My point was that those who uses in celebrations or hunting, are not firing the gun in order to kill another human being. i know this is my personal value and not shared by all (there are tons of examples where my logic fails..) but those who take the gun to kill another human, have to accept the fact that it might kill them. It's my upbringing, being third generation conscious objectors (grandfather, during the continuation war and my father went to jail because of it, law was changed, i didn't have to) but picking up that gun in that pretext is next to murder (it's a murder when you succeed in your quest of killing someone, anyone that happens to be wearing different clothes than your side)

So getting killed from spiked up bullet is much harder to "justify", but with grenades and mortar etc the issue is more clear. I'm not saying this is RIGHT as spiking the ammo is an act of war too. With ammo it can easily spread and wreak havoc years and years from now, just like landmines, spreading the casualities of war well outside that particular conflict.

Tragic to think that when these prodigal sons emerge from their sheltered upbringing to face the grim, meathook reality of modern politics and the ignorant frivolity of the masses, they will likely be depressed for the rest of their lives.

The book is filled with statistics that support the position (often to the point of information overload).

And you're right that we need to address the root of the problem but you have the wrong root. Lousy upbringings can indeed lead to criminal behaviour, but what leads to lousy upbringings?

Lack of education, unemployment, perceived social inequality all factor into it. And yes, some people are just messed up and shouldn't have kids, but I'd say they are a minority.

So instead of your frankly insane, dystopian, eugenics-based future, we could instead look at ways to make everyone better off. First step, give women control over their reproductive cycle. This has been shown time and again to be one of the keys points in raising a societies economic and social values.

To get back to the original point here, how do these young men, (who had every advantage in life, compared to 90% of the world anyway) fit into your future?

When was torture last sanctioned by the state? The dark ages? Of course violent crime was higher in the dark ages. It was pretty difficult to enforce the law back then due to the lack of cars, satellites, computers, security cameras, guns, etc, not to mention that laws varied greatly depending on which part of the land you lived in and what lords you served under. Does Pinker's book have any contemporary examples that support your position?

In any case, regardless of whether you favor punishment or rehabilitation, the real solution is to address the root of the problem: lousy upbringings. Anyone can have children, no matter how qualified they are. They can have a criminal record, a history of mental illness and be unemploymed and still have as many kids as they want. It's ridiculous and the reason why so many children grow up to be criminals. We need to have strictly enforced regulation of reproduction. Parents should have to go through a thorough testing process and meet certain requirements (like having enough money to actually support a family) before being allowed to have kids. If a woman walks into a hospital with an unlicensed pregnancy, both she and the father should be arrested and executed without trial. Legal births would be recorded in an international database, which employers and government workers would reference during any hiring, licensing or authorization process. Essentially, illegal children would have no chance of ever becoming a part of regular society, forcing them to the outskirts and slums. This would make it easier to focus raids and clear out the most prominent concentrations of criminals.

This may sound dystopian but it's really the only way to fix the root of the problem. You will never be able to make people better if you let them be raised under lousy conditions. Morality is learned, not innate. If we want everyone to follow the same rules, they need to be taught to respect them. If the parents don't, why would the children?

Yes, but you as well, are leaving out a key detail.
She wasn't killed instantaneously. (And nothing you can say will change that statement.) Regardless whether she was "declared" dead or not as she was still alive. Even though she was thought to be dead, clearly her brain was still functioning and was not dead. Her subconscious was still functioning.

Last night I dreamed I was chased by a dinosaur, this does not give evidence that dinosaurs are waiting for us in the afterlife. (poor example maybe - but my point is there.)

And no, in answer to your question, I have NEVER seen nor experienced anything in this existence that gives the possibility that a God exists - sorry. (all due respect.)

And you are wrong about me not looking for anything past the "world view" as you put it. I am spiritual, I'd love for a representation of the mystical to give evidence to itself. I'd love to live in that make believe world, honestly. I just learned early that it isn't there. I don't explain things away but I've never seen anything that could prove it existed. You are not privileged to my experiences so you shouldn't make assumptions - only I know what I give belief to. My reality lays on a solid foundation while yours lays somewhere else.

You are correct in that I don't give myself freely to the unprovable, purely for the reason of faith, that it exists. That, to me, would be more than foolish. If I was to do so, I would fall prey to every word, any person said to me. I would have to join all religions and believe in them all even though they contradict one another. And what is to stop me there, why shouldn't I believe every person who has ever tried to swindle me. Faith is something earned and not given freely and so far religion has swindled me far more in life than it has proven itself to have any basis in reality.

