The language is Czech, and more details about the animation are in BSR's post.

Water wheel powered pumps like the one used to empty the dam have been used for 6000 years, and all of the techniques shown here were used in the ancient world.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Wax tablets, stylus, ancient world, note taking' to 'Wax tablets, stylus, ancient world, note taking, lindybeige, nikolas lloyd' - edited by xxovercastxx

Air! In the Ancient world air was considered one of the elements.

Much later, but before the discovery of Oxygen and oxidation, it was suggested that phlogiston was emitted by burning, and that air had a limited capacity to absorb this substance... so they proposed a situation close to the exact opposite of what we now know to be the case. I think I saw mention of "dephlogistated air" in the video, which would have been air which had extra capacity to absorb phlogiston (because it was pure Oxygen, of course!).

@dag @Fletch @LarsaruS

I think you're all forgetting that Hitler was a master of propaganda, and those statements affirming Christianity were just that. Hitler used a facade of piousness to cement his power with a predominantly Christian populace. Feel free to disagree, but then you have to deal with statements which he made to party loyalists, like these:

"National Socialism and religion cannot exist together....
"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity....
"Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things." (p 6 & 7)

Night of July 11-12th 1941

"Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure." (p 43)

October 10th 1941

"The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity."

19th October, 1941, night

Doesn't seem like such a warrior for christ now, does he? The cult of personality that fletch is talking about just makes my point. When man tries to get rid of God, he just replaces God with himself. Human beings have the natural desire to worship, whether it is something like money, or power, or celebrity, or themselves, everyone who doesn't know the true God has at least one idol in their life they pay homage too.

To say there is no connection between atheism and communism is absurd. Atheism was at the roots of it, and that according to the communists themselves:

"Atheism is the natural and inseparable part of Communism"

"Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism"

Lenin

“With disdain I will throw my gauntlet full in the fact of the world and see the collapse of this pygmy giant. Then will I wander god-like and victorious through the ruins of the world. And giving my words an active force, I will feel equal to the Creator.”

Karl Marx

“The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion”

Karl Marx

So you see there is a connection between atheism and the atheistic regimes that committed uncounted atrocities. Fletch, you're even denial about the definition of atheism, which is the denial of any deity according to the dictionary. A famous quote says that "without God everything is permissable". And that is the logical connection, that a man unrestrained by any thought of ultimate accountability can justify any kind of moral action to himself. Consider this quote from Joel Marks, the professor of philosophy at the University of New Haven

“This philosopher has been laboring under an unexamined assumption, namely that there is such a thing as right and wrong. I now believe there isn’t…The long and short of it is that I became convinced that atheism implies amorality; and since I am an atheist, I must therefore embrace amorality…I experienced my shocking epiphany that religious fundamentalists are correct; without God there is no morality. But they are incorrect, I still believe, about there being a God. Hence, I believe, there is no morality.

Even though words like “sinful” and “evil” come naturally to the tongue as say a description of child molesting. They do not describe any actual properties of anything. There are no literal sins in the world because there is no literal God…nothing is literally right or wrong because there is no Morality"

Please note, I am not saying atheists cannot be moral; I am simply saying that an amoral viewpoint can be a causal factor in committing atrocities, just as much as any zealout. Psychopaths suppress what they know is right and wrong, and dictators ordain it.

It goes back to my original point. It is human nature that is the problem, the corruption of which I attribute to sin. A moral person will be moral in every circumstance, whereas an immoral person will be immoral in every circumstance. You cannot chop it up to specific beliefs of methodologies..they only diagnose the symptom and not the cause.

The first miracle of Jesus is turning water into really good wine at the wedding feast in Canan. What's more is our lord converted six 20 - 30 gallon stone jars worth! That's like the Costco of the ancient world for wine!! Pretty sure a few people got pretty drunk off of Le Vin Du Jesus that good day.
>> ^Duckman33:

>> ^shinyblurry:
This is a Christian:
Luke 9:23-25
If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?
If you do these things you will not inherit the kingdom of God:
Galatians 5:19-21
Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Everyone is guilty of breaking some of these, but we are to repent and change our ways. The word sorcery in the greek is pharmakeia, which is where we get the word pharmacy. It is specifically referring to drug use, especially as it pertains to idolatry. A Christian does not use drugs receationally, nor approve of their use. It is also violation of federal law to smoke marijuana.

