Thanks Enoch..I enjoy your company as well, and I appreciate you saying that..because I am still often accused of being a troll. And yes, I admit have been an asshat at times and said stupid things. It's hard not to want to respond to insults, but, when you don't I think it is something that builds character. Videosift has made me a more patient person.

I think there is just a strain of intolerance in the atheist community, that has become this militant antitheism, where you can't have decent conversation because everything being said is laced with insults and condescension. Videosift isn't really that bad in comparison to some atheist forums I frequent..and it isn't just me, because as soon as you open your mouth you have about 100 people all simultaneously ganging up on you and saying some really vicious things.

I know this isn't the way it should be, as we have seen on some of the more thoughtful debates on God. Where people actually treat eachother civilally and have thoughtful questions and answers. I think a lot of atheists want to act like it isn't even a valid question, or it has been sufficiently disproved, or it is something only stupid people believe, but that is flatly untrue. Even Hitchens said it was the greatest conversation you could have because the question of God leads to all the other important questions. So I think if people took that chip off their shoulder and gave the topic the consideration it deserves, all of this enmity could be avoided.

>> ^enoch:
when i first engaged shiny i mistook him for a troll.
i have since changed my position.
shiny is a believer.
and this belief is derived with the certainty that the bible is the un-erring word of god and ALL his philosophy flows from that point.
this is not something he keeps obscure or hidden but is quite upfront about it,so it should come as no surprise when he responds in the way he does.
give the man some credit for taking the time to respond to the massive amounts of flack he gets.
feel free to disagree with him (hell,i do...and often)but remember he is taking the time to respond and engage with you.
i also feel he deserves a bit of leeway when he gets a bit testy.very often comments are directed towards him as if he IS religion,or that he somehow represents fred phelps "god hates fags" and therefore should be treated with disdain.
cant blame a man for getting a tad defensive.
he is just a man who has a belief based on the bible and to attack him based just on that belief wastes a fantastic opportunity to understand WHY a person may hold that belief.
it is only through respectful interaction that a more complete and full understanding can be achieved.
i may disagree with shiny but i find him a pleasant individual.

The chances aren't that small. Given that he had already been given the first daily double question (and answered correctly), the odds of him uncovering the next daily double are at worst 1 in 22, since there were 22 questions left on the board. I think it's better than that though, since I think the lower value questions don't contain daily doubles, so it's probably more like 1 in 14.

Well, I'll have to disagree with you here. God isn't a myth. At the very least, God is an idea, and a philosophical conception. Let me ask you this, since you're science minded..Is the postulate of a creation really that irrational? Why is it so unlikely that it was? You may not agree with a particular account of creation, but just the basic question of how the Universe got here..why does creation seem unlikely to you?

I mean, for a species that hasn't even left its backyard, don't you think its a bit premature to rule that out? That in itself is bad science..as well as the fact that there is absolutely no evidence to support that view. Only a lack of evidence is pointed to, but as William Lane Craig says, an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Yes, religion has been misused. Evil people can abuse anything, especially Gods authority. Personally, I don't agree with anything the catholic church has done. If they are Christians, it's only by the skin of their teeth. There have also been evil atheists, like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot..and others who slaughtered tens of millions of their own people. It's human nature that is the problem here.

I know you don't believe in a spiritual reality, so you just don't get this video at all. It's not about the mans insight, he is describing an experience. This video is kind of chopped up..if you really want to evaluate it, watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9f2n0xPZ3k ..it's an interview which is much more indepth and makes some things clear which are not apparent.

For instance, when he goes to hell..he experiences being there for an eternity..not just a few minutes like it seems in the video..he describes being there for a vast amount of time, being self-aware the entire time and vividly recounting the thoughts that he had. He also goes into supreme detail of the experience he had with Jesus in going over his entire life, and secrets God revealed to him..not only that but he spends perhaps months with Jesus learning from Him and the angels in a question and answer session.

When he finally gets back, it turns out he was only unconscious for a moment..so all that time that had passed only equaled a moments time here. Plenty about this experience is unique, and intriguing. I would humbly submit that it is your lack of curiousity about the subject, mixed with the judgements you already have, that prevent you from seeing that.

