>> ^Quboid:

>> ^ant:
>> ^Quboid:
>> ^ant:
Good thing I am not a celebrity.

You are in the UK, you and Dec seem to present every fucking Saturday night bullshit show together.

Prove it.

4,470,000 pieces of evidence right here.


Meh, not me.

>> ^ant:

Good thing I am not a celebrity.


You are in the UK, you and Dec seem to present every fucking Saturday night bullshit show together.

>> ^PalmliX:

Hey thanks for your response Enzo!
If I had a Teddy Bear, then wouldn't I be justified in believing it's real because I could sense it with all 5 of my senses? As would anyone else I handed it to?
Or are you suggesting that I couldn't detect this bear with any of my senses, but I still believed it was real? Then I think most people would probably call me mentally ill. Myself included.
I also find the idea of ganging up with other people who share a belief (even if it's completely in contrast to your own) against those without any belief, a little scary.
Is it is far better to have ANY belief, no matter how ridiculous, unfounded, or even dangerous, than no belief? And should we really team up with other believers and "go against" those who make no such claims? Personally I would call this type of behavior mob/herd mentality or gang warfare, tribalism. An us or them mentality. I find this idea in a modern society a little frightening.
Your closing question "The non-believer is the real threat, ask yourself why." It's a difficult question to answer for a "non-believer" such as myself. Non-believer in the sense that so far, no one person's claim about the existence of an invisible Teddy Bear... has convinced me enough to worry and loose sleep at night.
I don't see how someone who doesn't believe in some variation of an unprovable belief is more of a threat than someone who does. Wouldn't it just be one less thing to fight about? i.e. if no one believed in Teddy Bears then there wouldn't be an issue in the first place? Because no one would even be talking about it?
I'm interested to hear your answer!
- Adam

The teddy bear belief I put represents the belief in the supernatural. There are people who simply don't believe in supernatural things at all. No ghosts, no spirit world, no voodoo, mind reading, water divining, astrology, and yes, even gods. This is the one step you need to consider.

When you say "I don't see how someone who doesn't believe in some variation of an unprovable belief is more of a threat than someone who does.", you're admitting that the belief in question doesn't exist. It's unprovable because it's a product of the mind and is limited to the mind, otherwise there would be a way for science to detect it. It can be incredibly real for the believer, but it doesn't exist in the real world, (therefore unprovable), and doesn't effect anyone who doesn't believe it. The non-believer is the only threat because the belief is dependent on more minds that believe, that's the only way the belief can propagate. This is why religion pushes faith and belief above all else.

The benefits of not believing in the supernatural are endless. For me personally, it's that the phrase "Why me?" has lost all meaning. Just consider how much anxiety and guilt you have for things like, "am i on the right path?", "am I being punished for something?", "what's god trying to tell me?", "is that a sign or just coincidence?". All that goes away. It's liberating like you wouldn't believe.

You've done some nice cherry picking here. Sepacore, my hope in this conversation is that you will be intellectually honest to address the substance of the arguments, rather than trying to find some angle to make your point so you can *avoid* addressing the substance. I don't think that is too much to ask.

My point exactly.
Therefore to call it 'evidence' rather than 'subjective experience' is an at best misleading if not false claim, as the term 'evidence' used in conversation with others generally refers to something provable to others.

To say something like "I had a subjective experience that is evidence to me" would be fine, as it has a buffer around the term to denote that 'evidence' in this case is in no way substantial or transferable to others, i.e. not evidence to others and can be discarded.. and any line of poetic words can not change this.

Jesus made a claim, that if I put my faith in Him, He would send me the Holy Spirit to supernaturally transform me, and live within me. If that happens, it is objective evidence that His claim is true. You may have other theories as to why it happened to me, or that it happened at all and I am simply deluding myself, but something has happened, and I have changed. Whether it is subjectively experienced, it can be objectively observed in my life. I am a different person, and those in my immediate family and circle of friends have certainly noticed it.

Let's look at the definition of evidence:

ev·i·dence
   [ev-i-duhns] Show IPA noun, verb, ev·i·denced, ev·i·denc·ing.
noun
1.
that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof.
2.
something that makes plain or clear; an indication or sign: His flushed look was visible evidence of his fever.
3.
Law . data presented to a court or jury in proof of the facts in issue and which may include the testimony of witnesses, records, documents, or objects.