>> ^Duckman33:
See? Even Jesus Christ wants it to be legal!

>> ^brycewi19:
Is no one noticing the pure awesomeness of who, in fact, sifted this?


I think you missed the point. I was making a tongue in cheek comment on the fact that this guy looks a lot like the popular interpretation of what Jesus looked like. Not that he endorses drug usage.
However:
Genesis 1:29
Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you"

@dgandhi

Again, even if there were no archaelogical evidence for anything in the Pentateuch, which there is, it still would do nothing to disprove my claim that the bible has been proven historically accurate thousands of times by archaeology. The bible has made known to the world many empires and peoples, towns and cities, customs and practices, historical figures and the ways of the ancient world etc that were not known otherwise. A classic example would be the Hittite Empire. Critics of the bibles historicity used to claim that it was made up and didn't exist..until its capital was unearthed in 1906. Ever since it was written, people have been slandering the bible and making claims about its authenticity and those claims have been disproven every single time.

It's not a question of whether the bible is historically accurate, because that has already been proven conclusively. The question is, what will it take for you to believe the very obvious fact that the bible refers to real people and places? Although you don't agree with the miracles because you have no faith, the general history it recounts has been proven time and time again. Never once has it been seriously disputed, and skeptics have been forced to backtrack from their claims for centuries. Sooner or later you are going to eat crow because your claim is indefensible.

OK Winstonfield, I'll tell you why you're a (religious) idiot. You seem to be asking for it after all.

1. All Christian codes of conduct (its ethics) can be traced back to Greek philosophers. It probably goes further back than that, but we only have records up to the Greeks. Religions at that time did not concern themselves with ethical matters, at least not in any systematized way (it was a collection of old wives' tale about what happened to the boy who cried wolf, etc.). Judaism was one of the first, if not the first, religion to do this. This is why it was laughed at. Everyone in the ancient world knew that religion had nothing to do with raising good people: the City did. Nowadays we would say: the school, or the government or whatever. Only when religion takes over the schools or the government (like Judaism did in Judea or Christianity in medieval Europe) does it serve that purpose. And all monotheistic religions, by their nature, seek to become the only power, so it makes sense that they would encompass all things about life. Which makes their message too spread out and (philosophically) weak. This is why a religion like Christianity, that was proliferated by Roman slaves, could itself become the basis for Black slavery centuries later.

2. Churches do not want to build better people for a better world. They want to indoctrinate people so that the Church becomes the World. They want uniformity of thought. They are totalitarian in their very nature. Especially monotheist Churches. But then again, polytheisms usually do not have Churches.

3. Churches do not teach moral behavior. They preach moral behavior. Anyone can preach. Few can teach. The ancient Greek and Roman nobility would pay fortunes to get a good teacher for their children, and the City was seen as having a duty to educate all children to become proper citizens. And here you say we must put our faith in the words of preachers, who recite two thousand year old parables about a supposed King of the Jews that lived in a Roman controlled desert? What the fuck is wrong with you?

4. You should learn about Evolutionary Stable Strategies. For a strategy to be evolutionary stable, it is not required that it do anyone any good, only that it be good at reproducing itself. Religions are such strategies. They are parasitic. They hijack the timeless ethical wisdom of our ancestors to perpetuate their useless metaphysics.

5. He means what I said at 4. Since it's important, I'll repeat it here: religions are hijacking the timeless ethical wisdom of our ancestors to perpetuate their useless metaphysics.


To be on topic, as an aikidoka I believe this is a perfect example of the good usage of violence (or force). Once you cannot peacefully avoid conflict anymore and the opponent still presses for combat, you give him the fight of his life. It may very well mean that you failed to avoid conflict, but that is why we learn to fight: so that when we do fight, we can prevail without killing or maiming (this kid probably does not know aikido so give him a break). But even so, in very rare and specific circumstances, you will have to kill to preserve your life or that of someone close. But if you tried to avoid conflict as the precepts of aikido dictate, it is safe to say that you are still a better person than he was*. After all, sometimes a good razing is the only thing that will keep a forest alive. Individual trees do not matter in the long run.

