1) The resurrection is absolutely not historical. Jesus the man MIGHT be.

There is a lot of scholarly research that says it is historical, especially in the last 80 years or so. There are volumes upon volumes of work, and there are a lot of things that deserve an honest and indepth discussion.

Almost all skeptical scholars affirm that Jesus was a historical person and that His disciples had an experience which convinced them that He was raised from the dead. Many agree that a group of women discovered the empty tomb. The origin of Christianity is something which must be accounted for, historically. You can't just wave your hand over it and say its all nonsense.

2) I know Christianity is a joke religion invented for political control by Constantine. That is a verifiable, historical fact.

On what do you base that conclusion?

3) mythos cannot verify mythos. You say Satan created other religions (many before Chritianity existed) to trick them out of worshiping Yahweh....why isn't that likely true of Christianity?

Because of the person of Jesus Christ, who is verified to be the Messiah from many lines of evidence. Some of these would include the fulfillment of dozens of prophecies, His life and ministry, and His resurrection from the dead.

4) not true. Verified truth can be proven and defended against being twisted with fact and evidence, at least to those willing to examine actual evidence and not rely on only propaganda and myth. God (if he existed) should have more backbone, and a clear, unambiguous word/voice. ( Your position seems to be he's not willing to stand behind his word and prefers most people burn in hell for their God given inability to distinguish which is which.)
How is it different from politicians? They aren't empowered by all powerful, vengeful gods....clearly neither are clergy.

I'm not sure why you think you are holding the keys of facts and evidence in your hand, first of all. Can your worldview account for these things? You would need to establish that before we can talk about what "verified truth" is. What is your worldview, by the way? I am assuming it is scientific materialism. Have you ever looked into whether it is correct or not?

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-scientific-materialism-almost-certainly-false/

5) ...you shall stone them to death.....thou shalt not kill. Not so clear.

I think that is easily explained. The laws you are looking at were civil laws which governed the nation of Israel. Consider that our society has a law against murder, yet we execute criminals. Same concept.

6) only those who believe are saved...so clearly the sin of disbelief is not erased and is worse than all others. If it's not automatic, he didn't die for MY sins or yours, he's trading being saved (from something he told you exists with zero evidence) for belief and obedience.

None of your sins would be erased if you reject Christ. You would be paying not only for unbelief, but for all of the other ones too. Unbelief is like any other sin execept that the consequence of the sin prevents you from receiving forgiveness. It is exactly like expecting your cancer to be cured without taking the cure.

Jesus died for the sins of the world, including mine and yours, but you cannot partake of the atonement unless you receive Him as Lord and Savior.

My evidence is not just what we are discussing. Jesus Christ is alive and He is with me every single day of my life. He comforts me in my distress. He encourages me when I feel stuck. He gives me strength to overcome things I otherwise couldn't. He gives me wisdom for every problem and situation. He gives me love for those I find difficult to love. He fills my heart with generosity when I want to be stringy. He helps me do the right thing when I am going to fall short. This is not abstract, but a living reality in my life that grows more and more. He has utterly changed me and made me into a completely different person just like He said He would.

7) things that only work if you believe are hokum or placebo, things that only exist if you believe enough are pure fantasy.

Without buying your system, I have no sin to repent so I should go straight to heaven and collect my $200.

That's kind of like saying you don't believe in the law so you think you won't be punished when you break it. You have to account for your sin whatever you believe you have any or not. Your conscience, however, tells you that you have done wrong things.

9) You have cancer and some guy tells you God sent a car (he just needs $50 for telling you about it), it's invisible, and will take you to the cure, but you must believe the car exists, and when you die sitting in the freezing street he says it's your fault for not believing enough in God's magic cars. Duh. I'll buy my own plane ticket and get myself there, not wait for ethereal magic cars.

Let's say that you got a sign that the car was legitimate, but you still stubbornly chose not to go. For instance, you had a dream that a green car with a florida license plate drove up to your house, and a middle age woman got out and came up to your door and told you she was sent by God to take you to the cancer cure, and then it really happened. Does that change anything for you?

Mostly the questions are for you, in hope you might see the contradiction and self reinforcing mythos, but your answers do offer insight to your (and other people's) intractable mindsets. Thanks

God had revealed Himself to me, personally, and verified the scripture in my as true. I know that He loves me, personally, and I know that He loves you too. My hearts desire is that you would know that love. That is my mindset, primarily.

1) The resurrection is absolutely not historical. Jesus the man MIGHT be.

2) I know Christianity is a joke religion invented for political control by Constantine. That is a verifiable, historical fact.