As you can see, not all evidence can be empirically tested. Personal testimony is sufficient to send people to the electric chair in our court system. My personal testimony, and the testimony of billions of others, does count as evidence. This is all beside the point:

If you understand the above point (one you made yourself), then you may agree that those who 'require evidence' (regardless of what some guy poetically said), can not genuinely accept your use of the word 'evidence' as having the same value as what now has to be refereed to as 'actual evidence' for clarity after the term has been devalued to host a non-transferable personal experience (i.e. not evidence to others), and therefore swapping out this term for a personal 'reason to believe' is not only required for more clearly followable terminology within a conversation but is more accurate in general discourse of 2 opposing views.

You have completely ignored the entire point of my argument, and it seem you deliberately left out the key part of what I was saying:

"but it is something you can test on your own"

I am not telling you, I experienced God so believe in God on that basis. I am telling you that Jesus made a claim which you can empirically test. You have constantly objected that there is no empirical evidence for God, yet you have failed to validate whether this is true. You have merely assumed it is true, through many other lines of reasoning, except the one that would, if the claim was true, produce any results. Again, Jesus said directly that you would have no experience of God outside of going through Him, and your experience directly matches His claim; No have no experience of God. You assume its because there isn't a God, which is natural to assume, but Jesus said it is because there is no way to even approach God or know anything about Him except through Jesus.


Re Jesus said, Jesus said etc

The notion that one would give another great tools/resources like logical processing, rational thought and critical thinking and then put forward a reward of 'subjective experience based evidence' only achievable by those that disregarded such 'gifts' enough so as to have a chance of achieving this form of evidence is absurd.

If there is a God, then you are using none of these tools correctly. If you've ever read the book "flatland", then you can understand how two dimensional creatures would consider the possibility of a 3D world illogical and irrational. Thus, so does a materialist consider the spiritual reality to be illogical and irrational. This is why I say atheism is a religion for people who have no experience of God.

The bible anticipates your argument and your skepticism:

1 Corinthians 1:18-22

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

Men have always taken great pride in their intellectual accomplishments, yet none of them have ever given even one shred of revelation about Almighty God. The wisdom behind the cross is much higher than this worldly wisdom, and it in fact proves it all to be vanity and foolishness, but the world cannot see that, because it is wise in its own eyes:

Romans 1:22

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

No offense taken as you've missed the point. Firstly there is a difference as i do not claim to 'know' that God doesn't exist. I claim to have 'reasons to believe' that it is unlikely. Knowledge of mental deficiencies, emotions, subjective experiences, experience recognition mental softwares and the way humans make mass assumptions to quickly gain degrees of understandings of any/every situation alone take me right up to that hairsbreadth away point. Whereby it can take time and effort explaining to people the difference between agnostic (don't know/care), agnostic-atheist (don't know, doubt it) and atheist (believe not), I'm happy to wear the tag as a generality in non-specific and non-in-depth discussions.

However I'm aware that a God identical to your claims 'could' be hiding in the shadows just outside of human detection and actual evidence as the religious coincidentally claim to those who request proof (yet then in the same breath can state 'but I have personal evidence'.. yes, seems convenient and unlikely).
Just like I'm aware that there 'could' be a 700 story tall pink dragon that farts rainbows named Trevor that simultaneously exists and doesn't exist inside both of my kidneys without being split into 2 parts..
Or someone 'could' prefer their beliefs enough to unknowingly and automatically do mental acrobats around anything that would disrupt them including acknowledging that their position is unsubstantiated outside of a mind that wants to believe (this is in fact what can occur when someone suffers from a delusion).
Debating possibilities is a waste of time, whereas debating probabilities is where you might actually get some results or at least supportable reason to belive.

I'm not talking about probabilities. Jesus was a real person, and He made claims. These claims can be tested.

As far as the difference between God and trevor goes, one has explanatory power and one doesn't. Neither does anyone believe in trevor; he isn't plausible. He isn't even logically coherent. No one believes in flying tea pots, and flying tea pots don't explain anything. God does explain something, and in many cases, is a better explanation for the evidence, such as information in DNA and the fine tuning of our physical laws. Asking whether the Universe was intelligently designed is a perfectly rational question and there is evidence to support this conclusion. Do you know that 40 percent of biologists, physicists and mathematicians believe in a personal God? I am not appealing to an authority here, but I think this statistic shows that people trained in science do believe that the evidence points towards God.

understanding of stellar evolution is actually very primitive

The arguments relating to 'we don't know everything yet' is not a basis in which to claim 'X is just as, if not more so, likely to be true'. Claims require their own 'evidences' to support them. Pushing ideas onto people requires 'transferable evidence' and just because there is a question mark at a stage whereby most other aspects of a theory hold true enough to be accurately predicted during tests, does not reflect on another theory being more likely but may indeed reflect on another theory as being less likely.

