One more thought that I had:

Before Tesla, electric cars were niche marketed as adequate. In the sense that if you were a person very highly motivated to be "green", you could get one, drive around short distances, and in general enjoy a small subset of the versatility of an internal combustion gas guzzling car. You could get by, but in general life with an electric car was a step back from life with a gas car.

The reason Tesla is amazing is that it flipped that on its head. You're not sacrificing anything, you don't need an attitude of "I can use a bit less and take one for the team" for a Tesla to appeal to you. Everything I watch about the Model S says it is a fast, high-performance, fun to drive, luxurious car -- objectively BETTER than a similarly priced gas-powered car to most users (who can afford one, but that will include more and more people over time).


Same thing goes for home solar and other "green energy". Adoption rates are NEVER going to soar when solar is "adequate". And then only adequate if you make very big lifestyle changes like cutting back on heating and cooling, using low-draw appliances, etc. etc.

But as Tesla is doing to cars, maybe this can do to energy. Musk is saying NO, you don't have to cut back. You don't have to settle for less. You don't have to take one for the team. Install some (currently fairly expensive) solar panels and 1, 2, or however many of our power packs, and you can have a BETTER experience than being on the grid, paying high bills every month and dealing with the occasional outage, etc.

I guarantee that pitch will do more to push the adoption of green energy than 10 years of Al Gore living in a mansion and flying around constantly on a private jet to give $100,000 lectures explaining why everybody else needs to cut back or we're all going to melt...

Its pretty cool that its one shot, it must have been a really hard thing to coordinate and time perfectly, but I thought the majority of punches here REALLY look like obvious fake moviepunches, ie, a punch in the face is a light touch on the shoulder. I know that they ARE movie punches in every movie, obviously, but shooting from the right angle usually hides the cheat. In this shot, i guess they sacrificed that to get it all in one shot, but imo, that killed the realism.

Last week, I mentioned a report about how Cyprus was sacrificed to prop up Greek banks. Parts of it have now been published in English as well:

http://www.thepressproject.net/article/73470/How-the-troika-and-Piraeus-Bank-sealed-Cypruss-fate

OK, I'm glad you tried though.
Actually I dismiss this as ignoring previous repeated public/biblical statements about god, Jesus, and the holy ghost being a single omniscient and omnipotent super being.
I've been told time and time again that Jesus "sacrificed himself for our sins". That means HE had control, obvious if he/3 is omnipotent, he has control over everything, knows everything, and free will is an illusion/lie...just like the cake. ;-) It simply can't be both ways. Either god is omnipotent or not. There's no such thing as 'partially omnipotent'....it's like saying 'part of infinity'....meaningless. (in case you are unaware, any portion of infinity is infinity)
If it was not intentional, and was all the doing of man, then Jesus didn't do anything FOR us in that death. So why do people thank him constantly? Why do people chastise others with 'Jesus died for your sins...so now you owe him your eternal gratitude'?
Man wouldn't need saving if god didn't CREATE sins to be avoided, or rules and rituals that must be observed (although oddly, every religion interprets the rules differently, even those that take the rules from the same book, which should be impossible if it's really the 'infallible word of god', no? Why would He make his definitive requirements so impossible to understand and follow, unless he's really closer to Loki in temperament and is really just screwing with us all), or punishment for being 'confused' about what's reality and what's not: Hell....or if god doesn't exist, or if god's existence and/or sin is unknown to a person.... (WHAT? What kind of rule system is that?) Reminds me of a joke too....

Aborigine asks the missionary :"So, you say God would not have punished us for sinning if we did not yet know about him or sin, and we would have all gone to heaven?"
Missioinary replies: "Yes, God is compassionate, and would not punish you for not knowing something you could not know, or not knowing rules you had not been taught."
Aborigine replies: "The why the f#ck did you tell us! Asshole!"

Also to be fair that's a bunch of bullshit...the technology exists to overcome all of those issues. You really can't count it as she IS singing if no one can hear it and what they can hear is a pre-recorded track...one that was most likely auto-tuned so even THAT isn't a live pre-recording.

I just don't get the logic of the fans and the defenders....you like the music you "hear" on the radio...you like the music you "hear" on your CDs or MP3s. When you are paying top dollar to "hear" and now "see" that music performed live why is it OK to let the "live music" slide and be sacrificed for a dog and pony show that doesn't have anything to do with the music you were drawn to in the first place?