Call me an Atheist if you like, but I prefer the term Realist. I am a Realist who likes to play at fantasy but in the end, I always land with my feat back on solid ground knowing which way is up.




>> ^shinyblurry:

You're leaving at a few key details in your analysis here. Number one, according to her testimony she was declared dead at the hospital. You're saying this was all the result of a subconscious mind on guilt overload, but she didn't know that she was dead until after she experienced the NDE. When she got hit by the car, she was killed instantaneously. She believed that she was dead because, at the moment of impact, she was flung out of her body into a dark tunnel with demons gnashing at her. For her to be influenced by guilt would necessitate that she already knew what was going on, but she didn't until after the experience had already began. It wasn't as if she was laying there for a time, knowing she was about to die. It all happened in a moments time.
Second, she came back to life at the moment that Jesus saved her. When she called upon His name, He came and lifted her back into the light, and it was then that she regained consciousness in the hospital. Do you believe this is a coincidence?
Your explanation is plausible if your underlying presupposition is correct, that Jesus Christ is not alive, but you have no way of confirming that. There is no instrumentation which is going to confirm your explanation either. You really have no basis for ruling out the possibility that her testimony is true, in actuality. So why do you? Have you never experienced anything in all your life which tells you there could be a God out there?
To note, we're both looking at the same evidence, but we're interpreting it different. The reason we interpret it differently is because we both have certain presuppositions about reality, which you could call a worldview. A worldview is like a pair of glasses that you look through to view reality. Your presuppositions are like the prescription for those glasses, and if your presuppositions are faulty, your interpretation of what you see will lead you to faulty conclusions.
The main presupposition of atheists is that of atheistic naturalism. To an atheist, the things of the spirit are ruled out apriori, so therefore there must be a naturalistic explanation for everything. So, an atheist will completely miss any explanation which doesn't fit into naturalistic assumptions, because they are interpreting every evidence through a naturalistic lens. Your explanation here is that this woman is simply a victim of her own lifelong conditioning, which as I pointed out doesn't quite line up with the facts. If what she described is 100 percent true, you would never once reach that conclusion, because of those presuppositions. How do you know you're not simply the victim of lifelong conditioning towards naturalistic assumptions about reality? This is after all what we are taught in school, and which is reinforced in the culture, popular media, books, music, and the like.
>> ^Sagemind:
This sounds like a person who believed in God but didn't stand by the principles of religion. Then she had a close call/ near death experience which forced her to have a guilt overload.
During that overload, she experienced everything she knew in her sub-conscience, everything she had been taught about heaven and hell as she focused on her fears and guilt over the life she had lead.
I'll guarantee she she was brought up in a religious home and religion was a large part of her life, so that when this experience came, her fear of death, caused her to remember everything she had been indoctrinated with. Everything she is saying is true for her and is a sentimental retelling of her experience but this just shows you how fragile and influential the human brain is to ideas if the ideologies are ingrained enough.
I believe she saw and felt what she did, but I also believe what she experienced was a manifestation of indoctrination and fear influenced by guilt which had been ingrained into her during her years of upbringing.
This is why religion is a dangerous tool. It's very powerful and influential and can be used to as a tool to over-power a person's natural abilities to discern the differences between reality and fantasy.

You're leaving at a few key details in your analysis here. Number one, according to her testimony she was declared dead at the hospital. You're saying this was all the result of a subconscious mind on guilt overload, but she didn't know that she was dead until after she experienced the NDE. When she got hit by the car, she was killed instantaneously. She believed that she was dead because, at the moment of impact, she was flung out of her body into a dark tunnel with demons gnashing at her. For her to be influenced by guilt would necessitate that she already knew what was going on, but she didn't until after the experience had already began. It wasn't as if she was laying there for a time, knowing she was about to die. It all happened in a moments time.

Second, she came back to life at the moment that Jesus saved her. When she called upon His name, He came and lifted her back into the light, and it was then that she regained consciousness in the hospital. Do you believe this is a coincidence?

Your explanation is plausible if your underlying presupposition is correct, that Jesus Christ is not alive, but you have no way of confirming that. There is no instrumentation which is going to confirm your explanation either. You really have no basis for ruling out the possibility that her testimony is true, in actuality. So why do you? Have you never experienced anything in all your life which tells you there could be a God out there?

