I didn't realize other denominations believed in original sin. Interesting.

Still, it's one of the most absurd concepts any religion has yet concoted, and the fact that believers think it makes sense blows my mind.

You don't seem to be understanding the problem. it isn't that you didn't include developer fees in the costs. It is that when asked how to value the operating system, you stated this "The value of the OS is the sale price minus the cost of all these other pieces.". Do you recognize that this statement assigns 100% of the profits entirely to the operating system and 0% of the profits to the hardware or services or anything else? Calling an error of this magnitude shooting from the hips seem pretty disingenuous. You weren't close or "close"; you weren't even in the same ballpark.

Is this meant to dispute something? Obviously SOMETIMES you quantify things, nobody is denying that. But one can't ALWAYS do it. In particular, one can sometimes only speak about the value of something relatively qualitatively. It's why we have words like "quantitative" and "qualitative" and not just the former. The idea that "Having no specific number and no real way to quantify it [makes it an empty assertion] is utter nonsense.


Trying to figure out why you think the one is meaningful and the other isn't. I am guessing it is because tithing and the like is more direct (saying to donate results in donations). Theology of needing salvation through the church isn't remotely as direct, but its effects remains very powerful. Perhaps it is just that you might hope to quantity the value of donations, but can't easily quantify the latter and have this weird tendency to reject the importance of something just because you can't quantify it.



Ya, I think the catholic leadership takes the success of catholicism into play when making theological decisions. I want to be a bit careful and not go too mightybooshian here; I am sure that like Apple there are people genuinely trying to what they think is correct. But this incentive - much like the incentive to appear good for Apple - nonetheless exists as a relevant factor.

Much like the Trinity (which also has, at best, weak Biblical support), it's one of the doctrines of the early Church that was well-established enough that most Protestants included it in their theology. The primary elements of Catholicism they rejected was church structure, special powers/privileges for the clergy, and the centrality of the sacraments (though most did not give up the sacraments altogether, and baptism and communion are still essential to many denominations).

Hardware is a red herring because Apple only makes hardware in order to sell their software. They aren't a hardware business. You can't buy iPads or other hardware that runs iOS without getting iOS. And for "services," they have a protection plan that you can buy that's supplemental to. What I've given is not a great estimate, but it's actually not awful.

In a business context (which was the analogy), virtually every decision can be quantified and those quantities drive business decisions (unless you're running your business poorly). All this does is add to the fact that trying to talk about the Vatican's theology as if it were some aspect of a retail business model is silly.


But the conversation is not about theology in general, or even about the theology of necessity of salvation. it is the about the theology of original sin as it relates to evolution. And the theology of needing salvation can exist in a form that's roughly independent of the source of that need. That is, even without accepting the theology of original sin, it is possible to "sell" a theology of sinfulness. The sin doesn't need to have come from Adam for it to be present.

It's not just about the inability to quantify it, although that's part of it. It's the inability to point to something in particular about the theology of original sin as it related to evolution that appears REMOTELY meaningful in driving people to do thinks like become a Catholic. As I noted above, it's not logically necessary for this theological position to be adopted in order to accept the basic concept of human sinfulness or the need for salvation or the need to be a member of the church.

Read it again... I agree that success comes into play. But financial success? Do you think they make theological positions based on increasing the financial strength of the church?

wat. This is complete nonsense...but I guess this explains the mystery of how you were not seeing the inanity of assigning 100% of profits to the OS! Apple makes money (primarily) from the sale of devices, devices that have appeal because of a combination of their hardware, software and services. Saying they "aren't a hardware business" or that they only do it to "sell software" is nonsense, there is no asymmetric preference one can just easily say they aren't a software business and only do that to sell hardware, its just as meaningless.

The point of the analogy was to illustrate that when you have a "package" containing many factors, it can be difficult to meaningful strip out a single factor to analyze its particular value. It is an example of something not easily quantifiable, but we can qualitatively speak to its importance, an example where just because you and I can't give a quantifiable number to the value the operating system in specific ads doesn't mean it is an empty assertion to think it is important, to paraphrase your ridiculous claim. Note that this was the extent of the analogy, this point about quantifiable, it (pretty obviously) wasn't trying to say the vatican operates on a retail business model or anything close to that.


