>> ^hpqp:

I would not be in the least surprised if he turned out to be gay, and yes, this is very camp. That being said, I know several people whose personalities are contrary to the heterosexual "norm" and yet are attracted to the opposite sex. A boy in my class in highschool was incredibly camp, exuberant, living his life like a constant performance (he's an actor/musician/artist to boot). Needless to say, he had no problem attracting the girls (in fact, some older women in the art world were fawning over him as well, borderline creepy-like).
In any case, I am of the opinion that our discussion and perception of gender and sexual identity need to move beyond the binary stage:
http://videosift.com/video/Re-Teaching-Gender-and-Sexuality


No you are a fag or not its quite simple , if things were shades of Gray it would be hard to know who to shout at or who should get the death penalty or a good stoning.

and don't try and bring facts into the conversation only dirty liberals use facts to win an argument.

I would not be in the least surprised if he turned out to be gay, and yes, this is very camp. That being said, I know several people whose personalities are contrary to the heterosexual "norm" and yet are attracted to the opposite sex. A boy in my class in highschool was incredibly camp, exuberant, living his life like a constant performance (he's an actor/musician/artist to boot). Needless to say, he had no problem attracting the girls (in fact, some older women in the art world were fawning over him as well, borderline creepy-like).

In any case, I am of the opinion that our discussion and perception of gender and sexual identity need to move beyond the binary stage:

http://videosift.com/video/Re-Teaching-Gender-and-Sexuality

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^blankfist:
And I will answer the question. As I have above. People shouldn't be forced to pay for services at the barrel of a gun
So that's a "yes", to let him die?


So what are you saying? It's either have money extorted to socialize medical treatments for everyone or some hypothetical person dies? No, I don't live in such a binary world. There are nuances.

If someone doesn't take personal responsibility they may die. That goes for all of us. Life is a risk. And your life isn't anyone else's responsibility but your own. Though those who love you would certainly give everything to save you. And that's how it should be.

I wish there was a medical system in the US that took care of all of us. I really do. And I'd much rather my tax dollars go to that than the wars and nation-building your party and the other one has gotten us into. But don't pretend the government spends our money smartly and in our best interest or try to guilt us into believing it can. The guy who beats his wife will never change.

@SDGundamX

On the So-Called Benifits of Religious Belief

First, I'm going to assume that you simply googled "religion+health+studies" or stg like that, and did not read before posting; frankly, I don't blame you. I can only hope you are not as intellectually (and downright) dishonest as the second link you posted: the very first study cited is completely misinterpreted; basically, since kissing multiple partners can increase probability of meningococcal disease, and strict religious tradition would prevent that, religion prevents meningococcal disease. Yeah, really strong science in favour of faith right there. Some of the studies cited actually prove the opposite of what the site is peddling, but they excuse this by accusing the meddling of "Jews and Buddhists" in the prayer groups. I'm actually surprised at some of the studies the website cites, one of which concludes that "Certain forms of religiousness may increase the risk of death." Some of the studies make no mention of religion whatsoever. I could go on, but the point is made.

As for the studies - and they exist - that show positive correlation between health and religion, they concern only the social benefits of religion as community*. The so-called "New Atheists" are the first to point out this positive role, although the uniting and socially reinforcing factor of religion is the same force that fosters and reinforces hate, prejudice and discrimination against the self (guilt) and the "Other" (non-members of the ingroup, "heathens", gays, blacks, "Westerners", you name it). When people use the socially unifying and reinforcing benefits of religious organisations to defend religious beliefs, a certain comparison quickly comes to mind, which Godwin's law prohibits me from making...