In reply to this comment by peggedbea:
there is a bias, all communities have a common ground. i just don't think the bias is against people of faith as much as it is a bias in favor of empirical evidence and against perpetuating bad science and myths. all myths, not just ones of a religious nature. and all bad science, not just creationism. i generally don't upvote atheist videos either. because they're often loaded with self righteousness and bad arguments. i do however, upvote good science and i do upvote thoughtful insight. i just didn't find this mans insight particularly insightful or original. people often have religious experiences when facing death, i have absolutely nothing against that. and i can understand the need to believe in an afterlife. i think spirituality is deeply personal and deeply powerful and deeply beautiful and fascinating. i think religion, however, is a massive power game and i think power breeds massive corruption... see the history of the catholic church and the influence of the christian right on todays political landscape.

>> ^bamdrew:

Hey, I'll take a trillion $ if we're just passing that kind of cash out.
Hell, I'd take the $29,315.96 that I'm apparently lending out ($9,000,000,000,000 / 307,000,000 people).

The ending is kind of funny... 'mr. chairman I am shocked... I apologize that my shocked voice sounds like my normal, tired voice, just trust me that I'm very shocked.'


For the record, the fed doesn't just hand out the money it prints. It operates like a typical bank and any money it gives out is handled like a normal loan. If a bank comes to the fed and wants a trillion dollars they don't just automatically get it. They need to convince the fed they are good for such a large loan, generally requiring them to put up their own assets as collateral. From there they STILL are not just handed the money, they are granted a loan for that amount. And the fed will be charging the bank interest on that loan until it pays it back.

I certainly understand the confusion though, as the questioner implied with every question that the money was just being handed over willy nilly and the fed rep just ignored that bent and tried to make sense of the question and how it would relate to what the fed really does. You can tell by her confused expression and pathetic answers that it was the wrong course. Leaving us watching a question and answer session where neither of the participants seems to realize the problem is neither of them are talking about the same thing.

Depends, some profs allow you to bring sheets of paper in for tests, some allow you to use your book....etc. If they could bring the test questions and answers in for "helpful" material then it just becomes matching question to question and copying the answer over or selecting the correct multiple choice option.

Even if they couldn't bring the question and answers with them, if they ask essay questions. To explain why you would make the selection you would...no one who just memorized questions is going to be able to answer those reliably. My favorite professor in university was a very young guy, maybe 6 years older than the average student age at the time. He would ask essay questions and look for specific phrasing and words to evaluate your answer...so you were using meaningful terminology and used it in a way that showed you understood the meaning of the word in that context.

He said this test will be multiple choice, but if I were him I'd throw in a half dozen essay questions and make them worth 50% of the exam. Just because those bastards cheated to such a degree, anyone who actually studied would probably prefer cutting out half the multiple choice and finishing early to answer a couple short medium difficulty essay questions...it's easier to get them mostly right if you have the general idea. Versus being completely wrong if you check the wrong box.


>> ^Norrass:

I don't see this as that big of a deal.
They didn't know what questions would be on the exam, so they had to memorize all of them.
When they memorized all of the questions and their answers, would you not agree that they 'learned' the material?
I'd wager that the kids who 'cheated' on the first exam, will be better prepared for the 2nd (because of how they 'cheated'), and will actually do better on the test than the kids who didn't 'cheat' the 1st time.

In the second scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly: "Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?" Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: "A fish!" And Clodpool went away, satisfied.
-- Terry Pratchett, "Thief of Time"

Great find with the Questions and answers video!

I hope you dont mind I edited its channel assignments to remove it from the British channel as it doesnt qualify. Lies tag seems legit though as the Rosminians were lying..

While Faux News is clearly biased, it is true that other news sources edit clips ALL THE TIME. Now most of the time there doesn't seem to be any alteration of the content, except for the pause in between question and answer for example, but there is no telling what slips past the average viewer. In my opinion this is purely the fault of the average dolt who loves controversy and has the attention span of a gnat so they can't be bothered to look up the context of a clip and complain when a bad edit happens. In the case of Faux News, the average viewer doesn't come near the intelligence of a dolt, so the problem would certainly be worse.

