I'm guessing that's probably because you generally deal with English-speaking atheists. Technically we are arguing against Allah when we argue against God but why would we use an Arab word? Allah is not the name of the God of Islam and, even if it were, it would be the same God anyway. "Allah" means "the one God". It's what Arab Christians call God as well.

Krishna... well, I would argue against Krishna in much the same way as I argue against Yahweh if it ever came up, but it doesn't. There is no significant number of Hindus trying to force their beliefs on us, fighting societal advancement, or passing laws based on their holy book. Where I live these are the actions of Christians and so, merely out of priority, these are the people I argue against most frequently.

I'm not talking about technicalities, though. If atheists are really so incensed about the evils of religion, they would be concentrating on religions, countries and cultures that had the most egregious examples of perceived evils. Instead, 99 percent of it concentrates on the God of the bible. The fact is, Christianity has played a very positive role in shaping our civilization. If you want to read about it:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-that-Made-Your-World/dp/1595553223/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343535302&sr=1-1&keywords=the+book+that+made+your+world

Yes, an entertaining speaker and an entertaining, and funny, presentation, which is why I'm so disappointed that he gradually took it off the rails over the course of it.

The meaning of life
He's arguing that the meaning he finds in his own life, living for Jesus, is the only valid meaning and therefore non-Christians must have no meaning in their lives.

What? That is not what he was arguing, by any stretch of the imagination. He argued that to be free = meaningless, and that no one can live that way, on top of all of the logical, emotional, psychological and philosophical convolutions that this truth entails. He proposed Christianity as a solution to this problem, but he did not make it the thrust of his argument. He asked at the end, what is your alternative? What is your reason for life?

Few, if any, people have the luxury of never struggling with this question and yet most of us, religious positions aside, find meaning in our lives eventually. Many of us recognize that, in the grand scheme, our lives, even our entire species, will have no impact; Nothing any of us does will ultimately affect the outcome of the universe or existence, but that does not make life meaningless. We find meaning in many things in life. We find meaning in our relationships with others. We find meaning in our work. We find meaning in religion, both Christianity and others. It's different for each of us and there's nothing wrong with that.

The argument is, though, that if you're free to make up your own meaning, then there is no actual meaning.

Unfortunately for him, he builds his entire argument on this false premise. Even more unfortunate (for him), he makes an excellent point about what to do with conclusions that are based on a false premise.

I could stop here since I've destroyed his premise, but I'll continue below.

You do not appear to have understood the basic premise of his argument..

Freedom
There's no such thing as absolute freedom, God or not, except maybe in non-existence.

You're splitting hairs here..he is talking about what it means to be truly be free, in the sense of not having any meaning imposed upon you from the outside.

Nobody can live without meaning
I think people who live without any meaning in life are few and far between but I do not see why they could not live that way. They may be miserable, depressed, suicidal even, but they will not cease to exist in any way that is different from how the rest of us will cease to exist.

No, he is saying that there is no way to live that way and be logically consistent with your own knowledge and experience.

The Straw Frankenstein Monster
Over the course of the video he constructs a straw man out of pieces of ideas from various philosophers and thinkers, assembling them like Frankenstein's Monster and then, fittingly, being destroyed by his own creation.

Give a specific example.

Scientific Theories
This whole section is fucked and was pointless to bring up in the first place. His argument has nothing to do with scientific theory.

CS Lewis
In the case of this quote, at least, Lewis is a damn fool. Love is no less real because it is a chemical process. Music is no less enjoyable, art no less beautiful because they are biological reacitons.

Flowers and Love
"The only way to enjoy flowers and love is to not think." This is a typical (and baffling, for me) anti-knowledge argument that I see so often from fundamentalist Christians. I don't get it. Flowers smell as good and look as beautiful after you learn how your senses function as they did when you were ignorant. There is no reason to avoid learning. The world is just as amazing when you understand it.

I think you might need to rewatch the video because I don't think you understood the point to these sections, or how they were supported by his overall argument.

>> ^xxovercastxx

Yeah, we really have no idea what's going on here. With no follow-up context we don't know if the guys really a cop or what.

One thing I will say, though, is that whatever video-stabilization algorithm is being used it is AMAZING! Just think what this video would look like without that filtering. Almost all of the left/right jitter and rotation that the incensed woman is doing with her camera is reduced to a semi-stable and coherent whole. It looks fairly simple, just matching pixels from frame to frame and allowing the active window to move around in the virtual space of the video, but still, the result is very effective. Pretty darn neat.

