Magic: The Gathering has been around sice 1993.

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Summoner/

Silly meatbags, you cannot ban a member who is already banned. Stop summoning me and get back to work sifting.

King of Tokyo, Zombicide, Escape, Mansions of Madness, BSG the Board Game, Mice and Mystics (great co-operative game), X-Wing Miniatures game, Android: Netrunner (perhaps best 2 player game out there), Arkham Horror are just a few of the better games on my board game shelf... want to try 7 Wonders and many others... I play Small World, Forbidden Island, Eclipse, Ascension, and Summoner Wars on my iPad
Catan is a decent game, and does well as a gateway (I think Ticket to Ride is better, and perhaps even Pandemic)...
Love board gaming...

it relates to the fact that they summoned about 500 jurors for this trial. usually only having like 12 or so... also, it was probably very hard to find people who hadnèt actually already heard of what was going on as it was all over the news.

Refer to the posting guidelines for the sift. No porn, No snuff, No self-links.

This definitely is snuff, there's no way in hell it's not, and it's NOT allowed to be here. Personal opinion or not, this is a family site, and certain things don't belong. I can summon @dag or @lucky760, and throw this in *Discuss, because it's now been up for 15 hours and you don't seem to be taking the posting guidelines seriously.

[redacted] double-checked, and it looks like I was wrong on you having tried to post snuff before.

That's interesting. In his Democracy in America Vol 2, Chapter XX "HOW AN ARISTOCRACY MAY BE CREATED BY MANUFACTURES", Baron de Tocqueville warned of these dangers (in 1840!):

In proportion as the principle of the division of labor is more
extensively applied, the workman becomes more weak, more
narrow-minded, and more dependent. The art advances, the arti-
san recedes. On the other hand, in proportion as it becomes more
manifest that the productions of manufactures are by so much the
cheaper and better as the manufacture is larger and the amount
of capital employed more considerable, wealthy and educated
men come forward to embark in manufactures, which were here-
tofore abandoned to poor or ignorant handicraftsmen. The mag-
nitude of the efforts required and the importance of the results to
be obtained attract them. Thus at the very time at which the sci-
ence of manufactures lowers the class of workmen, it raises the
class of masters.

While the workman concentrates his faculties more and more
upon the study of a single detail, the master surveys an extensive
whole, and the mind of the latter is enlarged in proportion as that
of the former is narrowed. In a short time the one will require
nothing but physical strength without intelligence; the other
stands in need of science, and almost of genius, to ensure success.
This man resembles more and more the administrator of a vast
empire; that man, a brute.

The master and the workman have then here no similarity, and
their differences increase every day. They are connected only like
the two rings at the extremities of a long chain. Each of them fills
the station which is made for him, and which he does not leave;
the one is continually, closely, and necessarily dependent upon the
other and seems as much born to obey as that other is to com-
mand. What is this but aristocracy?

Then in Vol 3, Chapter VI, "WHAT SORT OF DESPOTISM DEMOCRATIC NATIONS HAVE TO FEAR" he goes on, describing a situation where a democratic nation has become
subject to a despotic government, and when the people give up and stop participating in democracy:

Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by
the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to
resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to
surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is grad-
ually broken and their character enervated; whereas that obedi-
ence which is exacted on a few important but rare occasions only
exhibits servitude at certain intervals and throws the burden of it
upon a small number of men. It is in vain to summon a people
who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to
choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this
rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it
may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties
of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually
falling below the level of humanity.

Or in other words, once you have managed to oppress the people of a democratic nation, the very equality that defines a democratic nation leaves them powerless and unable to organise together and throw off their chains.

I summon @enoch!

Or perhaps a puzzle box of some kind.
>> ^grinter:

I would have figured that it involved candles and blood or something...

System Shock 2 is my #2 game of all time (only beaten by the original Half-Life) so when Bioshock came out, I was really psyched that I'd get to return to that FPS/RPG style of gameplay. I thought they did a lot of things great in Bioshock (the art style, the graphics, the story, the physics and mechanics of the gameplay), it's always the things that didn't make sense to me that stick in my mind first whenever anyone brings it up. Vending machines that sell ammunition? (That never made much sense to me in SS2 either.) Psychic abilities that summon......bees? They're little things, but it's always stuff like this that breaks the immersion for me. Anyone else like that?