Okay. Let me remind you what I said: "Something like evolution seems relatively unimportant and probably plays a small role in making catholism more popular (clearly benefitial for the church) because it is perceived as being less out of date. But the need for salvation through the church? That is very core. "

The theology of salvation is much more important than their views on evolution. The latter probably matters a little bit in terms of retaining popular support by preventing them from appearing even more like backwards cretins, but it certainly isn't core. Rather like the Apple analogy, you can view it as a relatively small component of the total package that is an iPhone or iPad - say one particular app, or a particular hardware component like the fingerprint scanner - that adds some level of added appeal to the religion/Apple devices.

Given how you are now reminded that I don't think the evolution bit is that important, I will presume you can see the obvious reasons why the salvation bit IS important to the success of the catholic church. If you can't see why, please let me know.

I don't see why it being logically necessary is relevant. The question is whether its adoption does promote participation with the church. Catholicism seems to have a relatively popular combination of elements that give it a strong appeal, but I don't see why it is or would need to be the exclusive way to go about it. Seems like grasping at straws here.

This is simply not correct, specific quantification is not a condition for verification and I think you are very well aware of this.

I agree with that. I also don't think there is (or was) conspiratorial intent or business-like intent behind the idea of original sin. I do however think that that...

... the idea of everybody being a sinner and necessity of church membership to attain salvation (for those that know of the church) was a big factor in the evolution of the Church's power and wealth, and of the key ingredients in the Church being a major factor in the history of Europe.

It isn't a necessity, which I tried to illustrate earlier via analogy. Many churches are big and rich without membership being a necessity for salvation. Nor does it imply that salvation comes with a monetary pricetag for the individual.

I think that it makes a lot of other things make sense for them. otherwise they could just say 'I haven't done anything wrong, I don't need your church and your salvation etc etc'.

IMO the mechanism of Catholicism is built around guilt, and that guilt comes from OS. It's irrelevant whether or not individual Catholics actually feel guilty, they're still part of a system that requires them to absolve it and which is justified by it.

If Apple were a hardware company, they would be content with the idea that they've sold you the hardware. But they're not. That's why they don't like it when you jailbreak it and work very hard to prevent you from doing that. Or they would be content to allow you to buy their hardware and then install whatever software you want. So there is an asymmetric preference for software based on their business model and their business decisions.

I never claimed that it wasn't difficult. I just claimed that in a business setting, it can be done.

I have no idea what claim you're paraphrasing here. I don't believe I've said anything remotely resembling that.

I never said you were. But I did say that trying to use retail operations as an analogy is pretty awful idea. There simply aren't enough similarities between the two to make meaningful comparisons.

You're now drifting quite far from the original claim I was addressing.

If the church were to abandon (or never had initially) a theology of original sin, it would not play a significant role in any of the ideas being brought forth in terms of "what makes the Catholic church popular.' I have no idea why you think original sin is somehow a driver for other theology. What matters to the "necessity of being a Catholic" is the fact that one is a sinner, not that sinful nature came from Adam.

I don't think the adoption of the belief of original sin does anything to promote participation in the church. That claim is the one that's grasping at straws.

Groan. And they don't just sell their software for any hardware either. Obviously, they are selling a complete package that integrates both and both have consumer appeal. Trying to put the software as responsible for 100% of the profit and the hardware for 0%, trying to say that they only sell hardware in order to sell the software is profoundly tone deaf, even for you.



Nothing special about a business setting that means everything is magically quantifiable; indeed, people often aren't able to do this.



Let me remind you: "Having no specific number and no real way to quantify it [makes it an empty assertion.". The lack of quantifiability does NOT make any statement an empty assertion. It is why we have the word "qualifiable"

I haven't drifted from anything. That was my first statement on the subject. It also mirrored tame_deuces's first post ITT: "Evolution aside, the notion of original sin has certainly been profitable for the Catholic church. It is a doctrine, after all, that makes the believer dependent on the church for his/her salvation. ". The evolution bit doesn't seem that important for him either, but the salvation through the church bit does.

Turn Prophet, the very original guy, hasn't weighed in again but for the two people who are arguing about it the presentation of our position has remained consistent from the moment of our entry into the discussion and hasn't "drifted" in the slightest.