As for faith itself, a recent study suggests that it can actually have negative effects on health, because of the stress and guilt believers put upon themselves when prayed for (link). Regardless, even if a positive placebo effect could/can be attributed to faith/rel. belief, it does not make it any less idiotic or objectionable than the belief in homeopathy or vaudou.
_{(if interested in what I think of the "faith is comforting" argument, pm me, I'm filling this thread enough as is)}

Your "two-sides of same coin" analogy fails entirely: telling a believer they're delusional is not denying their perception of their own happiness. A child happy at the prospect of Santa delivering presents is delusional, but truly happy. The idea that there is the same amount of evidence against and for religious belief is pure ludicrous. The Abrahamic God (let's not bring in the thousand and one others for now) has been logically disproven, even before el Jeebs showed up with his promise of hellfire. There is also substantial evidence that he is man-made, as are the book(s) describing him, which are full of inconsistencies (and outright fallacies) themselves.

Your comment about John Smith suggests that the only evidence that could convict a fraudster is confession; good thing you aren't a judge! Seriously though, your doubt probably stems from your lack of acquaintance with the evidence. You can start by reading his brief biography on Wikipedia; his con trick of "glass-seeing" (looking at shiny stones in a hat and pretending to see the location of treasure), for which he was arrested several times, is eerily familiar to the birth of the Book of Mormon (looking into a hat and "transcribing" gold plates that probably did not exist). He even had to change a passage after losing some pages of the transcript He received a divine revelation that the exact pages of the transcript that he lost needed to be changed, and that God had foreseen the loss of those papers (link).

The further one goes back in history, the harder it is to get historical evidence against religious beliefs, but there are always logical arguments that count as evidence as well (in arguing the idiocy of certain beliefs). Since my Santa analogy above seems not to have appealed to you, here's a different one. Imagine Kate were to have said "I do not believe in witchcraft/vampires because I'm not an idiot." Audience response? "Duh!" or stg similar. And yet there is the same amount of evidence for witches and vampires as there is for deities and afterlife**. The only difference between these three once highly common delusions is that one of them persists, even demanding respect, when it deserves at best critical scrutiny, at worst nothing but scorn.


<sub>*(and sometimes those benefits stemming from certain rules, like no alcohol/extra-marital sex etc... still nothing to do with belief.)

**Actually, there is relatively more evidence in favour of vampirism than of deities and afterlife</sub>


tl;dr: faith/rel. belief has no health benefits (check sources b4 posting); argument of religion's social role is double-edged; delusions are still delusions if they make you happy (try drugs); Joseph Smith Jr was a (convicted) fraud; idiotic beliefs are still idiotic when shared by the majority, just more socially unacceptable to mock.

>> ^SDGundamX:


See my answer to @BicycleRepairMan--what people accept as evidence in this matter and how much evidence is required for people to believe (or not believe) in a religion varies from person to person. Further complicating matters is that belief is not binary--it's a very wide continuum that includes people who aren't sure but practice the religion anyway.
My point about the New Atheists is that they feel the evidence against religion is sufficient. They are entitled to that opinion--but at the end of the day it is only an opinion. They should be free to express that opinion and tell people their reasons why they came to that conclusion. But they shouldn't pretend that their opinion is "fact" or belittle those who haven't come to the same conclusion.
About the "faith improving lives" bit--there is a fair bit of empirical evidence for the benefits of religious faith (in terms of both physical and psychological health: see here and here for more info) so I can't see how you can argue it is "delusional." Unless you meant that religion isn't the only way to obtain the same benefits, in which case I absolutely agree. But I find an interesting parallel in your thinking the New Atheists can tell a religious person that he/she is delusional if that religious person believes religion has a positive effect on their life with Christians who claim that atheists think they are happy but in reality suffering because they aren't one with Christ. Seems like two sides of the same coin to me.
I'm glad I amused you with my reference to Scientology. But this is a very rare case where we have a "smoking gun" so to speak. While I agree with you that there is a some suspicious stuff going on with Mormonism (how some passages in the Book of Mormon are very similar to other books available at the time John Smith lived), I'm unaware of any hard evidence that John Smith actually admitted to making it all up. Again with Mormonism, we're back to people having to personally decide for themselves what to believe (and all the issues that entails). [...]

