Also, winston, i will be very surprised if you have met "most" of the people who agree with Occupy Everywhere. I will be even more surprised to find out that you haven't but you're going around stating that "they are mostly college students who favour leftist causes."

Not only is it a guess, but it is an irrelevant point - the group is more likely to be subscribed to by people who have to tolerate all the worst things about the current state of affairs. I mean, i wouldn't be surprised if there were no rich twats there, because they're the ones benefitting from things being how they're being.

Now, "left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for an egalitarian society" - this is straight from wikipedia which is the only source i am going to dignify you with (and it's a fine source for meanings of words anyway). Let me also paste you their definition of egalitarianism;

"Egalitarianism (from French égal, meaning "equal") is a trend of thought that favors equality of some sort among moral agents, whether persons or animals. Emphasis is placed upon the fact that equality contains the idea of equity of quality. That is, all people should be treated with the same dignity or be regarded as possessing the same intrinsic qualities despite our societal diversity of race, religion, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression, species, political affiliation, socioeconomic status, (dis)ability or cultural heritage."

Are you surprised that the people who are protesting about the current state of politics and the economy are people who want fairness and equality amongst human beings?

Are you telling me you do not? Because if you do, then i could quite easily call you a leftist cause supporter. All you're trying to do is cloud up the issue and try to make Occupy look like something it is not by labelling it with something that looks right but falls down under scrutiny. They are NOT leftist, they are the rational minds of millions of human beings that no longer want to be lied to, and they're working to make a better world for you even while you sit there trying to sabotage them.

Understand this; underneath politics and government, underneath the concept of money, we are all animals fighting for survival. We animals banded together into familiar groups, because we're pack animals, and we called them countries. To make things easier for ourselves, we put rules in place that everyone agreed upon - laws if you like - for the benefit of all of us. We had to entrust some people with the power of governing these things.

At some point, the basic principles of why we have countries and government were lost. Don't try and tell me, or anyone out there sleeping rough outside financial centres worldwide, that this is an unfair assessment.

The problem with Bill Maher and his cackling hyenas, and most atheists in general, is that they seem to think that they have some sort of claim to rationality and logic above theists. Yet, as you pointed out, they are no less dogmatic about their faith than anyone else. Though you seem to think that they are in the superior position. I would say that you shouldn't forget about the religion of scientism which teaches that nothing exploded, and that this explosion magically produced order and complexity, and from this rocks became alive and turned into soup which turned into monkeys and then into you. These are metaphysical beliefs taken on faith. I find it amusing that people actually believe this nonsense without question and then have the nerve to call me irrational.

The fact is, everyone worships something. Every person has something which they bow down and kiss. Whether it is money, or celebrity, or power, or nature, or themselves, atheists are no different than anyone else. I also find it funny that you talk about crutches, as if atheists don't have crutches? What about drugs, alcohol, pornography, cigarettes, food, sex, etc? How many atheists do you know who use those crutches to get through life? Knowing Christ removes crutches from people, and being a Christian is freedom from crutches, not enslavement to one. Anyone who sins is a slave to sin, but anyone who knows Christ has been set free from that bondage.

So, I appreciate your attempted voice of reason, though you couldn't seem to manage it without condescension towards me, and Christians in general. Perhaps you feel you have to denigrate us in order to be socially accepted here. I think though that you see the futility of anti-theism, and the blind ignorance and hatred it produces in people. You know a tree by its fruit, and that fruit is rotten to its core.

