>> ^MaxWilder:
>> ^imstellar28:
to paraphrase, it is "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". From the above, many corollaries directly follow: such as the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, the freedom from slavery, etc.

I heartily agree with this statement. I'm glad you could break it down for me like this.
But as the term "happiness" is very vague, I would go with Locke's original version, "Life, Liberty, and Estate (or property)".
From this point, you could say that any activity is, and must be, legal as long as it does not interfere with another person's life, liberty, or estate.
The problem is, not everybody will agree with you. There are many who say that the right to life does not extend to pursuing "one's own ends through voluntary, uncoerced action". There are those who believe that the good of society must come first, and if your liberty must be restricted for the good of society, then so be it. I wish it were not so, but there are many, many people who feel that way. The statement you made above rings true to me, but what if you are surrounded by people who can't be convinced? Even if they are totally being dipshits, you can't just kill them, that would be violating your own rule. So you have to figure out how to get along with them.


Thanks for helping bridge the divide MaxWilder.

I'm sorry I didn't spot this comment thread earlier, it's fascinating.

imstellar, I have to say I'm shocked to see you opposed to gay marriage. Don't we all hold the highest claim to our own lives? Isn't liberty all about voluntary associations?

Don't we also have the right to give our own name to those associations part of our freedom? Isn't there some level of respect that we demand others have for the choices of others?

I started this thread almost laughing at how people were attacking you for opposing gay marriage, thinking that you were (once again) being misunderstood by people here -- that your beef was with democracy trumping individual rights, and that democracy stealing a right like this was what you were angry about.

I get nearly to the end though, and it turns out you're a "social" conservative, who thinks that there are absolute rules to human behavior beyond preserving life, liberty, and property.

Who are you to tell me which side of the road I'm to drive on? By what right do you limit my freedom to ride a bike up the left side? I'll live with the consequences of going against convention -- maybe I'll get crushed by a truck, or maybe people will avoid me and I'll have a nice ride. Success and failure are a natural part of living, aren't they? Isn't it my life to do with as I please, and with who I please?

(edit: imstellar clarified to me in a PM that he does support gay marriage)

I'm amused at how people were initially attacking you for opposing gay marriage, thinking that you were (once again) being misunderstood by people here -- that your beef was with democracy trumping individual rights, and that democracy stealing a right like this was what you were angry about. Glad to see I was right about that, even if you did later cross the line in your arguments.

As for your comment about monkeys being civilized, I had to laugh -- I often wonder if we can really do it, or just forever try to roll that stone up the hill. Personally, I think the key is to balance individual rights with general societal concerns. You think that second half is slavery.

How do we settle our differences? I'm not irrational, I don't need your philosophy explained better, I just demand proof of your hypothesis that demanding our government ignore societal concerns will be better for society.

The traditional way of settling things was with rocks, knives, swords, arrows, and guns. These days we have internet forums and ballot boxes. Bitch all you like about using elections as a conflict-resolution device (and Prop 8 certainly highlights a big flaw), but I'd rather we settle this through petitions, court battles, and ultimately another future vote than a civil war in California.

Lastly, please, please, please get one message from everyone here: We want to understand you, we want to discuss things with you, and we want to see if we can't find some common understanding. Don't assume you have the answers to everything, and that all those who disagree with you are "wrong" in some absolute sense, or somehow physically or intellectually flawed. As confident as most of us are in our beliefs, we understand that not everyone agrees with us, and that if they present their views in a respectful manner, they deserve some respect in return.

In short, loosen up, find a few ounces of humility, inject it, take some deep breaths, and try to find a better way to explain your views to people who aren't already sold on your ideology, or you're just going to wind up ostracized.

>> ^imstellar28:
to paraphrase, it is "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". From the above, many corollaries directly follow: such as the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, the freedom from slavery, etc.


I heartily agree with this statement. I'm glad you could break it down for me like this.

But as the term "happiness" is very vague, I would go with Locke's original version, "Life, Liberty, and Estate (or property)".

From this point, you could say that any activity is, and must be, legal as long as it does not interfere with another person's life, liberty, or estate.

The problem is, not everybody will agree with you. There are many who say that the right to life does not extend to pursuing "one's own ends through voluntary, uncoerced action". There are those who believe that the good of society must come first, and if your liberty must be restricted for the good of society, then so be it. I wish it were not so, but there are many, many people who feel that way. The statement you made above rings true to me, but what if you are surrounded by people who can't be convinced? Even if they are totally being dipshits, you can't just kill them, that would be violating your own rule. So you have to figure out how to get along with them.

