http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030

+ just note that the solar is expected to hit “grid parity” sooner than they projected in 2009 and the true cost of solar isn’t actually used.
-Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/13Ovp)

There are 3 instances of intolerance here: The white lady in the first tram, the black guy in the second tram and your intolerance right here. To have not addressed your racism would have been 'selective', as you say. Part of your problem is that you fail to see yourself as part of this continuum. As I said in my previous comment, had you chosen to present this in a non-racist way, you would not have had any problems. I think you'd rather be a victim than to have to face tough questions about who you are and what you stand for.

Go back and read the thread, kir_mokum, Boise_Lib, malldaffer, Jinx and myself all condemn the guy. There is no one that comes to the defense of the guy, except your ideological ally, bob, who says the guy was just drunk. The objections are not that you showed a racist black guy, but rather a) that you used racist language to do so and b) that you tried to make a case for parity between a racist bully and a racist nut, presumably because you are sympathetic to the bully.

The first video features a white woman in a crowd of white people. She singles out a lone black woman and then proceeds to bully and berate her. She makes it clear that these attacks are done in the name of her country and the white race, which is a cruel way to insinuate that she has the approval of the rest of her countrymen and fellow white people on that tram.

>>> That's a pretty bold assumption on your part. You believe she thought the orwellian serfs would back her up somehow? She is surrounded by Black people on that train--including one that could choke her or cut her throat from behind--and for good measure, there's a woman wearing a burqa in the background. It is more likely she had some mental disability, putting her kid in danger.

Thankfully someone stepped in and called this woman's bluff, which served to change the tenor of this exchange from a tense game of intimidation to a lone racist babbling nut.

The guy in the second video BEGINS his exchange as a lone racists babbling nut. He is a single black man in a crowd of white people.

He shouts out terrible things that he obviously has no intention or ability to carry out. No one takes him seriously. There is no bullying and no tension. People are laughing at him.

>>> Watch it again. There are other Black people on the train. And the nut's targets are not laughing. At all.

>>> Once again, you're making assumptions of questionable merit. First, you can't tell the level of someone's combat experience merely by sight, and if he's truly crazy he'll be immensely strong. Second, he's holding a glass bottle. He could've just as easily struck the woman to his left, with or without breaking the bottle first.

>>> Trying to summon up stormfront as a scary demon is laughable. Compare their ranks, which I assume aren't close to a few thousand, to the budgets and memberships of the NAACP, ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center.

You may believe you're "calling me out" and that's fine, you have every right to speak up. Individuals and group behaviors we can debate all day. However, the elephant in the room, with his buttocks spread across both videos, is the fact the French nutball was not condemned--by anyone--for his antics and there were no police looking for him after the fact.

You can be against intolerance or indifferent to it, but not selectively intolerant.












>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

Let me break this down.
The first video features a white woman in a crowd of white people. She singles out a lone black woman and then proceeds to bully and berate her. She makes it clear that these attacks are done in the name of her country and the white race, which is a cruel way to insinuate that she has the approval of the rest of her countrymen and fellow white people on that tram. Thankfully someone stepped in and called this woman's bluff, which served to change the tenor of this exchange from a tense game of intimidation to a lone racist babbling nut.
The guy in the second video BEGINS his exchange as a lone racists babbling nut. He is a single black man in a crowd of white people. He shouts out terrible things that he obviously has no intention or ability to carry out. No one takes him seriously. There is no bullying and no tension. People are laughing at him.
Context matters. If I say 'I'm going to kill you' in a dark alley with a gun pointed to your head, it means something very different than if I say it after you accidentally spill coffee on my new shirt.
The above video has been bouncing around the hate cesspools of the internet - like Stormfront - in an attempt to show parity between these two very different events; parity between an empowered bully and a powerless fool.
Now you could have framed this as 'hey look at this crazy drunk racist guy, what an idiot' and you would have had no problems, but that's not how you chose to frame it, and as a result, this post didn't go that well for you. I'd rather not have to call you out like this. It's obviously upsetting to you. But when racial issues that resonate with the Stormfront crowd also resonate with you, you might have problems. Sort yourself out.