*Some aikidoka would be reluctant to say this. They are either Japanese people and thus have a hard time admitting to unpopular/controversial opinions or they are deluding themselves and being weak. How can there be good if no one is better than anyone else, if no one is worth more than anyone else? Of course, it's easy to say "worth less" = "worthless", but that is only being cynical and misses the point. As for me, as an atheist I do not believe in Good or Evil and so goodness is more like IQ: normal people in a given society get a median of 100 points of goodness or virtue or whatever you want to call it. Even psychopaths need to be good sometimes in order to live in society (some may say they fake it, but faked or not their actions are sometimes good). Inter-cultural comparisons, while not impossible, are difficulty to do and ultimately arbitrary.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

1. You're speaking for all churches, which doesn't make sense. Different churches are... different.
Churches are different. This is true. But most religions do not go about teaching negative behavior. I've never been in a church (Baptist, Lutherain, Catholic, 7th Day, Mormon, Jewish, whatever) where I heard the message, "Its OK to steal, lie, cheat, sleep around, or be intolerant to others." Quite the opposite. Most churches teach what would be called 'positive morality'. The relative degree of success each church achieves then becomes represented in the population.
2. You're implying that all the morals that a church teaches are the right ones. Many people strongly disagree.
You are using absolutes here. I did not say "all the morals". I said that churches teach morality codes that encourages the "build a better world by building better people" outcome that some were saying was a preferable dynamic to a soceity where we cheer the slamming of bullies into the sidewalk.
3. You're saying that the best way to teach morals is to make people believe in God. Many people strongly disagree.
No - I did not say that. I said that churches/religion were places where moral behavior is taught, and that should be encouraged rather than denigrated.
4. You're saying that fighting against churches in various forms is counterproductive to
producing moral people. Many people strongly disagree.
This I DID say. Undermining organizations that instruct their members to be better people - merely because you may not agree with all their tenents - is counterproductive to producing a moral people. Many people strongly disagree? Then those people are morons.
Let's move it away from religion for a second. For the sake of argument, let's say that we're talking about a completely non-religious group which has as its sole purpose the desire to teach people the societal benefits that come from adhering to a Utilitarian philosophy. This group goes around, building charities, helping the poor, caring for the sick, and otherwise providing a bunch of service and societal benefits. In short - they are doing good and helping people.
But then a group of Wittgenstienians come along who strongly disagrees with the Utilitarian philosophy. They begin to loudly shout that these Utilitarians should be eliminated, ignored, and marginalized because what they believe is 'wrong' or 'old-fashioned'. They acheive a certain degree of success, and the Utilitarian group starts getting fewer people showing up, and therefore has less ability to continue doing its good deeds.
Now - how exactly has society been advanced by this scenario? It hasn't. These hypothetical Wittgenstienians are not doing good themselves. They exist only as a parasitical contradiction to the Utilitarians. They are not replacing the good deeds, actions, and benefits that were being done by the group they disagreed with. They are doing nothing except reducing the number of people who were doing good things. How is that "building better people?"
Now - that is an exaggeration of course. In real life, not all of Group "A" are necessarily doing good things, and not all of Group "B" are not contributors to the good. But by and large the example serves the purpose of illustrating that religions do contribute to the societal good, and that there is little or no societal benefit that results from hassling them merely because you don't agree with them.
5. You're misrepresenting the true purpose of most churches that I've heard of, and misrepresenting Christianity in general.
I... have no clue what you mean with this statement. At what point did I ever make statements about "the true purpose of religion"? All I said was that one of the main functions of religion is to teach morality to people. Well - that's true. When you sit down in a church & listen to a sermon or go to Sunday School, 99 times out of 100 the message is one of personal morality. I've been in all kinds of different denominations, and this is a characteristic that they all pretty much share.

This is great, but it doesn't even scratch the surface of how crazy being a Spartan wife was.

First was the marriage, wherein the bride would have her head shaved, be dressed in men's clothes then made to lay alone in the dark on a pallet waiting for her husband (who she may have never met) to abduct her, have his way with her, then return her to her parent's house.

This was the start of a marriage which, for the first few years, consisted of the husband showing up at night once in a while for sex and otherwise having no real contact. After the husband reached the age of 30 he was allowed to live outside of the men's barracks so he would finally be able to live with his wife. Things didn't get much more "normal" from there though...

