Love your reply and POV. You got it pretty much 100% right IMO. I admit, as I Christian, I went in from a far more cynical perspective because this "wholly uninterested god" is way different from the God of the Bible. Not that God didn't bring some crazy disasters on humans in the OT, but damn, not this way or purpose as in the videos.

I don't mind people mocking God or Christians or overly religious zealots of any faith. Many are wholly deserved to be mocked. People (that includes me, God knows I'm a dumbass, lol) need to be held responsible for their own crap & offensiveness and be called out.

Still, I feel this series is not helping any discussion, just good for a laugh (maybe?) and some decent video editing & production. It's harmless if seen as a philosophical piece.

I'd love to see some intelligent, cool-headed no-trolling discussions on the pros & cons, history & evolution of religion and such. But it's really tough when religion is so politicized (especially in the USA) and often hijacked for self-serving purposes. (Godly man Roy Moore my ass!)

I live in Canada, and I would call myself a Christian in public here, but in the US? No freaking way... it's not out of fear of being mocked and anything... it's that I hardly see me as anything similar to those "evangelicals" from my own limited exposure to them in US media. It's like they're a different (offensive) beast.

I'm not sure how he thought that would hold him... It this Evolution in Action?

Your video, The Evolution of Michael Jackson's Dance - By Ricardo Walker, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

As far as I know you are pretty much spot on. The 919 was run in the LMP1 class with 8 megajoules of hybrid power and a turbo 4 cylinder petrol engine.

This evolution of the 919 has increased the power of both systems, by removing the fuel flow restrictions and increasing the output of the electric motors. The boost graphic is probably showing the deployment of the stored power from the lithium batteries, but it wasn't 100% clear to me (usually they will indicate when it is charging or discharging, and this didn't).

I didn't find a really good reference, but there is a bit on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_919_Hybrid

There is a generally held belief that consciousness is a mystery of science or a miracle of faith; that consciousness was attained instantly (or granted by god), and that one has either attained self awareness or has not.

I don't believe any of that. I believe like all things in biology, consciousness evolved to maximise a benefit, and occurred gradually, without any magic or mystery. The closest exurb1a gets to that is when he says at 6:28:

"Maybe evolution accidentally made some higher mammals on Earth self-aware because it's better for problem solving or something"

We need to know what other people are thinking and this is the problem that consciousness solves. If a neighbouring tribe enters your territory then predicting whether they come to trade, mate, steal or attack is beneficial to survival.

Initially this may be done through simulation - imagining the future based on past experience. A flood approaching your cave is bad news. Being surrounded by lions is not good. Surrounding a lone bison is dinner. Being charged by a screaming tribe is an upcoming fight.

We could only simulate another person's actions, but we had no experience that allows us to simulate another person's thoughts. You may predict that giving your hungry neighbour a meal may suppress their urge to raid your supplies but you still can't simply open their head and see what they are thinking.

Then for the benefit of cooperation and coordination, we started to talk, and everything changed.

Communication not only allows us to speak our mind, but allows us to model the minds of others. We can gain an understanding of another person's motivations long before they act upon them. The need to simulate another person's thoughts becomes more nuanced and complex. Do they want to trade, or do they want to cheat?

Yet still we cannot look into the minds of others and verify our models of them. If we had access to an actual working brain we could gradually strengthen that model with reference to how an actual brain works, and we happen to have access to such a brain, our own!

If we monitored ourselves then we could validate a general model of thought against real urges, real experiences, real problem solving and real motivations. Once we apply our own selves to a model of thought we become much better at modelling the thoughts of others.

And what better way to render that model than with speech itself? To use all of our existing cognitive skills and simply simulate others sharing their thoughts with us.

At 3:15 exurb1a referenced a famous experiment that showed that we make decisions before we become aware of them. This lends evidence to suppose that our consciousness is not the driver of our thoughts, but a monitor - an interpretation of our subconscious that feeds our model of how people think.

Not everybody is the same. We all have different temperaments. Some of us are less predictable than others, and we tend to avoid such people. Some are more amenable to co-operation, others are stubborn. To understand the temperament of one we must compare them to another. If we are to compare the model of another's mind to our own, and we simulate their mind as speech, then we must also simulate our own mind as speech. Then not only are we conscious, we are self-aware.

Add in a feedback loop of social norms, etiquette, acceptable behaviour, expected behaviour, cooperation and co-dependence, game theory and sustainable societies and this conscious model eventually becomes a lot more nuanced than it first started - allowing for abstract concepts such as empathy, shame, guilt, remorse, resentment, contempt, kinship, friendship, nurture, pride, and love.

Consciousness is magical, but not magic.

I wasn't raised in the church nor did anyone ever tell me about the Lord. I came to believe in God and Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior entirely by personal revelation.

The information bubble that he talks about equally applies to secular society. Many elements of our society, be it entertainment, media, or education all point to the secular creation story. Watch basically any nature video and you'll see the indoctrination "blah blah evolution blah blah deep time blah blah deep time blah blah evolution" etc

I never had a Christian or spiritual friend, my friends and family all believed what I did. That wasn't by design since no one ever brought up God or spiritual beliefs to me. There was zero information coming into my life about God.

I developed an arrogance towards believers although I was incredibly ignorant about what they believed. I had cherry picked a few bible verses which I thought disproved their religion, and that's about all I had.

