I really like watching his talk show because it seems to be more from the hip than staged like the rest. He's a funny/interesting guy and doesn't seem to take anything too seriously. Conan's humor changed when he went over to the tonight show, and started returning to normal when he knew his run there was over. Ferguson filled that gap Conan left when he went to the Tonight Show in my opinion.

Look, this is very different from a Bible story. The evidence exists, you just need to look further than a youtube video. If you need more information about the subject, try wikipedia. If you need more information, try a book meant for a layman. If you still need more information, try text books or physics classes. The information is accessible, but there probably isn't even a single experiment to point to, and it would probably take advanced physics knowledge to even understand some of them.

Also, keep in mind, this isn't a video that claims to be describing an absolute truth. It's a video describing the standard model. The standard model is a very successful model, but it isn't even a complete theory. As admitted in the video, it doesn't even explain gravity.

But I have to say, this series of videos are some of the best visualizations I've ever seen, and fills a gap by not treating the viewer like a complete idiot.

>> ^visionep:
Zzzz...
He might as well be telling a bible story since there is no mention of the experiments or calculations that give rise to any of these theories.
It would be very interesting to me to see a footnote section to each of these stated theories which there are about a thousand. Anyone want to try? Go ahead and start with the first 10 to the -43rd second and explain why someone thinks the temperature was 10 to the 32nd degrees (C, F, Kelvin?).

Like I said I will likely wait for a later, better equipped version until I get one, but I could see myself using this around the house.

Right now at home I am using my IPhone a lot to quickly check stuff on the web, because sometimes starting up the laptop is just too much. In some of these cases I whish my phone was easier to navigate and this could fill the gap nicely.

They finally gave birth to this baby and I think it will learn to walk around our lives pretty quickly.

Why do we have to explain everything? Some things are not explained yet, but there is no reason for putting something in its place, ie. God. God in the Gaps is a terrible solution. To remove the God in the Gaps we don't have to fill the gaps with anything else, we just have to take the God out.

Logic is Universal, it is, not matter how you perceive time or space. "A = A != B" A thing is itself and not something else, no matter how you spin it.

My 4 year old son has been brought up without the lens of religion. It is wonderful to see him grow and experience the world around him without the taint of superstition. He experiments, he learns, he asks questions. When I don't have an answer to something, I simply say... I don't know, or no one knows (when that is the truth).

I will not tell my child some magic entity in the sky made something happen.. all because 'it' decided to work in mysterious ways in order to keep us from ever 'knowing' or understanding the truth. Effectively quelling any incentive for investigation/experimentation. Such behavior feeds ignorance by stunting an individuals natural desire to learn and experience. Filling in gaps in one's knowledge with fairy tales, does not give one knowledge.

by the way, if you want an update to this fiasco, I went to the dentists who said he would try to crown it (in about 2 months) and see if it will stay together. If that doesn't work, it will have to come out and be replaced with a fake tooth (preferably made out of a miniature marble lion face) screwed into my jaw to keep the bordering teeth from collapsing inward.

In the meantime, he's basically filled the gap between the fragments with crazy-glue and built a large mound of putty around the busted tooth. This means that I have one abnormally large, grotesque tooth-shaped blob in the back corner of my mouth. It also means that I can't close my teeth together.

beedlebeedlebeedlebeedlebeedlebeedle
frown

Unlike the multicultists, decent American Whites are not permitted to politely express admiration for their race or its achievements, so these LCD hooligans crudely fill the gap.

The bigger disgrace is anyone who approves of their own country's borders, language and culture being subverted and destroyed by an impoverished invasion force, lured here by the welfare state.

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

>> ^qruel:
>> ^MINK:
yeah but she IS retarded, biased and unreliable.

sheesh, what's with the ad homs from you lately? so unlike you. Wasn't it enough to state she is biased and unreliable ?


Mink has decided that our troll quota is low, so he's pitching in to fill the gap.

I say for a few reasons, first off it seems like most of the sift is liberal in their views, followed by libertarian with conservatives bringing up the rear (insert gay joke here).

A good many of the sifters are ready willing and eager to debate so even if a video doesn't specifically discuses an issue the posters do. And from my observations they generally give at least a few points to shore up their position.

As far as the bashing videos vs. position/issue explanation vids, well that's probably more a result of the media than anything else. When I watch the news it's generally about why the other guy's opinion is wrong, so I expect that to translate to what gets onto the sift.

Also I looked through your queue and pq and didn't really see much that offers explanation rather than bashing the other side, I really didn't see but one or two political videos to begin with. So sift some, I'm not being snarky or mean I'm just saying if you think VS is lacking a certain kind of video, sift it, help fill the gap.

Old navy - I'm not sure why you thought that dog police thread appropriate to comment on political / military affairs,but i feel a reply is warranted anyway. first, I'll thank you for your service. I have been in the Army for 5 years, and yeah there are a lot of waivers in for criminal offenses, but to be honest, either they don't talk about it, or they get chaptered out real early. The Army separates a lot of soldiers before they complete their first term. Unfortunately, (and myself and a friend are working to get this changed) the Army is too focused on short term number.s So long as they fill the gaps, they don't care. They will just weed out the shit heads at a later point in time.