>> ^bareboards2:
This is a demonstrably false statement:
@EMPIRE said Religion is NOTHING BUT bullshit, deception and complete ignorance.
I have often thought that atheists can be just as dogmatic and rigid and intellectually bankrupt as any religious person. Here is the proof of it. You have your belief and no facts are going to get in your way.
You are the holder of the One Truth. There can be no Other Truth. If someone believes otherwise, they are a Heretic and an abomination.
The world isn't perfect. It is full of flawed human beings just trying to get by, trapped by their meat puppet bodies and brains. Some need a crutch to make it through life. You would deprive them of their crutch? THEY WILL FALL DOWN.
I keep saying the same thing over and over here on the Sift. You'd think I'd learn to back out of these pissing matches. I don't though, because I know that atheists ultimately are intelligent people, open to rational thought. I wouldn't try to talk shinyblurry out of his beliefs. That is a complete waste of effort. I am enough of a Pollyanna to think a rationalist will eventually get it -- that humans are flawed, that humans have had gods since the very beginning of human consciousness, that thinking that ALL HUMANS will leave behind an evolutionary trait is a fools game.
The best we can hope for is to keep religion out of the laws as much as possible. That is where someone's evolutionary crutch needs to keep to itself and out of my life. And keep educating about rational thought, throwing a life line to people who are born into a religion and don't hear anything but their family's brand of dogma.

I said religion is nothing but bullshit, deception and complete ignorance.
I never once said I want to deny people the right to be stupid. I know very well, that religion is a crutch for many people. It's unfortunate that they have to lean on something as frail, demonstrably wrong, and more times than not a cancer on human societies such as religion, but it's their choice.

Now, just because I don't want to deny people their rights, doesn't mean I won't call them out on their bullshit when I see it. And that's what I think should be happening more often.
It's not funny or productive to make fun of someone who is merely ignorant of something, but doesn't have a problem with trying to learn some more (ignorance can be easily fixed with education). Unfortunately, as we all know, the vast portion of the population of this planet has no access to proper education. However, in the case of people brought up in a developed nation, with all the access to information and education, who..... oh, I dunno, think Joseph Smith is a prophet, need to be ridicularized for the stupidity of their belief system.

There has to be a line (although fuzzy I'm sure) that separates faith from mental insanity. Believing in something like Lord Xenu, I'm sorry, but it's the case of mental insanity. Should they be allowed to believe in it? Sure. But they should also be categorized as lunatics who should have absolutely no way to interfere with the normal proceedings of a civilized society.


>> ^bareboards2:

This is a demonstrably false statement:
@EMPIRE said Religion is NOTHING BUT bullshit, deception and complete ignorance.
I have often thought that atheists can be just as dogmatic and rigid and intellectually bankrupt as any religious person. Here is the proof of it. You have your belief and no facts are going to get in your way.
You are the holder of the One Truth. There can be no Other Truth. If someone believes otherwise, they are a Heretic and an abomination.
The world isn't perfect. It is full of flawed human beings just trying to get by, trapped by their meat puppet bodies and brains. Some need a crutch to make it through life. You would deprive them of their crutch? THEY WILL FALL DOWN.
I keep saying the same thing over and over here on the Sift. You'd think I'd learn to back out of these pissing matches. I don't though, because I know that atheists ultimately are intelligent people, open to rational thought. I wouldn't try to talk shinyblurry out of his beliefs. That is a complete waste of effort. I am enough of a Pollyanna to think a rationalist will eventually get it -- that humans are flawed, that humans have had gods since the very beginning of human consciousness, that thinking that ALL HUMANS will leave behind an evolutionary trait is a fools game.
The best we can hope for is to keep religion out of the laws as much as possible. That is where someone's evolutionary crutch needs to keep to itself and out of my life. And keep educating about rational thought, throwing a life line to people who are born into a religion and don't hear anything but their family's brand of dogma.

This is a demonstrably false statement:

@EMPIRE said Religion is NOTHING BUT bullshit, deception and complete ignorance.

I have often thought that atheists can be just as dogmatic and rigid and intellectually bankrupt as any religious person. Here is the proof of it. You have your belief and no facts are going to get in your way.

You are the holder of the One Truth. There can be no Other Truth. If someone believes otherwise, they are a Heretic and an abomination.