Hey Newtboy,

God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Issac; later, when it was clear that Abraham would obey Him, He rescinded the command. I don't know if you've ever read about this, but God was revealing a deeper truth here as to what He would do when He sent Jesus to the cross to die for our sins. Often in the Old Testament you can find what are called "types". There is a whole study of the scripture called "typeology", where certain events happened in the Old Testament which were foreshadowing events in the New Testament.

Issac then, in this context, is a type of Jesus. Issac, like Jesus, voluntarily submitted himself to be sacrificed. He was a young man whereas Abraham was close to 100 years old; he could have easily overpowered Abraham. This is a picture of Jesus voluntarily going to the cross by His own volition. There is also a similarity in that Issac, like Jesus, carried the wood for his own sacrifice. The biggest difference is, God the Father didn't ask Abraham to do what He ultimately would do, which is to give His only begotten Son as a sacrifice for sins. Here is some more information about typeology:

https://www.blueletterbible.org/study/larkin/dt/28.cfm

@newtboy
i know man and got respect for your position.
have many friends who feel exactly the way you do.
so im not hating.

i have sacrificed much to hold fast to my conviction.
i deal mostly in cash or barter.
i do not and will never have a credit card,nor a bank account.
i drive "illegally" ,though it is rare,because i refuse to subscribe to mandatory insurance.or any form of insurance for that matter,mandatory or not.
i treat opiate addicts for free and give them a place to stay because the clinics (state run and corporate) have a zero tolerance policy.they pee dirty ONCE,for anything and they get booted.so i take them in.

this one,in particular,gets me into some serious trouble with the authorities at the local addiction a.k.a methadone pill-mill.they turn me in at least once a year.the baliffs at the courthouse know me by name.

i get in trouble at tax time because i dont file.my business is not income driven but rather "donation" driven.so...suck it county clerk!

i do work at a friends restaurant as a bartender/waiter and thats on the books,but thats mostly for my child support.

all this has been hard on my family,well,my boys mainly.while they were growing up i didnt have a lot of extra resources,but they turned out pretty damn good.

simply put(me?simple?ha!)
my faith dictates my politics.

God sacrificed His Son too.

I feel like the current crop of superhero flicks are sacrificing too much in the way of character development for spectacle and more characters. I was honestly surprised by the reception to The Avengers as it felt like it could have been directed by Michael Bay. I suppose it's too much to wish for more superhero movies in the style of Watchmen, particularly given how badly it did.

I thought CA:TWS had some good set piece scenes, but ultimately fell into the same camp (threadbare plot! more under-developed characters! more explosions!). The deeper themes I saw some reviewers vouch for (surveillance vs. security) seemed horribly superficial.

Hi voodooV..sorry it took me so long to reply.

you're committing another logical fallacy here. Argument from ignorance. just because you can't think of any other reason for morality doesn't prove god did it.

The fallacy you mentioned doesn't apply. The argument isn't for Gods existence, the argument is that atheism is incoherent because it has no foundation for morality, among other reasons. Ravi asked the question, without God what are the Ontic referrants for reality?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontic

To answer your question though. Survival...pure survival is pretty much the foundation of morality. what behavior ensures a long, prosperous and happy life? That's your morality right there. And it's all based on logic and reason, not an imaginary god.

is it better to be a dick to someone or is it better to work with other people. hrm...which ensures a higher probability of success in your endeavors.

is better in the long run to help or to hurt. Which ensures a greater likelyhood that people will be willing to help YOU out when you need it.

virtually everything that we consider moral today is the evolution (gasp) of instinctual rules we've learned over the millions (not thousands) of years that ensure a longer, happier life.

What you're talking about is pragmatism, which is to say that if it works then it is the best way to do things. Yet plenty of people have led long, prosperous and happy lives by exploiting other people for their gain. That's what works for them, so why shouldn't I emulate that standard of behavior instead of being self-sacrificing? Some of the most successful people who have ever lived got there by being terrible human beings. Basically, your standard of survival isn't about what is right, but what is right for me and that is entirely arbitrary. It also is an incoherent standard for morality.

Which is why only two of your commandments still hold up as secular laws.

I forget where I learned this but even biblical morality can be traced back to rules that made sense, at the time, that ensured survival. I think it has been shown that many of the biblical rules involving not eating certain foods can be traced back to diseases or some other logical reason, but hey, we didn't have an understanding of these pesky little things called bacteria and microorganisms back then so when you ate a certain food and died, that wasn't science, it was your imaginary sky god who was angry with you.