>> ^KnivesOut:

Your entire schtick is to lead us to the lord by your example. Carry on, you're doing a great job.>> ^shinyblurry:
>> ^KnivesOut:
@shinyblurry good job googling "jesus sarcasm" and posting the first result. However, where jesus seems like he's just kind of exasperated and using sarcasm as a way to lighten up the mood of his followers, you just come off as a passive-aggressive prick.

That was off of the top of my head. You're here calling me names when the only reason you're in this thread is to take the opportunity to give me a hard time because I (gasp) made a sarcastic comment. How ridiculous, considering the things people say to me around here. Where is your outrage for that? I made a valid point, but admittedly it was based on a misunderstanding of HPQPs views.



The Lord has some better examples for you. I agree with you, that participating in controversial topics with sarcasm probably isn't going to lead to anything good for the Lord. I was just slightly incensed based on a misunderstanding I had about hpqps viewpoint. I can admit I made a mistake, and you're welcome to continue trying to capitalize on it, but it isn't going to have a very long shelf-life

my bitch about the game is that when you "practice" with bots they all come after you, whereas in the original the bots would tackle each other as well as coming after you. you felt like you were part of the game rather than bait in a pool of blood-incensed white sharks.

Fixed

In reply to this comment by nanrod:
I can't see the video - it's private.

Some reporters can have a career-defining epiphany on their own, others must have it forced upon them.

Thanks meow!

In reply to this comment by Issykitty:
*quality entertainment

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

A person who spends a good deal of his time taking care of his body may find it slightly repulsive to pay for the care of someone whom has not taken care of himself, and perhaps rightly so.

But what's the real root of that objection? Is it that they think it'd be more helpful overall if there was also money going into programs designed to encourage people to take better care of themselves? Or is it just a fundamental rejection of the idea that they should bear any responsibility for other people?

The former I'm sympathetic to, the latter not so much.
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
For instance, if I were mad about jobs, the last thing I would do is OWS, I would instead seek to create a job fair.

Right, but job fairs don't fix anything if the problem is that you have more people who want a job than there are openings. It's not that we have 10 million job openings, and 10 million unemployed people, and all we need to do is help them find each other. The problem is that we've got 10 million unemployed, and barely 1 million openings (or maybe the ratio is even worse).

I suppose the unemployed could try giving each other jobs, but they don't really have any money to hire people -- that's why they're looking for jobs in the first place. And the people who do have money have been laying people off rather than hiring more people -- that's why we have so many unemployed people. And the people with money are doing that because their sales are down, and their sales are down because people don't have any money because they lost their jobs...

The people who're suffering need help from the people who aren't. And the people who aren't suffering are saying "don't blame us, blame yourselves," and generally lashing out at anyone who implies they have a moral obligation to help.

So of course there are protests. Hell, in the grand sweep of history, this kind of protest has rarely ended peacefully.

These people aren't just whining about having to pay taxes, they're incensed about having worked all their lives to get a modest amount of prosperity, and lost it all for reasons that were beyond their control. They're mad as hell and they're not gonna take it anymore.

There's actually a fairly extensive literature now on the benefits of meditation (sans the woowoo). Lots of health benefits, including long term effects like staving off cognitive decline (e.g., dementia). Expert meditators can show all kinds of interesting cognitive benefits. I keep meaning to take up the practice myself.

>> ^Jinx:

I wish meditation didn't have all this newage connotations. I've been meditating on and off in a similar manner as he describes (ie, focusing on breath, on the bodies sensations in the present etc) as a way to fight stress/anxiety/depression. It works well, although I've no idea how well grounded in science it is.
I definitely think its something worth looking into even if your not having trouble with anxiety etc. It honestly allows me to have healthier thoughts and just generally a clearer rational, and that in turn keeps the anxiety, depression and all the rest of that bad shit away. But yah, when I first started I was supes skeptical cos I envisioned holding crystals and burning incense while chanting a strange language.
Anyway, I'm glad Sam Harris is talking about it.

I wish meditation didn't have all this newage connotations. I've been meditating on and off in a similar manner as he describes (ie, focusing on breath, on the bodies sensations in the present etc) as a way to fight stress/anxiety/depression. It works well, although I've no idea how well grounded in science it is.

I definitely think its something worth looking into even if your not having trouble with anxiety etc. It honestly allows me to have healthier thoughts and just generally a clearer rational, and that in turn keeps the anxiety, depression and all the rest of that bad shit away. But yah, when I first started I was supes skeptical cos I envisioned holding crystals and burning incense while chanting a strange language.

Anyway, I'm glad Sam Harris is talking about it.

>> ^moodonia:

>> ^honkeytonk73:
All religions are cults.