The world isn't perfect. It is full of flawed human beings just trying to get by, trapped by their meat puppet bodies and brains. Some need a crutch to make it through life. You would deprive them of their crutch? THEY WILL FALL DOWN.

I keep saying the same thing over and over here on the Sift. You'd think I'd learn to back out of these pissing matches. I don't though, because I know that atheists ultimately are intelligent people, open to rational thought. I wouldn't try to talk shinyblurry out of his beliefs. That is a complete waste of effort. I am enough of a Pollyanna to think a rationalist will eventually get it -- that humans are flawed, that humans have had gods since the very beginning of human consciousness, that thinking that ALL HUMANS will leave behind an evolutionary trait is a fools game.

The best we can hope for is to keep religion out of the laws as much as possible. That is where someone's evolutionary crutch needs to keep to itself and out of my life. And keep educating about rational thought, throwing a life line to people who are born into a religion and don't hear anything but their family's brand of dogma.

>> ^Fade:
Re. your point about funding. A 47 story skyscraper collapsing is a worrying event. Since the new york skyline is dominated by many such buildings, all at risk of fire you would think that funding for an investigation would be readily available.
The NIST report basically says that every building in New York is going to have to be rebuilt. That's hard to swallow since no building before or since has collapsed due to fire, therefore a rational conclusion would be that the investigation was potentially flawed and should be rerun.


Funding for an investigation was available; it's what NIST did. The government funding yet another investigation doesn't make much sense, especially since the NIST report was supposed to be a more thorough investigation after FEMA already made their preliminary investigation. And so far you haven't really given any good reasons to do so. There's no real evidence of controlled demos. And arguing via precedent (i.e. "other buildings didn't fall down!") is a fallacy and concluding their investigation was flawed on those grounds is illogical.

The alternative is a privately-funded investigation, but that means individuals have to cough up the cash. The NIST investigation cost about $16 million; I imagine just for WTC 7 probably ran a few million alone, so who is going to pay for it? Would you be willing to chip in a few thousand dollars of your own money to help fund such an investigation? How important is this to you really? Enough to cough up some real cash?

You say it doesn't look like a controlled demolition. Fine, I think it does. How will we come to a consensus?>> ^shponglefan:

The problem with theory 1 isn't a problem at all. In fact, it's largely irrelevant because what happened to WTC 7 (debris damaged followed by 7 hour fire) was a larely unique event, and that's ignoring other factors (i.e. building design, mitigating circumstances like lack of fire suppression) which may make comparisons even more unwarranted. And furthermore, even if other buildings had not collapsed under similar conditions doesn't mean it couldn't happen to WTC 7 or another building in the future. This appears to be the fallacy affirming the consequent.
The second issue is that WTC 7 doesn't look like a controlled demo other than the building fell down due to structural failure and gravity. To make that comparison based on the most superficial view is completely illogical, not to mention incredibly weak evidence for a controlled demo. Controlled demo would imply, as I said earlier, much pre-planning and logictical difficulties in setting it up. This makes theory #2 considerably more complex (since it involves many unknown factors) han theory #1.
Occam's Razor certainly applies here. It's not about the strictly simplist theory. It's about the theory with the same explanatory power but the fewest elements (complications). Theory #2 is by far a more complex theory than #1 as it involves not only the known facts from 9/11 (debris damage, fire), but also many more unknown speculations. As a result, it doesn't add anything unless you rule out theory #1 first. And if your best answer to that is "other buildings on fire didn't fall down" then it shows how weak your argument really is.
>> ^Fade:
We have two 'theories'
1 - Steel Skyscraper collapses due to office furnishings burning for roughly 7 hours
2 - Steel Skyscraper collapses due to controlled demolition
Problems with theories.
theory 1 - No steel skyscraper has ever suffered a complete collapse due to fire.
theory 2 - It looks like demolition but demolition implies conspiracy.

