>> ^luxury_pie:

>> ^Duckman33:
>> ^luxury_pie:
Here on the sift we would NEVER jump to conclusions.

The problem with that statement is, we here on the sift are not journalists. We are normal every day type people. Journalists/news organizations should not try to taint or slant public opinion. They are supposed to be unbiased. This is just another example of the media using scare tactics to keep us fearing the "brown people" that want to kill us all. It's really quite disgusting.

You call that journalism?


That was kind of my point. And no offense taken

>> ^Duckman33:

>> ^luxury_pie:
Here on the sift we would NEVER jump to conclusions.

The problem with that statement is, we here on the sift are not journalists. We are normal every day type people. Journalists/news organizations should not try to taint or slant public opinion. They are supposed to be unbiased. This is just another example of the media using scare tactics to keep us fearing the "brown people" that want to kill us all. It's really quite disgusting.


You call that journalism? I'm sorry but I rate the let's call it "aggregating journalism" here on the sift infinitely higher then whatever the fuck Fox is doing.
Whatsoever I wasn't judging anybody, if I somehow implied that, I am sorry.

>> ^luxury_pie:

Here on the sift we would NEVER jump to conclusions.


The problem with that statement is, we here on the sift are not journalists. We are normal every day type people. Journalists/news organizations should not try to taint or slant public opinion. They are supposed to be unbiased. This is just another example of the media using scare tactics to keep us fearing the "brown people" that want to kill us all. It's really quite disgusting.

Hey look, it's Islamist terrorists! SHOCKING REVEAL!!

edit: and yes, this is at least partially because of a freakin' cartoon. <---sadly not sarcasm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Oslo_attacks

edit 2: Seems I stand corrected. *hangs head in shame for jumping to conclusions*

>> ^blankfist:

What is? Getting BoneRemake and chicchorea banned? Or are you just jumping to conclusions again?

Bone was suspended for harassing me. As far as I know, bareboards had no part in it.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

This is all your doing, friend. Ease up on the hate, already. >> ^blankfist:
@bareboards2, why don't you take a little break from grandstanding for a while. You'll have plenty of time to write a Sift Talk Post about it later and author it as the doe-eyed victim.



What is? Getting @BoneRemake and @chicchorea banned? Or are you just jumping to conclusions again?

>> ^rottenseed:

What you guys didn't see was that when the suspect was off-screen, he turned around and started charging the cop with the knife (it was actually a small sword). You guys always jump to conclusions with half the story...
</typical cop apologist>


Except that the typical "cop apologists" go by facts instead of hearsay or speculation--the kind of speculation that you would attribute falsely to us. We do note that such a scenario is a possibility and when in doubt the cop should have the he-said she-said benefit of the doubt; but when evidence is presented otherwise, we say fry the cop, we say fry this cop. We also note that the cop is not acting within the law, that he is a thug and gangster at the point that he breaks the law...

Now, unlike the typical cop-haters, most of us do admit that cops abuse power (Cop haters for the most part cannot side on the right side, they side on their side. Kind of like racists...)

Oh, here it comes from a typical cop apologist--Fry this cop...

What you guys didn't see was that when the suspect was off-screen, he turned around and started charging the cop with the knife (it was actually a small sword). You guys always jump to conclusions with half the story...

</typical cop apologist>

Hey, we Nords have to stick together against these barbarian hordes...

Also I can't believe the amount of crap you got for that video... I mean that was some serious work by the Overreaction Squad... I believe I even saw the leader of the Jump To Conclusion gang in there as well... Sorry about that... guess my promote got you in trouble... but you are welcome. "That which does not kill you hurts" or however the saying goes...


In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
You sir, are a man after my own heart. Nordic brothers unite!

And thanks for the promote.
In reply to this comment by LarsaruS:
Wow! The white knights are out in force in here... "Let's save the poor females!" seems to be the battle cry of choice in here and it is ringing loud and true! Seeing as how all females needs to be saved from the big bad real world! or perhaps people should let other people take responsibility for their own actions and not be fucking enablers for the misogynistic opinions of the females-can't-take-any-damage-and-are-not-responsible-for-their-own-actions-and-can-therefore-not-face-any-consequences-of-their-aforementioned-action
s crowd of white knights (and ladies who both wants to eat the cake and keep it) in this thread. Some of you are no better than the mob in the "How can she slap" video who absolutely pummel the guy for hitting back since hitting women is absolutely forbidden but hitting males is A-OK... Shame on you!

Also: Welcome to the 21:st century... Equality Bitches. Don't you like it? Equal rights, Equal responsibilities, Equal consequences.

