99 percent of the time, the man gets screwed in a divorce. This time he won.

It was designed to reach death level G forces and maintain long enough to kill anyone who isn't wearing a g-suit. The funny thing is, it has been reported that some people are simply naturally resistant to G-forces. They are still researching why.

So technically it would kill like 99 percent of the people who rode it, but Urbonas factored in this possibility. Riders would be fitted with a biometric monitoring system. If one go around wasn't successful, for whatever reason, the coaster would not apply brakes to stop at the station and would cycle you through again before your brain had a chance to recover.

"Our corporate money worshippers often attend services at churches and synagogues. But they worship during the workweek at the altar of money, and we, the 99 percent, have become their sacrificial lambs. Like a drug addict looking for a fix they spend their lives rigging the system in their never-ending quest for greater and greater wealth- the rest of us be damned."

Source: http://www.theunion.com/opinion/19681951-113/jeff-vogel-the-most-dangerous-religion-of-all

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Scientism:

"Scientism is belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints."

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-folly-of-scientism

http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/sciism-body.html

The idea that science has all the answers is a particular faith of some atheists and agnostics, with no evidence actually supporting the claim. The problem of induction alone throws that idea out of the window. I love science and I amazed by what we are able to do, technologically. I've studied astronomy quite a bit in my lifetime. Just because I love science does not mean that I must bow before any theory because it is accepted by the mainstream scientific community as being the current idea of what is true and real.

If you look through history you will see many of these ideas held to be truth by the scientific community turned out to be half-baked ideas based on pure speculation. Somehow, people think we have it so nailed down now that the major ideas we have about the cosmos have to be true. It's pure hubris; our knowledge about how the Universe actually works or how it got here is infinitesimal compared to what there actually is to know.

Draw a circle on a piece of paper and say that represents all of the knowledge it is possible to know. What percentage of it could you claim that you knew? If you're honest, it isn't much. Do you think that knowledge of God and the supernatural could be in that 99 percent of things you don't know? If you really think about this you will see that to rule these things out based on limited and potentially faulty information is prideful and it blinds you to true understanding.

"Because of their small size, this process of dropping doesn't hurt the fish (it's like a high diver diving into a deep pool of water). The survival rate of these fish is around 99 percent."

From a this interesting article about how they do it.
http://www.utahfishfinder.com/articles/flying-fish.html

also @Payback may be interested in the article

depends on how you define "maximum nasty" @enoch

There was a time where I thought for sure we were heading towards another civil war. My assumption was that the gun nuts and other right wing lunatics would eventually take up arms against their country but ultimately lose.

But as I think about it more, for all their bluster and rhetoric. Chickenhawks are ultimately cowards and even gun-nuts really don't want to sacrifice their lives for their interpretation of the 2nd amendment. When it comes right down to it, most people don't want to fight and kill their fellow countrymen despite how much they want to try and demonize the "other"

The core issue as I see it that is preventing our political system from being more effective is private money in our politics and I don't think that's going to be fixed without a constitutional amendment prohibiting it. Thanks to the internet age, elections should be 100 percent publicly funded and lobbying and donations should be outlawed, because anyone can e-mail/blog and thus influence their elected officials without bribes or gifts or perks being involved. Money is not free speech

income inequality is going to get worse and worse until it reaches a tipping point that galvanizes the 99 percent but we're just not there yet. While I'm sure there will be some bloodshed during this process, I think on a national level it will be relatively bloodless and relatively peaceful.

as always, it's just going to be painful and it's going to take time. One of the problems with change is that you usually have to wait for people with bad ideas to die of old age before better ideas are implemented.

Can you point me towards a comparable situation? I can't recall a situation where he was making an emotional plea about an important topic and was ripped for his usual stutter. People like Jon Stewart pick their spots. Comedy is about timing.