Let me break this down.

The first video features a white woman in a crowd of white people. She singles out a lone black woman and then proceeds to bully and berate her. She makes it clear that these attacks are done in the name of her country and the white race, which is a cruel way to insinuate that she has the approval of the rest of her countrymen and fellow white people on that tram. Thankfully someone stepped in and called this woman's bluff, which served to change the tenor of this exchange from a tense game of intimidation to a lone racist babbling nut.

The guy in the second video BEGINS his exchange as a lone racists babbling nut. He is a single black man in a crowd of white people. He shouts out terrible things that he obviously has no intention or ability to carry out. No one takes him seriously. There is no bullying and no tension. People are laughing at him.

Context matters. If I say 'I'm going to kill you' in a dark alley with a gun pointed to your head, it means something very different than if I say it after you accidentally spill coffee on my new shirt.

The above video has been bouncing around the hate cesspools of the internet - like Stormfront - in an attempt to show parity between these two very different events; parity between an empowered bully and a powerless fool.

Now you could have framed this as 'hey look at this crazy drunk racist guy, what an idiot' and you would have had no problems, but that's not how you chose to frame it, and as a result, this post didn't go that well for you. I'd rather not have to call you out like this. It's obviously upsetting to you. But when racial issues that resonate with the Stormfront crowd also resonate with you, you might have problems. Sort yourself out.

@shinyblurry

Aside
I'm not trying to win the argument, and it isn't important for me to do so. I am only interested in what you believe and having a fruitful dialogue.

In my reply, I gave a refutation to your objection as well as noting that I would like to advance to the actual argument. I don't have a problem with logical argumentation, I just was somewhat disheartened to see you were trying to kill off the argument without engaging it.

Now I get what you're saying. Check my next message. It's going to be full of that stuff. This message thread is only about the validity of Craig's proof. And when you reply, I'd prefer it if you kept your replies to the two messages separate, as logical discourse must be kept separate from and exchange of personally held opinions, especially where the lines between subjective and objective are being defined. Thanks!

The issue
Yes, I agree that even if every human decided that torturing babies was good, it would still be objectively evil.

Great. Then you'll agree we now have to determine logically that objective moral values, as defined by Craig, exist, or fail to do so. You must also agree that if we fail to prove that they exist by our definition, then we cannot say that Craig has proved his conclusion. I state again in advance that Craig's failure to make his case will not constitute disproof of any god, nor of the existence of objective moral values.

That there are universal moral values in humanity is clearly evidence for and not against the existence of objective moral values. To turn around and say that just because they exist doesn't automatically mean they are objective isn't an argument. You need to flesh this out. Are you saying there aren't any objective moral values? That it isn't absolutely wrong to torture babies for fun?

Let's clearly separate the two meanings of "evidence", which are: "indication/support/things that point to/suggest/etc." (what courts call circumstantial evidence); and "proof".

That there are universal moral values in humanity stands well enough proven. I agree this doesn't in any way contradict the possibility of objective moral values. It could be taken as evidence supporting OMVs if it weren't the only evidence for proposing OMVs to begin with (besides the evidence of God, of course, which is what is in contention here, so can't be taken as evidence). Weaker even than a tautological proof, this is a kind of tautological suggestion. And it sure doesn't prove the case. Lack of disproof is not equal to proof, nor even an indication of truth, on its own.

"Universal" means everybody has them (like large brains, or opinions). "Objective" means they exist outside of and independent of humans.

Let's say, Statement O = "Objective moral values exist", and Statement U = "Universal moral values exist".