John McCain is so old Creationists Have used his testament that riding dinosaurs bareback "back in the day" confirms the bibles version of the origin of life.

ba-bum-bum-tshh! Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week...

Political leanings are a lot more difficult than this video makes out. You can't simply chalk it down to that simplistic of an idea -- I mean, you can, but I think (at least in the US) deciding to be conservative versus liberal largely depends on your stance on the following:

Pro Choice/Life
Gay Rights
Origin of Life

Your belief in these can radically change your affiliation. I grew up in a Christian household, and in my experience -- I've been on both sides of the fence -- Pro Life, Anti-homosexual and Creationist ideas are not up for discussion. We were NOT given a choice. I've always been a liberal guy, even when I attended church, but it wasn't until I began educating myself beyond the beliefs forced upon me since birth that I began to let my true identity guide my political thoughts.

The video makes sense when you look at it from a specific point of view (namely a more open, liberal point of view) but from your typical USA Conservative POV, it's just liberal propaganda.

evolution doesn't explain how life started or why. evolution only explains how simple things get complex and adapt to their environment in order to survive. totally different thing. the "origin of species" is not called "the origin of life" or "the meaning of life".

now repeat this ten times every 5 minutes in front of a mirror for a week.

Host was annoying.

The list seems to be stuck between telling you which FPSs are awesome for the moment compared to which are the classics. The lighting and mood-setting of Doom 3 was good, I admit that, but other games have done it as well or better. The actual gameplay style and much of what the host craps on about in terms of the gameplay elements was lifted virtually unchanged from the predecessors.

Sorry, if you're talking about FPSs, putting a game that bought FPS to consoles as number 1 makes no sense. FPSs have and will always play better with a mouse. You might be able to name a great console FPS that never made it to PC, but admit it, if it did make it to PC it would be much more hectic and fun to play if ported properly. I watch videos of people playing the same FPSs with gamepads that I have played on PC such as TF2 and CoD4, and the difference in pacing almost makes it look turn-based. Now, no doubt GoldenEye was a great game and deserves to be on the list but not number 1.

The original Half-Life has to be on there one way or another, even it means having both the first and second game somewhere on the list.

I would put Deus Ex on there as well but I guess it's a bit more cross-genre reminiscent of an RPG in terms of customization/genuine storyline direction choice.

They said it was Counter-Strike, but they had video of Counter-Strike Source. There's a difference, not to say CSS is necessarily bad on it's own, but the original CS is the hallmark classic that deserves the credit.

Halo's way too high. I agree it defined the original Xbox and yes, it populised the rechargable health system over garrish health packs but it stole much of the rest from far better games.

I can't quite grasp what makes people say CoD4 is so immersive. Is it because of the obsession with warfare and realism? Other games have created far more detailed, far more believable and captivating persistent worlds and that takes far more than creating a few admittedly believable urban landscapes, and tying them together with a paper-thin plot-line and immensely cliched story.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'David Deamer, origin of life, self assembly, intelligent design' to 'David Deamer, origin of life, self assembly, intelligent design, abiogenisis' - edited by theaceofclubz

>> ^examininglibertarian:
"Rotten tomatoes rating" - Moral based movies typically only do well among their target audiences. Look at the recent war movies for an example. Pretty weak attack vector.
True in a sense, but also Rotten tomatoes takes the ratings of many, many reviewers and is one of the best gauges of a movie's perception in the wider world. And to say that a 'moral' movie only does well in its target audience... does that mean that a movie should only be judged on how well the already converted see it?

"Science leads you to killing people" - entire section taken out of context. He is talking about the scientific explanation of the origin of life as a dehumanizing influence. He is NOT claiming that every scientific advance is evil.
No, he pretty much is saying that science is evil. If you asked him to rationalize it after giving him the given examples of science doing good, he would say something like that sure, science can do good, but it needs a tempering hand from religion to guide it. Which of course is complete nonsense as all religion has done for centuries is tried to stifle science whenever it proves their beliefs to be wrong.

"Naked vulnerable superpower" - The United States has military alliances with all the countries he mentions. I cannot fathom the link here in trying to Make Ben Stein a bloodthirsty warmonger. War that cannot happen? I agree that all of them happening at once would be virtually impossible, but individually... The US would not have to unilaterally attack anybody, they would be pulled in by military treaties that they have already agreed to. Now, Ben Steins argument is weak too, US military spending is [s]ufficient and just needs to get more [e]fficient.