To note, we're both looking at the same evidence, but we're interpreting it different. The reason we interpret it differently is because we both have certain presuppositions about reality, which you could call a worldview. A worldview is like a pair of glasses that you look through to view reality. Your presuppositions are like the prescription for those glasses, and if your presuppositions are faulty, your interpretation of what you see will lead you to faulty conclusions.

The main presupposition of atheists is that of atheistic naturalism. To an atheist, the things of the spirit are ruled out apriori, so therefore there *must* be a naturalistic explanation for everything. So, an atheist will completely miss any explanation which doesn't fit into naturalistic assumptions, because they are interpreting every evidence through a naturalistic lens. Your explanation here is that this woman is simply a victim of her own lifelong conditioning, which as I pointed out doesn't quite line up with the facts. If what she described is 100 percent true, you would never once reach that conclusion, because of those presuppositions. How do you know you're not simply the victim of lifelong conditioning towards naturalistic assumptions about reality? This is after all what we are taught in school, and which is reinforced in the culture, popular media, books, music, and the like.

>> ^Sagemind:

This sounds like a person who believed in God but didn't stand by the principles of religion. Then she had a close call/ near death experience which forced her to have a guilt overload.
During that overload, she experienced everything she knew in her sub-conscience, everything she had been taught about heaven and hell as she focused on her fears and guilt over the life she had lead.
I'll guarantee she she was brought up in a religious home and religion was a large part of her life, so that when this experience came, her fear of death, caused her to remember everything she had been indoctrinated with. Everything she is saying is true for her and is a sentimental retelling of her experience but this just shows you how fragile and influential the human brain is to ideas if the ideologies are ingrained enough.
I believe she saw and felt what she did, but I also believe what she experienced was a manifestation of indoctrination and fear influenced by guilt which had been ingrained into her during her years of upbringing.
This is why religion is a dangerous tool. It's very powerful and influential and can be used to as a tool to over-power a person's natural abilities to discern the differences between reality and fantasy.

This sounds like a person who believed in God but didn't stand by the principles of religion. Then she had a close call/ near death experience which forced her to have a guilt overload.

During that overload, she experienced everything she knew in her sub-conscience, everything she had been taught about heaven and hell as she focused on her fears and guilt over the life she had lead.

I'll guarantee she she was brought up in a religious home and religion was a large part of her life, so that when this experience came, her fear of death, caused her to remember everything she had been indoctrinated with. Everything she is saying is true for her and is a sentimental retelling of her experience but this just shows you how fragile and influential the human brain is to ideas if the ideologies are ingrained enough.

I believe she saw and felt what she did, but I also believe what she experienced was a manifestation of indoctrination and fear influenced by guilt which had been ingrained into her during her years of upbringing.

This is why religion is a dangerous tool. It's very powerful and influential and can be used to as a tool to over-power a person's natural abilities to discern the differences between reality and fantasy.

Good conversation points Yogi.

Hurting people isn't a freedom of speech issue. He stalked her and tormented her. If he'd done it by distributing flyers it would still be criminal, not protected speech.

I don't think that vigilantism is justice, but when someone does something bad to someone else, IMO they give up the expectation that others won't do that same thing to them. In other words, while I wouldn't be the one who maliciously distributes his info, he has to accept that it's fair by virtue of his own actions.

Thanks for being honest and open about your feelings relating to judgement of her suicide. You've made most of my argument for me already, but I'll add a couple things. First, you say, "... I don't think words is a good enough reason." You say it like words are just painless electric signals produced in our brains from oscillations of our eardrums, and so shouldn't cause anxiety. I can't disagree more. I was bullied as a kid for two years, and looking back, I'm really thankful that it was almost all physical and exclusion. It hurt, and I felt powerless, but the people bullying me didn't spend a lot of effort attacking my character aside from calling me fag. They also didn't begin to ruin my social life by turning entire schools against me, even after moving. And even if it weren't that severe, to a teenager, any words that contain some ring of truth will stick. And teens are extremely self-conscious, so anything negative they will accept as probably accurate.