As the Spartan marriage was primarily for procreation, it was not unheard of for an older man to give permission for younger men to have sex with his wife in order for him to have strong, healthy children (the marriage's duty was to bear strong children for the state after all). There is no evidence that Spartan women were opposed to this though. They had greater rights than many other women throughout history with respect to property ownership (it is estimated that women owned 35% of all Spartan holdings), they probably received benefits from these arrangements. According to ancient historians like Plutarch these Spartan customs ensured that adultery, illegitimacy and prostitution were nonexistent in Sparta.

Further, unlike Athenian women who wore heavy, concealing clothes and were rarely seen outside the house, Spartan women wore short dresses and went where they pleased.

So being a Spartan wife was quite the interesting life. It could be difficult, but the benefits were a greater freedom, autonomy, wealth and power than any other women in the ancient world.

Chapter 1 courtesy of the http://richarddawkins.net/article,4217,Extract-from-Chapter-One-of-The-Greatest-Show-on-Earth,Richard-Dawkins---Times-Online

Imagine that you are a teacher of Roman history and the Latin language, anxious to impart your enthusiasm for the ancient world — for the elegiacs of Ovid and the odes of Horace, the sinewy economy of Latin grammar as exhibited in the oratory of Cicero, the strategic niceties of the Punic Wars, the generalship of Julius Caesar and the voluptuous excesses of the later emperors. That’s a big undertaking and it takes time, concentration, dedication. Yet you find your precious time continually preyed upon, and your class’s attention distracted, by a baying pack of ignoramuses (as a Latin scholar you would know better than to say ignorami) who, with strong political and especially financial support, scurry about tirelessly attempting to persuade your unfortunate pupils that the Romans never existed. There never was a Roman Empire. The entire world came into existence only just beyond living memory. Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan, Romansh: all these languages and their constituent dialects sprang spontaneously and separately into being, and owe nothing to any predecessor such as Latin.

Instead of devoting your full attention to the noble vocation of classical scholar and teacher, you are forced to divert your time and energy to a rearguard defence of the proposition that the Romans existed at all: a defence against an exhibition of ignorant prejudice that would make you weep if you weren’t too busy fighting it.

If my fantasy of the Latin teacher seems too wayward, here’s a more realistic example. Imagine you are a teacher of more recent history, and your lessons on 20th-century Europe are boycotted, heckled or otherwise disrupted by well-organised, well-financed and politically muscular groups of Holocaust-deniers. Unlike my hypothetical Rome-deniers, Holocaustdeniers really exist. They are vocal, superficially plausible and adept at seeming learned. They are supported by the president of at least one currently powerful state, and they include at least one bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. Imagine that, as a teacher of European history, you are continually faced with belligerent demands to “teach the controversy”, and to give “equal time” to the “alternative theory” that the Holocaust never happened but was invented by a bunch of Zionist fabricators.

Fashionably relativist intellectuals chime in to insist that there is no absolute truth: whether the Holocaust happened is a matter of personal belief; all points of view are equally valid and should be equally “respected”.

The plight of many science teachers today is not less dire. When they attempt to expound the central and guiding principle of biology; when they honestly place the living world in its historical context — which means evolution; when they explore and explain the very nature of life itself, they are harried and stymied, hassled and bullied, even threatened with loss of their jobs. At the very least their time is wasted at every turn. They are likely to receive menacing letters from parents and have to endure the sarcastic smirks and close-folded arms of brainwashed children. They are supplied with state-approved textbooks that have had the word “evolution” systematically expunged, or bowdlerized into “change over time”. Once, we were tempted to laugh this kind of thing off as a peculiarly American phenomenon. Teachers in Britain and Europe now face the same problems, partly because of American influence, but more significantly because of the growing Islamic presence in the classroom — abetted by the official commitment to “multiculturalism” and the terror of being thought racist.

