The analogy I would make with this is, a corner kick that gets bicycle kicked into a post which bounces off the back of the goal tenders head and is nudged/headed in by the offense.

One part good fortune, one part mistake, and one part heads up playing.

It's closing because the cat is pushing on it. A little nudge will trigger the closing mechanism just like pushing the button again.

@shinyblurry

Of what you said above in the first two paragraphs about the consequences of accepting meaninglessness as reality, just about all of it I fully agree with. For clarity, I’ll mark the exceptions:

the closer you are to death the less happy and hopeful you will become
and
Eventually, when enough tragedy happens to you, you will break down and the future will become more and more like a millstone around your neck.

I found these to be presumptuous. They do happen to some people, maybe even most people, but they don’t happen to all. Many people of no religion, and despite immense tragedies, live happy and fulfilling lives, and feel happy and fulfilled on their death beds. I’d further argue that people with religious faith also get depressed. I suspect you’d counter that anyone who is depressed has insincere faith. That seems tautological to me, but either way, it’s moot, for now.

Further, you comment that, "people become depressed because of a lack of hope."

Some people do, at least in part. It’s a lot more complex than just a lack of hope though. For some people it’s due to a tragedy, or overwhelming cognitive dissonance, or it’s simply chemical, and has no correlation with anything in their lives at all. Maybe I’m nitpicking. I just want to make clear that depression is a mental disorder and is not a synonym for, "lack of hope because I don’t have God in my life."

For all of our so-called progress, humanity is just as sick and depraved as it always has been. Evil is increasing, not decreasing, and mankinds destructive appetites will never be satiated. There is no hope in man, but there is in God. I think you know that.

Here you slipped into metaphysical talk that means nothing to me, full of judgemental words ("sick and depraved") and terms that I had just told you I don’t accept as objective concepts ("evil"). You also know that I don’t think there’s any hope in your Yahweh God since he’s a mythological character, so I’m not sure where that’s coming from.

(Also, not that it’s critical to the discussion, but I’d like a reference for your poll about young people not knowing who Hitler was.)

All that is to say I pretty much agree with your view of what meaninglessness implies, and if there’s any bits that you want to explore more, I’m all for it.

Now, about "bliss". I didn’t define what I meant by that, so you didn’t understand it. I’ll make up for that now. By “bliss”, I don’t mean immediate pleasure, or instant gratification, or fulfillment of a goal, or basically anything you mentioned. I do mean a great powerful feeling of being centred, being in tune, achieving self-fulfillment, overflowing joy, love, inner peace, elation, connection, lightness, "harmony", "rapture" or a feeling that many describe as "doing what I was born to do/meant to be doing" or "transcendent". It’s the kind of happy that boosts your immune system and makes people around you feel good about themselves as well. (The words in quotes aren’t words I tend to use myself—I’m employing them to help clarify the concept I’m talking about.)

If you understand now what I mean by "bliss" (as opposed to instant gratification, etc.), you’ll understand that people don’t follow their bliss and rape people, nor find inner peace by beating their wives, and so there’s no need to append any rules about not hurting. I can’t imagine how anybody’s bliss could ever include causing harm to other people, but I’ll even address that hypothetical, towards the end of this comment.

Lots of people do bad things to others and themselves, and later on, some may consider what they did was bad, or they might not. If they still think it was OK, it’s because they’ve used some kind of justification, like, "She did it to me first," "She was teasing me. What did she think would happen?" or, "He had it coming," or "I had no choice," And so forth. These are all rationalizations after the fact, justifications that allow them to still consider themselves as good people rather than change their behaviour or take responsibility for having done something wrong. These don’t address the real reason these people did these things. In all cases, whatever they did, it was because they were feeling bad about something, weren’t centred, and reacted from "lizard brain" instincts of individual survival rather than from human compassion.

I believe that the natural and best state for a human being to be is happy (and here again, I mean blissfully happy). Every bit of programming we have nudges us towards certain actions by rewarding us with feelings of happiness, or reduced misery. We only live once, so I would modify your description only slightly to, “taking what bliss you can when you can”.

Divine morality isn’t necessary. Having any collective understanding of what is good and what is bad is enough. For most of humanity’s existence, even up to now, there hasn’t been a clear standard. In patches of geography where there was one, it only applied well to that time and culture. Just as ordinary people supplanted kings and emperors as absolute leaders without society collapsing, and just as ordinary people supplanted religions are sole arbiters of the law without society collapsing, ordinary people can supplant religion as arbiter of what is good and what is bad as well, and society will continue not to collapse.