>> ^bobknight33:

But if you can't find a job in a year than you are lazy bastard who is not willing to do what ever to takes to find employment. I moved 4 times for 4 new jobs. There is only a few of us per state. So When I need another job it means moving. It sucks but that life.
...
There are Millions of jobs available and you only need 1. Just one and only 1


I think it's a stretch to imply that anyone who wants a job can find one, especially right now. Even for low-wage positions, there's almost 100 applicants for each opening.

A lot of people also need to not just find any job they can get their hands on, but need to find a job that makes enough for them to be able to provide for their family. Hell, they might also need a job that lets them live up to their obligations to creditors. I know that if I got fired tomorrow, I couldn't just go work a minimum wage job and never need assistance from anyone.

Also, due to the nature of the housing crisis, a lot of people are underwater on their mortgage. In case you're unclear on what that means, it means even after someone sold their house, they'd still owe money to pay off the mortgage, and not just a trivial amount either. That's making people a lot less mobile than they usually are.

Also, since we're talking about someone who's getting on in years, they're going to have a lot of trouble getting an entry-level position when there are so many young people looking for jobs too. They're going to have a hard time finding a high-level position, because there aren't a lot of those to be found even in good times, and in bad times the competition is going to be fierce.

Which is all a long way of saying, it's very easy, especially now, for someone to wind up involuntarily unemployed for more than a year.

>> ^bobknight33:
If you do not want to pack up and move for a job why should we the people carry you?

Well this seems to be the fundamental moral difference between you and I. I think that people who stumble need to be helped back up.

You seem to assume everyone who falls down is just trying to scam people into carrying their weight for them. Further, you think that sort of thing should matter when you see someone else fall down.

People who've lost their way so badly that they want to be carried all the time need even more help than those who just want a little help to get back on their feet. They aren't wicked sinners who need to be punished, they're lost souls who need to be rehabilitated.

The problem with theory 1 isn't a problem at all. In fact, it's largely irrelevant because what happened to WTC 7 (debris damaged followed by 7 hour fire) was a larely unique event, and that's ignoring other factors (i.e. building design, mitigating circumstances like lack of fire suppression) which may make comparisons even more unwarranted. And furthermore, even if other buildings had not collapsed under similar conditions doesn't mean it couldn't happen to WTC 7 or another building in the future. This appears to be the fallacy affirming the consequent.

The second issue is that WTC 7 doesn't look like a controlled demo other than the building fell down due to structural failure and gravity. To make that comparison based on the most superficial view is completely illogical, not to mention incredibly weak evidence for a controlled demo. Controlled demo would imply, as I said earlier, much pre-planning and logictical difficulties in setting it up. This makes theory #2 considerably more complex (since it involves many unknown factors) han theory #1.

Occam's Razor certainly applies here. It's not about the strictly simplist theory. It's about the theory with the same explanatory power but the fewest elements (complications). Theory #2 is by far a more complex theory than #1 as it involves not only the known facts from 9/11 (debris damage, fire), but also many more unknown speculations. As a result, it doesn't add anything unless you rule out theory #1 first. And if your best answer to that is "other buildings on fire didn't fall down" then it shows how weak your argument really is.

>> ^Fade:
We have two 'theories'
1 - Steel Skyscraper collapses due to office furnishings burning for roughly 7 hours
2 - Steel Skyscraper collapses due to controlled demolition
Problems with theories.
theory 1 - No steel skyscraper has ever suffered a complete collapse due to fire.
theory 2 - It looks like demolition but demolition implies conspiracy.

@marbles

That's not what I said, and it's not what Chomsky said either. My point is that when they couldn't keep Iran-Contras leak free, there's no way that they could prevent a multitude of leaks about the much larger supposed 9/11 conspiracy. And we don't see that.

What we see, according to the truthers, are several unexplained phenomena about the collapse of the two largest office buildings in the world and one of their neighbours. Well, what a fucking surprise. It's not every day that giant skyscrapers get hit by planes and fall down. It's a damn complex event that we don't know everything about, especially not the truthers.