Now, before moving on, let's make clear what is going on (since you seem to keep forgetting what conversation has occurred). There are two themes. One is about the necessity of quantifiability. Your original challenge was that a statement wasn't quantifiable, and further went on to state that without such quantifiability it was an empty assertion. The above addresses that nonsense. Below we move into a discussion about the importance of certain aspects of the catholic church. In that discussion we are accepting that quantifying it in terms of dollars is obviously not going to occur. You seem to be offering no quantification for any of your positions on that, either, which is fine because for the most part with religious/political/social and heck even a lot of business things such discussions are only reasonably qualified not quantified. So if you reject the very idea of being able to have a qualitative discussion, there is no point in addressing the below, since that is going to be its nature. However, over many, many conversations with you the overwhelming lion's share of those are qualitative so I am sure you don't actually have a problem with it, you just made a stupid statement and are now desperately trying to defend it.


The idea is that humans have fallen from grace, and thus need the church with things like baptism for their salvation. If one doesn't need salvation, or if one doesn't need the church for the salvation, there is little reason to have the church.


I think I already made it clear I certainly don't think there is a unique way to form a popular, enduring religion that encourages active participation with the church. I think Catholicism has found one such way to do it, and that it is important for them to try and stay relevant by adopting some consistency between science and the bible and their historical positions, it certainly isn't the only way to do it.

Fwiw, what first drew me to Apple products was their aesthetically pleasing hardware. I imagine I'm not alone.

Apple products being discussed here is clearly a subliminal reference to the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden

Thats weird. What got me hooked was Steve Jobs, what a cute little punkin.

That's changing the underlying statement. It's not about "responsibility." It's about trying to find some way of computing the value of iOS. I gave a particular description (that I've already noted is flawed and am not particularly married to). If you want to claim that only 80% or 10% of the profit is value that can be attributed to the hardware, that's fine with me. You've still assigned a value to iOS.

After taking some time to reflect on it, it occurred to me that another not-unreasonable way of doing the calculation is to simply assign iOS a particular value based on the expense of development and projected lifespan of the product.

Being unable to due to incompetence isn't really of interest to me. It's well known that a lot of people running businesses have no clue what they're doing (which is why most businesses fail). Anything that's relevant to the value/profit of the business can be quantified in a meaningful way. This does not imply that the way to quantify it is unique, but it can be done.

This reminds me of someone saying "I contribute a lot to this organization" but can't come up with a single thing that he's done. If you're struggling this much to quantify something, it's very probable that your qualitative analysis is going to be flawed. This is especially true if your underlying claim is about "profitability."

Would you have preferred I say that what you're saying is entirely tangential to the original claim I was addressing?

I stand by the claim that it's a pretty empty assertion to just say "This particular theology is profitable" without having any reasonable way of computing the profitability of the particular theological claim. Going back to the original soap example, it's like saying "This soap is profitable" without knowing how much money was spent on the soap and how much it sells for. It seems to be just a stupid way to look at it.

I'll note that you start moving from talking about profitability to success. That is an important shift. It's stupid to talk about the profitability of theology. It's less stupid to talk about the success of theology.

Again, I simply need to note that original sin (that the sin condition comes from Adam) is basically irrelevant as it pertains to the success of the church. Any stand-in for sin's origins would not change the core need of salvation and would not significantly change what could be interpreted as the primary message of the church.

lol wat. Yes, sure, you can just make something up that computes a numerical value like your ridiculous assignment of 100% of profit to iOS and 0% to everything else. I can likewise make up any quantifiable metric like "100% of vatican revenues is due to their theology on original sin". It would be equally stupid. No, I don't think you were just making a point about being able to come up with any old random way to assign a numerical value. Given your subsequent defences of it and your loltastically bad analysis of Apple, I think you actually thought this utter nonsense was a reasonable way to go about it.



Given the above, I might need to be careful here. Can you just make up some arbitrary measure? Sure. But can you always come up with a meaningful way to measure something? That your measure isn't just made up, but actually relates to reality in a meaningful way? Not even remotely true. Some things are just not easily quantifiable. Just because it relates to business doesn't mean it suddenly magically becomes quantifiable.