We have already proven that U is true.
I think we also agree: "If O, then U." (Or, only as long as humans exist, for those who want to quibble)

This does not entail, "If U then O," as the two terms OMV and UMV are not functionally equivalent, even though the existence of one of them entails the existence of the other. So you cannot determine from the existence of UMVs that OMVs must exist. The two terms are not interchangeable.

Semantically this doesn't contradict the possibility of OMVs, but doesn't logically prove anything either. So Premise 2 remains unproven. As long as it's unproven, Craig cannot claim his conclusion proven, even if you both know in your minds that it's true. Even if you're right in your knowledge that god is real, you have to admit that this particular formulation of the argument fails to prove it.

Back to the aside
I would say though that if you accuse some of having beliefs which lack evidence, and you yourself have beliefs that lack evidence, then there is indeed a parity, no matter how internally consistent you believe you're being.

You've misread my statements. I first said that disproven beliefs/theories are not on par with unproven beliefs/theories. Demonstrating that my theories aren't proven (or even provable) doesn't make them equal with beliefs that cannot be rationally held. Then I said that many believers annoyingly think it's a victory to point out that my beliefs aren't provable in response to my doing the same to theirs, when I had never made any claim that mine were absolutely true, but they had.

And by "evidence", I'm going to infer from the context that you mean "proof". Scientific theories are not proven, and most are unprovable, but there's mountains of objective evidence that "suggests" scientific theories are true, but none whatsoever to suggest any single religious belief is true. Sometimes the theories change too as their early incarnations are proven incorrect or incomplete, as Einstein did to Newton, and as the folks at CERN may be doing to Einstein right now. That's the way of science, and it's the strength of science, not the weakenss. What I'm not comfortable with is religious beliefs/theories that are internally unchallengeable due to a part of the theory itself -- it's own infallibility. Imagine if science was based on the premise that by definition none of it's theories are false. Laughable, right? That's what I think of religion.

Your beliefs lack proof. But you claim yours have proof. I claim yours don't. This is the main issue raised by this video, and the only one I'm interested in laying to rest. Everything else in the other several comment threads you and I have going is just conjecture, an exchange of ideas. It's not logically sound of me to say that your beliefs are unproven simply because I have different ones. Mine might be total crap and not stand up to any scrutiny, so I don't present them here.

Of course, just about universally, humans hold very similar moral values about certain behaviours like killing, inflicting pain, caring, protecting and so on. To determine what this entails, I need to know if you agree with this snippet from my earlier comment:

...[our agreed-upon standard definition of "objective moral values" as given verbatim by Craig] entails that if all humans on Earth agreed that torturing babies for fun was morally acceptable, that it would still not be morally acceptable. In fact, it also entails that if all humans were dead, those moral values would still exist...

This part of the definition (the "objective" part) is necessary for determining that a god must have made the OMVs.

Yes, I agree that even if every human decided that torturing babies was good, it would still be objectively evil.

On the other hand, if you agree with that quote, then you have to admit that just because humans all exhibit the moral belief that torturing children is bad, it isn't entailed that torturing children would continue to be bad if humans all changed their minds about it or if humans were all wiped out. In other words, to say there is a universal human moral value is not to say that the value itself transcends our DNA and is therefore an objective moral value (by Craig's definition: "independent of whether anybody believes it to be so"). In this case, Premise 2, the existence of an objective moral value, remains unproven.

That there are universal moral values in humanity is clearly evidence for and not against the existence of objective moral values. To turn around and say that just because they exist doesn't automatically mean they are objective isn't an argument. You need to flesh this out. Are you saying there aren't any objective moral values? That it isn't absolutely wrong to torture babies for fun?

In this argument, I have taken no position whatsoever about the nature of moral values. This was on purpose and with great restraint. I've had dozens of serious drawn-out ontological discussions with believers, and when their own position is pushed against the wall, they get desperate to find out what I think, then when I tell them, they point out how it's possible that my theory is wrong or that it doesn't explain everything, and say I'm close-minded for not considering their theory, and dance around the room saying that my theory isn't necessarily true either. It's the "either" that really pisses me off because it implies that their various beliefs are merely "not necessarily true", and on equal footing with my own non-proven beliefs, whereas I have actually shown their beliefs to be self-contradictory, unlike my own.