This would be perfect for our Friday night demon summonings.

@shinyblurry

The facts are simple: the existence of God explains everything that you feel about wanting to do good, and the love that you have for people and life, and your atheism denies it. Yet you embrace what is contrary to your own experience.

AND from farther down

… your atheistic presuppositions about reality. You say no one has come back but one man has, but of course you dismiss the account as fantasy (again because of your atheistic presuppositions).

Those aren't facts though. Those are your opinions and conjectures. Your theory of God may explain a greater number of things around me than science, but it also raises more questions than it answers, which makes it a horrible theory. "My atheism" doesn't exist as a concept. I don't subscribe to any belief about Gods any more than a monkey does. Are monkeys atheistic? I'm like a monkey. I have no "-ism" that "denies" anything. I happen to lack belief in any supernatural deity. *This lack of belief defines my atheism, rather than atheism defining my lack of beliefs.* I can't believe you still don't understand my position (or lack thereof). I have no idea what you mean by embrace. Nothing about my experience with "meaningfulness" requires me to believe in any gods, particularly not Yahweh.

So if it makes you feel good its okay to be a slave? You don't mind being enslaved to a mindless irrational process because you get rewarded for it like a rat activating a feeder?

Chemicals in my brain cause me to feel hunger and crave food. I follow them because doing so makes me feel good. I don't consider myself weak for being driven by those chemicals in my brain. To really feel like a slave, I'd have to be compelled to follow the commands of a sentient being, like a plantation owner with a whip, or a god of love threatening me with eternal torture, for instance, not chemicals in my own brain. Can there be shame in being a slave to yourself?

So I will modify this and say that you're living like a theist does but denying it with your atheism.

You changed one word, but missed the point of mine, so I've changed the same word: So I would turn it around and say instead that it's Christians *theists* who go about their lives living like normal humans, but thinking they're being good because their religion tells them to.

Now what?

Therefore what you're talking about is a herd morality.

Yep. Pretty much.

The entire point of my example was to show that if we simply have a herd morality where the majority tells us what is good and evil, then if the majority ever said child rape is good it would be.

If your whole final end goal is to prove your child rape hypothetical is internally consistent, and not to extend it into the real world, then yep, that's logically quite true. However, if you want to use it make any point about proving my beliefs to be somehow wrong, then you'll have to give me reason to believe it could ever possibly happen in a sustainable way.

My point was that we all come pre-programmed with a need for worship, which you apparently agree with. That is what is natural to us … It is actually more natural for us to rebel against God because of our corrupt nature.

Are we programmed to worship, or to rebel against God? Which is it? I propose that we're genetically designed to do exactly what makes us happy. Being good to others makes us (non-psychos) happy. Worship also makes many of us happy. Cognitive dissonance does not. I don't believe in any god, so I can't possibly worship one with a straight face. That would be cognitively dissonant and make me unhappy. I see no need to introduce the concept of "corruption".

The sense we agreed upon and have been discussing is that that life without God is meaningless … Therefore the meaning you derive from your feelings is only an illusion created by chemical reactions in your brain.

All cognition, from self-awareness, to thought, to the senses, to desires, to emotions, to numinous experiences, all of it is 100% chemical reactions. It's only fair to call my conscience an "illusion" if I also consider everything else that I perceive to be an illusion created by the chemicals in my mind. My feelings are as subjectively real as my senses.

There are other causes of depression but you see my point. Hope is the solution to depression.

That can be true. It's human nature to want to worship, and worshipping something can give hope. So for some people, if they can convince themselves to believe it, worshipping a god can lift them out of depression.

On what basis do you say your belief is more likely?

Occam's razor.

You say there is no reason to speculate (ever); now that is an interesting statement from someone who believes in open inquiry. What you've said is actually the death of inquiry. And let's be clear about this; you have speculated.

If there's no way to establish the truth of something, then there's no sense in trying to do so. There are no reliable records of the afterlife, so hoping to reach a conclusion is a vain pursuit. You can imagine hypotheticals, but you can't give any rationale for preferring one over another. Except by Occam's razor. What you consider "speculation" is just me saying, "nothing disproves anything about the afterlife".

Of course anything is possible when you summon your magic genie of evolution. "Time itself performs the miracles for you."