Again, this is just cherry picking and I think you have lost track of the thread, or you don't want to follow it. You said that part of your skepticism about God creating the Universe was that we understood things about stellar evolution, which is to say we don't need to invoke God as an explanation. I pointed out that not only is our understanding primitive, but even if it were perfect, how does that rule out a Creator? You are confusing mechanism for agency. The stars didn't create themselves, the laws that govern the cosmos caused them to form, and ultimately the laws that caused them to form also had an origin. You have to explain the agency before you can say you don't need God to explain something.

I won't reply much to this as it merely shows that you're already geared to ignore actual evidences that would support the idea of the universe not requiring a God (note that this readiness to disregard facts is what occurs within delusions so as to keep degrees of stability withing fantasized worlds).

I can just as easily say this:

And I won't reply much to this as it merely shows that you're already geared to ignore actual evidences that would support the idea of the universe requiring a God (note that this readiness to disregard facts is what occurs within delusions so as to keep degrees of stability withing fantasized worlds)

Although we haven't figured everything out yet, we've only had about 400 years worth of good studying and scientific thinking on the matter of a 13.7 billion year old case... how much can you honestly expect us to know definitively when so much of our combined time goes towards supporting notions that can't actually be proved?

I don't, and therefore, I wouldn't expect you to say that what has been described actually proves anything one way or the other.

Yes I know that humans must make assumptions so as to figure things out, in fact it was one of the if not THE main focus of my previous post.
Could you ask your question if their wasn't uniformity in nature? No. The fact that there is, is what allows for those that can question it to arise. Our mere being here says nothing as to whether there is a God, in fact nothing in science thus far (to my knowledge) says anything as to whether there IS a God, however some things do say as to whether or not a God is required.

So what is the experiment that proves science is the best method for obtaining truth if you have to assume things you cannot prove to even do science?

Our being here doesn't prove there is a God, necessarily, but we should be surprised to find ourselves in a Universe that is so finely tuned for life.

Scripture (your one and others) say a lot of things, some things vaguely, somethings specifically, and some things contradictorily (Google 'bible contradictions' for examples), but most of all, it says things poetically somewhat like a manipulating salesman whose product you're not allowed to touch, until you've handed over the money. Scripture also doesn't say things as well as some writers over the years could have, but hey it's only the word of God.. I'm interested in things outside of scripture, things that are testable, things that are comparable to an alternate source than where they came from.

You're cherry picking, and dodging the substance, and now even the point of the argument. You were agreeing with Sageminds contention that if God is perfect, then He is also perfectly evil. I pointed out that scripture describes God different, and I also gave you a logical argument outside of scripture for it:

It would be less perfect for God to be a mixture of good and evil versus being perfectly good.

Do you have a response to that argument?

Cheap shot: proof please. I require it in order to respond to the statement & question.
Na just kidding I don't expect any proof for these claims, just like I can't provide you any proof about Trevor.. * whispers: because Trever doesn't actually exists *. In these cases we'll just dismiss each others unsubstantiated claims until the other provides either evidence or acceptable reason to believe said claims.

It's your claim that God does evil in the bible, and so I am asking you why, hypothetically, is it wrong for God to take a life? Since we're talking about the God of the bible, He is the creator of all things, and so has ultimate responsibility over His creation. He is responsible for every aspect of your life, and has the say over your continued existence. Therefore, what makes it wrong for Him to take life just as He gives and maintains life?

Conflict.

Christian claim: God gave humans free will and allows them to use it whereby they will be judged in the afterlife.
Christian claim: God may affect the world in your benefit if you pray (or as your hypothetical, affect the world against you if you're naughty).
Christian claim: God exists outside of detection.
Christian claim: God can do anything.
Christian claim: God.
Christian claim: God is mysterious / we can not understand the will of God
Christian claim: God likes X, God doesn't like Y.

Or to summarize: God exists outside of known existence and has the ability to create and destroy anything without exception.
This is the result of human intelligence evolving to the point of getting one of our psychological survival drives (hope) to an indisputable peak of performance.

My point is that believers over time have given themselves so much wiggle room, when we start talking about 'why God X, why not Y, can God Z' etc, then we enter the realm of imaginative flexibility where the desperate and delusional can simply change the variables of what they want to use regardless of the conflicts, and ignore any logical positions by getting caught up on their preferred ideological technicalities while rejecting other physical or metal technicalities or proofs.