It is frequently, and rightly, said that senior clergy and theologians have no problem with evolution and, in many cases, actively support scientists in this respect. This is often true, as I know from the agreeable experience of collaborating with the Bishop of Oxford, now Lord Harries, on two separate occasions. In 2004 we wrote a joint article in The Sunday Times whose concluding words were: “Nowadays there is nothing to debate. Evolution is a fact and, from a Christian perspective, one of the greatest of God’s works.” The last sentence was written by Richard Harries, but we agreed about all the rest of our article. Two years previously, Bishop Harries and I had organised a joint letter to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

[In the letter, eminent scientists and churchmen, including seven bishops, expressed concern over the teaching of evolution and their alarm at it being posed as a “faith position”at the Emmanuel City Technology College in Gateshead.] Bishop Harries and I organised this letter in a hurry. As far as I remember, the signatories to the letter constituted 100 per cent of those we approached. There was no disagreement either from scientists or from bishops.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has no problem with evolution, nor does the Pope (give or take the odd wobble over the precise palaeontological juncture when the human soul was injected), nor do educated priests and professors of theology. The Greatest Show on Earth is a book about the positive evidence that evolution is a fact. It is not intended as an antireligious book. I’ve done that, it’s another T-shirt, this is not the place to wear it again. Bishops and theologians who have attended to the evidence for evolution have given up the struggle against it. Some may do so reluctantly, some, like Richard Harries, enthusiastically, but all except the woefully uninformed are forced to accept the fact of evolution.

They may think God had a hand in starting the process off, and perhaps didn’t stay his hand in guiding its future progress. They probably think God cranked the Universe up in the first place, and solemnised its birth with a harmonious set of laws and physical constants calculated to fulfil some inscrutable purpose in which we were eventually to play a role.

But, grudgingly in some cases, happily in others, thoughtful and rational churchmen and women accept the evidence for evolution.

What we must not do is complacently assume that, because bishops and educated clergy accept evolution, so do their congregations. Alas there is ample evidence to the contrary from opinion polls. More than 40 per cent of Americans deny that humans evolved from other animals, and think that we — and by implication all of life — were created by God within the last 10,000 years. The figure is not quite so high in Britain, but it is still worryingly large. And it should be as worrying to the churches as it is to scientists. This book is necessary. I shall be using the name “historydeniers” for those people who deny evolution: who believe the world’s age is measured in thousands of years rather than thousands of millions of years, and who believe humans walked with dinosaurs.

To repeat, they constitute more than 40 per cent of the American population. The equivalent figure is higher in some countries, lower in others, but 40 per cent is a good average and I shall from time to time refer to the history-deniers as the “40percenters”.

To return to the enlightened bishops and theologians, it would be nice if they’d put a bit more effort into combating the anti-scientific nonsense that they deplore. All too many preachers, while agreeing that evolution is true and Adam and Eve never existed, will then blithely go into the pulpit and make some moral or theological point about Adam and Eve in their sermons without once mentioning that, of course, Adam and Eve never actually existed! If challenged, they will protest that they intended a purely “symbolic” meaning, perhaps something to do with “original sin”, or the virtues of innocence. They may add witheringly that, obviously, nobody would be so foolish as to take their words literally. But do their congregations know that? How is the person in the pew, or on the prayer-mat, supposed to know which bits of scripture to take literally, which symbolically? Is it really so easy for an uneducated churchgoer to guess? In all too many cases the answer is clearly no, and anybody could be forgiven for feeling confused.

Think about it, Bishop. Be careful, Vicar. You are playing with dynamite, fooling around with a misunderstanding that’s waiting to happen — one might even say almost bound to happen if not forestalled. Shouldn’t you take greater care, when speaking in public, to let your yea be yea and your nay be nay? Lest ye fall into condemnation, shouldn’t you be going out of your way to counter that already extremely widespread popular misunderstanding and lend active and enthusiastic support to scientists and science teachers? The history-deniers themselves are among those who I am trying to reach. But, perhaps more importantly, I aspire to arm those who are not history-deniers but know some — perhaps members of their own family or church — and find themselves inadequately prepared to argue the case.

Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eye witnesses to the Holocaust. It is the plain truth that we are cousins of chimpanzees, somewhat more distant cousins of monkeys, more distant cousins still of aardvarks and manatees, yet more distant cousins of bananas and turnips . . . continue the list as long as desired. That didn’t have to be true. It is not self-evidently, tautologically, obviously true, and there was a time when most people, even educated people, thought it wasn’t. It didn’t have to be true, but it is. We know this because a rising flood of evidence supports it. Evolution is a fact, and [my] book will demonstrate it. No reputable scientist disputes it, and no unbiased reader will close the book doubting it.