It's scientific fact, not mine, not anyone's. It's yours too, if you want it. You just have to go and learn about it from an unbiased source, not from uninformed people with pre-conceived ideas about what it is and isn't.

So no one is really bad?

In the relative non-objective morality sense, no, nobody is inherently bad or "evil" apart from our judgement of their actions. We often call people "bad", but that's just shorthand for what I said, or for having difficulty accepting that another person can do something so contrary to our concept of good.

Well, I'm fairly sure you've told me before that you hate the idea of God telling you what to do.

True, I would resent anybody giving me free will, then giving me a choice of doing what they say or accepting the worst conceivable torture for eternity. Did I misunderstand something?

[me:]Does the bible that say that rape is wrong? Does it say you cannot marry a child?

[you:]I've covered this above, but I will also add that if we had evolved differently, then in your worldview, all of this would be moot. We are only in this particular configuration because of circumstance, and not design. It could just as easily be 1000 different other ways. There could easily be scenarios where we evolved to exploit children instead of nuture them.

For a species to evolve to exploit children rather than nurture them is nearly impossible. That gene would get weeded out of the gene pool very quickly. Maybe I'm missing your point, and what you're really trying to say is that according to me, human feelings about right and wrong are, at their essence, random, because humans could have developed different feelings about right and wrong. I agree.

Back to my question: Does the Bible say that rape is wrong? Does it say that you cannot marry a child? To save time, could you point me to a neat summary of all the biblical rules that still stand? The Commandments were given in the Old Testament. I thought that law was struck down and there was a new covenant now, no? No sex before marriage is one, I'm assuming. Do you have to attend mass on Sundays? What are the others? I'm surprised to hear that you don't think the Bible suggests any position on condom usage. Is that just a Catholic hang-up then?

[me:]In both cases, you didn't address my point. 1) I'm stating that Yahweh's laws are far, far more complex than secular morality. You countered that Yahweh's laws were as simple as Jesus' two rules.

[you:]Romans 13:9-10

I agree that the rules in that verse are clearly derived from "love your neighbour", except maybe coveting, but that's not the point. Once I see the summary of biblical edicts, I'm sure I'll be able to point out that "Love your neighbour" isn't enough, that there are rules you would only follow because they're stated in the Bible, not because they obviously flow from the concept of neighbourly love.

So, when we think about doing unto others, we would think about it in the context of how Jesus taught us to behave.

So you're saying that we have to adjust our conscience first to align with the Bible, and then follow it. I'm saying we can just follow it according to what is bad for people.

abortion statistics

Good point. Foetal rights/women's rights is the moral debate of our times, IMO, maybe of all history. I haven't found any solid position on that issue. I've thought a lot about it, but this isn't the place to debate it. Suffice it to say I don't see abortion as a good thing, but not equal to infanticide either.

So your answer is yes? You think that without religion, society may decide torturing babies is good because it decided that killing Jews was good?

Yes, I think an entire society could end up agreeing on something that depraved, just like the ancient Greek society approved of paedophilia.

You know Germans were 94% Christian during WWII, right? And that the Greeks had those relations consensually? I'm against legalizing sex with children because it would be abused and children would be victimized, not because I think it's impossible for a child to enjoy and benefit from sex. I did it when I was underage and it was nothing but good.

You also act as if I am trying to defend all religion, which I'm not.

The thing is, you regularly invoke the 85% of humans who are theist when having a large number bolsters your argument, yet you disassociate yourself from most of them when their behaviour weakens your argument. I can never tell who you're talking about. Clearly identify the people you're talking about at all times, and we won't have this problem.

In any case, there are many examples of non-believing societies doing sick and depraved things to their populations.

And many Christian societies too, but I'm sure you'll disassociate yourselves from *those* Christians.

Tortured for Christ

According to Jesus, the Romanian government was appointed by God, so those Christians must have been doing something wrong, perhaps rebelling:

Romans 13:1-5

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended.

That passage, BTW, makes my stomach turn for all the people (Christian or otherwise) who have been tortured and killed at the hands of immoral rulers. And Jesus says might makes right. Go Jesus go. Prick.

[you:]… logic, rationality, morality, uniformity in nature …

[me:]You're slipping back into solipsism. We agreed not to go there. I'm not going to answer any of those things.