And better than a list of what’s good and what’s bad is a system that determines for us what’s good and what’s bad. I’ve seen one model that I like, delivered by Sam Harris. The most salient bit starts at about 10:00 and runs to around 27:30. If you don’t want to watch it now, I’ll summarise the most important ideas: For a moral code to have meaning, it has to apply to some form of consciousness – it cannot apply to rocks and dust. Then there’s the central point which requires you to imagine "the worst possible misery for everyone", and assume that this situation is "bad". "Good" is then defined in terms of moving people away from this "worst possible misery for everyone". That’s it. I recommend hearing it from Harris himself.

The three advantages that occur to me of this system over Yahweh’s morality are that it’s a simple system rather than a long intricate list, so it’s quick to teach, easy to absorb, understand and reference, hard to corrupt, and all-inclusive; there’s absolutely nothing random about it, so odd details like not being allowed to wear garments made from two different thread types won’t make it in and there’s nothing objectionable about it from the standpoint of people who just want to do the right thing; and it’s truly universal in that it applies equally well now as it would have in 4000 BC China, in 30 AD Mesopotamia, or will in 12 000 AD Mars, so it’s broadly acceptable too. Every act that is good makes things better for people. If an act makes the world worse, then it’s bad. Simple. Lots of generalities can be derived from it, like killing people is bad, respecting other people’s property is good, and there’d be no arbitrary crap about touching pig skin being bad or extra-marital sex being bad.

Even more generally, we clearly don’t require any god to tell us what’s good and what isn’t. We already have a conscience inside us that tells us what’s good and what isn’t regardless of laws. I know you believe that Yahweh made our conscience for us. Even if that were so, it doesn’t change the fact that if properly relied upon, a conscience precludes the need for an external set of laws. Any law that echoes what everyone naturally feels already is superfluous. Any law that contributes to human misery is morally wrong and deserves to be disregarded.

You state that without a divine moral standard that exists outside our consciousness, there is no objective justice. This is true by definition. Without a true objective moral code, you further argue that nobody can condemn any action as bad without being hypocritical, so in effect, everything is permissible. This is not the case, however. Although the moral code I advocate isn’t "objective" in the sense that it exists beyond our consciousness, it is universal among humans. And if we’re only attempting to determine moral behaviour for humans, then a universally accepted standard among humans suffices, regardless of where we think it came from.

The arguments I make here don’t describe a perfect system. That’s wasn’t my intention. I believe they do, however, answer your concerns about non-objective morality being insufficient to guide humans.

>> ^Morganth:

The wide-eyed expression of "oh crap" at :08 is wonderful.


The OMFG staring at the other girl after *NUDGE* "We're on!" was even better.

>> ^bareboards2:

The very first minute of this report says these planes have never been used in combat.
Why we are risking the lives of these pilots for a training plane? It is seriously nuts.
I think of it as penis waggling. Boys and their toys. Even the pilots said they were happy to fly again at first.
Who in the Pentagon is so invested in keeping these in the air and why? It isn't rational.


Dunno about penis waggling, politicians of all genders are generally of the mindset if we paid for something we should use it no matter how wasteful/dangerous/stupid it is.

That's why so many projects end up going over budgets and never working, because they are too "invested" either corruptly or politically to say enough is enough.

They need a bunch of kids getting cancer or born with birth defects (BP oil spill and all those non-harmful chemicals they dumped in the water *wink wink nudge nudge*), or a school being demolished by a plane falling out of the sky to give them the proof they need to not look like they screwed up in the first place and instead look like they gave it a chance but obviously the people advising them are fools...never the politician or people in charge.....never.

We're talking about the same people who generally promote family values and hetero relationships while they are heading to the restroom for a little rough and tumble with a random dude they just met or whatever other devious example you want to use. Bunch of corrupt mfers basically, who give no shits about you until it makes them look bad when they don't.

>> ^MilkmanDan:

If somebody double-parks you in like that, I think it is basically reasonable to give them a "nudge" if it will buy you enough room to get out. But as mentioned by @Payback, it looked like there was likely enough room to squeak through at the correct angle either without hitting either car, or certainly after a light push or two of the offending car.
Being pissed off makes us take things further than necessary, but I'd still say that is not much of an excuse for when he tried to do a sustained push and the rear end slid around into the innocent bystander car to the right.
I kinda miss the good old days, when cars had bigass bumpers and weren't afraid to use 'em. My first car was a 1979 Lincoln Continental. That thing had a huge bumper with thick rubber pads at the contact points, not to mention what seemed like a 20' long hood (that was 60% empty, not like modern cars where the machinery fills the entire hood). In that car, high mass + thick bumper = anything blocking your path wouldn't stay there for long.


Yeah, also meant that in a crash you died.

Seriously, crash in a new car compared to an old car and you are umpteen times more likely to walk away from the accident. I think more easily dinted bumpers is a small price to pay for being alive.

If somebody double-parks you in like that, I think it is basically reasonable to give them a "nudge" if it will buy you enough room to get out. But as mentioned by @Payback, it looked like there was likely enough room to squeak through at the correct angle either without hitting either car, or certainly after a light push or two of the offending car.