What's really interesting about that is that Moses was educated as an Egyptian prince, which was the most advanced country in the world at the time. He would have certainly been exposed to their medical knowledge, but you won't find a shred of that in the bible. The Egyptians were doing things like applying dung to peoples wounds, whereas the Laws of Moses detailed procedures for disease control, like hand washing and quarantine procedures, as well as public sanitation, and dietary laws which prevented the spread of parasites. They were thousands of years ahead of their time; we only started washing our hands to control disease in the past 200 years.

Even your fear and hatred of homosexuality and abortion can be easily explained by survival. When your village only numbered in the hundreds or maybe thousands and simple diseases and winters wiped out LOTS of people, discouraging homosexuality and abortion is actually a pretty good idea when the survival of your species is at stake. But when you've got advanced medicine and we've got the whole food and shelter thing dealt with and our population is now 7 billion. the whole "be fruitful and multiply" thing just isn't necessary anymore. In fact, it's becoming a problem. and Once again, survival will dictate our morality. If we do nothing to combat overpopulation and resources become an issue, I guarantee you that large families will eventually have a negative stigma attached to them until the situation is resolved.

You're talking to a former agnostic who once approved of homosexuality and abortion. I am not afraid of it, and I don't hate the people doing it. This is a clash of presuppositions; if there isn't a God then I couldn't give you an absolute reason why people cannot have homosexual relationships or murder their unborn children. If we're all just glorified apes contending for limited resources, then in that paradigm it may be necessary to cull the herd. I think the appropriate response though to someone contending we should eliminate vast swaths of the human populace to save the planet is, "you first".

But God is in control and this is His planet, and since He is still creating human beings, He will provide the resources to take care of them. It's the iniquity of mankind which is limiting the resources when the truth is that we have way more than enough to take care of everyone. Take for example the fact that over 30 thousand people starve to death every day. Is that because we don't have enough food? Actually, we have more than enough food yet we waste about 1/3 of the world food supply every year. The gross world product in 2012 was over 84 trillion dollars, more than enough to feed, clothe, house and vaccinate every single person on the planet. Those people die not because there isn't enough, but because the wickedness of man.

Don't ask me though, ask an anthropologist or sociologist. They've been studying this stuff for decades. I'm sure you could even find an anthropologist/sociologist that believes in god and they'd still say the same thing. our understanding of reality changes....as does morality. no one takes seriously the old biblical rules about stoning unruly kids, working the sabbath, and wearing clothing of two types of fabric anymore. So why should we listen other outdated biblical rules that don't apply anymore. As countless others of sifters have already informed you, you have the burden of proof and you haven't met it yet.

Call me when someone discovers a disease or some other problem that arises when you mix two fabrics and we'll revisit those rules k?

God has three kinds of laws, moral civil and cermonial. The rules you're referring to were civil and ceremonial laws for Israel and not for the rest of the world. They have no application today because they were connected to the Old Covenant God had with Israel. God has a New Covenant with the whole world that doesn't include those laws. The moral laws of God do not change with time, or ever. And although we fancy ourselves as more enlightened today, the reality of the world we live in tells us that human nature hasn't changed one bit. Human nature is every bit as ugly and self serving as it always has been. If you peel back the thin veneer of civility you will find a boiling pot of iniquity.

Stop committing basic logical fallacies and you might learn this stuff for yourself You haven't ever said anything that isn't easily invalidated by a simple logical fallacy or hasn't already been debunked long ago.

It's easy to speak in generalities; if I have committed a logical fallacy, then specifically point it out. The one that you detailed earlier did not apply.

Do you watch the Atheist Experience videos Shiny? because every time I watch one of the videos and listened to the same old tired theist "arguments" over and over again. I'm always reminded of you because you just aren't saying anything new. If you're serious about understanding why your ideas just don't pan out and you're not just trolling, you should seriously watch those.

I've watched the show, and again, I was a lifelong agnostic before becoming a Christian. I was pretty far left and would have probably fit in well with the lot of you not too many years ago. So, this is all to say that I understand where you're coming from and why you think and believe the way you do, because I used to think and believe in the same ways. Your mindset isn't a mystery to me. What I've learned about it is that God has to reveal Himself to a person before they will know anything about Him. Everyone gets some revelation and it is up to them to follow it. I received the revelation that there is a God and I pursued that for many years until He revealed Himself to me through His Son Jesus Christ. He has revealed Himself to you and everyone else on this website in some form or fashion. You would be shocked to hear some of the revelation people have received and turned away from, or rationalized away later. Statistics show that 10 percent of self professing atheists pray, and that is because they are unable to within themselves completely deny the revelation that they have received. I guarantee you there are atheists on this board who wrestle with all of this but since it isn't something atheists talk about (or would admit to publicly) you would never know it, that you're all keeping a lid on the truth.