[you:]Now you're just trying to duck the issue, and perhaps you don't understand what solipsism is, because this is not solipsism. Solipsism is the belief that only your mind is sure to exist.

What I am talking about is right in line with the video. Without God you don't have any ultimate justification not just for any kind of value, but even for your own reasoning. It is a direct implication of a meaningless existence. This is what I mean about a justifies b justifies c justifies d into infinity. You have nowhere to stake a claim which can justify anything which you experience, or even your own rationality. If you feel you do, please demonstrate why you believe your reasoning is actually valid.

Then you've entirely missed the point of me making those rules back at Qualiasoup v. Craig.

We agreed not to question the validity of our senses. If I can trust my senses, then I am self-aware. I must assume I'm a rational agent, since it was my own rational awareness that defined my self. If I'm a rational agent, then I can trust logic, which Craig tells us in the same video is a rational thing to do.

If your whole argument is, "a god must exist for you to be able to use logic" then I put it to you to show me logically (and not tautologically) why that must be true. To me, there's no connection.

I still don't see the infinite regression. Give me a real example of it in the form a justifies b which justifies c....

Also, what's "uniformity in nature" and when do I ever appeal to it?

Before any quotes, I'll give my own overarching point: Life without a higher purpose may be ultimately meaningless (I'll get more into what sense I mean), and that makes life more difficult than if there were ultimate meaning, but that has no bearing whatsoever on the truth value of the existence of Yahweh. You cannot derive Yahweh's existence (or any deity or pantheon) from your claim that life is easier that way. [Edit: Turns out I never actually get to that conclusion in my comments below, so you might as well address it here, but after you've read the rest.]

The point was never that a meaningless Universe makes life more difficult; you simply decided that was the point. The point the video makes, and which I have also been making, is that you are suffering from cognitive dissonance by having no ultimate justification for your value system, but living as if you do. You admit that under atheism the Universe is meaningless, and so we've been debating on whether you can find any justification for a value system in a meaningless Universe. The explanation you have ultimately given me is that you believe there is a right and wrong, and people do have value, because you feel it. Do you realize this proves what I have been saying all along?

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

Cognitive dissonance is the term used in modern psychology to describe the state of holding two or more conflicting cognitions (e.g., ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously.

Your atheism tells you that life without God is meaningless. Your feelings tell you that life is meaningful. These are two conflicting cognitions. Instead of realizing that and re-evaluating your atheism, you say that you don't know why and you don't care. That is the very definition of cognitive dissonance.

But the fact is that somehow, in the context of my own little 80-year microblip in the lifespan of our planet, I do care. I just do. I have nothing more than a pet theory about why I care. I care, and I care a lot. I suppose I'm somewhat curious as to why I care, but it's not of primary importance for me to know. I just do, and it's pleasing to notice that just about everyone else around me does too. The only question for me is how to follow this desire of mine to be good given my circumstances.

The facts are simple: the existence of God explains everything that you feel about wanting to do good, and the love that you have for people and life, and your atheism denies it. Yet you embrace what is contrary to your own experience.

And why should I reject being a slave to chemicals? The chemicals MAKE ME FEEL GOOD, remember? Should I purposefully do things that make me feel bad? Why on Earth would I even consider it? Ridiculous.

So if it makes you feel good its okay to be a slave? You don't mind being enslaved to a mindless irrational process because you get rewarded for it like a rat activating a feeder?

I reject the description that I live my life "as a Christian does", as if Christians invented or have some original claim being good. All humans, regardless of faith or lack thereof, believe in the value of humans (or, any societies that don't value humans go extinct very quickly). We all generally shun murder and violence, foster mutual care, enjoy one another's company, feel protective, have a soft spot for babies and so forth, and have been doing all of this as a species since before Christianity began.

So I would turn it around and say instead that it's Christians who go about their lives living like normal humans, but thinking they're being good because their religion tells them to.

Most people in this world (around 85 - 90 percent) are theists. If we are going to talk about universal belief in this world then it is theism which is normal. That is historically where our morality comes from. Everyone who believes in God has an ultimate justification for right and wrong, but atheists do not. So I will modify this and say that you're living like a theist does but denying it with your atheism.

