advocate for traditional Biblical interpretations?

Ok, so I recently got into an argument with a few muslims about the recent mob murder of the sri lankan factory owner in pakistan. A brutal attack and obviously my first thought was sympathy for him and his family after this horrific incident. A lot of muslims however, jumped instantly to defend islam...

Now, the refusal to accept islam's role in this horrible murder is often justified with the excuse "blame people not islam"....but that makes no sense...

Islam was the fuel, the tool, the ideology that pushed forward this event to occur. Would it have happened without islam justifying the hatred??? I don't know and I need a few good arguments to back up my points, an analogy or something...

Introduction

This is the second in a series of posts (see the first here), debunking myths about the Opium Wars of the late nineteenth century, which were conflicts between Western powers and China, resulting from the sale of opium by Western merchants to Chinese traders. More specifically, the wars were military incursions by Britain and France aimed at compelling the Qing Dynasty’s government to lift its prohibition on the trafficking of opium to and within China, in order to preserve the incredible profits being enjoyed by British and French companies.

This post covers these topics.

1. Britain knew opium was addictive & harmful
2. Most Chinese users were not addicts
3. Opium legalization did not increase opium use
4. Opium trading did not cause a silver crisis

This post is long, so if you'd prefer a video go here.

Britain knew opium was addictive & harmful

In this section I will be relying significantly on the article “Notions of Addiction In The Time of the First Opium War”, published in 2015, by historian P. E. Caquet, who makes this observation.

>While most political historians have assumed that the British authorities understood the nature of the drug, social historians argue that notions of addiction only arose, in Britain, at the end of the nineteenth century. [1]

Despite the huge volume of writing on the Opium Wars, many people still seem unaware that opium was widely available and used in Britain itself. Whereas typical Opium War narratives depict Britain as merely exporting opium from India to China, opium was also being imported from Turkey to Britain itself in very large quantities. In fact by the late nineteenth century, when Britain was exporting around 7,000 tons of opium a year to China, it was also importing opium for British users, from India, Persia, France, and China itself. [2]

Caquet observes that during the time of Opium Wars, opium use was completely legal in Britain, where it was commonly used as a painkiller. [3] Caquet also notes that opium use in Britain was typically ingested as a pill or combined with wine, rather than smoked as it was in China. Most importantly for the topic of British attitudes to opium, Caquet explains opium in Britain “was sold widely and retailed not just by doctors and pharmacists but in grocery stores, and its distribution was neither regulated nor subject to supervision”. [4]

Dutch historian Frank Dikötter writes that

The Sheikh says it is not permissible to follow more than one madhab.

The analogy he gives is that if you go to a neurosurgeon for knee surgery, you accept what the neurosurgeon says.

Firstly, this is poor analogy. In medical field, we do consult various doctors before making the final decision. It is also permissible to go to one doctor for your knee and another doctor for your stomach. The Sheikh's analogy is flawed I think.

The Sheikh further says that you must follow one sheikh or madhab because whatever they tell you, you will be exempt on the Day of Judgment because you only followed them.

This is in direct contradiction with Quran 7:38 which says both the erroneous leader and the blind follower will face punishment. Islam condemns blind following and commands to use personal intellect.

" [Allah] will say, "Enter among nations which had passed on before you of jinn and mankind into the Fire." Every time a nation enters, it will curse its sister until, when they have all overtaken one another therein, the last of them will say about the first of them "Our Lord, these had misled us, so give them a double punishment of the Fire. He will say, "For each is double, but you do not know.""

My opinion on the matter is that on any given matter, you follow one madhab to be consistent. For example, it is insincere to pray Asr at different times everyday depending on what time suits you. If you follow Hanafi, then stick to the later time everyday. Otherwise, stick with the earlier time everyday. But on different issues, you can follow different madhabs.

Now people will say I am a layman so my opinion does not matter. But the Sheikh also gave only his opinion without backing it up with Quran and hadis.

I am open to being corrected if I get this wrong.

https://youtu.be/e-6NM9joksY

Are there any scholars of Islam or the Koran who analyze the material in a similar way to Liberal Christian theologians? Liberal theologians generally analyze the Bible and Christianity in non-literal ways, interpret the stories as metaphorical and allegorical, or use a mythological understanding. Some liberal Christians go so far as to be agnostics, and do not use any reference to the supernatural. I am looking for equivalents in the study of Islam.