There are enough real problems and conspiracies in this world without people inventing new ones. Why not invest time and energy to solve for instance the AIDS problem in Africa? That would actually help real people. But it's much more comfortable to watch cleverly edited youtube videos at home. That way one doesn't have to think.

None of that shit is relevant. I just want to know whether explosives were used or not. Independent testing shows evidence of this. So why didn't NIST do a test?
The footage of wtc7 collapsing is not grainy at all. What footage were you looking at?

your first point is covered in the NIST report anyway. NIST themselves state that the failure was not from structural damage due to falling debris.

The fact that you are arguing against the official account tells me that you probably haven't even read the official account. So why are you even involved in this discussion?

>> ^shponglefan:

I suppose if your standard for "looks like a controlled demo" equals "grainy footage of a building falling down", then yeah. I'm not sure why people expect a building collapsing due to structural failure is going to look any different. And really, you have to ignore so many things to even consider that it was a controlled demo:
1. The fact the building was damaged from debris and then on fire for 7 hours;
2. The fact that wiring the building in advance and in secret would be an incredibly complex undertaking;
3. Why the building was wired at all, since for all of this to happen would require the towers to be wired correctly, planes hitting the main WTC 1&2 towers, those towers collapsing, the debris hitting WTC 7 and causing it to burn for hours before finally setting off the charges to bring it down... it's a plan of epically complex undertaking with no evidence beyond grainy video footage of a building falling down. So why waste taxpayer dollars to chase what amounts to little more than conspiracy fantasy?
Plus, there's this bizarre idea that somehow a building hit by debris and then left to burn for 7 hours should somehow be impervious to eventual structural failure leading to collapse. Like somehow buildings in America are immune to gravity unless specially placed explosives are involved. I just can't fathom the mentality to believe all that.
>> ^Fade:
Well WTC7 certainly looks like a controlled demo which to my mind calls for a little investigation to at least rule it out. There was no evidence of a planet destroying space-station in the videos I have seen.

I suppose if your standard for "looks like a controlled demo" equals "grainy footage of a building falling down", then yeah. I'm not sure why people expect a building collapsing due to structural failure is going to look any different. And really, you have to ignore so many things to even consider that it was a controlled demo:

1. The fact the building was damaged from debris and then on fire for 7 hours;
2. The fact that wiring the building in advance and in secret would be an incredibly complex undertaking;
3. Why the building was wired at all, since for all of this to happen would require the towers to be wired correctly, planes hitting the main WTC 1&2 towers, those towers collapsing, the debris hitting WTC 7 and causing it to burn for hours before finally setting off the charges to bring it down... it's a plan of epically complex undertaking with no evidence beyond grainy video footage of a building falling down. So why waste taxpayer dollars to chase what amounts to little more than conspiracy fantasy?

Plus, there's this bizarre idea that somehow a building hit by debris and then left to burn for 7 hours should somehow be impervious to eventual structural failure leading to collapse. Like somehow buildings in America are immune to gravity unless specially placed explosives are involved. I just can't fathom the mentality to believe all that.

>> ^Fade:
Well WTC7 certainly looks like a controlled demo which to my mind calls for a little investigation to at least rule it out. There was no evidence of a planet destroying space-station in the videos I have seen.

>> ^Jinx:

>> ^Duckman33:
I'll leave this here too:
http://i.imgur.com/EZLaA.jpg

He didn't say the US didn't gain anything by it, but not even Hitler murdered 3000 of his own countrymen to build a stronger case against the Jews. It especially doesn't make any sense when you consider that they had to sell the idea of WMDs in Iraq and fabricate as many connections between Saddam and Osama as possible. If they really plotted to bring those buildings down and had the competence to keep it so well hidden then why did they get the wrong fall guy?