>> ^hpqp:

@SDGundamX
You make a very fair point, and I agree with you to a certain degree. I agree that it is important to respect people, even when one does not respect certain among their beliefs.
When it comes to evidence, however, I disagree that there is no evidence against the beliefs of theists; all the evidence points to those beliefs being the creation of men from a specific timeperiod in history. In a court case you don't necessarily need a "smoking gun" to disprove someone's alibi, if their alibi is so obviously made up, or logically impossible.
As for the New Atheists themselves are the ones demanding special treatment. They are essentially saying that everyone must think the same way that they do, and those who don't are somehow inferior., I would refer you to my Santa Claus comparison above. Sure, Santa Claus may exist, but for a grown person to believe in Santa when all the evidence points to him being the production of the human imagination is - to put it bluntly - dumb... even idiotic.
You say A lot of people believe because they feel their faith improves their life--provides them with social and psychological comfort, gives them a sense of mission and hope, etc. This is exactly the delusion that the so-called "New Atheists" are trying to fight against (amongst other things) because not only is it an empty promise, but it also lends credence (and thus power) to the belief systems it is attached to (X-ity, Islam, etc.) which in turn do far more damage.
It's funny that you exclude Scientology because "Hubbard admitted to making it up". Historical evidence shows that John Smith was a conman and a charlatan, yet try and tell a mormon today that his/her faith is based on a conman's made up religion. The people who believe may or may not be charlatans (look at all the preachers/gurus who make huge profits... heck, check out the golden decked halls of the Vatican), but those who founded such beliefs most probably were, at least to a certain degree.
Finally, as to whether or not being rude is always counterproductive, it would seem that is a matter of divergent opinions (you can tell what mine are in the comments above).


See my answer to @BicycleRepairMan--what people accept as evidence in this matter and how much evidence is required for people to believe (or not believe) in a religion varies from person to person. Further complicating matters is that belief is not binary--it's a very wide continuum that includes people who aren't sure but practice the religion anyway.

My point about the New Atheists is that they feel the evidence against religion is sufficient. They are entitled to that opinion--but at the end of the day it is only an opinion. They should be free to express that opinion and tell people their reasons why they came to that conclusion. But they shouldn't pretend that their opinion is "fact" or belittle those who haven't come to the same conclusion.

About the "faith improving lives" bit--there is a fair bit of empirical evidence for the benefits of religious faith (in terms of both physical and psychological health: see here and here for more info) so I can't see how you can argue it is "delusional." Unless you meant that religion isn't the only way to obtain the same benefits, in which case I absolutely agree. But I find an interesting parallel in your thinking the New Atheists can tell a religious person that he/she is delusional if that religious person believes religion has a positive effect on their life with Christians who claim that atheists think they are happy but in reality suffering because they aren't one with Christ. Seems like two sides of the same coin to me.

I'm glad I amused you with my reference to Scientology. But this is a very rare case where we have a "smoking gun" so to speak. While I agree with you that there is a some suspicious stuff going on with Mormonism (how some passages in the Book of Mormon are very similar to other books available at the time John Smith lived), I'm unaware of any hard evidence that John Smith actually admitted to making it all up. Again with Mormonism, we're back to people having to personally decide for themselves what to believe (and all the issues that entails).

Just one more thing... since you believe there are times that being rude or insulting can be productive, I'd like to know if you have any examples (personal examples are fine) of that being the case. I'm just curious what brought you to that conclusion.

>> ^Lawdeedaw:
How did the debate become so simple? Raise taxes, build unions and universal healthcare versus cut taxes, free-market, personal responsibility. Does everything break down to this high school level prom-running event?
Call it pessimism or fatalism (Which it is not since I am trying to affect change for the better) but we complain like Rome when it fell--not like we should, not in a healthy way...
Sorry for the rant, which this last section was.


That post was packed to the gills with ideas, so forgive me for only trying to really respond to this one.