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

Hello everyone,

I come from a literature/cultural studies background, and I'm applying for an MA in digital humanities. My main area of research interest is videogame studies. By that, I generally mean applying theoretical frameworks (psychological, philosophical, ...) to the narrative structure and the storytelling of one or two videogames. However, I'm also interested in analyzing and writing about the gameplay aspect of video games and the video game culture. Now I'm not sure where exactly this type of qualitative research stands in academics? Based on my findings, I've deduced that digital humanists are more interested in videogame studies than literary and cultural scholars. Though most work done in this area is quantitative and deals with the computational or scientific aspect of games. I've heard that digital humanities are also about the humanistic analysis of digital objects/culture, but I'm not sure how popular and relevant this practice is in this field of study.

So, I'm asking for advice. Do you think it is wise for me to choose digital humanities in order to progress my studies? I would also welcome sources that would help me better understand humanistic analysis in digital humanities (methods, examples, critical frameworks, and such).

What's going on everybody,

So I recently saw a post on here about a person who was a victim of child predation under Chogyam Trungpa (here), and it inspired me to write this post atleast as some motivation for people who might be struggling through something similar.

Now first, let me say, the buddhadharma in and of itself is amazing. Im BLOWN AWAY that i have enough merit to have a connection with Mahamudra/Dzogchen, and I sincerely strive to reach Buddhahood in this lifetime.

...THAT BEING SAID, that doesnt mean all the PEOPLE who choose to teach buddhadharma are all qualified (IF they're even teaching *genuine* buddhadharma),and I want to talk about potential red flags to look for.

As someone who has a background in community organizing & fighting against corruption, I've seen firsthand how corruption is prevalent everywhere; in police, government, business, religions, you name it.

If you think Buddhism is exempt from this, I've got some bad news for you...

For example, one of the biggest recent crackdowns on Buddhist corruption happened in Thailand where some of their most high-profile monasteries were exposed for child abuse & corrupt allocation of funds. (the article's here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/26/thailands-junta-renews-corruption-crackdown-on-buddhist-monks)

Some people might be shocked by this, and wonder how could this happen?

The biggest thing for alot of people: it's about money & power.

in Thailand specifically, it is seen as an "honorable" thing to become a monk, similar to how going to the military is seen as an "honorable" thing here in the U.S. (However, many of us know good & well that many people don't care about the "honor;" they only go to the military for financial reasons; getting their college for free, getting tax benefits, free healthcare etc. I was in the military; I've seen firsthand how recruits were planning marriages just to get extra tax benefits.)

And because of this "honorable" perception, these monasteries are places that receive ALOT of donations (I'm talking MIILIONS of dollars).

This shows that Buddhism can also be BIG BUSINESS for alot of people, so many people will pursue it just for the money.

**My point is: Just because someone assumes the role of a

Part I

Throughout the storied history of planet Earth, countless species in the animal kingdom have battled malicious viruses and bacterial strains; all with varying degrees of success. While these microscopic invaders wreaked havoc on the host’s embattled immune system, it did so without support or assistance from any other microscopic species. In essence, we were often able to overcome these internal attacks because they came from only one pathogen at-a-time.

We ‘knew’ they were primitive life forms; wholly incapable of complex mental function, or self-awareness. Any empirical evidence to the contrary would’ve suggested a significant level of sentience we weren’t willing to entertain. The human race was so fixated on its perceived ‘superiority’, that we refused to consider the possibility of species outside the animal kingdom being able to communicate with different life forms too. Our scientific community and religious leaders assured our fragile little egos that humanity is unique.

“Only we can communicate with each other in a meaningful way.”; They told us. We thought of these one-celled parasites attacking our bodies as unthinking, mindless ‘germs’ intellectually unaware of their own existence, or the greater world outside the body of their hosts. Those ‘facts’ made us feel important and special but they were recently proven very wrong.