3) mythos cannot verify mythos. You say Satan created other religions (many before Chritianity existed) to trick them out of worshiping Yahweh....why isn't that likely true of Christianity?

4) not true. Verified truth can be proven and defended against being twisted with fact and evidence, at least to those willing to examine actual evidence and not rely on only propaganda and myth. God (if he existed) should have more backbone, and a clear, unambiguous word/voice. ( Your position seems to be he's not willing to stand behind his word and prefers most people burn in hell for their God given inability to distinguish which is which.)
How is it different from politicians? They aren't empowered by all powerful, vengeful gods....clearly neither are clergy.

5) ...you shall stone them to death.....thou shalt not kill. Not so clear.

6) only those who believe are saved...so clearly the sin of disbelief is not erased and is worse than all others. If it's not automatic, he didn't die for MY sins or yours, he's trading being saved (from something he told you exists with zero evidence) for belief and obedience.

7) things that only work if you believe are hokum or placebo, things that only exist if you believe enough are pure fantasy.

Without buying your system, I have no sin to repent so I should go straight to heaven and collect my $200.

9) You have cancer and some guy tells you God sent a car (he just needs $50 for telling you about it), it's invisible, and will take you to the cure, but you must believe the car exists, and when you die sitting in the freezing street he says it's your fault for not believing enough in God's magic cars. Duh. I'll buy my own plane ticket and get myself there, not wait for ethereal magic cars.

Mostly the questions are for you, in hope you might see the contradiction and self reinforcing mythos, but your answers do offer insight to your (and other people's) intractable mindsets. Thanks

@Buck, I did upvote it.

I’m just not sure that videos like these do anything other than reinforce people’s beliefs (regardless of what position they hold).

Religion is only a symptom of the fundamental problem with modern society: unwillingness to accept facts that contradict your beliefs.

While those on the right (especially the religious right) tend to suffer more from it, liberals are not immune either (anti-vaxxers, ridiculous fad diets).

The Oatmeal made a fantastic comic about this. I genuinely believe that if we could get more people to read that, it would do more good than one million atheist videos.

Ok, but also consider the early training and constant reinforcement of the idea that, under no circumstances, ever, may a man hit or injure a woman. Surely that at least partially mitigates the average size difference.

@jwray

*facepalm*

You realize the link you just posted is titled "IQ dominates socioeconomic background data for white men" (my emphasis).

Sure, there is a correlation between IQ and crime and it is hotly contested to what that actually means.

To some, that means only dumb criminals actually get caught (meaning we don't know the true average IQ of criminals because the smart ones get away with it).

To others, it reflects the socioeconomic status of the people most likely to commit crimes (i.e. likely grew up poor in a neighborhood without strong educational opportunities and therefore does not share the cultural values that IQ tests inherently load into the questions and furthermore the test-taker may be openly hostile to standardized test-taking).

To still others it reflects the RESULTS of crime (i.e. leading a criminal lifestyle makes it more likely that you are going to suffer traumatic physical injuries to the head that literally make you dumber).

The 7-8 point difference you quoted is not nearly enough to make a difference on the crime rates. 100 IQ is the normally distributed mean and Japanese people on average, score around 106. For reference, a standard deviation on the IQ test is 15 points, meaning that for all intents and purposes Japanese people are still roughly in the same ballpark as Americans with their 98-point average.

And literally the first Google search result when I looked up Japanese IQ scores was this one, explaining how national average IQ scores correlate with the per capita income and national rates of economic development.

In other words, economic factors correlate with IQ, which correlates with negatively with crime, which seems to further reinforce the idea that socioeconomic forces are a key factor in criminal behavior.

Look, we're getting really far afield of what the video is about. I think it is a no-brainer that few gun crimes are committed in Japan because guns are so heavily regulated. We do have stabbings, in fact we have mass stabbings (which is something you don't see so often in the U.S.). The thing we both agree on is that it is impossible for the U.S. to replicate these crime statistic results, whether that be for cultural reasons or whatever other cause you want to throw out there.

Very analogous to Westboro Baptist "church" stooges. They (ab)use their constitutionally protected rights to free speech to say the most offensive and provocative crap that they can come up with, specifically with the intention to incite a (violent) reaction against them. Why? Because pretty much the entire Phelps family are lawyers, and they know that they can generally win any assault case that they can provoke people into. All that hate they spew boils down to a stupid, petty moneymaking scam.

Is the Seattle Nazi that devious and cunning? I doubt it. Probably just a crazy / fucked up guy, as Maher said. That doesn't excuse his fuckwittery, but it does reinforce Maher's argument that punching the guy is NOT the best response.