But his whole argument is based on 'now imagine if they all happened at once. And also to suggest that the US military spending is ANYTHING but grossly inflated is insane. He is using fear mongering to... well, actually I don't know what, what is his aim in his rant? He just wants a bigger army for the US? Yeah, that's a compassionate person.


"Contemptuous regard for rule of law" - The narrator was really fishing for a soundbite on this one. He creates a very nice straw man and sets up Ben stein as a law-shunning malcontent, when he merely differentiated between law and ethics. It IS possible to disagree with laws and still follow them. The fact that he is not in prison is proof of this.
Ben is a little off, but the narrator is worse.

I do agree that he drew a long bow here and twanged it pretty hard. But I think the point he started to make before he went off the rails is that Stein is picking and choosing which laws he wants to adhere to, and suggesting that laws have zero baring at all on issues where he doesn't agree with them.

Stein is someone using nothing more than scare tactics to try and force a world of ignorance onto people. He continues to use the dirt/mud hit by lightning bullcrap as this preposterous notion that he expects people to scoff at.

Even if it were true that science thought that life may have started via a lightning strike into a puddle of mud... I'd have no problem with that if they had good evidence to back it up. These creationists seem to have GREAT issue with thinking that we've evolved from anything lesser than humans, they find it abhorrent to think that we evolved from apes. Why? What's so horrendous in thinking that our long ago forbears were apes? How does that really change who you are, are you repulsed to think that some of your behaviors can be explained because they were born from earlier times in the wild?

This 'I either don't understand or don't like the truth so I'll invent this cushier, softer fantasy and believe in that' notion really, really shits me.

"Rotten tomatoes rating" - Moral based movies typically only do well among their target audiences. Look at the recent war movies for an example. Pretty weak attack vector.

"Science leads you to killing people" - entire section taken out of context. He is talking about the scientific explanation of the origin of life as a dehumanizing influence. He is NOT claiming that every scientific advance is evil.

"Naked vulnerable superpower" - The United States has military alliances with all the countries he mentions. I cannot fathom the link here in trying to Make Ben Stein a bloodthirsty warmonger. War that cannot happen? I agree that all of them happening at once would be virtually impossible, but individually... The US would not have to unilaterally attack anybody, they would be pulled in by military treaties that they have already agreed to. Now, Ben Steins argument is weak too, US military spending is [s]ufficient and just needs to get more [e]fficient.

"Contemptuous regard for rule of law" - The narrator was really fishing for a soundbite on this one. He creates a very nice straw man and sets up Ben stein as a law-shunning malcontent, when he merely differentiated between law and ethics. It *IS* possible to disagree with laws and still follow them. The fact that he is not in prison is proof of this.

Ben is a little off, but the narrator is worse.

UGH.
Let me preface this by saying I am Christian. That is probably already known to most of you.

What pisses me off is when we (Christians) are all slumped into one group with morons like this.

I most certainly believe that the Earth is billions of years old. You'd really have to be stupid to think otherwise. How can you so easily dismiss hard evidence and proof?
Another thing that pisses me off is saying that "evolution = origin of life"

No, it most certainly does not. It means that life has (GASP!) evolved. Creationism and evolution are not mutually exclusive. It is indeed possible to believe that life was created (though not only 6,000 years ago. Need proof? Look at McCain. If that's not evidence of an Earth older than 6,000 years I don't know what is.) and that it has since evolved. That doesn't necessarily mean that humans evolved from monkeys, but that some life has evolved.

Anywho, these people are idiots.

This is a really good video, because it explains abiogenesis instead of evolution. Many people think that evolution is the origin of life - not helped by Darwin's poor title choice.

Abiogenesis covers step 0 to step 1, and evolution covers step 1 to infinity.

The caller didn't get around to stating his point until the very end, but I think I followed his (flawed) logic and he seemed to be saying this:
<caller's view>
Evolution must be false since its proponents say humans evolved from apes(1.) yet apes are still around now. Since evolution started in some specific geographic location(2.), and creationism says Adam and Eve were created in some specific geographic location, then evolution and creationism are in agreement on the idea that life originated in a specific geographic location. Since they are in agreement on that fact then that fact must be true(3.), and since as per the first sentence evolution is false that leaves creationism as having to be true(4.) as it is the remaining alternative agreeing with said fact. Further, since evolution agrees with creationism on that fact which must true, then evolution is in fact creationism(5.) that has been modified and had god taken out all because some people just don't like god(6.).
</caller's view>

There are many problems with that train of thought:

1. Humans did not evolve from apes; humans and apes evolved from the same ancestor which was some third thing. People say humans evolved from apes in casual conversation because "ape" can be broadly defined to mean anything with an opposable thumb other than a human. Don't put too much stock in how words seem to be used in casual conversation; to have a serious discussion on a topic the first thing you do is define the words you're going to use.