In a surprising level of collaboration that went initially undetected, the viral and bacterial kingdoms started attacking their human hosts in a deliberate, calculated fashion. This highly unusual partnership was unlike anything we’d experienced before. Their tandem attacks meant that previously developed natural immunity or lab vaccines only had a minimal impact.

Deaths spiraled globally from what was previously curable conditions. This hidden disease alliance led the leading virologists astray because they were still targeting specific strains. Besides offering malicious pathogens safety in numbers and greater gene variety, their united front afforded them unparalleled resistance to what had been our most effective treatment options.

There was also the devastating effect of natural evolution as a bringer of beneficial adaption. In ‘comparing notes’ and sharing their inherent biological strengths via reproduction, it allowed the rise of super strains produced through organized cross-breeding. Even the ‘common cold’ mutated. It was able to weaponize itself tenfold against thousands of years of mammalian re

I am interested in how to go about reliably determining what could be called a consensus among biblical scholars on a given issue. My initial quest was in regard to authorship, but this is really more of a general question, which seems often to emerge in debates when one side or another references a "general consensus". My concerns are as follows:

• Is there any formal or standardizes way of determining consensus, as opposed to claiming consensus based on a limited reading of academics (who may lean a particular way)? I have been confused how people on opposing sides of a view feel justified in claiming contradictory academic consensus.
• What are some reliable resources (publications, polls, etc) which you feel well represent (as fairly as possible) academic views on various Biblical topics?
• What are your thoughts on the value of a consensus, or the weight of consensus in an argumentative sense?

I went to seminary, the teachings of which were understandably tilted toward the theology of the faculty. I am interested in a more academic/less theological understanding of some of these issues, and am willing to defer to the current consensus, especially in areas I am not well-trained in. I want to make sure I am approaching the research correctly and not tossing around consensus claims.

Theres been numerous religions in the past that have tried to get people to contact these "aliens" and that they have been masquerading as different things in the past

small excerpt (read full wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aetherius_Society)

King claimed to have been contacted by many aliens, including Venusians, Martians, Devas, and the Great White Brotherhood to spread a message to aid humanity. This message exalted the promising future humanity has should Earthlings turn to better ways of living, while warning of the possible consequences otherwise.[72] King taught that humans had the choice of self-destruction or the enjoyment of a New Age that was coming to Earth. And that the Cosmic Masters had intervened via the Aetherius Society to help humanity into the New Age.[10][24][31]

As Zeller notes in his chapter "Apocalyptic Thought in UFO Religions," King believed there would not be a catastrophic end to the world, but that the planet is on the verge of a new millennium of peace and enlightenment and the Age of Aquarius. This will also require human effort.[30][72][73] The Aetherius Society's teachings share the individualism of not only other New Age teachings of the era, but of the Protestantism King grew up in, i.e. individual humans face the decision of whether to join the millennial kingdom.[31][72][73]

The society also predicts the coming of 'the next Master' from space at an indefin

I don't normally make posts of this nature, but I thought it could be helpful to get some of this information in the same place. I am NO financial expert, and it's very possible that in my attempts to simplify this information for my own understanding I have made a mistake that would seem simple to someone who is. It may perhaps be better to look at the sources I have included directly and draw your own conclusions. Also, I am sure a great many of you are already aware of the information I will share, and attempts to share old information as new could be just another form of the manipulation already so rampant. So it would be helpful to view this all with a critical eye, and I would appreciate corrections. It may be best to view this as an informal PSA about possible market manipulation and those responsible, with a purpose of raising awareness. I left out some key players in the conspiracy in an attempt to be more concise and focus on the threat Citadel poses to our financial markets. This is my interpretation of the criminal conspiracy that has captured the US market, and many of those in charge of regulating and reporting on it.

TL;DR Begins here: The price is wrong. Citadel is naked shorting Gamestop, and the clearing house (DTCC) is complicit. The SEC is aware of, and even encourages it. Citadel plays by different rules than the rest of us. Citadel is still breaking every understanding of the rules, most especially by manipulating the price, and a variety of other criminal activity [enters speculation, 21], as they have done before. [11] In my view as nothing more than an individual American investor, GME is an asymmetric opportunity you should consider buying if you can, holding what you have, and DRSing (direct registering) what you are able to. I don't really have ideological orthodoxies, and prefer to deal in probabilities and possibilities as opposed to certainties. But, I do like the stock if that affects your reception of this information. This isn't really about a particular trade though, or expecting the market to work exactly as I would like every time, it just so happens the illegal manipulation has also produced a possible opportunity by weighting so heavily against retail and applying massive leverage to be the counter party in a bet against all individual investors.