There are no such thing as secrets now anyway. Given the scale of 9/11, the coordination with the planes striking the building...any conspiracy must have had a rather large number of people involved. Any conspirator must have known there was a massive risk that any one of these people would have second thoughts about murdering thousands of civilians or improperly covering their tracks. The chance of discovery is colossal and I can't see how the benefits of this stunt would ever outweight the risks. Succeed and you get the Patriot Act. Fail and you doom your party/political ideology for the next century or two.
Razer: "Plane hit building. Building fall down."


I posted that for something to think about, not as a plausible theory as to why or how 9/11 happened. But please, go on with your bad self. And I will state for the record again since you guys REALLY don't seem to get it, I never said Bush had anything to do with 9/11. In fact if you read my comments in this thread it's pretty obvious I'm not of that line of thinking in this matter. But by all means guys, keep putting words in my mouth.

>> ^Duckman33:

I'll leave this here too:
http://i.imgur.com/EZLaA.jpg

He didn't say the US didn't gain anything by it, but not even Hitler murdered 3000 of his own countrymen to build a stronger case against the Jews. It especially doesn't make any sense when you consider that they had to sell the idea of WMDs in Iraq and fabricate as many connections between Saddam and Osama as possible. If they really plotted to bring those buildings down and had the competence to keep it so well hidden then why did they get the wrong fall guy?


There are no such thing as secrets now anyway. Given the scale of 9/11, the coordination with the planes striking the building...any conspiracy must have had a rather large number of people involved. Any conspirator must have known there was a massive risk that any one of these people would have second thoughts about murdering thousands of civilians or improperly covering their tracks. The chance of discovery is colossal and I can't see how the benefits of this stunt would ever outweight the risks. Succeed and you get the Patriot Act. Fail and you doom your party/political ideology for the next century or two.

Razer: "Plane hit building. Building fall down."

>> ^dannym3141:

@Skeeve don't forget, nothing you say would convince a conspiracy theorist off this idea. Because nothing can convince them off it - no authority is high enough because their nature makes them question authority. The only way they'll change is by letting them go and see for themselves and find the evidence glaring them in the face, but how the hell do you do that with a building that burned down years ago?
These people are so quick to shout "Hah, that building wouldn't fall down in a fire!" but honestly, what do you people know about that? What do any of you really know about the internal structure of a high rise or its construction, or exactly what a fire in a high rise can do? Do you even know what a fire in a normal room can do? Are you sure you're not guessing?


It's worse than just "questioning authority" -- questioning authority can be a very positive thing.

We're talking about the people who think Obama was born in Kenya, that global warming is a hoax, that vaccines are dangerous, and that the government is gonna send the army to take away their guns any day now.

America seems to have been totally overrun by a strain of people who have absolute, unshakeable faith in things that aren't supported by even a shred of evidence, or worse, are demonstrably false.

They aren't questioning authority -- they're lashing out at people who question their authority.

I didn't miss that memo, but after reading their opinions I decided to put more stock in the opinions of the other 99% of architects and engineers in the US alone who either didn't agree or didn't think the issue was worthy of comment.

You apparently missed the memo about the fallibility of professionals including architects, engineers, doctors, lawyers (especially), and accountants (see Arthur Anderson and Enron). There are just as many people wearing tinfoil hats in the professions as in any other field. >> ^Fade:

I guess you missed the memo from the 1500 architects and engineers who might have the qualifications to debate the 'evidence'.>> ^dannym3141:
@Skeeve don't forget, nothing you say would convince a conspiracy theorist off this idea. Because nothing can convince them off it - no authority is high enough because their nature makes them question authority. The only way they'll change is by letting them go and see for themselves and find the evidence glaring them in the face, but how the hell do you do that with a building that burned down years ago?
These people are so quick to shout "Hah, that building wouldn't fall down in a fire!" but honestly, what do you people know about that? What do any of you really know about the internal structure of a high rise or its construction, or exactly what a fire in a high rise can do? Do you even know what a fire in a normal room can do? Are you sure you're not guessing?