Second, you say, "...without good reason". The word "good" is itself a judgement. That guy told Amanda since she was 12 that she was never going to have any friends, and he had made sure of it. She had never known any other social reality, and it seemed like the torment was literally going to last forever. To a bullied 15-year-old, the time when things will be better is probably four years away. To me that's nothing, probably you neither. I'm going to be 40 in four years, and it feels like it's next door. Yet for me at 15, 19 was an imaginary concept. Having no friends at 15, in our primitive brains, equals certain death. It wasn't a logical decision any more than hooking up with some guy with a girlfriend who said he liked her.

Finally, and this isn't my strongest point here, you say that you went through hard times and never thought suicide was the answer. For you. You're not the yardstick the rest of the world is measured by. I could equally ask you why you didn't kill yourself when clearly Amanda thought it was the answer. People are just different.

Less to argue with you, and more to move along your internal debate.

As for me, I'm not exactly settled in my full opinion, but I can say I respect the decision to commit suicide. This article by Michael Landsberg about his friend, hockey player Wade Belak's suicide was formative for me. In it he says, "People kill themselves when the fear of living another moment outweighs the fear of dying at that moment." People with loving young families and without any "obvious" problems find reason to kill themselves. I have to acknowledge that reality in any personal opinion of suicide.>> ^Yogi:

This is a very sticky subject especially if you don't understand all the nuance. I mean it's about freedom or speech which Americans cherish rightly but it's also about not acting like a complete dick, which it seems most Americans still cherish. Now tormenting or abuse I think is much different than me coming on here and telling @Sagemind to go kill himself because he smells.
I'm not sure if I agree with Anon releasing this persons info either. Maybe it makes you feel good in the revenge center but is that really how we want justice to work?
Personally I also have an issue with someone who committed suicide. I'm still exploring it because I don't think it's right for me to tell someone how they should react to things, especially when given differences in upbringing or simple brain chemistry. I guess I'll just say that I think suicide is quitting, I don't like it and I don't really respect people that do it without good reason, and I don't think words is a good enough reason. This is my experience from my life of horror and feeling like utter shit a lot of the time. I never thought that ending it would be an answer and I don't necessarily understand those that do. Sorry I didn't want to cede the intellectual ground but I felt I had to be honest and maybe that'll start a conversation about how other people feel about people who commit suicide.

Well said, Yogi. I think the awareness of bullying and online safety is what we should take away from this story. I'm glad the vid made it to the Sift if only to promote awareness.

>> ^Yogi:

This is a very sticky subject especially if you don't understand all the nuance. I mean it's about freedom or speech which Americans cherish rightly but it's also about not acting like a complete dick, which it seems most Americans still cherish. Now tormenting or abuse I think is much different than me coming on here and telling @Sagemind to go kill himself because he smells.
I'm not sure if I agree with Anon releasing this persons info either. Maybe it makes you feel good in the revenge center but is that really how we want justice to work?
Personally I also have an issue with someone who committed suicide. I'm still exploring it because I don't think it's right for me to tell someone how they should react to things, especially when given differences in upbringing or simple brain chemistry. I guess I'll just say that I think suicide is quitting, I don't like it and I don't really respect people that do it without good reason, and I don't think words is a good enough reason. This is my experience from my life of horror and feeling like utter shit a lot of the time. I never thought that ending it would be an answer and I don't necessarily understand those that do. Sorry I didn't want to cede the intellectual ground but I felt I had to be honest and maybe that'll start a conversation about how other people feel about people who commit suicide.

This is a very sticky subject especially if you don't understand all the nuance. I mean it's about freedom or speech which Americans cherish rightly but it's also about not acting like a complete dick, which it seems most Americans still cherish. Now tormenting or abuse I think is much different than me coming on here and telling @Sagemind to go kill himself because he smells.

I'm not sure if I agree with Anon releasing this persons info either. Maybe it makes you feel good in the revenge center but is that really how we want justice to work?

Personally I also have an issue with someone who committed suicide. I'm still exploring it because I don't think it's right for me to tell someone how they should react to things, especially when given differences in upbringing or simple brain chemistry. I guess I'll just say that I think suicide is quitting, I don't like it and I don't really respect people that do it without good reason, and I don't think words is a good enough reason. This is my experience from my life of horror and feeling like utter shit a lot of the time. I never thought that ending it would be an answer and I don't necessarily understand those that do. Sorry I didn't want to cede the intellectual ground but I felt I had to be honest and maybe that'll start a conversation about how other people feel about people who commit suicide.