Being pissed off makes us take things further than necessary, but I'd still say that is not much of an excuse for when he tried to do a sustained push and the rear end slid around into the innocent bystander car to the right.

I kinda miss the good old days, when cars had bigass bumpers and weren't afraid to use 'em. My first car was a 1979 Lincoln Continental. That thing had a huge bumper with thick rubber pads at the contact points, not to mention what seemed like a 20' long hood (that was 60% empty, not like modern cars where the machinery fills the entire hood). In that car, high mass + thick bumper = anything blocking your path wouldn't stay there for long.

I think that our disagreement centers around our differing opinion of the utility of religion. In my opinion, these transcendental states you speak of are not in any way dependent on a religious belief. It is true that many beautiful things have been created within the confines of religious experience. But almost all of the most profound thoughts, intricately beautiful music and profound works of literature I can think of are all written or composed in absence of religious inspiration. Sure, this is certainly a matter of opinion, but I do not think there is any denying that atheists can create beauty in their lives just as I don't deny that the religious can. Which begs the question, is it necessary? Sure many people have found inspiration in religion, however the ecstasies you speak of can just as easily be created by the biochemical effects of substances or - perhaps more healthily - the close ties of relationships or the beauty of nature.

So seeing as how beauty is not exclusively inspired by religion, I prefer my art to be entirely reality-based. And I think it's better that way. To me, knowing that that painting I am looking at, the music I am hearing or the book that I am reading has a long lineage of innovation and creativity traceable through the efforts of countless individual minds throughout time is far more interesting to me than the simple notion that someone contemplated an extremely ambiguous and enigmatic all powerful being and decided to write something about it.

Again, this is all a matter of opinion, but my point is that religion is not necessary for this transcendentalist beauty.

Which brings me to the video. I agree with you that religion is diverse and individuals typically lie along a continuum of adherence levels within each religious tradition. I also agree with you that it is far nicer when a Christian chooses to take most of the bible metaphorically, and as such has no reason to oppress homosexuals, shun scientific understanding and so on. What I do think, however, is that the step between calling yourself religious and taking most of the bible as metaphorical teachings with moral value and calling yourself an atheist and taking the entire bible as metaphorical teachings with moral value is a small and painless one.

Which is the whole point of this video.

This video is not directed at the fundamentalist Christians who hold to the literal teachings of the Bible. It is far too great a leap for them. It is directed towards people who have thought about their faith and concluded that they can not take certain parts of the bible as literal and authoritative, but still give biblical teachings some sort of privileged authority over other ideas put forth. There are many, but one of the main problems I see with this type of religion is that the privileged authority given to the bible tends to cause ignorance of other those other ideas that in reality have an equal opportunity at validity.

Which is why I posted the video.

Because it points out that applying a logical, reality-based analysis of the bible's claims (in this case, one that accepts the fact of evolution) will lead you to the conclusion that the overarching religious point of the bible is invalid. And it is simply attempting to nudge the liberal Christians who attempt to interpret the bible with a huge grain of salt just a little bit closer to atheism.

The fact is that an absence original sin means we don't need to be saved from it. Sure, we do sin and we need to do something about it, but if you are going to take the original sin as metaphorical (because evolution discredits the concept) then why should you take the biblically proposed remedy as literal? And if you're going to take the resurrection as a metaphorical assertion that you need to do this or that to improve your life and the lives of others, than why pay particular attention to that metaphorical assertion. To me, a someone who takes a vast majority of the bible as metaphorical but lives his or her life by it, is about the same as someone saying that they favor a Zizekian outlook on life - which is great and all, but again, it's limiting. There are plenty of ideas out there, go discover them and decide if they should shape your worldview!

Whether or not you think the above proposition is a better way of doing this or not, is up for debate. I think it's the way forward and videos like these help people move in that direction. They did for me.

@HadouKen24 - I think that our disagreement centers around our differing opinion of the utility of religion. In my opinion, these transcendental states you speak of are not in any way dependent on a religious belief. It is true that many beautiful things have been created within the confines of religious experience. But almost all of the most profound thoughts, intricately beautiful music and profound works of literature I can think of are all written or composed in absence of religious inspiration. Sure, this is certainly a matter of opinion, but I do not think there is any denying that atheists can create beauty in their lives just as I don't deny that the religious can. Which begs the question, is it necessary? Sure many people have found inspiration in religion, however the ecstasies you speak of can just as easily be created by the biochemical effects of substances or - perhaps more healthily - the close ties of relationships or the beauty of nature.

So seeing as how beauty is not exclusively inspired by religion, I prefer my art to be entirely reality-based. And I think it's better that way. To me, knowing that that painting I am looking at, the music I am hearing or the book that I am reading has a long lineage of innovation and creativity traceable through the efforts of countless individual minds throughout time is far more interesting to me than the simple notion that someone contemplated an extremely ambiguous and enigmatic all powerful being and decided to write something about it.