You seem confused on the objection to your ludicrous statement: "Having no specific number and no real way to quantify it [makes it an empty assertion]". What I am objecting to is the need to quantify something, to offer specific numbers. That is not necessary to make meaningful statements. Of course, one does need to come up with qualitative justifications, you can't just say anything. I am not disputing the need for justifications, I am disputing the necessity of quantitative justifications. That is your error.




Not that important a distinction really...success by other measures such as popularity is going to strongly correlate with financial success. Not that I actually used the word "profitability" but I did use the word "success" so, again, not a shift. The point was you had this ludicrous insistent on the need for an actual figure on the amount of net worth when one certainly does not need to be able to quantify it like this in order to speak to its importance. Don't see any reason to nit it up on this.

As I repeatedly said, I hardly think the Catholic Church's ideas (or Christianity's more generally) is a unique way to gain such popularity and engagement with a centralized church. The funny part is, it seems you have entirely bought into the idea that man having sin and needing salvation through the church is important to perpetuating the church. Your only objection is that it isn't the ONLY way which i am sure everyone agrees with. But of course, you haven't quantified this. You haven't given numerical values to how much money come from different things either. It is almost like it is possible to speak about the importance of things without having a meaningful way to give a numerical value!

Oh, I know. I was raised Catholic...was an altar boy, went to Catholic school...the whole nine yards. ****ing nutcases.

Same. I thought they were nuts... until I met conservative Protestants. They make the priests who taught me in high school look like HL Mencken.

So to be clear, the overall conversation started from here:

Which then became

And you "mirrored" that position in the following form:

And you expect me to understand that your objections are not particular to the concept of profitability, but to a more generalized sense of "success"? I suppose you can decontextualize the entire conversation to the point where my statements are understood as having no relation to anything stated previously, in which case it's entirely possible to find that certain claims are false in some extremely generalized sense.

And I think there's a distinct lack of both business sense and general sense in the following statement:

I find this to be extremely dubious. There are both people and organizations that are popular but are also financial wrecks, and there are also plenty of people and organizations that are financial successes that are strongly disliked. I will consent that there's a correlation, but to call it a strong correlation seems to be an overstatement caused by poor sampling methods.

I have no idea why you have decided to focus on this rather minor hair split while entirely ignoring your ridiculous claim about the need for quantifiability and specific numbers otherwise something is an empty assertion, your nonsensical view that the operating system accounts for 100% of Apple's profit, or your inability to understand how a doctrine of salvation through the church might be important to their financial success. It seems like the least relevant thing to obsess over. Perhaps given the magnitude of your mistakes earlier in the thread and your poor positioning for the debate, it is the only point you think you can score on?


As I said, I don't think the distinction really matters for our purposes. Your failure has been this bizarre and unexplained insistence on the need for quantifiability, that without this, without specific numbers, one is making an empty assertion. That statement is just as ridiculous regardless of whether you want to measure number of dollars or number of followers or anything else.

You clearly need lots of supporters if you are going to get lots of donations...if you want to only call that "correlated" and not "strongly correlated" well really go nuts the adjective matters not for any argument here.

If you really want to quibble over such minor distinctions while entirely ignoring what has been the main point of our entire argument, then I will note that while it matters not one bit to the main arguments, I don't really like "profitability" which is why i didn't say it and pointed out that I didn't say it when you accused me of it. The catholic church is an enormous financial machine, but it might run a deficit in a given year (i have no idea if it does or not) so there are certain connotations of profitability that just aren't quite apt for describing the church, but whatever this doesn't matter for what we have been talking about. We want to be able to talk about the sort of financial size of the institution - your net worth is fine for this - but profitability is a bit off so I didn't use it.

Polite snip

Robbers steal $600,000 from a megachurch in Houston

http://www.news.com.au/world/north-a...-1226852418433

Over half a million dollars in one weekend. How much money did they make on the trinkets then?

It's an empty assertion because it's not backed up with a useful analysis. That doesn't make it a "false" assertion. In a business context, it's the difference between making decisions by anecdote and making decisions based on hard data.

I never claimed it was a great way of computing it, but it's not entirely unreasonable. Apple defends its software with much more vigor than it does its hardware. That's just a reality of how they conduct business.