I can claim that I have a stronger sense of what's right and wrong than the psychopath simply because they are defined as lacking that sense (or, perhaps non-psychopaths are defined as people having that sense). And you're right that I do not claim that my way of determining which actions are appropriate is inherently superior to the psychopath's. As it happens, my way of determining morality puts me among the overwhelming majority, and so it's relatively easy for me to mitigate the negative impacts of people like that by identifying and avoiding them. I don't say that my way should be preferred to the pshychopath's; I just notice that it is, and I'm grateful for that, and for the fact that psychopathy is not a choice.

Actually, psychopaths do know right from wrong, but they don't care.

In any case, what you're saying here contradicts your later claim that my hypothetical about a society approving of child rape is ridiculous, and proves my point. You admit here that you couldn't say that your way of morality is superior to psychopathy, it just so happens that there are more of you than there are of them. You name that as the reason why your way should be preferred. Therefore what you're talking about is a herd morality.

Now think about if the situation were reversed and psychopaths were in the majority. Your version of morality would no longer be preferred, and psychopaths would no longer need to conform to your standards; you would need to conform to theirs. Whatever was normalized in a psychopathic society would be what was called good and whatever the psychopathic society rejected would be called evil. This is proof that everything I said was true. The entire point of my example was to show that if we simply have a herd morality where the majority tells us what is good and evil, then if the majority ever said child rape is good it would be. This is simply a fact. Whether you think it could happen or not is relevent to the point.

You're drowning in a sea of relativism, where a justifies b and b justifies c and c justifies d, and this goes into an infinite regress.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Can you give an example of a justification to infinite regression that would cause some kind of problem unique to non-thesitic morality?

I'll get to this later.

I don't accept that it's any more natural to worship Yahweh than some other deity or pantheon or idol, and I can't imagine how you could justify such a position without referring to dogma. Ask a Muslim. He'll tell you with the same conviction that Allah is the natural way and show you his own dogma. 100 years ago, a Japanese would have told you it was natural to worship the Emperor, and today he'd say it's natural to worship ancestors. My point is that any worship will satisfy our natural urge to worship, which is why almost all people worship something, and the object of worship you're brought up around is the one you're most likely to be comfortable with worshipping, naturally.

The reason I said this was in reply to your assertion that we developed religion because it answered questions and made us feel comfortable. My point was that we all come pre-programmed with a need for worship, which you apparently agree with. That is what is natural to us. It has nothing to do with whether it is more or less natural to worship Jesus. It is actually more natural for us to rebel against God because of our corrupt nature. It's only through personal revelation that we direct our worship in the right direction.

People don't naturally conclude life is meaningless; they know from their experience that it is very meaningful. They are taught it is meaningless through philosophy and the ennui that comes from modern life. You will never find a population of natural atheists anywhere on the planet.

The problem —and one that I fell into myself— is the conflation of two senses of the word "meaningless". For example, I can say without conflict that the planet and humanity is doomed and so forth, so our actions are ultimately meaningless, AND that interacting with people gives meaning to my life. Now, in the first sense, I mean there's no teleological purpose to my life. In the second sense, I mean certain people and things in my life give fulfillment/bliss.

The sense we agreed upon and have been discussing is that that life without God is meaningless. In this sense, it is still equally meaningless whether human civilization implodes or doesn't implode. Therefore the meaning you derive from your feelings is only an illusion created by chemical reactions in your brain.

Your anecdotal evidence about depression doesn't make you an authority on *the single cause* of depression. Some depressives follow your pattern, and others don't. I don't. When I'm depressed, my feeling isn't hopelessness. In fact, these days, I'm feeling rather hopeless, but I'm not depressed.

You can feel hopeless and not be depressed, but the source of the depression is almost always hopelessness. I'll give you some examples. If you put all of the worlds depressed people in a very large room, and gave each of them a check for 10 million dollars, you will have instantly cured around 80 percent of them. The majority of depression comes being stuck in a bad situation that you don't feel like you can change, situations that cause a lot of stress and unhappiness. A lot of money buys a lot of change. Many of the rest are probably depressed because of health issues, and if you could offer them a cure (hope), they would be cured as well. The remainder are probably depressed because of extreme neurosis. There are other causes of depression but you see my point. Hope is the solution to depression.