Morello is awesome, with RATM and Audioslave, and now Prophets of Rage, etc. But he's dead wrong on this issue, and comes across as a bit of an "internet tough guy". Outside of just ignoring them, I kinda think the only way to one-up these people is to know the law, what constitutes assault etc., and essentially beat them at their own game (ie. provoke them into doing something to you). On the other hand, there's something to be said for using using passive-aggressive snark to mock / humiliate them in a nonviolent way, ala the Foo Fighters:

It's the parents fault for using reinforcing the ide gender colours

So basically, the examples at the end reinforce her point at the beginning: fade-outs are a cop-out, an anti-ending. They function reasonably well in cases where the artist has no idea how to actually end the song. That seems particularly true with pop songs, where there really isn't a particular message or story in place, it's just some danceable nonsense - what's the logical conclusion to that?

I've become increasingly aware of fade-outs over the years when listening to older songs, and I suspect it's due to their relative rarity today. In the past they were so standard as to be the expected default, so I never noticed them. They irritate me now: "I don't know what to do with the ending, guess I'll just repeat this last bit an arbitrary number of times while slowly making it quieter." The example she gives of Holst's "Neptune" is in my view the somewhat rare case of a fade-out being used for the right reason, to convey a particular idea, or meaning, or feeling.

When used as the default in lieu of coming up with a real ending to the song, I hate the fade-out. When it makes sense in context, they're fine. I don't often run into the latter.

Yay, at least you bothered to watch the video.

And yes, No Bullshit's channel is loaded with a lot of biased opinions as he leans significantly to the right. But you'd be hard pressed to argue that, despite this particular video not making the mainstream air, that the coverage has shown the depths both sides have plunged to. Australian coverage has been downright blinkered at this point, there is no violence on the left at all and it's all nazi's killing folks... /eyeroll

So instead, you could look at channels like Sargon's, who, despite being constantly labelled as an alt right dickhead, is generally slightly left of center but who calls out violence where/when ever it happens.

I've seen a lot of shit in burrowing in to this, from a lot of sources on both sides (and people who try to be objective). Objectively, if you show up in black masks with pre-bagged shit, urine, fireworks and glass bottles, weighted sap gloves, bike locks and pepper spray combined with a clear message that it's okay to attack "nazi's" who's crime is expressing their admittedly vile ideology, you're not a good person.

Red shirts vs brown shirts, Wiemar Germany pre-WWII anyone?

You can try to make this about me ('ermagerd, you caused me to downvotes the video'), but you've admitted you didn't even watch the vid. At least I gave it a fair hearing, and while I do certainly admit the videos maker has an agenda, it is still documenting what is going on out there. Turn off the fucking voice track if you're too much of a snowflake to hear commentary you don't agree with, but the footage is damning...

As for Bob, I've been fairly unequivocal in the past about his line of deeply partisan BS and the veiled racism he espouses. As per the Ruins Everything sift up (https://videosift.com/video/Why-Proving-Someone-Wrong-Often-Backfires) atm about arguing and how it generally reinforces opinions, do you think that you two haranguing each other constantly (or even you and I) is going to accomplish anything other than entrenching the other side? \= |

They actually mention that it could be used as-is where we would need to use steel reinforced concrete.

Where it really wins out is marine applications, which get stronger from reacting with seawater rather than weakening over time.

"the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." Treaty of Trippoli-ratified unanimously and signed by then President John Adams. Clear enough for me.

The constitution is actually based on English common law, which existed there for centuries before they ever heard of that Jesus guy. If you want to worship based on the religion the constitution reinforces, burn that cross and beg Odin or a pagan tree god for forgiveness.

Funny that he doesn't offer any specific examples, huh?

It's like the doctors have given you second and third opinions and told you your liver is failing, you have to stop drinking or you'll die. You won't die the next time you have a beer, but every beer takes you farther over the edge. You can say the bartender who knows this is blameless for serving you, because others gave you the alcohol that destroyed your liver and it took longer than one night, or you can work from now and realize that he's intentionally killing you in hopes of a tip before you stumble outside and keel over.
Working from today, our planet's liver is failing, there no transplant, and Trump just reopened the bar and is serving everclear. Chances are he can't accelerate things so much that Florida submerges in the next 3 1/2 years, that doesn't mean he can't make things be far worse, beyond the point of possible mitigation.

You may hold that theory, but climatologists disagree. We are past, but still near the tipping point, and every ton of CO2 takes us farther from a survivable rise. It's ridiculous to think that we're already past holding at 3.5 degrees global rise (edit: the maximum assumed to be survivable by civilization), so we might as well make it 5 degrees.

