Somewhat disappointed that he didn't include my personal favorite argument against Pascal's Wager: conflicting faiths.

Instead of a 4-cell chart (2x2 from believe/don't believe and god exists/doesn't), the chart should arguably be a LOT bigger. Plenty of individual branches of Christianity will tell you that *their* specific brand is the only one that will get you into heaven. And that's just relatively minor distinctions -- different sorts of Protestants, or Protestants vs Catholics, etc. We haven't even got to Christianity vs Judaism vs Islam -- all of which fall under the "Abrahamic" umbrella -- but very few Christian faiths think that Jews or Muslims are just as eligible to enter heaven as they are (or vice-versa). From there you can get to things as disparate as Hindu vs Ancient Egyptian vs Zoroastrianism, and everything else.

With that sort of chart, it is just as easy to say that choosing to believe in the *wrong* god could possibly be associated with a more negative outcome than washing your hands of it and going Atheist. Maybe I chose to believe in Ra the Sun God when Zeus ends up being the one true deity. Come to find that Zeus, as it turns out, tolerates people who don't believe in him as long as they don't believe in one of his competitors (like Ra). Therefore I get a lightning bolt to the keyster and a trip to Hades while my nonbeliever buddy gets a ticket to Elysium.

Of course it's all a load of bollocks, but if your argument is a load of bollocks (like Pascal's wager) you don't get to complain when somebody flips it on its head and uses it to argue the exact opposite...

As psychologist Nicolai Sennels explains, "Mohammed, the prime example for Muslims, married Aisha when she was six and had intercourse with her when she was nine. Besides, according to the Quran (4:24), Muslims are allowed to have sex with female slaves[.]" In addition, "uncovered women are in many Muslim cultures seen as a kind of prostitute, and if a man is aroused by such a female, then – partly due to the corrupted logic of responsibility within Muslim psychology – the female is blamed for being raped (and will therefore often face execution)."

Andrew C. McCarthy, in his book entitled The Grand Jihad, described rape by Muslim immigrants as the "unspoken epidemic of Western Europe." Six years later, it continues to expand and sweep across the continent. Ingrid Carlqvist documents how Sweden is now the rape capital of the West, and when "Michael Hess, a local politician from [the] Sweden Democrat Party, tried to warn his nation that 'it is deeply rooted in Islam's culture to rape and brutalize women who refuse to comply with Islamic teachings' he was charged with 'denigration of ethnic groups'" – a crime in Sweden.

According to Islamic clerics, a woman who fails to wear a headscarf is asking to be raped. Consequently, in the eyes of Muslim men, Western women are seen as "promiscuous, loose, and willing," and since no one in the Islamic community refutes this, they engage in the violence and abuse of power that rape represents. In Australia, Lebanese gangs threaten policemen's wives and girlfriends with rape. In 2006, the mufti of Australia, Sheikh Taj al-Din al Hilali, maintained that "women who do not veil themselves, and allow themselves to be 'uncovered meat,' are at fault if they are raped."

In Rotherham, England, some 1,400 British children as young as 11 were plied with drugs before being passed around and sexually abused by Muslims. As shocking as this was, it is the fifth sex abuse ring led by Muslims

In Nigeria, Boko Haram seized 300 schoolgirls in order to sell them on the open market.

In Pakistan, the police do nothing as Hindu and Christian children as young as 7 years old are gang-raped and sold as prostitutes or slaves to wealthy Muslim families. From 2011 through 2014, approximately 550 Egyptian Coptic Christian girls were abducted and sexually abused by Muslim men.

I could go on and on, but the point is that in Islam, a women is considered to be a subservient and second class person. Men are supreme and women who do not dress appropriately (per Islamic standards) risk things happening to them. This is nothing new, it is part of their culture. Exposing them to women not raised in that culture is going to lead to incidents.

Now, please note that I do not think that we should not accept refugees. But I do think that we should make sure that women are aware of the situation and we should absolutely be enforcing the law in regards to the people breaking it, refugees or not.

Wait...so she thinks if a word is used as a racial slur once it can never have another definition? I'm thinking specifically of "gypsy" here. How can one be upset that it wrongly labels Romani as Egyptian, and also claim it can't mean 'nomadic'? Language is fluid, and because a phrase or word might have a 'racist' origin does not mean it can't ever have another meaning. Duh.

I think many Romani are no longer nomadic because you can't just move across international borders without papers, and they historically refuse to do government paperwork, get IDs, pay taxes, etc. That's also why many were deported, they refused to live by the rules of the countries they were living in. Especially in todays climate, refusing to have a verifiable identity is considered unacceptable in many countries. This should surprise no one.

There is something innately fascinating in finding technical, biological and economical explanations of historical developments, and it's definitely so much more satisfying than having to resort to nationalism, racism, or religion to explain one region or another's successes.

The risk, I guess, in treating human history as a set of engineering problems, is that the human mind is so attuned to finding cause and effect that it might make us a little blind to situations where the answer is actually more blind chance than anything else.

One of my favorite of these explanations is when China's 'failure' to colonize the world is attributed to the success of porcelain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0OhXxx7cQg

It seems almost too neat to be true - like the false etymology of Marie est malade - so does anyone know if there are scholars who poke holes in the Porcelain vs Glass explanation?