1. The price is wrong.

This is the only one for now I hope you will allow going mostly unsupported in this particular writing, I feel like others have covered thi

I don't normally make posts of this nature, but I thought it could be helpful to get some of this information in the same place. I am NO financial expert, and it's very possible that in my attempts to simplify this information for my own understanding I have made a mistake that would seem simple to someone who is. It may perhaps be better to look at the sources I have included directly and draw your own conclusions. Also, I am sure a great many of you are already aware of the information I will share, and attempts to share old information as new could be just another form of the manipulation already so rampant. So it would be helpful to view this all with a critical eye, and I would appreciate corrections. It may be best to view this as an informal PSA about possible market manipulation and those responsible, with a purpose of raising awareness. I left out some key players in the conspiracy in an attempt to be more concise and focus on the threat Citadel poses to our financial markets. This is my interpretation of the criminal conspiracy that has captured the US market, and many of those in charge of regulating and reporting on it.

TL;DR Begins here: The price is wrong. Citadel is naked shorting Gamestop, and the clearing house (DTCC) is complicit. The SEC is aware of, and even encourages it. Citadel plays by different rules than the rest of us. Citadel is still breaking every understanding of the rules, most especially by manipulating the price, and a variety of other criminal activity [enters speculation, 21], as they have done before. [11] In my view as nothing more than an individual American investor, GME is an asymmetric opportunity you should consider buying if you can, holding what you have, and DRSing (direct registering) what you are able to. I don't really have ideological orthodoxies, and prefer to deal in probabilities and possibilities as opposed to certainties. But, I do like the stock if that affects your reception of this information. This isn't really about a particular trade though, or expecting the market to work exactly as I would like every time, it just so happens the illegal manipulation has also produced a possible opportunity by weighting so heavily against retail and applying massive leverage to be the counter party in a bet against all individual investors.

1. The price is wrong.

This is the only one for now I hope you will allow going mostly unsupported in this particular writing, I feel like others have covered

I don't normally make posts of this nature, but I thought it could be helpful to get some of this information in the same place. I am NO financial expert, and it's very possible that in my attempts to simplify this information for my own understanding I have made a mistake that would seem simple to someone who is. It may perhaps be better to look at the sources I have included directly and draw your own conclusions. Also, I am sure a great many of you are already aware of the information I will share, and attempts to share old information as new could be just another form of the manipulation already so rampant. So it would be helpful to view this all with a critical eye, and I would appreciate corrections. It may be best to view this as an informal PSA about possible market manipulation and those responsible, with a purpose of raising awareness. I left out some key players in the conspiracy in an attempt to be more concise and focus on the threat Citadel poses to our financial markets. This is my interpretation of the criminal conspiracy that has captured the US market, and many of those in charge of regulating and reporting on it.

TL;DR Begins here: The price is wrong. Citadel is naked shorting Gamestop, and the clearing house (DTCC) is complicit. The SEC is aware of, and even encourages it. Citadel plays by different rules than the rest of us. Citadel is still breaking every understanding of the rules, most especially by manipulating the price, and a variety of other criminal activity [enters speculation, 21], as they have done before. [11] In my view as nothing more than an individual American investor, GME is an asymmetric opportunity you should consider buying if you can, holding what you have, and DRSing (direct registering) what you are able to. I don't really have ideological orthodoxies, and prefer to deal in probabilities and possibilities as opposed to certainties. But, I do like the stock if that affects your reception of this information. This isn't really about a particular trade though, or expecting the market to work exactly as I would like every time, it just so happens the illegal manipulation has also produced a possible opportunity by weighting so heavily against retail and applying massive leverage to be the counter party in a bet against all individual investors.

1. The price is wrong.

This is the only one for now I hope you will allow going mostly unsupported in this particular writing, I feel like others have covered