I'm not saying you can't get your digs in. I'm saying there's a time and place. Shannon Sharpe's speech impediments and questionable word choice are widely joked about:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/cbs-producers-ask-shannon-sharpe-to-use-at-least-3,7044/

That doesn't bother me. He's plenty self deprecating about his "book smahts." My issue is with context. 99 percent of the time you could crack these jokes in his face and he'd laugh right along with you. If you did it here, he'd rip you in half. The guy grew up dirt ass poor in rural georgia. He made himself a millionaire. What does he need to do for the peanut gallery to shut the fuck up for 2 minutes while he talks about something important? If he was being granted a shred of respect, they would.

gay priest fag nigger bitch cunt cracker first world problem 99 percenter repoublican males that cry transgendered piss slave Muslim pagent winner alien parasite in your stomach to consume humanity for the ultimate genocide

DEFEND YOUR RIGHT TO LIVE

I blame Tarrantino. Bad tipper, asshole youth corrupter.

Sarah Silverman takes blame too. I blame her for being so hot and not my wife. I'll make a virtual reality model after her with a penis.

video is dead.

but the main reason it didn't succeed is because it got associated with college hipsters and the homeless looking for a free place to crash. Camping out 24/7 is not something the typical person wants to do. It was extremely unrelate-able. Let alone hang out with annoying hipsters and smelly homeless people.

most of the 99 percent are wage slaves who cannot take time off work to.......go sit in a tent on concrete for weeks on end. They needed something way more accessible to the regular person.

it was a marketing failure.

The 99 percent.

"Speaking to a packed audience Wednesday morning in Geneva, CERN director general Rolf Heuer confirmed that two separate teams working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are more than 99 percent certain they've discovered the Higgs boson, aka the God particle—or at the least a brand-new particle exactly where they expected the Higgs to be.

The long-sought particle may complete the standard model of physics by explaining why objects in our universe have mass—and in so doing, why galaxies, planets, and even humans have any right to exist."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/07/120704-god-particle-higgs-boson-new-cern-science/

>> ^shinyblurry:

I'm not talking about technicalities, though. If atheists are really so incensed about the evils of religion, they would be concentrating on religions, countries and cultures that had the most egregious examples of perceived evils. Instead, 99 percent of it concentrates on the God of the bible.

I'm only speaking for myself, not for The Atheists™. I do not generally go around condemning religions, individually or as a whole; I condemn when it is called for or when my opinion on something is requested. When Catholics rape children, I condemn. When Muslims throw acid in the faces of "immodestly" dressed women, I condemn. When Catholics deny their employees access to healthcare, I condemn. When Scientologists destroy the lives of people who want to leave their organization, I condemn. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, as they say, and there are no Buddhists or Hindus lecturing me on the meaninglessness of my life. I tend to argue mostly with Christians and so I tend to argue mostly against Christianity.

>> ^shinyblurry:
That is not what he was arguing, by any stretch of the imagination. He argued that to be free = meaningless, and that no one can live that way, on top of all of the logical, emotional, psychological and philosophical convolutions that this truth entails. He proposed Christianity as a solution to this problem, but he did not make it the thrust of his argument.

Nay, he proposed Jesus as the solution to this problem, a problem that I don't even necessarily accept is a problem as defined. It is entirely the thrust of his argument. Let me quote...

Nobody can live that way. To really believe that life is meaningless gets you into convolutions that are emotional, convolutions that are psychological, convolutions that are logical, convolutions that are philosophical, and you can't even live that way because life does have meaning and both freedom and meaning are found in Jesus Christ. That's the argument.

>> ^shinyblurry:
The argument is, though, that if you're free to make up your own meaning, then there is no actual meaning.

Agree. There is no inherent meaning in life; we find meaning as we go.

>> ^shinyblurry:
No, he is saying that there is no way to live that way and be logically consistent with your own knowledge and experience.

That's an even worse argument. I would argue that, at some level, every person who has ever lived has/had logical inconsistencies if you dig far enough. They're on the surface for some and deeply buried for others but we all have elements of contradiction in us.

>> ^shinyblurry:
Give a specific example.

Well there's a half-hour video at the top of this page. Will that do?

>> ^shinyblurry:
I think you might need to rewatch the video because I don't think you understood the point to these sections, or how they were supported by his overall argument.