Well, we haven't gotten anywhere near what you're talking about. I said that your beliefs are relevant in engaging the argument. I do find it fairly common though that atheists will resist revealing their true positions, nearly to the brink of death. Probably for the reason you have revealed, that they balk at there being any inference drawn to a parity between the respective belief systems. I would say though that if you accuse some of having beliefs which lack evidence, and you yourself have beliefs that lack evidence, then there is indeed a parity, no matter how internally consistent you believe you're being.

Or if I have merely shown that one particular assertion of theirs is not necessarily true, they think it's a massive victory to prove the same about something, anything that I believe, and spend a great deal of effort in the process, even though I already knew it wasn't necessarily true when I woke up that morning, and I don't care.

I'm not trying to win the argument, and it isn't important for me to do so. I am only interested in what you believe and having a fruitful dialogue.

"Breaking apart" an argument is how I "engage the argument". What other way is there? You say Craig is right, and I go about proving he's not necessarily right, then you say I'm not engaging the argument because I won't talk about the side issue of my own beliefs. I'll answer any questions you have about my beliefs once this Craig argument is settled. If we can't settle a formal logical debate on logical terms, then I don't see any point in having any logical discussions.

In my reply, I gave a refutation to your objection as well as noting that I would like to advance to the actual argument. I don't have a problem with logical argumentation, I just was somewhat disheartened to see you were trying to kill off the argument without engaging it.

>> ^messenger:

@shinyblurry
Of course, just about universally, humans hold very similar moral values about certain behaviours like killing, inflicting pain, caring, protecting and so on. To determine what this entails, I need to know if you agree with this snippet from my earlier comment:
...[our agreed-upon standard definition of "objective moral values" as given verbatim by Craig] entails that if all humans on Earth agreed that torturing babies for fun was morally acceptable, that it would still not be morally acceptable. In fact, it also entails that if all humans were dead, those moral values would still exist...
This part of the definition (the "objective" part) is necessary for determining that a god must have made the OMVs.
If you don't agree with that quote, then all you're saying is if any moral values (not necessarily objective moral values) demonstrably exist in humans, then a god exists, without determining what is so special about these moral values that a god must have made them. If human moral values are no more metaphysically significant than large brains, upright posture, self-awareness, reason, guile, or any other human characteristic, then there's no reason to suggest they must have come from a god, and Premise 1 (that a god necessarily created OMVs) remains unproven.
On the other hand, if you agree with that quote, then you have to admit that just because humans all exhibit the moral belief that torturing children is bad, it isn't entailed that torturing children would continue to be bad if humans all changed their minds about it or if humans were all wiped out. In other words, to say there is a universal human moral value is not to say that the value itself transcends our DNA and is therefore an objective moral value (by Craig's definition: "independent of whether anybody believes it to be so"). In this case, Premise 2, the existence of an objective moral value, remains unproven.
what do you believe? That is what is truly relevant to the argument.
If you want to take a position of moral skepticism, then feel free, but you don't get to dismiss the argument over it. How we determine whether premise 2 is true or false is at the heart of how you approach this entire problem. How about you engage the argument rather than trying to break it apart so you don't have to take any position? It would be nice if we could advance the discussion.
I joined this argument to see how you think, and how someone being logical might think that Craig's argument was valid, and to challenge that position. What I personally believe has absolutely nothing to do with the validity of Craig's argument, just as a defence attorney's opinion of their client's guilt or innocence holds no weight in the courtroom. It's only the people who make propositions (like Craig) who must defend them. I have no interest in defending my own positions because I know they're not provable, and may even be false. I also don't guide my life by them, so it doesn't matter.
In this argument, I have taken no position whatsoever about the nature of moral values. This was on purpose and with great restraint. I've had dozens of serious drawn-out ontological discussions with believers, and when their own position is pushed against the wall, they get desperate to find out what I think, then when I tell them, they point out how it's possible that my theory is wrong or that it doesn't explain everything, and say I'm close-minded for not considering their theory, and dance around the room saying that my theory isn't necessarily true either. It's the "either" that really pisses me off because it implies that their various beliefs are merely "not necessarily true", and on equal footing with my own non-proven beliefs, whereas I have actually shown their beliefs to be self-contradictory, unlike my own.
Or if I have merely shown that one particular assertion of theirs is not necessarily true, they think it's a massive victory to prove the same about something, anything that I believe, and spend a great deal of effort in the process, even though I already knew it wasn't necessarily true when I woke up that morning, and I don't care.
So as a rule, if I'm in an ontological debate with an opponent and I intend to join the debate seriously, I keep my own opinions out because I'm not trying to prove any propositions, and my own unproven opinions cannot disprove anyone else's anyway. Only logic and reason can do that, so that's what I use. I don't hold anything to be absolutely true, so if they demonstrate what I believe is not necessarily true by proposing an intelligent creator as an alternate theory to mine, I'll just agree.
"Breaking apart" an argument is how I "engage the argument". What other way is there? You say Craig is right, and I go about proving he's not necessarily right, then you say I'm not engaging the argument because I won't talk about the side issue of my own beliefs. I'll answer any questions you have about my beliefs once this Craig argument is settled. If we can't settle a formal logical debate on logical terms, then I don't see any point in having any logical discussions.