>> ^gorgonheap:
To say that man has achieved omniscience about their existence a gross lie.

I don't recall anybody making that claim, I certainly did not. Religious revelation is the only claim to universal and total truth that I am aware of in the religion vs science debate, and this is not a position you seem to be advocating from the religious side either.

I was pointing out that the gaps we are working on filling are gaps we didn't even know existed a century ago. We can now start to formulate theories and study mind as a computational system, the question of what we are as thinking beings is no longer a strictly metaphysical exercise, as science keeps answering questions which religion thought it had in the bag, where is there for religion to stand?

Do we have to construct, again, out of whole cloth, a new magisterium which we believe science will never be able to intrude upon? What do we do when science comes knocking on that door in a decade or two?

And Swampgirl, Your posts are always thoughtful and contributing, but I want to answer this one part:

So much seeking of validation..needing it.... is NOT believing in anything enough?

Thats exactly right, atheism is NON-belief.

But it is, the way most atheist sees it, a result of critical and skeptical views on ANY claims, not just that of the religious. If you are an "atheist", it is likely that you have taken a look at the claims of the Chrsitians and the claims of the muslims, and/or any belief and said to yourself: "sorry, the evidence is just not good enough"

Anyway, they point that some of us wants to make, is that religious views should have no special free passes, no gaps, no privileged place in our discourse, simply because they are religious claims They should rather be subject to the same kind of criticism that a politician that seeks to lower the taxes, or an engineer that seek building permission, or a scientist that seeks stem cell research funds will meet. We see no reason why people who simply declare their beliefs as "faith" should get special treatment, in fact they should be held accountable, like any view that has impact on the way we live our lives. And since no one else seems to take that view, the people who run "The Atheist Experience", and others try to fill that gap,is way overdue.

That's all fine and dandy, to an extent. But that has not the slightest bearing on where the evidence is pointing at the moment; should we not work with what we know rather than discard that all and work with what we don't know simply on the basis that scientific theories have often been disproven in the past? Once again, to invoke god where there is no necessity or reason to (filling the gaps for the sake of it) is just plain counter-productive. Saying god is still a valid possibility would carry no more scientific merit than me saying that the "giant omnipotent goldfish of wisdom" is a possibility because the initial assertion is not based on true conjecture but the fact that it can't ever be completely disproven or is simply taken out of ignorance or the utter desire for it to be true. What notion could possibly lead me to think so? We can only extrapolate so far within reason before we start to tread into the realm of fantasy/non-science. Saying "we ultimately don't know" would be better. Saying "we don't know" BUT "I also believe in god as preference" at the same time seems slightly disingenuous and a bit of self-deception. It's having your proverbial cake and eating it too and who doesn't love cake? But beware, the cake is a lie! /superfluous nod to Portal

Our understanding may be finite and very well may always be finite, but it's getting less and less so all the time as time & our own understanding progresses. You can't prove that something does exist because it has NOT been proven to exist and conversely you can't prove something does NOT exist because there is no proof it does exist. We may eventually discover evolution is part of an even larger & more complex system or that it was wrong in some places but once again it's not an "Either it's evolution as we know it OR it's god." multiple choice question. Whatever it is will be based on the tangible when/if it is solved. The possibilities may seem infinite from our own lonely perspective but does that mean every possibility within that infinite spectrum of our imagination is as valid as the next? Are the possibilities that are shown to have zero supporting evidence as important as those that actually do? Are all points of view (regardless of what reality/evidence may contradict) equally valid? Relativism with the facts or lack thereof is not science.

But did you become a theist because the atheists were as empty, pompous and smug as the speaker in this clip? I don't begrudge you a little cultural theism to avoid hanging out with blowhards.

Perhaps God (SHE) is the happy and mad designer of evolutionary biology and quantum physics. Perhaps quantum physics and evolutionary biology led to a point where bipeds were unduly, wrongly, and sickly fascinated with HER.

My main problem with the political farce that is Intelligent Design is that, in the classroom, creationism and evolutionary theory have pedogogical cross-purposes. One is trying to fill the gaps, while the other is merely asking me to have a little faith in the gaps. To pretend that Intelligent Design is a form of science or a counter-theory to evolution seems to me to be disingenuous at best.

And science (though really just a church that places its supreme faith in
provable or calculable sensory evidence) is the study of a particular method applied over physical evidence.

I agree with KaiER.

Would Olberman have the Government claim the land via eminent domain and build a memorial? The sad little secret is that the land shall always have more commercial value than symbolic or emotional value because it is in Manhattan. Even the deaths of many, many more would not sway the desire of real estate developers to squeeze every dollar out of that land.

However, Olberman targets the cynicism of the Republican Party and the 'straw man' or wolf/sheep strategy brilliantly. I wish the Democratic Party would step forward and be as critical as this of the malfeasance and supreme incompetence of this administration. The problem is that, over the last 50 years, the Democratic Party has abdicated any consistent vision of foreign engagement. And the wolves sadly have filled that gap.

I don't have room to post it right now, but here is a great primer in Fearmongering Totalitarianism 101:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp4vLBvU1bA

Demand transparency from your Government.