2. Evolution did not start in a specific geographic location. The caller is confusion evolution(change in life, which would occur where ever life is) with abiogenesis(the origin of life, from chemical reactions). Abiogenesis also did not necessarily start in a specific geographic location. The necessary chemicals would have covered the entire planet, as those chemicals formed from the same large cloud of material the planet itself formed from. (Search the sift for "The Origin of Life made easy".)

3. Just because two views that otherwise are in opposition happen to be in agreement on a particular idea does not make that idea true. It's trivial to think up arguments which demonstrate this. This is a flaw in the caller's logic as opposed to the misunderstanding of facts in points 1 and 2.

4. Even if evolution were false, that would not automatically mean creationism must be true. Just because you've ruled as false all but one of a set of explanations does not mean the remaining one must be true; they could have all been false. This is another logical fallacy, and again it's trivial to think up examples that contradict the caller's idea. The caller also makes another misunderstanding of fact here by claiming creationism and evolution/abiogenesis are the only explanations for life.

5. Just because two views agree on a particular subtopic doesn't mean the two views are the same. It seems that what the caller is trying to do here is say that proponents of evolution aren't merely saying things that are false but they are saying things they know are false and thus they are liars. It's an emotionally motivated attack against the evolution proponents' characters and motivations; he's trying to claim evolution proponents secretly believe in god but support evolution because they dislike god. Involving someone's character or motivations in an assessment of the veracity of their argument is another logical fallacy.

6. There are large numbers of people who claim to believe both in god and evolution. Various Popes have even made the claim or at least come close.

Zifnab: Hehe...I'm realizing that when you want to play with the big dogs, you just hammer in the embed code and hit submit. Then you go back and add channels, comments, etc.

With that said, the only way that this game can redeem itself now is if it jumps out of the box, installs itself, impresses me so much that it erases my memories of the original Half-Life and blows me at the end of every play session. Maybe (and this is a strong maybe), it has a chance...

Well, it is, by definition, impossible to completely rule out the existence of anything, but as far as it goes, I think when God is concerned, evolution comes close to ruling out the possibility. It wont ever be 100%, but I'd rate it as being very close to ruled out, or "by all practical meanings ruled out"

As science progresses, the gaps where God is supposed to be a possible answer, disappear bit by bit. I feel very confident that science will probably within the next 10 years or so create life in the labs, ie: show how life (the first replicators) could come about by chemical chance.

Once thats done, the "original life-giver" argument disappears as well. At the same time, experiments with the Large Hadron Collider and other physics experiments are working on obliviating the so called "first cause" argument, closing yet another gap.

Not that "god" was an impressive argument to begin with, because its the very opposite of evolution. Think about it, all evolutionary theory is all about is "How can we explain this enourmous complexity??" ie: the brain, the eye, etc. and the answer is of course a bottom-up solution, life, and complex life, grows up in the universe, complexity comes LATE, after billions of years of evolution. God requires that the opposite is true: that the most complex thing imaginable came FIRST!, and that is, again, impossible, according to what we have learned about the universe so far.

In reply to this comment by botono9:
In reply to this comment by BicycleRepairMan:
It takes a bit of time to explain, I recommend you read one or two books on evolution/natural selection to understand, but to give a brief answer as I can(in retrospect it got pretty long, sorry): ...

[clip]

Your original comment made it sound as if evolution proves the existence of God to be an impossibility (or perhaps I just read it that way). If that is the case, I don't see how natural selection (which we know to be true) proves the absence of God. Evolution and natural selection do not speak to the origins of life, only its development over time.

If that is not the stance you were taking, well then never mind. While I do not personally know whether or not miraculous intervention is possible, I don't see any reason to believe it has happened so far in the course of evoltution.

In reply to this comment by BicycleRepairMan:
It takes a bit of time to explain, I recommend you read one or two books on evolution/natural selection to understand, but to give a brief answer as I can(in retrospect it got pretty long, sorry): ...

[clip]

Your original comment made it sound as if evolution proves the existence of God to be an impossibility (or perhaps I just read it that way). If that is the case, I don't see how natural selection (which we know to be true) proves the absence of God. Evolution and natural selection do not speak to the origins of life, only its development over time.

If that is not the stance you were taking, well then never mind. While I do not personally know whether or not miraculous intervention is possible, I don't see any reason to believe it has happened so far in the course of evoltution.