Again, this is a hypothetical scenario involving the God of the bible. It's your claim that God has done evil, so you can back it up with a logical argument? I've outlined a few scenarios and asked you if God would be evil for doing any of those things. I am not talking about mysterious ways, I am talking about specifics.

I have to say 'proof please' again. The words of 1 source (the Bible) are not good enough, evidence requires testability and multiple sources of confirmation. Too much imagination and you can slip away from reality.

Again, we are speaking hypothetically of a scenario you engaged in; "how would you react if the God of the bible showed up at your door". You said you would react in such and such way, which is unrealistic considering how the God of the bible is described, which is what I pointed out to. Based on your modified understanding of the God of the bible, do you think you would react the same way?

Would have replied sooner, but was busy and then D3 launched =D

No problemo..take your time? How is D3?

>> ^Sepacore

>> ^raverman:

Is fining revenue gathering? Of course it is.
Is speeding endangering the lives of your fellow citizens? Of course it is.
(It's not a matter of opinion. It's proven and documented statistical probability.)
So the secret to beating the system? Just don't speed.
With any luck you'll hit a tree and remove your idiocy from the gene pool - but sometimes you'll hit one of us and hurt our loved ones. So we asked our government to do something to keep us safe from you. That's why there are laws and enforcement.


you talking to me?
because i speed all the time and i mean SPEED..none of that mamby pamby pussy speeding,im talking red-lining as fast as my car can go baby!(ok..that may have been a tad hyperbolic,but you get my point).

do i do this in a 25mph zone? no.
where residential homes are and possibly children? of course not,dont be absurd.
busy highway? with cluttered traffic? again that would be pretty dumb.traffic by its nature has a flow to it and 5 miles more per hour wont make much of a difference.

i am an adult who can make rational and reasonable choices concerning my safety and those around me and i CHOOSE to let my car rip with the windows down and the music cranking usually late at night when few cars are on the road and always a well lit road and/or highway.
i am not risking anybodies safety but my own.the only thing i am truly risking is getting popped by a cop and that is also a risk i chose.
i am ok with that and i have been pulled over a few times with not ONE citation for speeding (though i obviously was).

because that IS the point of this video yes?
a cop pulls me over on a lone highway doing 110mph and all i get is a warning but an automated surveillance camera does not make those distinctions.nor does it differentiate between 1 mile over the speed limit or 30 mph over.it does not discriminate because safety has nothing to do with its function.it serves entirely as a revenue gatherer...period.

now maybe you are speaking of those drivers who zip in and out of lanes,always having to gain that 5-10 of pavement,cutting in and out and driving aggressively.
or the drivers who scream down a residential road doing 50mph where kids play and people walk their dog.
well i can agree with you whole-heartedly on those points.those drivers are disregarding the safety of other people and should be fined etc etc but (and this is the main point) you will NEVER find one of those surveillance cameras in those areas.
why?
because most people dont drive like that and usually only speed on open highways.
(this is not opinion but statistically documented)
there is more revenue to be had on the open highway than there ever could be on your side street.hence surveillance is (usually) on open highways and freeways.
this is about money,moola,scratch and little to do with safety...or the law.

i am sure you did not direct your post at me @raverman nor people who may speed on occasion like i do.i am just using your comment to make a point and to express something that i am seeing more and more and i have to admit that it is a bit troubling to me.
how many of the people i encounter are becoming more and more comfortable with tactics such as this and then rationalize it in a way that,on the surface,does seem reasonable but i ask you...
i ask all of you..
to think a bit further when a government implements such tactics as automatic surveillance under the guise of safety because when we look at it honestly it is anything BUT about concerns for safety.

i do not obey blindly and i aim to misbehave.
i might just start doing that wearing a nightgown.
lets be honest..that was epic.

@Boise_Lib I think it is better to say "How one teaches is directly controlled by the education system" is how some systems work, but not how teaching in general has to be. You could have a system where teachers are free to experiment with different teaching methods, ( as some of the smaller counties already do here in Texas) for example. Or, conversely, if it became the cultural norm among the major body of educators that discovery based teaching was the best mode of teaching, you would see it in the private and public schools. I still say that this is more about the role and mode of educators than of any one system, but I will leave it at that.

I agree @Ryjkyj, I think we are saying the same thing. I am not arguing against education as the highest priority for kids, I think that is every parents number one concern. I think it is better to stress the role of teachers and teaching methods as the primary discussion topic on education and less the system around it. Start with kids and teachers, get those right, and the rest of the shit around them will fall into place. Different country will most likely have a different container for teachers and students that is consistent with their laws and cultural values, but as long as that center piece is strong, I would wager they would both be very successful. Teachers and students, teachers and students, teachers and students; low hanging fruit, talk about this stuff first!