From where I sit, left vs. right is really about complexity vs. simplicity. It winds up being a binary choice, mostly because the right is unified behind a ridiculously simplistic philosophy (erase the government and life will be awesome), while every other possible idea gets lumped together as being "left".

Want to talk about policy we can put in place to make markets more efficient? Left-wing social engineering. Want to try to systematically cure poverty? Socialist, or maybe Communist. Want to try to find a way to keep us from killing ourselves with pollution? Nazi, clearly. Want to end wars, well, unless it's because you don't think government should have the power, you're obviously some kind of dirty hippie.

That accounts for a lot of the differences between the left & right political movements. We're mostly unified by being anti-right, rather than some idea of what we want to do. We'd probably still have trouble getting bills passed through Congress even if every seat was held by a Democrat.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

I see value in broad categories like Liberal and Conservative or Rock and Hip Hop. I find the small categories to be silly, like Nü-Hard-Alterno-Glitch-Break-Indie-Core-Hop and Strict-Conservo-Constitutionalist-Neo-Minarcho-Capitaltarianistism. >> ^blankfist:
>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_conservatism
Despite the fact that I honestly believe you are conservative, part of the fun of calling you conservative is your overly defensive reaction. If you were to own it or ignore it, the charge would disintegrate faster than Freddy Kruger.
Trolololo.
This from the guy who takes exception to political labels and thinks people aren't so easily definable. Tsk. You're trolling, sir. I have no candy for you today.


I'm discouraged you dichotomize people into such a simplistic and stark binary world view. Conservative vs. Liberal. Black vs. white. Good vs. evil. With us or against us.

I'm curious where in your either/or world view do you put the original liberals? And then what of these guys? I say this as a concerned friend, maybe don't claim absolute certainty about concepts you're having a hard time grasping. Troll on, friend. Troll on.

>> ^bcglorf:

I don't really think evil is a defining human attribute either. What I do believe is that evil behaviour is inescapable in a large enough group of humans. It is THE defining theme of the entirety of our written history, and NEVER have we been able to collectively escape it. The real trick is when the minority of evil humans culls the population of those that aren't where things are really ugly.
Am I fair in proposing that our frequent differences on the level of state control still required are degrees in a more similar philosophy, rather than a fundamental state or no state binary choice? Presumably you accept that a police force of some form on some level is still required by our society to stop the thieves, rapists and murders from simply taking what they want through force?


I do think we need security. I think that should be the responsibility of the individuals to voluntarily discover the best ways to do that. It could a police force or guns in the cabinet. But I don't think police should always be state run. I don't think the state should exist unless voluntary.

I understand we can't have a voluntary society tomorrow, and that some form of statism is required during a transitional period.

Going back to your evil comment, I see the evils of humans being created by the state. Sure, you have people who think god talks to them and they do some really disturbing shit individually, but generally mass genocide and wars are created by collectives, not individuals.

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^bcglorf:
It's not even that you can't jump to no government overnight. It's as your quote observes:
I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
You can't jump until men are prepared for it. I don't believe there has or will ever be a point in time where men are prepared for it. Furthermore, if the day did come dictatorships, monarchies, theocracies and democracies would ALL flourish and be wonderful utopias as well.
The trick to asking for 'better' government is that it must be better in light of the fact that human beings are greedy, selfish and frequently evil creatures willing to destroy one another for gain. For some even personal amusement counts as enough gain to inflict massive suffering on others. Improvements to government MUST take into account the existential flaws and failings of our species.

I don't accept your premise. Humans are "greedy" and "selfish" because of survival mechanisms, but I don't believe in "evil" as a defining factor of humanity. If you do, then why have hope for humanity at all? We might as well give up now.
It's a myopic and fear-driven position to think humans cannot achieve better, and certainly to think they cannot achieve better through their own self-reliance, intelligence, and the empathy for their common man.
His quote is pretty clear. No government is the best government, but we cannot have no government all at once. It would be chaos. But we should building a better government along the way with the end goal being the best government (i.e., no government). One day humans will be ready for that - It's not today and not in our lifetimes.