I've watched it 3x now. If his argument is so poorly constructed/stated that it cannot be understood after 3 listens, that is his fault.

I'm guessing that's probably because you generally deal with English-speaking atheists. Technically we are arguing against Allah when we argue against God but why would we use an Arab word? Allah is not the name of the God of Islam and, even if it were, it would be the same God anyway. "Allah" means "the one God". It's what Arab Christians call God as well.

Krishna... well, I would argue against Krishna in much the same way as I argue against Yahweh if it ever came up, but it doesn't. There is no significant number of Hindus trying to force their beliefs on us, fighting societal advancement, or passing laws based on their holy book. Where I live these are the actions of Christians and so, merely out of priority, these are the people I argue against most frequently.

I'm not talking about technicalities, though. If atheists are really so incensed about the evils of religion, they would be concentrating on religions, countries and cultures that had the most egregious examples of perceived evils. Instead, 99 percent of it concentrates on the God of the bible. The fact is, Christianity has played a very positive role in shaping our civilization. If you want to read about it:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-that-Made-Your-World/dp/1595553223/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343535302&sr=1-1&keywords=the+book+that+made+your+world

Yes, an entertaining speaker and an entertaining, and funny, presentation, which is why I'm so disappointed that he gradually took it off the rails over the course of it.

The meaning of life
He's arguing that the meaning he finds in his own life, living for Jesus, is the only valid meaning and therefore non-Christians must have no meaning in their lives.

What? That is not what he was arguing, by any stretch of the imagination. He argued that to be free = meaningless, and that no one can live that way, on top of all of the logical, emotional, psychological and philosophical convolutions that this truth entails. He proposed Christianity as a solution to this problem, but he did not make it the thrust of his argument. He asked at the end, what is your alternative? What is your reason for life?

Few, if any, people have the luxury of never struggling with this question and yet most of us, religious positions aside, find meaning in our lives eventually. Many of us recognize that, in the grand scheme, our lives, even our entire species, will have no impact; Nothing any of us does will ultimately affect the outcome of the universe or existence, but that does not make life meaningless. We find meaning in many things in life. We find meaning in our relationships with others. We find meaning in our work. We find meaning in religion, both Christianity and others. It's different for each of us and there's nothing wrong with that.

The argument is, though, that if you're free to make up your own meaning, then there is no actual meaning.

Unfortunately for him, he builds his entire argument on this false premise. Even more unfortunate (for him), he makes an excellent point about what to do with conclusions that are based on a false premise.

I could stop here since I've destroyed his premise, but I'll continue below.

You do not appear to have understood the basic premise of his argument..

Freedom
There's no such thing as absolute freedom, God or not, except maybe in non-existence.

You're splitting hairs here..he is talking about what it means to be truly be free, in the sense of not having any meaning imposed upon you from the outside.

Nobody can live without meaning
I think people who live without any meaning in life are few and far between but I do not see why they could not live that way. They may be miserable, depressed, suicidal even, but they will not cease to exist in any way that is different from how the rest of us will cease to exist.

No, he is saying that there is no way to live that way and be logically consistent with your own knowledge and experience.

The Straw Frankenstein Monster
Over the course of the video he constructs a straw man out of pieces of ideas from various philosophers and thinkers, assembling them like Frankenstein's Monster and then, fittingly, being destroyed by his own creation.

Give a specific example.

Scientific Theories
This whole section is fucked and was pointless to bring up in the first place. His argument has nothing to do with scientific theory.

CS Lewis
In the case of this quote, at least, Lewis is a damn fool. Love is no less real because it is a chemical process. Music is no less enjoyable, art no less beautiful because they are biological reacitons.

Flowers and Love
"The only way to enjoy flowers and love is to not think." This is a typical (and baffling, for me) anti-knowledge argument that I see so often from fundamentalist Christians. I don't get it. Flowers smell as good and look as beautiful after you learn how your senses function as they did when you were ignorant. There is no reason to avoid learning. The world is just as amazing when you understand it.

I think you might need to rewatch the video because I don't think you understood the point to these sections, or how they were supported by his overall argument.

>> ^xxovercastxx