Again, this is all a matter of opinion, but my point is that religion is not necessary for this transcendentalist beauty.

Which brings me to the video. I agree with you that religion is diverse and individuals typically lie along a continuum of adherence levels within each religious tradition. I also agree with you that it is far nicer when a Christian chooses to take most of the bible metaphorically, and as such has no reason to oppress homosexuals, shun scientific understanding and so on. What I do think, however, is that the step between calling yourself religious and taking most of the bible as metaphorical teachings with moral value and calling yourself an atheist and taking the entire bible as metaphorical teachings with moral value is a small and painless one.

Which is the whole point of this video.

This video is not directed at the fundamentalist Christians who hold to the literal teachings of the Bible. It is far too great a leap for them. It is directed towards people who have thought about their faith and concluded that they can not take certain parts of the bible as literal and authoritative, but still give biblical teachings some sort of privileged authority over other ideas put forth. There are many, but one of the main problems I see with this type of religion is that the privileged authority given to the bible tends to cause ignorance of other those other ideas that in reality have an equal opportunity at validity.

Which is why I posted the video.

Because it points out that applying a logical, reality-based analysis of the bible's claims (in this case, one that accepts the fact of evolution) will lead you to the conclusion that the overarching religious point of the bible is invalid. And it is simply attempting to nudge the liberal Christians who attempt to interpret the bible with a huge grain of salt just a little bit closer to atheism.

The fact is that an absence original sin means we don't need to be saved from it. Sure, we do sin and we need to do something about it, but if you are going to take the original sin as metaphorical (because evolution discredits the concept) then why should you take the biblically proposed remedy as literal? And if you're going to take the resurrection as a metaphorical assertion that you need to do this or that to improve your life and the lives of others, than why pay particular attention to that metaphorical assertion. To me, a someone who takes a vast majority of the bible as metaphorical but lives his or her life by it, is about the same as someone saying that they favor a Zizekian outlook on life - which is great and all, but again, it's limiting. There are plenty of ideas out there, go discover them and decide if they should shape your worldview!

Whether or not you think the above proposition is a better way of doing this or not, is up for debate. I think it's the way forward and videos like these help people move in that direction. They did for me.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

You are right. I usually give it to the very top SFW video for the week. In this case, I gave this one a nudge because it was younger and had almost the same amount of votes and more comments.


To paraphrase Spock - the needs of me outweigh the needs of the many. ;-)


>> ^jmd:

not to knock this awesome trailer, but how does this become top soft of the week? The phantom menace video and this one are pretty much the same age (and neither would have acrude enough votes on sat either).
Me thinks top sift of the week is chosen by one, not by the many.

It's not impossible to miss but really, he shouldn't have.

What made him miss was pressure or lack of awareness of where exactly he was standing. He tapped the ball with his foot curved to face the post he hits when he should of tapped it with his foot parallel to the goal line. With a clearer focus, he could of stopped it flat with his left foot and then nudged it in, plenty of (relative) time or even just used his left foot, the angle would have been far more open for error.

This was more an error in skill than any spin on the ball.

>> ^VoodooV:

from the wide shot, yeah, it seems impossible to miss. But when they go in for the close up, you can see how the ball had a backspin to it or something when it was being passed (someone more experienced in football can explain it better than I can).
rotational physics is a bitch, yo!

When I saw the Politico piece about this, I just about blew a gasket. I mean, why should we let a little thing like popular vote get in the way of our Democratic process? ...Oh, wait.

Republicans are happy to have Paul bump up their seat numbers in the Senate, but when it comes to a Presidential election, he can't be "one of them"? Maybe the GOP bigwigs in their smoke-filled rooms should take note of Ron Paul's popularity as a sign that maybe *some* of their base would prefer some shifts in the direction of Libertarianism rather than the continual creep further and further into the raving/religious right. Hint hint, wink wink, nudge nudge, me included.

Your video, Colbert on Occupy U. C. Berkeley: Students Gently "Nudged", has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

*nudge* Yeah, that's what SHE said!!!

>> ^Payback:

New funnel overlords, burn with fire, damn nature, yadda yadda yadda. Think that covers all the bases that belong to us.

A friend in the camp's story from yesterday.

"One of the scariest moments yesterday was when this one psycho cop right next to me who kept trying to choke the person next to me. Me and another woman kept trying to stop him and get in the way. He would just hit our arms away and say shut up when we said there was no need for violence. The guy he was strangling was just standing next to us with linked arms, absolutely no threat. Even the police woman next to the crazy cop was nudging him and looking uncomfortable. And he just kept on laughing and laughing! Fucking scary stuff. Pity we didn't catch it on film."