I don't really think evil is a defining human attribute either. What I do believe is that evil behaviour is inescapable in a large enough group of humans. It is THE defining theme of the entirety of our written history, and NEVER have we been able to collectively escape it. The real trick is when the minority of evil humans culls the population of those that aren't where things are really ugly.

Am I fair in proposing that our frequent differences on the level of state control still required are degrees in a more similar philosophy, rather than a fundamental state or no state binary choice? Presumably you accept that a police force of some form on some level is still required by our society to stop the thieves, rapists and murders from simply taking what they want through force?

Saying you have a fifty percent chance no matter what is like saying everyday there is a 50-50 chance of rain. You end up ignoring math/science in favor of a simple yes/no, on/off, 0/1 binary response.

@ant, I appreciate the contrast between your upvotes and downvotes of my comments, but I'd prefer we have a conversation about it, rather than this sort of binary approve/reject communication.

You're not obliged to do anything, and like I said to you, you don't owe me anything and you're not accountable to me. But if you're going to be involved at all, I'd much prefer that we talk about it.

@dgandhi

I don't understand why all self-reported data is "bad" data. Yes, self-reporting by itself is unreliable data. The problem with self-reporting is that you can't be sure the reason people checked a box on the survey is the reason the researcher thinks they checked the box. That's why it is so crucial to triangulate your data--for example with follow-up interviews and observation of how people actually behave (which, for example, Gallup doesn't do). Self-reported data is not "bad" so much as it is incomplete if that's all you're going to work with.

Case in point, in the article you linked to it turns out many people who only attended church once or twice a month reported themselves as attending "regularly." Yet these same people did not in fact differ in commitment to the religion as those that attended weekly--which is why they chose "regularly." So basically the Gallup poll provided an incomplete picture of what was going on (as did the weekly church attendance count--people going to church less often didn't necessarily mean people abandoning the religion entirely). In my comment to you, I was criticizing not the article you linked to but the polls cited by this video which were only surveys and not triangulated in any sort of way. Those are the ones I find unconvincing--for the same reasons the article you linked to found the Gallup data unconvincing. Sorry if I didn't make that clear. Also, have you read Ecklund's research? I would be interested in hearing your critique of the methodology used.

As to your second point, I disagree with several of your statements. You can in fact be religious and not believe in the existence of a good deity. Most Buddhists sects have been doing it for thousands of years. There was another Sift on here a while back about an aboriginal group that had only one deity--and it was evil. It basically existed to torment them. Are they not religious?

I also disagree that belief is binary. What empirical evidence do you have that belief is binary? Does anything in neuroscience support this? "Kind of" believing in something sounds a lot like agnosticism to me... you're not sure something is out there, but you're also not willing to rule out the possibility that it exists either. This guy explains why belief can't be binary a lot better than I can.

Now, the information in this video is questioning what would happen if we deported all atheists. It seems clear from the examples of atheists they show that they are referring to self-proclaimed atheists. The atheistempire poll cited by this video clearly states that 7% of the people polled described themselves as either atheist or agnostic. It's not the pinnacle of research by any means, which is why I asked if you have any other data about self-proclaimed atheists. That was the reason I was asking you to keep things simple, by the way. It's not that I don't believe there aren't a lot of hypocrites out there who claim they are religious but act in a different way--I most certainly do believe that. For the purposes of commenting on this video though, I'm completely unconcerned with them.

As an end note (to what unfortunately became a rather lengthy post--sorry), let me just explain that the only reason I commented on this video was because I was disgusted by how completely half-baked most of the sources were and at the completely unjustified conclusions it came to. Now, in your original reply to me you suggested that 10% was a conservative number for the number of atheists in the U.S. And I took that to mean self-proclaimed atheists, which I found hard to believe (which is why I asked for a source). But it's clear to me now that when you say "atheist" you are referring to everyone--the non-practicing Christian who only shows up for Christmas and Easter, the hypocrite who doesn't practice what he preaches, etc.--into the term atheist. And I agree with you--if you lump all those people together, yeah, you'll get more than 10%. But I don't agree with lumping them all together any more than I agree with your "binary" definition of belief.