It's not my hope. I believe that dead is dead. Much simpler than your belief. Much more likely too. You're implying that I'm following some faulty reasoning about the afterlife. Among the things I don't know are an *infinite number of possibilities* of what could happen in the afterlife, one of which is your bible story. My best guess is nothing. Since nobody's ever come back from the dead to talk about it (Did nobody interview Lazarus? What a great opportunity missed!), nobody knows, so there's no reason to speculate about it ever. Your book says whatever it says, and I don't care because to me it's fairy tales. I'd have to be an idiot to live my life differently because of a book I didn't first believe in. Just like you'd be an idiot to live like a non-believer if you believe so much in Yahweh.

On what basis do you say your belief is more likely?

Someone has come back from the dead to talk about it: Jesus Christ. You don't have to believe the bible; you can ask Him yourself. You say there is no reason to speculate (ever); now that is an interesting statement from someone who believes in open inquiry. What you've said is actually the death of inquiry. And let's be clear about this; you have speculated. You are basing your conclusion on no evidence but merely your atheistic presuppositions about reality. You say no one has come back but one man has, but of course you dismiss the account as fantasy (again because of your atheistic presuppositions).

I would also ask how you think the brain understands the complex moral scenarios we find ourselves in and rewards or doesn't reward accordingly? Doesn't that seem fairly implausible to you?

It's quite plausible. I'm no biologist, but I'm sure there's a branch of evolutionary biology that deals with social feelings. My own pet theory is that these feelings are comparable to the ones that control the behaviour of all communal forms of life, like ants and zebras and red-winged blackbirds. It's evolution, either way, IMO.

Of course anything is possible when you summon your magic genie of evolution. "Time itself performs the miracles for you."

What makes someone a bad person?

In the absolute sense, religious faith, only, can bring that kind of judgement as a meaningful label.

In the relative sense where I would colloquially refer to someone as "a bad person" (my prime minister, Stephen Harper is an example), I mean someone who has shown they are sufficiently disruptive to other people's happiness due to acting too much in their own self-interest that they're best removed from influence and then avoided. But I would only use that term as a shorthand among people who knew that I don't moralize absolutely.

So no one is really bad?

Do you think this could have something to do with the fact that the bible says you should do things you don't want to do, or that you should stop doing things you don't want to stop doing?

An interesting question, but no. I don't believe it because everything I see points all religion being a human invention.

Well, I'm fairly sure you've told me before that you hate the idea of God telling you what to do.

Your hypothetical is an appeal to the ridiculous. It simply is a fact that just about everyone —including child rapists, I'm guessing— believes that child rape is wrong for the simple reason that it severely hurts children. If it increases a person's suffering, then it's wrong. I can think of nothing simpler. Your hypothetical is like one where a passage in the bible prescribed child rape. Would it be OK then? Does the bible that say that rape is wrong? Does it say you cannot marry a child?

I've covered this above, but I will also add that if we had evolved differently, then in your worldview, all of this would be moot. We are only in this particular configuration because of circumstance, and not design. It could just as easily be 1000 different other ways. There could easily be scenarios where we evolved to exploit children instead of nuture them.

In both cases, you didn't address my point. 1) I'm stating that Yahweh's laws are far, far more complex than secular morality. You countered that Yahweh's laws were as simple as Jesus' two rules. I showed that was wrong with my AIDS in Africa example (condoms saving lives). You can address that, or you can agree that Yahweh's laws are more complex that Harris' model of secular morality.

I hope I don't need to point out that the bible says nothing about condoms. Gods morality is really as simple as the two greatest commandments because if you follow those you will follow all the rest:

Romans 13:9-10

The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

When you love your neighbor and love God you are basically doing the whole law right there. There are some particulars that can emerge in different situations just like we have laws for different situations, and so Harris would have to accommodate those as well.

2) I also pointed out that Jesus gave us a moral model that requires the individual to determine for themselves based on fixed criteria what's good and what's not. "… as you would have your neighbour do unto you…" implicitly requires the individual to compare their actions with what they themselves would want someone else to do to them. That means relying on their own understanding. This contradicts your other statements that we shouldn't rely on our own understanding. You see? To follow Jesus' second law, you must rely on your own understanding.

Yes, in this case we would rely on our own understanding, as informed by the biblical worldview. What scripture is saying when it says "lean not on your own understanding" is that we make God the Lord of our reasoning. So, when we think about doing unto others, we would think about it in the context of how Jesus taught us to behave.

[you:]What about all of Pagan societies throughout the ages that sacrificed their children to demons?