Notice you've hedged the position: "might be important" is very different from "clearly profitable."

Given that you're playing a completely separate game than the one I'm playing, arguing over points that you have admitted are irrelevant to the original claims as stated, and needing to decontextualize my comments to the point that they do not accurately reflect what I stated, I have little concern over your perception of my positioning.

That's too bad for you, I guess.

This is also false. Deep-pocketed donors can push things very far. As a political observer, you should know this. But pulling back the "strongly correlated" undermines your ability to make the stronger assertion necessary to reach the conclusion that you're trying to reach here. The multi-step process of starting from a single theological position (one theological position out of literally thousands) to the financial success of a church, especially one that has many functionally equivalent replacements, is just a bad argument on its face.

This is borderline-Booshian. Contextually, given that the previous two posters were explicitly talking about money and the business model analogy was used in that context, your adoption of similar language strongly suggests the continuation of that position. I'll grant that you never *SAID* profitability, but contextually-speaking, it is the most reasonable interpretation of your entry into the conversation. And I'll grant that it's possible you never meant it, but my accusation that you're now creating an entirely tangential conversation that's unrelated to the initial assertions seems to be accurate.

First, that's not the Catholic Church. That's Joel Osteen's mega-church. Second, Joel Osteen presents a prosperity gospel, in which your generosity towards the church is tied to God's generosity to you. Third, that's a drop in the bucket compared to the overall size of the Catholic church, which owns Catholic Charities USA, which is in the top 10 largest charitable organizations in the US and sells trinkets. (And this doesn't even include other similar organizations that the Catholic church operates worldwide.)

There is no confusion over what empty assertion meant. You don't seem to be processing what the objection is. To repeat: the criticism isn't that you need justifications for statements - we both clearly agree with that - it is the necessity of "specific numbers" or a way to "quantify" it..reprised here with your "hard data". That is the error. It is possible to justify meaningful statements qualifiability, not just quantifiably. You began this by asking for a specific number, a dollar figure, for how much influence the theology had. This truly bizarre insistence on the need for quantifiability that is a ludicrous standard, a standard that your own posting almost never attains.


Wat. I have no idea why you think this. I have no idea why you think "Apple only makes hardware in order to sell their software". I have no idea why you think that 100% of the profits are attributed to the operating system isn't - obviously - completely unreasonable. These are all truly bizarre. Its funny because the use of analogies is to take something hopefully familiar to everyone to illustrate the point. In this case, we had an example where it ISN"T remotely clear what portion of apple's profits can be attributed to any particular component of their integrated products. Yet you just come in and randomly assign one component 100% of the value and everything else 0%....and you seem to have lessened your support for this ludicrous view but still try to say things like "not entirely unreasonable". Yes, it is entirely unreasonable and you can not - and have not - been able to offer a shred of justification for it.


Lol okay. Hence why we are talking about correlations not "directly proportional" or something like this. Either way, we have a billion followers and get an enormous amount of donations from this. So it just doesn't matter to me whether you want to talk about dollars or people. If you think this is an important distinction - which your terse "thats too bad for you" seems to indicate - feel free to delineate a position where you do magicially need these specific numbers and hard data and quantifiable analysis when talking about dollars but magically don't for talking about people. I just don't see the distinction as relevant, and see nothing in your posts that shows why it is relevant either.

You seem rather confused as to the issue here. I have now said it repeatedly: everything I have said about your mistake - the insistence on quantifiability - is just as fine if you want to talk about number of dollars or number of people or anything else. As I just told you, my minor objection I didn't bother to state earlier to "profitibility" was irrelevant to the main point (hence why I didn't state the objection, I just didn't use it)...but that wasn't an objection to talking about something to do with financial success, I just didn't like profitability. I just told you I am quite happy with "net worth" for instance. I suspect you didn't internalize the point and so have misconstrued it as me trying to abandon any financial interpretation whatsoever; not so.

It is almost like one can give a qualitative argument for how the theological positions of a church might relate to its financial success without the need for quantitative "hard data" and "specific numbers"!

Next thing you know we'll be able to tell a coniferous forest from a broadleaf forest without counting the trees.