>> ^SDGundamX:


Thanks for posting that link. It was an interesting read. Unfortunately, it didn't really persuade me that much. I'm not sure if you clicked the links I supplied or not, but the sources I cited didn't just do a simple survey--they did a full-on academic year-long research projects that followed up with in-depth interviews of the participants and structured data analysis.


I find that counterargument interesting. The only thing the study I linked shows is that self reporting for religiosity in the united states is extremely unreliable, and specifically very biased towards religion. Your response is to say that you want to only use studies that use larger datasets of self reported(bad) data, I really don't see how that makes you feel better about the reliability of the results.

>> ^SDGundamX:


EDIT: I'm really most interested in any evidence that 10% is a conservative number for the number of atheists in the U.S., because it seems from the studies I find that at this point 7% is probably about right and maybe even a little bit of an overestimate. Just to be clear, these studies are talking about people who are full-on self-described atheists, not people who are kind of on the fence. It doesn't make sense to try to count the people who are on the fence because it gets too confusing... do you include as an atheist a guy who goes to church every week but doesn't follow any of his religion's tenets? Do you include people who think "something" is out there but are turned off by the idea of--and don't participate in--organized religion?


This is a goal post move, atheist ≠ anti-theist, and religious ≠ non-anti-theist. To be religious requires a positive belief in the existence, and goodness of a deity. You can't "kind of" believe something, belief is binary, and largely unaffected by desire. The fact that Americans seem to want to be religious, or church goers, or whatever, has no bearing on their actual beliefs, or apparently on their actions, except that it seems to drive them to lie. And when we measure behaviors that we can measure against self-reporting, we find that self reporting is HUGELY biased in the favor of religion.

Now nobody can KNOW if you believe in something, and so I am left to conclude that your claims about what you believe are probably as accurate as your claims about where you were on Sunday. If even a conservative 1/4 of the claimed "believer" population does not actually believe, then the real number of non-theists is somewhere around 25%. I'm not claiming that it is that high, but I would not be unreasonable if I were to make that extrapolation from the data we have, I would be happy to consider any data (not self reported) that you might have that suggests that that extrapolation is untenable.

As to Mr. Paul, he doesn't seem to be able to accept a complex situation.

He wants to simplify things down by acting like providing financial aid to Pakistan and bombing Northern Waziristan at the same time is contradictory. The reality that any pundit or commentator has to recognize is that Pakistan is NOT a single unified nation. Even it's intelligence services and military are not unified in their allegiances. The official ISI stance is to fight the Pakistani Taliban and their terrorist attacks against Pakistani schools and hospitals. The official military stance is to fight the Pakistani Taliban in their attempts to take over the tribal regions of Pakistan. At the same time though, the former head of the ISI publicly states that all good muslims should hope for the victory of the Taliban, as a matter of course. Operations by the Pakistani Military are frequently leaked by internal elements before the operations are put in place.

The problem is that America has both it's closest allies and it's deepest enemies within Pakistan's government. The pro-democracy parties of the country like Benazir Bhutto's PPP sit in the National Assembly with members of the JUI-F who decried the tragic death of Osama as he was a muslim hero. It's worth remembering that Benazir is dead now, just as her father before her.

Ron Paul isn't alone, but every commentator that want to have some binary friend/foe label to place on Pakistan collectively will never find a foreign policy that makes any sense, because the very premise they are working from doesn't make any sense either.

Oh I really liked that, thanks for sharing it with me!

I'll promote one for you! You unselfish sifter you!
In reply to this comment by oritteropo:
See what you think of this one - http://videosift.com/video/BT-This-Binary-Universe-The-Internal-Locus

Argh, I should be promoting my own vids