Edit: Improving my googling shows that this explanation remains reasonable but still also involves a bit of blind historical chance. Colored glass was available in ancient Greece, and the Romans and Egyptians used manganese oxide to decolor it, which led to transparent glass and the basis for lens-grinding... that decolorization process apparently didn't pass on to China or wasn't valued by their culture, perhaps due to the clear competitive advantages of porcelain.

Are you Egyptian? cause.. you're definitely in denial..

This behavior isn't the norm?
Then why does it take place literally everyday?

Like you and every other police sympathizer likes to point out..

"The incidents that make the news are just a small fraction of what ACTUALLY takes place!"

Precisely.

So considering there are multiple instances of police brutality 24/7/365..

..think about all the police violence that WE NEVER SEE.

Then think about all the "less severe" police misconduct: unlawful stops, unlawful seizure, evidence tempering, falsifying reports, etc.

Even if excessive force & brutality is just a fraction of the pie.. the entire pie is still corrupt.

How do we know this?
Because whistle-blowers are always stigmatized, demoted or fired..

While murders routinely get off with little or no punishment.

Clearly, the romanticized ideal of police "protecting & serving" is a fairytale.
And those idealist police officers are the true minority.

"Police Brutality isn't the norm! America is a post-racial society!"

Psh, gimme a break.

I've often wondered what it that makes cats find boxes and bags so compelling. It must be some instinctive thing, but the only thing I can think of is wanting to dive into a rabbit hole or a rat hole to get at the treats inside. Mine generally seem to be in wiggly-haunches attack mode when diving into a paper bag, but I suppose it could be defensive evasive thing too. Or then again, maybe the Egyptians were just really good at animal husbandry and bread them to be self packing for when it came time to move or to be entombed with their owner.

It's not fringe when a good chunk of muslims around the world (not just the middle east) have extremist points of view:


Muslims in most countries surveyed say that a wife should always obey her husband." (including 93% in Indonesia and 65% in Turkey).

Only 32% of Muslims in Indonesia say a woman should have the right to divorce her husband (22% in Egypt, 26% in Pakistan and 60% in Russia)

1 in 3 Muslims in Austria say it is not possible to be a European and a Muslim. 22% oppose democracy

21% of Muslim-Americans say there is a fair to great amount of support for Islamic extremism in their community.

61% of British Muslims want homosexuality punished

Turkish Ministry of Education: 1 in 4 Turks Support Honor Killings

WZB Berlin Social Science Center: 65% of Muslims in Europe say Sharia is more important than the law of the country they live in.

Pew Research (2013): 81% of South Asian Muslims and 57% of Egyptians suport amputating limbs for theft.

Pew Research (2013): 72% of Indonesians want Sharia to be law of the land

Pew Research (2010): 82% of Egyptian Muslims favor stoning adulterers
70% of Jordanian Muslims favor stoning adulterers
42% of Indonesian Muslims favor stoning adulterers
82% of Pakistanis favor stoning adulterers
56% of Nigerian Muslims favor stoning adulterers

MacDonald Laurier Institute: 62% of Muslims want Sharia in Canada (15% say make it mandatory)

Pew Research (2013): 39% of Muslims in Malaysia say suicide bombings "justified" in defense of Islam (only 58% say 'never').

Pew Research (2013): 76% of South Asian Muslims and 56% of Egyptians advocate killing anyone who leaves the Islamic religion.

Pew Research (2010): 84% of Egyptian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
86% of Jordanian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
30% of Indonesian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
76% of Pakistanis support death the penalty for leaving Islam
51% of Nigerian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam

Pew Global: 68% of Palestinian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
43% of Nigerian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
38% of Lebanese Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
15% of Egyptian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
13% of Indonesian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
12% of Jordanian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
7% of Muslim Israelis say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.


CLEARLY, what we need is more Islam in the world. Such a force for good...

Biblically, Hebrew slaves. Historically otherwise it appears they and various other captive slaves were held and used in Egypt.

Egyptian labor build the pyramids. Citizen workers. conscript and contract both, lived in worker villages located around the construction sites. There has been much modern excavation of the villages. Residences, bakeries, and such has been found.

So, no 'white' Egyptian slaves at all (disputing the bible)? Or just not building pyramids?

The Palestinian boy was burned alive:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/05/palestinian-boy-mohammed-abu-khdeir-burned-alive

Israel has Gaza under siege, what are they suppose to do, role over and die?

The cease fire agreement is just ploy. Israel and Egyptian government are both unfriendly to Palestine. Would you agree to sign a contract written by your enemies without any representation from your side.

At the point that Israeli soldier was killed the ground invasion had already began, what would anyone except?

Can you name any other conflict in which they count the number of ammunition fired by one side? If you can't, its because conflicts are never reported that way. It is a talking point from Netanyahu's propaganda scripts and you shouldn't trust a source that just reads propaganda.

...and Egyptians, and Muslims.
It's funny because I recall the Obama administration halting foreign aid when the Muslim Brotherhood seemed to be grabbing power, so how is it exactly that they're an exception?

Tags for this video have been changed from 'jet, egyptian, land, landing, emergency' to 'turboprop, airplane, egyptian, land, landing, emergency' - edited by calvados

Your video, Egyptian Buffalo Jet Lands without Main Landing Gear, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Direct that spiel at every world leader buying air-time or cornering the market in the same. This cunt represents a simple petty thug in a coat pocket. Fascist Egyptian military working for the machine that makes all this possible? God-fearing is what the machine wants you to lay down for, they think themselves little motherfucking gods there, skippy.
Education, education, and education? More-likely re-education and a side-order of the real.