In reply to this comment by netean:
This game feels like it's been in development nearly as long as Duke Nukem Forever - I remember seeing early footage just after Quake 4 launched.

Tragic to think that after all this time, all this development and money, they've made a very visually stunning game that looks quite dull and tedious. To my eye looks exactly the same as Quake 4/3/2/1 Doom etc just with better graphics.

So essentially this is Quake 1 but you'll still need to invest an a top of the line new gaming rig just to get more than 15fps.

ID Games: a 1 trick pony that seem to think if they up the graphics enough time no one will notice the total lack of originality!

ID Tech 5 is portable across all major platforms. A high end gaming rig is most certainly not required. It's designed to make cross-platform releases have as much parity as possible. The fact that is made to run at solid 60 FPS on a PS3 and an Iphone as well as PC and 360 is probably one of the reasons it took so long to develop. I'm sure you will be able to crank up the bells and whistles on a high end PC but that was not the intention of this game or the engine.
Another reason for delay would be that Id is actually creating a new graphics technology too. Not just cranking out a game based on someone else's engine. Id Tech 5 streams MASSIVE amounts of textures on the fly into and out of memory seamlessly. Game devs never have to worry about texture memory constraints or making each platform look good. The engine optimizes everything per platform so each looks as good as possible while the developer only need make one version of the texture for all platforms.
Another reason for a long delay would be that Id licenses it's engines to a bevy of other game companies who could not pursue or afford the R&D of developing new tech. Part of selling such a high cost package is they need to provide usable tools for artists and programmers to interface with. This is a priority for their profitability down the line because if the tools suck there will be heavy tech support costs to fix them and maybe a lawsuit. "Rage" is just half of the equation here.
Finally, I believe the delay in this game could be attributed to it being a semi-open world exploration game, with a story line, and with a sizable racing component thrown in as well. It is not just a first person shooter as you see in this clip. In fact the multiplayer part of the game is said to be just the combat-racing. Not deathmatch or CTF. It's a pretty big departure from the "one trick pony" you describe.
Personally, I would like game devs to release a game when it's fully completed and not draw unfair comparisons to 3D Realms' laughable situation. There really is no similarity at all if you know the facts.