Why, then, do we speak of “Darwin’s theory of evolution”, thereby, it seems, giving spurious comfort to those of a creationist persuasion — the history-deniers, the 40-percenters — who think the word “theory” is a concession, handing them some kind of gift or victory? Evolution is a theory in the same sense as the heliocentric theory. In neither case should the word “only” be used, as in “only a theory”. As for the claim that evolution has never been “proved”, proof is a notion that scientists have been intimidated into mistrusting.

Influential philosophers tell us we can’t prove anything in science.

Mathematicians can prove things — according to one strict view, they are the only people who can — but the best that scientists can do is fail to disprove things while pointing to how hard they tried. Even the undisputed theory that the Moon is smaller than the Sun cannot, to the satisfaction of a certain kind of philosopher, be proved in the way that, for example, the Pythagorean Theorem can be proved. But massive accretions of evidence support it so strongly that to deny it the status of “fact” seems ridiculous to all but pedants. The same is true of evolution. Evolution is a fact in the same sense as it is a fact that Paris is in the northern hemisphere. Though logic-choppers rule the town,* some theories are beyond sensible doubt, and we call them facts. The more energetically and thoroughly you try to disprove a theory, if it survives the assault, the more closely it approaches what common sense happily calls a fact.

We are like detectives who come on the scene after a crime has been committed. The murderer’s actions have vanished into the past.

The detective has no hope of witnessing the actual crime with his own eyes. What the detective does have is traces that remain, and there is a great deal to trust there. There are footprints, fingerprints (and nowadays DNA fingerprints too), bloodstains, letters, diaries. The world is the way the world should be if this and this history, but not that and that history, led up to the present.

Evolution is an inescapable fact, and we should celebrate its astonishing power, simplicity and beauty. Evolution is within us, around us, between us, and its workings are embedded in the rocks of aeons past. Given that, in most cases, we don’t live long enough to watch evolution happening before our eyes, we shall revisit the metaphor of the detective coming upon the scene of a crime after the event and making inferences. The aids to inference that lead scientists to the fact of evolution are far more numerous, more convincing, more incontrovertible, than any eyewitness reports that have ever been used, in any court of law, in any century, to establish guilt in any crime. Proof beyond reasonable doubt? Reasonable doubt? That is the understatement of all time.

*Not my favourite Yeats line, but apt in this case.

© Richard Dawkins 2009

I would imagine if you made cars illegal, car related deaths would go down. That isn't the point though. You would be punishing people that haven't done something on the off chance that they might. It is even worse than the whole pre-crime stuff of Minority Report, it is punishing people of no crime. Might it be more safe to ban weapons completely, perhaps, but at a great cost of liberty... and like someone (O wait me!) mentioned before, there is no logical ending point to keeping you safe. Like the great movie, "Thank You for Smoking", jested at; should we outlaw New England Cheddar because of people dying from high cholesterol? While this seems ridiculous, it isn't a stretch of the imagination, and moreover, there is no logical distinction between the two. What you have is a system that is made up of preventative safety measures based on arbitrary personal values, a realm that both Ben Francklin and Plato/Socrates warned against. The tyranny of the majority masked in the public good (in this case, safety). The battle cry of the "majority good" flies in face of the ideas the social contract and civil liberties (classical liberalism).

To rephrase what someone said before, there is no perfect system. Horrible things are going to happen. The real question is in what manor will this happen. Will we be free to make our own mistakes and suffer the consequences of poor judgment and/or bad luck. Or will we subject ourselves to tyrannical (in the sense of a moral majority overruling a minority, even if that minority is 48% of people) safety control ebbing away at our every freedom. More over, things could (as they did in Greece) switch from legal and noble to illegal and punishable by death very swiftly. This was in the ancient world, just imagine what shifts in life could be made via modern communications?!

I do truly fear centralized power of any kind; be it government or commercial. My fears are realized all to often in the long history of the human race. Domination and might makes right all to often are the prevailing models of society, I see moving away from the social contract and to a system of moral governance as a return to what is basically a theocracy of dogooders trying to get their moral agendas on top of the "new laws here" list.