The majority of unbelievers are in the position I was in. I would have gone that way forever if God hadn't revealed Himself to me.

This video is partly true, as beliefs can develop in a bubble. Then it brings up the "truth" as the antidote, yet what is the truth according to the creators? They failed to define what it is, only that it wouldn't be a belief in God, with no proof for that at all. True believers in the secular story don't see that as faith, because of the indoctrination, ironically

How do they take our money? Half the people who work for Walmart qualify for food stamps, even though they make so much money they could easily pay living wages, give benefits and still make a profit. This happens at big companies all across the country. That's how they take our money. But you, as a Christian, don't give a crap about those employees, they just better get another job and work 80 hours a week, so they don't have to get food stamps, just so the rich people running these companies and the shareholders can continue to reap in the huge amounts of money. Who cares Jesus commanded you to help the poor, and that the rich were going to hell, in modern Christian culture it is the rich who are blessed, and the poor who need to be vilified.

I'd wager most of us are working, probably 40 hours or more. Used to be that one person in the family working 40 hours a week was enough. Now that isn't enough in most cases. That money moved to the top. We have one of the largest and fastest growing wealth and income gaps in the world, and in history. Real world income isn't staying with inflation, but that 1% that modern Christians love so much, is staying so far ahead of the curve.

And as to, "they like making $8 an hour" bull fucking shit. While I'm making well more than that, I know that isn't true. They got the best job they can get. It's not that people aren't applying for the jobs that are out there, the employers aren't hiring the people applying. Perhaps that person making $8 an hour doesn't have a college degree, and can't afford to go to college. I have a worthless bachelor's degree in "programming and applications" which basically means I know how to use Word, which I knew before I had it (I could have taught even the programming classes for all the further we got into the programming). That degree cost me near $25k, and who knows how much it'll cost by the time I'm done paying it off with all the interest on it. Back on point, those people can apply to a ton of jobs, but unless they are qualified they won't get it, and even among those they do qualify for, there are a ton of applicants for each job out there. Nobody is working Walmart, McDonald's, Lowes or whatever because it's their dream job. It's the job they can get.

Why should you make a living off 40 hours a week, but they should have to work 80? Why the double standard? Why say let the rich owners and shareholders take that income that used to go to the workers and just say f the employees, so long as I make a living at 40, those people better just work longer. This is why I HATE Christianity because every person who thinks that is a Christian. Every person who thinks that LGBTQIA+ people shouldn't have equal rights under the law is a Christian. Every person who was shouting "let him die" at the Republican debate in '08 in regards to a guy without insurance, was a pro-life Christian. Every person who cheered at the idea of carpet bombing at the 16' debates were pro-life Christians. It's why, in the unlikely event it is real, I'd rather burn in hell than be around those people for all eternity. I've never met a good right-wing Christian. Never. They are all evil vile people who are full of greed and have zero of the love of Christ. Their witness is a shining example of how evil and vile Christianity is.

I'm surprised that fat tub of lard Trump, who dictated his son's letter, who dictated his Doctor's letter, can swing a golf club as often as he does... a guy who bitched and moaned about how often Obama golfed, and who's own golfing and vacation time has far outdone Obama's golfing and vacation time.

We got a President, flagrantly breaking the emoluments clause, and nobody seems to give a rats ass (save a few on the further end of the left, certainly the mainstream media, which Fox and the right accuse of being far left, doesn't care, nor do even moderate Democrats).

I know you don't believe he, or Fox and the like are the ones doing the lies and deceit... and nobody will ever convince you otherwise. I know, because I too once was a far-right Christian, who only trusted Fox, and thought the science of climate change was a joke, as was evolution and the big bang (though I was an old earth creationist, I could never get into the 6,000-10,000-year-old argument)... then I learned to actually vet my news and information. I have no doubt that most of my anger at the right is the fact I was so easily deceived for over 30, nearly 40 years of my life. Hopefully, in the highly unlikely event that others on the right learn that they are the ones who've been lied to, that they are the ones more guilty of spreading falsehoods, deceit, greed, and setting a horribly bad witness for their faith that does far more harm than good, they don't get as angry as I did and leave the faith all together and then hate all of what they once were a part of.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IO-YhtiiLc for an evolution compilation.

Evolution:
Dinosaur -> bird -> Predator

To be honest, I thought his description of the creation of the universe and evolution was quite good. Kinda like Neil DeGrasse Tyson on crack.

Whatever goes fastest.

It's interesting to look at the evolution of the boats in these races.

When someone asks you if you believe we evolved from apes, the correct answer is "I believe in evolution, but we did not evolve from apes, only an idiot would believe that about evolution."

CNN uses more facts in a day than FOX has total since the days I watched it day in and day out and railed against the commie left, and the dangers of the Demoncrats some 11 years ago (here's a prior version of me on an account I couldn't recover: https://videosift.com/video/Fox-News-takes-Rep-Wexler-from-the-Colbert-Report-out-of-context-I-enjoy-cocaine-because#comment-12957 ... I thought there was another post under that account where I blasted evolution but I don't see it)... had I not opened my eyes and started vetting, I'd probably be right there with you though, so you go and do your thing.

Aren't must asians lactose intolerant, as their ancient ancestors never drank milk on a regular basis? Interestingly it was evolution that gave neolithic european and middle eastern peoples the ability to digest and process lactose as adults, a genetic mutation that soon became widespread.

But for asia, must be a difficult market to break into.