Island nations, people who live South of New Orleans, and millions of others are already being displaced. It only takes one high tide (edit: or one extended drought) to wipe out low lying farmland permanently, and erosion has become an unstoppable force.

Trump is moving towards raising the level of multiple greenhouse gases we produce, Obama had us lowering those levels. Time can only tell what that actually means in tonnage, but 180 degree turnaround is awful enough. I agree, we also didn't do enough under Obama.

? Reversible means it can be reversed, not that it's easy. I don't know where you get that idea. Irreversible in this context means sending the temperature trend the other way before civilization becomes unsustainable. Eventually the planet should normalize unless we really follow Trump's lead wholeheartedly, then we might go full Venus. There WAS a magic bullet, being responsible with our atmosphere, but we argued over climate change until it was useless.

If, before it reverses (which it may not do at all, btw) the planet becomes inhospitable to humans, then for humans, it's irreversible. In 4 years we can do enough damage to 1) make the effects longer and harsher enough to make long term survivability impossible and or 2) go beyond the next tipping point where feedback loops reinforce each other, leading to a Venus like runaway greenhouse effect. We're damn close to massive methane releases (already happening) and if we don't avoid that, nothing will save civilization.
All that said, Clinton probably wouldn't do enough to avoid disaster either, but at least she accepted the science and agreed we should make efforts to mitigate the coming damages.

I'm definitely a pessimist, mostly because I understand the systems and human nature, and so I think we're totally hosed as a species.

I never understand why people think that when someone finds fault in someone else's mindset/religion/politics it's assumed they are "writing the other person off".
I find fault in nearly every person in some way or other, including myself, no person is perfect. That doesn't mean I automatically write any of them off. I actually find the accusation somewhat insulting. Just because that's how many people operate is no excuse for assuming everyone does. That mindset is antithetical to learning and understanding and only reinforces fanatical 'us VS them' thinking while denying the possibility of 'we'.

Tsu said “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
If you write off your 'enemy' as underserving of being understood, you hurt yourself more than you hurt them.

"Offended" is different from "harmed". The SJWs need to learn that lesson fast. Harm in this context means put in physical danger of injury, which a stampede or riot would fall under and why you can't incite either.

If one is truly "harmed" by offensive words, that's an extremely odd personal mental problem that should not be inflicted on the rest of us, please just avoid the public and stick with your similarly afflicted group.

Your TV point is good, change the channel or turn it off.
Your college point is terrible, IMO. College is, in large part, intended to expose you to new and differing ideas and mindsets and teach you how to interact with those holding them. Interpersonal communication was a requirement where I went. If that's something people are uncomfortable with, they don't belong in colleges. Period. If someone wants to start a school where those ideals (safe space, regulated speech, trigger warnings, etc) are reinforced, fine, but it shouldn't be accredited because, no matter how good the classes and students are, it's missing a key component.
The boss being offensive, there's a clearly defined legal line, if they cross that line you can sue, if not, grow a pair and realize two of the most important lessons my parents taught me...."life's not fair", and "what you want and what you need are two different things, and knowing which is which can be the road to contentment, while not knowing is always a road to ruin". I feel like a lot of kids today have never heard either.

No, being on RT does not negate his reputation, but it tarnishes it, imo. It doesn't make him a liar, it makes him SUSPECT....less trustworthy, not untrustworthy.
I think using the reporter's chosen organization's reputation as one piece of evidence to make that determination is proper, I think we may just disagree on the weight we give that piece of evidence.

I explained that he doesn't have to stoop to the level of demagogue to serve the propaganda machine by lending them his reputation, and that harm's his rep. He may be 100% honest and factual, but he still helps spread obvious propaganda just by his presence, and I think both he and they know it well, and that's a huge disappointment from him for me.

Yes Chomsky is a good example of how, even though he's correct in his assertions, he gives a skewed view by omitting a comparison with the only alternatives (in speeches).

Again, imo, all news is suspect, there is hardly an example of "hard hitting journalism" in main stream media today that's not tainted with bias either by the reporters or the news organization that employs them. I'm not special, I don't have access to good news, and I'm not sure I could recognize it if I did, at this point. I think most reporting done today is at least in part an echo chamber/bubble meant to reinforce bias, which is why it bothers me so much when one of the few decent reporters takes a job with a propaganda factory...choices matter, who you surround yourself with matters, and surrounding yourself with unapologetic liars should hurt anyone's rep, especially a reporter with a reputation for telling unbiased truth.

Being critical of power doesn't cut it for me if it's designed to hide or excuse other criticism of another power....that's why I need to see him be critical of Putin on RT to regain some trust...until then, bye Felicia.