>> ^Ryjkyj:
Wow danny,
Let me clarify:
Rich americans (and others) are the ones vacationing in dubai and investing in the properties there. The whole thing just seems like a wasteful overindulgence to me. I'm happy that the people there have jobs and that it helps their economy but if I know rich developers(and I'm a construction manager in NYC), they're not paying very much.
It seems like you're railing me for my comments but then going on to list a bunch of negatives about the country? Not sure I follow the logic there.
PS: I realize that you're probably exposed to the worst of my culture every day but I'm kind of offended by your overgeneralization. I'm a hard-working stiff like most of the rest of the world, only with the advantages afforded me by being a US citizen. I can't remember the last time I took a vacation and I couldn't even afford a gun. Oh, and I don't dance.
If I judge solely by your comment, it would appear to me that the reason the rest of the world hates america is ignorance. There are real people here you know.


You've really changed your tune from your first post here to your second. Or you've given the wrong impression in your first. Firstly, you're agreeing with someone saying "HAHAHAHAHAHA" because dubai's prosperity is on the fall, so that doesn't put you in good moral standing, but then you say "screw dubai".

So exactly what is your opinion? Are you laughing at their declining prosperity or not? It appears you are, and then it appears you're back tracking. So clear it up and fix your comments if that's not what you meant.

I'm railing you for your random celebration (as it appeared to me) at the declining prosperity in dubai. Then i'm explaining why i think the idea is doomed to failure - because they are exlusive (in a literal sense, excluding of others/other things), insular, occasionally archaic (by the standards i hold), often racially discriminating, and they fight to remain that way.

I base that on evidence, and facts that have been presented to me by people i trust, i do not begrudge them their prosperity and i do not rejoice or mourn their lack of it. I simply have an opinion about whether their plan will work. I also have an opinion about the way they run their country and their people, which i am entitled to, just as you are. And in fact, you're entitled to rejoice and celebrate at their lack of prosperity - you're under no obligation to impress me. I just happen to have an opinion about people who rejoice at another people's lack of prosperity too.

I think our disagreement is that i railed you for rejoicing, and you say you didn't. I hope you understand why i thought so.

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As for people saying "good, i'm glad they're gonna phail" - well i'm not. I think the island was beautiful, i think any monuments and expressions of wealth and power are amazing. The seven wonders of the ancient world were built to demonstrate power and wealth, and nothing is better than humans acknowledging and marvelling at how far we can drive ourselves and what wonders we can create when we put our minds to it. It's a beautiful thing. In 2000 years, what will they have to remember us by? What will our 7 wonders be? I hope it's not starbucks. I want someone to build a hanging garden ala babylon. Only bigger, and more beautiful, and i want to walk in it before i die. I love grand and exciting projects for the sake of exhibition. They haven't killed anyone doing it. It's not like they've polluted or pillaged the land any more than we have in our quest for mediocrity - at least they're doing it on a grand scale! Even IF the product they sold for their money (oil) is responsible for heavy pollution and loss of the fauna of the earth, it's everyone's fault, not theirs. They had a product which people wanted and they wanted it bad. Don't blame them for providing us with the tools to pollute, we scurried our lives away to buy the shit they had to sell, and it's our fault as much as theirs.

How many lives have been lost due to our own religion, technological advances, armies, industrial waste, commercial and residential expansion, cosmetic testing, need i go on? We're as bad as they are but at least there'll be more beauty in the world. If we were making gorgeous buildings and glorious projects to enrich our lives and inspire ourselves at half the ecological and economical cost, you might have an argument. Fuck you for hating them because they want to make something special and secure their future.

I've gone on a bit of a rant here, but i couldn't give a fuck. Fuck everyone who's so bitter in their jealousy. And if you have a valid reason for rejoicing their lack of prosperity, then good for you, this wasn't aimed at you.

I fuckin pray less ugly, useless things are made in our countries (at little ecological and economical cost) and more beautiful, inspiration things are made in theirs (at greater ecological and economical cost). Little cost lots of times, large cost fewer times, it balances out, don't try and mount a false high horse.