>> ^bobknight33:

Some of the most stupid reason to vote for Obama.
Obama has 1/2 Asian sister - so vote Obama.
Obama has 3 Asians working for him - so vote Obama.
I was interned in the 40s - so vote Obama.
Asians have low voter turn out - so vote Obama.


He's making the case to Asian Americans that Obama cares about and understands their interests. Obama's cabinet appointments, family and upbringing help make that point. As for low voter turn out among Asian Americans, I think Takei is making a more general point that their community has gone through hardship and discrimination to get where they are now, and it's a waste if the younger generation doesn't choose to participate in democracy.

>> ^Sagemind:

Emotions, hate and everything negative create a killer - thereby emotion, forgiveness and love shall set him free.
...And by free, I mean free to remorse and begin a process of feeling what it is to be human again.
Since negative forces create a killer, condemnation and negativity will never penetrate to hard shell he has around him. The unexpected realization that someone is reaching out, someone you expect only condemnation from can be the chisels to start the first crack of remorse and acceptance that maybe someone out there cares.


Very well put.

He is so used to negative feedback from people, it probably just fuels how he validates his actions. It is the unexpected act of kindness that he was not prepared for.

When I see someone who is sick, I see a symptom of that illness. When I see a member of society acting in this fashion I see a symptom of a social illness. We are all responsible for our own actions, don't get me wrong. However I wonder if there was any point in this man's upbringing where something could have been done differently so that he wouldn't have brought so much pain to others.

On a side note I have a ton of respect (despite his tendency towards believing in mythology) for a man who can forgive another for such a devastating act of cruelty.

Undermining the freedoms of a culture/society through violence or through political manipulation does not change the fact that you are still a device of social segregation.

The point is that there are certain people that are obsessed with trying to exert control over others they perceive to be inferior. I would argue it is out of fear and personal insecurities, which is perhaps a different topic.

Why is this a facet of our species in this day and age? We have the power to perceive and evaluate ourselves and our actions as they affect the people around use. What is it in our society or culture or upbringings that is affecting our lack of introspection so much?

There are some people that are not reaching a basic level of personal enlightenment that are negatively affecting so many around them. I am worried, our destination as a species is not so clear nor bright when I look forward in time.

>> ^hpqp:

The two most popular Bible stories for kids after the baby Jeebus one are the Garden of Eden/Creation story (hello incest) and the Noah and the Flood story (hello incest and full-scale genocide). Am I wrong?
>> ^Yogi:
>> ^hpqp:
>> ^PostalBlowfish:
In the sense that Creationism is basically a fairy tale, it is appropriate for children. Unfortunately, it's not treated like that. It becomes part of an indoctrination that discourages critical thinking, and there is no question to me that such indoctrination is abuse.

I would not want my kids to be read the kinds of "fairy tales" found in the Bible. The Grimm tales are dark enough, without adding incest, genocide and mass genital mutilation to the mix. The Bible is more like Ovid's Metamorphoses; an important piece of literature you don't put into small children's hands.

Yeah they don't make children read those stories. I'm sure there's one church somewhere that does but everyone I've ever talked to that had a "Churchy" upbringing never heard about that side of the bible. Death yeah, but watch tv today and you get tons of death, so it's not really that big of a deal.



There was never any incest or genocide the way that they tell them. It matters a lot how you present the stories.

The two most popular Bible stories for kids after the baby Jeebus one are the Garden of Eden/Creation story (hello incest) and the Noah and the Flood story (hello incest and full-scale genocide). Am I wrong?
>> ^Yogi:

>> ^hpqp:
>> ^PostalBlowfish:
In the sense that Creationism is basically a fairy tale, it is appropriate for children. Unfortunately, it's not treated like that. It becomes part of an indoctrination that discourages critical thinking, and there is no question to me that such indoctrination is abuse.

I would not want my kids to be read the kinds of "fairy tales" found in the Bible. The Grimm tales are dark enough, without adding incest, genocide and mass genital mutilation to the mix. The Bible is more like Ovid's Metamorphoses; an important piece of literature you don't put into small children's hands.

Yeah they don't make children read those stories. I'm sure there's one church somewhere that does but everyone I've ever talked to that had a "Churchy" upbringing never heard about that side of the bible. Death yeah, but watch tv today and you get tons of death, so it's not really that big of a deal.