You're making my point for me. Paganism is religion. Non-believers would never justify a habit of killing their own children.

Yes they would:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,880,00.html

So your answer is yes? You think that without religion, society may decide torturing babies is good because it decided that killing Jews was good?

[me:]If you think I’m being ridiculous, what do you think is more likely: that a society somewhere will suddenly realize that they feel just fine about torturing babies, or that a society somewhere will get the idea that it’s their god’s will that they torture babies? Human instinct is much more consistent than the will of any gods ever recorded.

Yes, I think an entire society could end up agreeing on something that depraved, just like the ancient Greek society approved of paedophilia. You also act as if I am trying to defend all religion, which I'm not. There are plenty of sick and depraved religions out there, and religions can easily corrupt a culture, like islam has done to the Arab culture.

In any case, there are many examples of non-believing societies doing sick and depraved things to their populations. Millions of Christians were murdered by communists in the 1940's and 50's. I highly recommend you read this book:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gracealoneca.com%2Fsitebuildercontent%2Fsitebu
ilderfiles%2Ftortured_for_christ.pdf&ei=PSNiUIyTCsPqiwLYtYGQCw&usg=AFQjCNG-ro4rM7dfvFCkgIvjnmgdhQnSPA&cad=rja

The fact is, in a meaningless Universe you simply can't prove anything without God. You actually have no basis for logic, rationality, morality, uniformity in nature, but you live as if you do. If I ask you how you know your reasoning is valid, you will reply "by using my reasoning".

You're slipping back into solipsism. We agreed not to go there. I'm not going to answer any of those things.

Now you're just trying to duck the issue, and perhaps you don't understand what solipsism is, because this is not solipsism. Solipsism is the belief that only your mind is sure to exist.

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

What I am talking about is right in line with the video. Without God you don't have any ultimate justification not just for any kind of value, but even for your own reasoning. It is a direct implication of a meaningless existence. This is what I mean about a justifies b justifies c justifies d into infinity. You have nowhere to stake a claim which can justify anything which you experience, or even your own rationality. If you feel you do, please demonstrate why you believe your reasoning is actually valid.

>> ^messenger:

stuff

"And now the real reason you've all been summoned here...start picking up those ping-pong balls."

>> ^seltar:

"She had broken a Texan law that makes it a crime to miss more than 10 days of school in a six month period, according to local news
When she recently missed classes again, he issued a summons and had her arrested in open court when she appeared." - src
So yeah, that judge is an Asshat for what he did, but the fact there is a law for missing school in Texas is even worse.


Yep, that's Texas for you. Home of the small braingovernment crowd.

Here's the thing about that law it's not typically designed to punish the student, I live in Texas I know, the law is mainly targeted for parents who don't care to make sure their child goes to school or even care if their children get an education period. For some reason truancy in Texas has spiked dramatically in recent years since nothing else they've done seems to work so they've started telling parents that if you don't make sure your kid goes to school you could possibly be faced with jail time for neglect. This is actually the first time I've heard of a student themselves being jailed and I can only assume it's because she has no parents to hold accountable. Do I agree with the law no, do I think this was taken WAY too far in this case, definitely. But I still can't come up with a better answer for getting parents to realize that's it's not okay if you don't make sure your child gets a proper education. I still think these things need to be tried on a case by case basis and if the child is on their own that EVERY available solution should be explored first before resorting to drastic measures like this. That said there are some kids who simply won't go even if you walk them in the door to school every day yourself. If a kid wants to get out of school that bad they'll wait for first period to end and skip class on their own. So what do we do then? What do you do about parents who simply refuse to take their kids to school and also refuse to pull their kids out of school?(Which is entirely legal in Texas, you can pull your kids out of school anytime you wish.) Do we continue to let them waste tax payer dollars, Teacher's time and other children's resources?(For instance some electives only have so many slots per class) I don't know I don't think they should be so cavalier about sending a kid to jail but if you don't take drastic measures with some kids/parents they simply won't listen any other way.

>> ^seltar:

"She had broken a Texan law that makes it a crime to miss more than 10 days of school in a six month period, according to local news
When she recently missed classes again, he issued a summons and had her arrested in open court when she appeared." - src
So yeah, that judge is an Asshat for what he did, but the fact there is a law for missing school in Texas is even worse.