Isn't there some sort of right-wing video site that you can post your nonsense to where the audience will appreciate it, form in a circle, and jerk each other off?

This new-age libertarian crap is about as stupid of an idea as I've ever come across. It's nothing more than hippie-esque "Give peace a chance" horseshit, without the excuse of being a drug burnout.

It really doesn't take much to recognize some commonalities in "government-less" places: Tribalism, Warlordism, Violence, and Death.

Wanna fuck with a libertarian?

1) Ask them if they owe society for anything.
2) Watch the instantaneous "no" fly from their lips.
3) Point out that thousands, maybe millions, of people have sacrificed themselves to their benefit.
4) Sit back and watch the squirm.

This reminded of the a scene in Always Sunny. S02E03, first 60 seconds. Dee and Dennis are the Libertarians.

I think these so-called unstoppable warlords that siphon off our aid is an even bigger myth. The United States of America defeated the British Empire, invaded Nazi Europe, dropped a nuclear fucking bomb on Axis Japan, sacrificed thousands of lives in Vietnam, stood head to head against the USSR during the Cuban Missile Crisis, landed on the moon, funded Nicaraguan revolutionaries using money from arms sales to Iran, assassinated Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, lied about weapons of mass destruction and invaded Iraq, fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, and yet we can't deal with warlords and civil wars in Africa where (at least with Rwandan civil war) weaponry is in the form of crate after crate of machetes made in China?

If all of those things are possible for the biggest super power in the world, how is it not possible to stop these warlords from siphoning our aid?

Lies.

We don't care so nothing of real consequence happens. All of those above events have one thing in common: our own goddamn self interest.

Everything sucks. May god have mercy on everyone's soul.

The guy who made this video really failed to give a thoughtful analysis of the situation. Before I comment, I will clarify that I do not agree with the thought or spirit behind Phils comments. I think they were crude, and fundamentally wrong on a few different levels. I do agree with Phil, however, that homosexuality is a sin. However, so is stealing and lying and cheating on your taxes, and so I do not single out homosexuals for their sins in particular. To do so would be hypocrtical because I fall short of the glory of God daily and I need Jesus just as much as they do.

My comment is that this situation has little to do with Phil or Duck dynasty; it is simply acting as a vehicle for a lot of pent up outrage and angst against the media and the politically correct culture. It's an overreaction, basically, because conservatives in general and Christians in particular feel marginalized by the current cultural climate.

It's an interesting cultural milestone because while Chick-fil-a was popular, it was never in the spotlight of the media or very much in the national consciousness. As a money making and ratings juggernaut, Duck Dynasty is right on the main nerve of it all, and so its fans, typically conservatives and Christians, cannot be easily ignored. Greed has given them a voice because the threat of a boycott is seen as a clear and present danger to many different bank accounts.

So we see two forces now pitted against eachother; one is the real motive of the corporation, which is to milk duck dynasty for every dollar it can. The other is its obligation to appease the politically correct establishment by blacklisting all who have violated the new cultural norms. A&E had no choice in the matter; they clearly had to do something. But, it is all just a facade; they dearly wish they had 100 Phils with 100 hit shows instead of just 1.

So, it is interesting to me because greed is taking the air out of the politically correct atmosphere. Because of Duck Dynastys popularity, the right actually has a louder voice in the culture than the left on this issue. If Duck Dynasty was just an obscure show, Phil would be history. Yet, because it generates so much wealth for shareholders, Phil is pretty much invincible. It all comes back to the bottom line, an idol to which seemingly anything can ultimately be sacrificed, even the progressive agenda itself.

There's room for both. I do plenty of sports/activities, but I still enjoy watching people who are really good at them perform them at a high level.

And yeah, there are some sports I enjoy watching more than playing. My time is limited and for me, joining a rugby team or learning to be good at Starcraft would mean sacrificing another aspect of my life.

But a few hours to watch a game? That I can totally do.

oh and @poolcleaner? Protoss FTW!