There are sets of criteria which define what is a cult and what is a religion, I understand that most people feel the need to share their personal beliefs whenever the subject of belief arises but lumping the two together is inaccurate.


I see where you are coming from.. however:

According to most mainstream English dictionary definitions of the word "cult", all religions fall into said category. The concept of a religion being non-standard (unorthodox), not mainstream, or not 'right' rests solely as the opinion of the individual perceiving said religion in question. It is a matter of perspective. My declaration that all religions are cults puts them all on equal ground without a preference to the religion of my familial ancestry. Calling one's own religion a 'true religion', and all others cults, comes from a false/biased perspective. That makes it one's own definition, not a standardized definition.

While a roman catholic might consider themselves a member of a 'true religion', they just might consider a southern baptist group in Oklahoma to be a cult. Meanwhile the baptists mentioned would consider the roman catholics 'cult-like' with their insistence of ritual and pomp and circumstance surrounding their traditions... most of which are not even in the Bible, and were mostly developed for it's 'oooh ahh' factor with colorful shiny costumes and incense.

Were the Greeks, Romans or Egyptians.. all members of 'cults'? Their religion most certainly was mainstream and heavily followed during their age. Could they be labeled as cults today? Most certainly. Just because a religion is main-stream, or followed by a majority does not make it any less a cult.

Merriam-Webster: "a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also : its body of adherents"
Wikipedia: "A system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object."
Dictionary.com: "a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc. "
thefreedictionary.com: "A system or community of religious worship and ritual."
Oxford: "a system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object"
Websters: "Followers of an exclusive system of religious beliefs and practices."

OK, let me start by saying I was never incensed, irked, consternated, angered, or otherwise bothered. I always think it's funny to hear the assumptions people make about me, they are invariably wrong, I'm a wierdo and rarely take the path expected. I take joy in setting the record straight in the hopes of presenting a different point of view for consideration, I see no reason for revenge or anger over a misunderstanding and usually not schadenfreude either.
I didn't see it as consession to my arguement, I saw it as coming to agreement that we really meant the same thing. I guess to some people that might be the same thing, it's not to me.
The only apology needed is to Umption, you made an ass out of him. I'm not looking for one myself, I don't know why I might be due one except for the blankfist thing. You misunderstood me again.
It depends on which current financial crisis you mean. I completely agree, our economic crisis was caused by mismanagement and deregulation of the banking system/wallstreet, which is now made worse by the European crisis. Our debt crisis is a decades old issue that's suddenly in the forefront, but is also a huge and looming problem. The European debt situation is different, and seems to be a major cause of their current economic crisis, so is the whole credit default swap thing to a lesser extent, but they're far more removed from it.
The debt discussion stems from the discussion of the european crash, which I believe was caused mostly by the crushing debt of many union members, caused in large part by over spending on social programs like paid maternity (along with many others), and the worsening of that debt to the point their partners could no longer ignore it caused by the global market declines. It came to a head when Greece couldn't borrow more money to pay for the services they refused to curtail. I disagree with the contention that Spain and Ireland were in "good" shape simply because they were not collapsing yet. Greece has been spending like a teenager with daddy's credit card for far too long (probably decades), so long that it's people (and corperations most likely, don't misunderstnad) believe they are entitled to all their handouts because many have never known different, and they flatly refused to raise taxes to pay for those services and entitlements, forget paying their debts. Let's be clear, they are not us, they were even worse about entitlement programs and ignoring debt. That does not mean we should not use them as a cautionary tale of what to avoid, we don't want to be where they are now, and it's where we are heading.
Here in the USA, I think our debt stems from overspending (on defense and entitlement programs, stupid wastes, and needed services) AND under taxing. I'm not sure about your health care point, we haven't really paid for it yet, so it hasn't really effected the debt. Maybe I'm missing your point.
I disagree with your final point, that our debt is a made up problem. I also disagree with the contention that we must erase the debt completely and instantly, damn the consequences. Sadly, the big 'debt debate' that once again tarnished our reputation worldwide (and continues to) is really not about paying down our debt. As far as I know, no one seriously even floated a ballanced budget ammendment, forget actually paying down the debt. All the wrangling is over a small percentage of the insane increase they expect in the national debt over 10 years (I think I recall the number 24trillion). I fear the debt will crush us, and stagnate our economy if not dealt with quickly, but it must be done with reason and thoughfulness, not ignored OR myopicly focused on.>> ^NetRunner:
@newtboy the part that reminds me of blankfist is that you seem to be incensed at my terrible crime of misunderstanding an ambiguous statement, and then thinking I owe you something (a retraction, an apology, or a concession to your argument) because of that.
Let's wind this train of thought back a bit. My contention is that the present economic calamity started with a financial crisis, driven by mortgage-backed securities.
I didn't mention debt, you did.
I agree that debt plays a role in the unfolding of this crisis, especially in Europe, but it's not a cause of the crisis. Any kind of economic crisis throws a government's budget into deficit (or pushes it further into), because tax revenue goes down when GDP and employment go down, while at the same time, more people wind up needing to rely on the social safety net as they loose their jobs (or just get their hours or pay cut). Greece and Italy were in bad shape before the crisis, and got much worse. But Spain and Ireland were in good fiscal shape before the crisis, and wound up deep in debt as a consequence of the crisis.
I also disagree with your contention that the debts are caused by "people taking maternity leave along with other social programs to a ridiculous extent." I'm not intimately familiar with the specific fiscal details of the European countries, but basically the way government budgets work is that you need to make sure you have tax revenues that are higher than spending in normal times.
Here in the US, our debt issues are primarily a result of cutting taxes, overspending on defense, and a refusal to adopt a single-payer health care system for everyone.
But for the most part, debt is a made-up problem in the US. It's not that it's not a problem at all, it's just that it's not something we need to solve in 2011, it's something we need to solve by 2030 or so. It's important, but not urgent.