So, I finally watched this vid, and yeah, its pretty out there... sort of... so, swedishfriend, to answer your questions about the historical accuracy of his argument:

All that stuff about Amenhotep IV and the introduction of a one god, whom he called Aten, is pretty much true... also, Nefertiti (of the beautiful bust that is in Berlin) was his wife, and Tutankhamen (King Tut) was his son, (or perhaps nephew, its debatable) and the second heir to his throne. There is a pretty good article on wikipedia about him and Atenism if you need a starting place.

However, the central thesis of this video, that the word 'Amen' is somehow derivative of the name 'Amenhotep' is dubious at best... in fact I think its probably just plain wrong. I consulted a few different Etymology Dictionaries, and they all list 'Amen' as having derived from the Greek 'amen', which in turn seems to have come from Hebrew word for 'truth', roughly spelt out a-m-n, and was used in both languages as way to say 'truthfully' in agreement to something. One source on the matter states that it was only recorded as being used at the conclusion of prayers from 1230 CE onward, about 2600 years after the rule of Amenhotep, which, in my mind, is a bit long to suddenly revive something like that for the sole purpose of ending off a prayer.

Also, linguistically, although the Egyptian language of modern times is grouped with other Semitic languages (like Hebrew) this is only due to the Arab invasions and their influence in the region. The language of the New Kingdom was much much different and unlikely to have influenced Hebrew, which evolved separately in the East.

Lastly, I find it highly unlikely that early Christians drew inspiration from the name Amenhotep for religious reasons related to the origins of monotheism, because once Amenhotep instituted Atenism, he changed his name to Akhenaten, which would have been the name appropriate to him in a religious context. That is also how he was primarily remembered throughout history, as most all of his monuments were carved with his new name. The name 'Amenhotep IV' was not likely to have been remembered in connection with the new religion of the one god.

So, raven's vote: this guy is full of crap with this theory, don't take it seriously, but, do pursue your interests in the ancient world (I certainly do )... however, this vid is crazy and highly entertaining... so, upvote from me.

My first response after the X-mas hit would have been, "What the Bible does clearly teach is that Christ was born in the fall (tax season) and not on December 25th. The latter date was the great pagan holy day of the ancient world." Clearly he should have made this point. Also Christianity in it's current and old forms are predated by many religions in the Iron Age. Guess those guys got in for free or were SOL.


Presents please.

I just never understood why we should follow something we have no proof of and causes major strifes throughout history. What's more important the medical treatment you get now, or the possible healing from religion (which doesn't seem to work so well). I will follow proof in front of me rather than faith. Proof allows me to interact with all people on a non-biased viewpoint. Faith requires me to be "loving" but tell other people they're wrong.

Religious holidays that coalesced into the 25th.

As for the video, if I knew who was recording (perhaps a sibling with similar views, or knew how the mother would react) the I might be willing to not call this viral. But, the cutoff at the end made me wonder.


Atheist till the end. If there is such a thing as God, then he would have to obey rules--to be able to choose. Which means on some level he must obey rules. Which means he is fallible and may not deserve our trust. The derivation of his dogma and power can be put to the question. Then he must explain logically why all God's dogma is correct. But, of course, it could just as easily be Zeus.

I vote for nothing as the universe seems to be a closed system (except some quantum effects). If we can master this, X-mas will be the last thing you believe is nice.

Etc.. etc... etc...
P.S.- White, any insights into your "hatred"? I can also say that religion seems to be a fad/trend in my area (Utah).

OMGZ HUMAN HAX

But seriously, Is it hard to believe that perhaps like we had our Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, the ancient world would have the similar great scholars that would make these constructions possible? Human progression has really taken place because we publish works of knowledge, preserve them and pass them on.

We know that we have lost so many old world works of science and knowledge, lost in place like the library of Alexandria. Who knows what people might have deduced by then via ancient scholars? As to the large structures and alingment of the stars? Those were the world's wonders at the time. Why wouldn't one worship it, their mystery must have baffled these ancient peoples just like they do us now.

And Mars-Earth connections? Cheap shot using the old photographs that make it look like a face and pyramids. That same site has been photographed countless times showing no evidence of structures just natural formations. I don't think the drones they have at mars would be racing towards a large crater looking for possible evidence of microscopic life if there was evidence of a intelligent structures on mars.

I don't understand why we have to always say we relied on someone else to progress. Still entertianing watching.