I wonder how many bake sales they had to hold to raise the money for this thing, huh? Am I right? Hahaha...ha...heh...nevermind.

I have some shallow tastes -- I kept waiting for him to be sick of something that I like and pursue.

But I am just as disinterested in all the things he chose to highlight.

I feel a tiny flame of pride that my shallow tastes aren't the most shallow.

One more thing I am sick of? Survivor Anyplace.

@SDGundamX

You make a number of fair points, and I humbly accept your chastisement of my condescending attitude (<--no sarcasm here, rereading my own post with the mist of anger gone makes me feel a tad ashamed of myself). As you can see, it is not above me to make false assumptions (re: why you didn't respond to the other comment), but at least it isn't beneath me to recognise when my bitchy ego has gotten in the way.
As for the subject matter(s), I guess we disagree on Hitchens being an alcoholic and it being inappropriate to toast him. What I still stand by - and what really pissed me off to begin with (pardon my French) - is that I do not think the discussion on the Sift has been "O'Reillyfied". Sure, people get heated and say nasty things (I am one of those), but then again, we're only human. As for making snarky comments for the sole purpose of garnering votes, I have to disagree. If you had an inkling of the kind of pestering shite shiny has been here you would understand why most of us have nothing but utter contempt for both him and the ideology he persistently preaches at us (if you feel like it, browse his comment history). I think many of these comments are in the spirit of the following quote by T. Jefferson: "Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."

I would actually be very interested in discussing whether insulting someone's beliefs is an insult to them or not (my position is obviously that it's not).

cheers

@NetRunner It would be over simplistic for me to say what "the real problem" is, I was pointing out "a" problem I see with certain mindsets. But surely, the people you mention do exist, and to that I mean people who want a certain degree of leeway in those they help. A person who spends a good deal of his time taking care of his body may find it slightly repulsive to pay for the care of someone whom has not taken care of himself, and perhaps rightly so. The shoe exists on the other foot as well, I am not blind to those who very little personal action was taken but very much social/economic/political benefit was reaped. Often have I toyed around with different ways of managing property rights and such to eliminate or make more difficult the position of the freeloading, powerful man.

I don't deny the need of government, nor would I suggest its eradication. My objection was more in line with "how" people are solving the problem of a non-functional government. Forgive me, but having been to several protests now, I find them moronic. It plays out like children jumping on a bed in a stew of anger. Some of Cobert's recent shows on OWS, and before it, the Tea Party stuff made me laugh to tears as I so greatly identified with is complaints. The overall event of a rally is a dogmatic, simplistic, and mostly naive portrayal of the problems, and to rant about even more dogmatic, arbitrary and simplistic solutions. To be forthright, I am an introvert. Large groups of people will, in time, always annoy me, and as such, I admit that perhaps there is something different about a rally that I don't understand. Some kind of comradery in spouting babbling cheers, sitting a public place for no real objective, and making a ruckus. It would seem that most of a rally is about being seen, and I would rather not be. Instead, I would rather be unseen, but actually affecting. It seems more beneficial as a rally only can indirectly change something, where as any other course of direct action has a real effect. For instance, if I were mad about jobs, the last thing I would do is OWS, I would instead seek to create a job fair.

And that was my main point, rallying seems to be the battle cry for those whom want solutions to be created by someone else. Why waste your time and money supporting a rally instead of the cause itself? I used to not have this world view. But, I hold now that spending your energies directly addressing the problem is more beneficial, in large, than trying to bring "awareness" to it. Perhaps I am wrong, though, and some level of awareness is needed just to enact the more hidden, direct changes, hard to say.

The reason I mentioned any of this was because of the position Mr. Moore took up on Obama. He talked about how it was young people that got him elected, that he didn't do the job he was elected to do exactly the way he laid it out, so they became disenfranchised. That was my main concern, and it would seem that those who fall victim to this are the same that think rallying will do anything other than have a rally. As a libertarian minded person, the last thing I am looking to do is give people less of a voice, my aim is almost always entirely the opposite. My objection was that outsourcing your voice to something that is only going to indirectly help you might not be the best course of action. Mad about wall street, fine, but do you still have a 401k? Often times, we are, esoterically, part of the problem and it is that kind of conversation you won't find at a rally. We are always in the right, and we were always wronged by some evil third party...a great children's story, but more often than not, not exactly true.

Sorry for the long rant. More poor command of the egrish usually means I babble on.