@newtboy the part that reminds me of blankfist is that you seem to be incensed at my terrible crime of misunderstanding an ambiguous statement, and then thinking I owe you something (a retraction, an apology, or a concession to your argument) because of that.

Let's wind this train of thought back a bit. My contention is that the present economic calamity started with a financial crisis, driven by mortgage-backed securities.

I didn't mention debt, you did.

I agree that debt plays a role in the unfolding of this crisis, especially in Europe, but it's not a cause of the crisis. Any kind of economic crisis throws a government's budget into deficit (or pushes it further into), because tax revenue goes down when GDP and employment go down, while at the same time, more people wind up needing to rely on the social safety net as they loose their jobs (or just get their hours or pay cut). Greece and Italy were in bad shape before the crisis, and got much worse. But Spain and Ireland were in good fiscal shape before the crisis, and wound up deep in debt as a consequence of the crisis.

I also disagree with your contention that the debts are caused by "people taking maternity leave along with other social programs to a ridiculous extent." I'm not intimately familiar with the specific fiscal details of the European countries, but basically the way government budgets work is that you need to make sure you have tax revenues that are higher than spending in normal times.

Here in the US, our debt issues are primarily a result of cutting taxes, overspending on defense, and a refusal to adopt a single-payer health care system for everyone.

But for the most part, debt is a made-up problem in the US. It's not that it's not a problem at all, it's just that it's not something we need to solve in 2011, it's something we need to solve by 2030 or so. It's important, but not urgent.

This argument is so terrible. The primary purpose of cars and steak knives is not to kill people. Yes, they CAN be used as weapons, but by and large they are not, and the benefits we get from them outweigh the risks. The assertion that the benefits of brandishing a gun in public outweigh the risks is pretty easily contested.

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^PalmliX:
>> ^blankfist:
Not sure why people are so incensed by people carrying guns.

No? No idea? How about fear of death? I live in Canada and if me or anyone I knew saw a civilian walking around with a gun we would call the police immediately. Doesn't really matter if they have no 'ill intent', they're walking around with a weapon that can kill someone in the blink of an eye. There's no use for a gun other than killing. Like someone said earlier, this isn't the wild west, have some common sense and at the very least it should be concealed with the proper permits.

I don't think this guy lives in Canada. He lives in the US and in a place where open carry is legal. Some of us don't give in to fear. Sure a gun can kill someone in a blink of an eye, but so can a car or a steak knife. Should we ban roads and steak restaurants?

I'm not incensed, not in the least. But I definitely would be afraid if I saw some random dude carrying a handgun in the wide open. Why? Because I know some people who carry - and I certainly would rather they didn't carry, given how well I know them... And since it's our right to carry, it's also a responsibility. Not just to be aware of safety when we carry, but also aware of the safety issues regarding other people carrying. Just like driving, you can't assume everyone on the road is a stellar driver... If you see some creepy dude walking around with a handgun, you'd be stupid not to raise an eyebrow.

But I strongly disagree with the comments that guns are only intended to kill people, are for quick and efficient murder, or that carrying one says "I'm willing to kill someone." Those kinds of statements only reinforce what Blankfist is saying - that the entire subject is being doused in fear and hyperbole...

>> ^blankfist:

Still not sure why people are so incensed by people carrying guns.