>> ^rottenseed:
I think the music in this made it more dramatic and philosophical feeling than the question and answers really are...
what's next? "What kind of shoes do you want to wear tomorrow?"


However, not all the people are reaching into the great existential realms for their answers, and yet this downbeat lighthearted song made them too deep?

I think you are just in a bad mood.

I think the music in this made it more dramatic and philosophical feeling than the question and answers really are...

what's next? "What kind of shoes do you want to wear tomorrow?"

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

The main reason is because the the bigger clip contains all of the information of the little clip .

The little clip (if second) is only a subset of the first.

We would let a 2nd submitted longer clip go because it contains information not included in the little clip. I feel like I need a Venn diagram or something

>> ^Grimm:
>> ^dag:
It is a bit in the gray area, but I agree that in general a shorter clip of a longer version is in most cases a dupe.

Only if the longer clip is first. If the shorter clip is first and the longer clip has a significant amount of extra content they both stay.
Long clip first, short clip second - short clip gets killed.
Short clip first, long clip second - both videos get to stay.
My point is if it benefits the sift if both videos would be left alone in one scenario then why not the other?
Again let me clarify...we are talking about a significant difference in content. This one for example puts a focus on one question and answer from an entire 8-9 minute interview. If you look at the comments you can see it sparked a very decent debate that did not happen with the full interview.

What I didn't like was that the shorter clip got a vote that pushed it to the front page with 4 votes and mine dropped to the second page with 3 votes atm and nobody saw it and voted for it.

That's why the shorter clip sparked a long conversation and nobody paid attention to my whole clip. - Which I was SO happy to have found and posted first!

After yelling to NetRunner for quite a while and saying 'WHY THE F**K isn't Grimm's a dupe???' he asked me to calm down, mumbled something about shorter clip, that he didn't know if it was considered a dupe. And he suggest I'd just refer to the longer video and let others confirm whether it is a dupe instead of me calling it a dupe, possibly unfairly.

I had calmed down and was waiting, untill MGR was claimimng a video of mine a dupe. So here I am, kinda ticked off again, hoping an answer for both videos and thinking after that I am going to take a lONG break from VS.



>> ^Grimm:
>> ^dag:
It is a bit in the gray area, but I agree that in general a shorter clip of a longer version is in most cases a dupe.

Only if the longer clip is first. If the shorter clip is first and the longer clip has a significant amount of extra content they both stay.
Long clip first, short clip second - short clip gets killed.
Short clip first, long clip second - both videos get to stay.
My point is if it benefits the sift if both videos would be left alone in one scenario then why not the other?
Again let me clarify...we are talking about a significant difference in content. This one for example puts a focus on one question and answer from an entire 8-9 minute interview. If you look at the comments you can see it sparked a very decent debate that did not happen with the full interview.

>> ^dag:
It is a bit in the gray area, but I agree that in general a shorter clip of a longer version is in most cases a dupe.

Only if the longer clip is first. If the shorter clip is first and the longer clip has a significant amount of extra content they both stay.

Long clip first, short clip second - short clip gets killed.

Short clip first, long clip second - both videos get to stay.

My point is if it benefits the sift if both videos would be left alone in one scenario then why not the other?

Again let me clarify...we are talking about a significant difference in content. This one for example puts a focus on one question and answer from an entire 8-9 minute interview. If you look at the comments you can see it sparked a very decent debate that did not happen with the full interview.

thank you >> ^aaronfr:
I believe the answer that your looking for can be found here - Dept. of State August 13 Briefing. The actual question and answer runs from 16:10 to 18:15[...]


Thank you very much for providing the link aaronfr!

I believe the answer that your looking for can be found here - Dept
. of State August 13 Briefing. The actual question and answer runs from 16:10 to 18:15, but you should watch the full thing if you actually want to know about US positions on the issue. The answer she gave was mocked on the Daily Show Thursday, you can see that here: Russo-Georgian Conflict. That being said, I'm getting a bit tired of attempts at insightful commentary and analysis from 30-second news clips; it seems to be a problem here on the sift.