Fox lies. Apparently, the host had a parity error and couldn't remember the long chant. He also never said that Fox doesn't lie.

@gwiz665 - Forgot to add, 1 million subscribers in 1999 as a percentage of people who had access to a pc was pretty high. Especially factoring in that the balance of mmo-capable pc/internet owners who were in the age range to play an mmo was nearer parity than nowadays. The internet now is far more a realm for the young. And we all know who buys the most games.

Seeing as the Canadian dollar has been trading near parity with the American dollar - and was worth more than the American dollar a month ago - I'm not sure what you are trying to say... >> ^mxxcon:

And that's Canadian 1 cent, so this is even a bigger miracle, that's like turning shit into wine.

You're right. Back to the race card now.

>> ^rychan:
>> ^doogle:
Wow those kids are white.
I mean it. They're all white.
At least they have something close to gender parity - but still. Not one black or Asian. I think maybe I saw someone who maybe looked Indian though (on the left @ 3m:24s).

That's what you think gender parity looks like? What are you, a CS major? There's at least twice as many guys.

>> ^doogle:
Wow those kids are white.
I mean it. They're all white.
At least they have something close to gender parity - but still. Not one black or Asian. I think maybe I saw someone who maybe looked Indian though (on the left @ 3m:24s).


That's what you think gender parity looks like? What are you, a CS major? There's at least twice as many guys.

Wow those kids are white.

I mean it. They're all white.

At least they have something close to gender parity - but still. Not one black or Asian. I think maybe I saw someone who maybe looked Indian though (on the left @ 3m:24s).

The "danger" thing is obvious nonsense - that's not to say it isn't dangerous, but I don't see any reason it would be more dangerous for women.

I think womens' ski jumping is probably viable - but I don't think they're being unreasonable in some of the requirements. For example, the video says there "will be" a world championship in 2009, while the guy says there needs to have been a certain number of world championships. I can see this requirement being waived for a new sport that seems to be on its way up - but there's no reason to waive it for womens' ski jumping. The facilities have been around forever, so there's no reason there couldn't have been world championships and such long ago if there was sufficient interest. If they have world championships for a few years, I imagine their Olympic bid could go better later - but to do that they'll need to get some interest going.

And, yes, I do think there should be strong evidence of interest before its included. If we're just going to go with "there must be gender parity" then I look forward to mens' rhythmic gymnastics. Do you think there's never been a guy who wants to do rhythmic gymnastics? I'm sure there has been, but it's not at a high enough level to justify inclusion at the Olympics and I think the standards for this have probably served them well.

That said, in general I think they should be shrinking the number of Olympic events in the category of "things few people are interested in, but that we've always just sort of had in there". Screw tradition, and screw the 100 kinds of luge, bobsled and skulls, 2400 varieties of swimming and 900 weight categories of weight lifting. I think they should trim this back, leaving a shorter schedule of events where each medal has more meaning.

^pennypecker, I know I shouldn't encourage your verbose brand of fringe-right madness by responding, but I'm feeling sporting tonight, so here are a couple of pointers.

1) No offense, but you are absolutely terrible at analogies. I see you fail at it time and time again. If you'd like to stop having your ass handed to you as bea has done above, I'd kindly suggest you work harder at finding analogies that evoke at least some vague semblance of parity. This current analogy is going to continue to fail for you no matter how many times you repeat it. Let it go.

2) Unlike you, Bea is (was) actually a Mormon herself. The Mormon Church is famous for encouraging members to cut off communication with family members who have either left the church, been excommunicated or are of different religious beliefs. I've known enough Mormons and ex-Mormons to confirm this is not even controversial within the community, although individual Mormons may choose to frame it in less damning terms. One of my very close friends was disowned by his Mormon father after coming out of the closet in his teens. Luckily, his mother was smart enough to divorce dad and leave the deranged home wrecking fanaticism of the Mormon church far behind in the Utah dust.