Meh!
White knights are like the T-Rex, just stay still and they will move on... Too bad I feel like running down the road with a flare today...

*promote again because a lot of you guys/gals really need to get that 10 foot pole out of your butt... They are having a good time playing a stupid game and since she lost she gets smacked in the groin. Big Fucking Deal!!!!!!1111111oneoneone

(Prepares for the righteous charge of the Knights in White)

PS: To the Haters: 1 2 3 and last but not least 4

PPS

@GeeSussFreeK I'm going to pick and choose from your comment instead of quoting, since it's huge.


There are some major problems with this claim, IMO. I would like to clean up the wording of your second sentence. Something that doesn't interact in anyway with the cosmos, doesn't exist meaningfully. So something that does not, cannot, and will not interact with an object doesn't exist to that object. Indeed, when our own galaxy is racing away from the other galaxies at a speed faster than the speed of light (the space in-between being created at a rate which pushes us away faster than the speed of light) you can say the same thing, that our galaxy is the only object that exists in the universe. Other objects existed, but the no longer do. They might "exist" in some theoretical way, but they don't meaningfully exist. I completely agree with this position. If a being we want to call God doesn't exist here in any way physically, than he doesn't exist.

I'm not sure you can say that something doesn't exist, just because we cannot observe it directly anymore. Galaxies moving away from ours at greater than light speed still have had an effect on things around them and we can see the "traces" of them, which at least suggests that they exist - like black holes, which we cannot see directly either. Futhermore, we can observe on the galaxies moving parallel or at least along side our own, how they move and can thus estimate the position of the big bang and theorize from the given evidence that galaxies moving in the opposite direction should exist even if we cannot see them or in essence EVER interact with them again.

A similar argument can't be made for God.


Which brings us to your first point. How does the universe exist? I assure you we have more question in that than answers. And every answer brings forth new questions. We are no closer today to understand basic ideas than thousands of years ago.

You are being a bit facetious here, I suppose? We are quite a bit, actually a huge leap, closer to the basic ideas than we were thousands of years ago. The problem is that the target keeps moving further back. First cells, then molecules, then atoms, now quantum entanglement (or what its called).

For instance, how to objects move? Force is applied to an object making it move relative to the world. The world moves in the opposite direction, but only relative to the opposite force, which means very, very little.

If space is infinite, how do finite objects transverse infinite space in a finite time?
It isn't and they wouldn't.

What determines gravity attract at the rate it attracts?
I'm not a physicist, so I won't venture too far off ground here. It's understood as far as I know. @Ornthoron could you perhaps confirm for me?

Why are macro objects analog and quantum objects digital?
Macron objects are perceived as analog, because we don't look closely enough and in short enough time spans. Any perceived analog object can be simulated digitally if you use enough data to do it. This is my understanding, anyway.

We can't even show that the sky is blue, only that it exists as a wavelength of light that human preservers sometimes interpret as a mind object of blue, we are no closer to understanding if blue is a real thing or a thing of mind.
This is a distinction between what is and what something is perceived as. Essentially you're touching upon qualia, which some cognitive scientists believe in and others don't. Blue is a real thing in so far as it's a wavelength of light. As for the rest, I don't know. It's a much harder question than you lead on, because a theory of mind is one of the hardest questions there are left.

I think you give to much credence to our understanding for this claim to be sufficient. To my knowledge, we have little understanding of the functional dynamics of the cosmos. We have pretty good predictive models, but that is a far cry for absolute certainty, a necessary for a claim such as this.


There are many metaphysical examples of all powerful beings and absence of their direct physical interactions being detectable as well. One of the more famous is of the "God mind" example. In a dream, you are in control of all the elements. Let's call all the elements of your dream your dream physics. The dreamer is in 100% control of the dream physics. The dream itself is a creation of his dream physics. The dream physics themselves are evidence of the dreamer. In addition, the dream, being wholly created from dream physics is also evidence of the dreamer. Parallel that back to us and you have one of the easiest and elegant explanations of the universe.

I think you are confusing a dream with the idea of a dream. You rarely have any control in dreams and even lucid dreamers don't have 100 % control. How a dream actually is made/dreamed is also a point of discussion in itself. A fundamental problem with this hypothesis is that WE think. Actors in our dreams don't think or do anything that has any effect in the world other than our memory of them. Like our thoughts, dreams don't have wills of their own.

Indeed, it is so comprehensible other views of the metaphysical nature of the cosmos will seem overly complex and lauded with burdensome hyper explanations, making this model satisfy an occam's razor over other possibilities. But complexity is hardly a model for evaluating truth, so I leave that just as an aside.

All other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. But all other things aren't really equal here. Some thing are just inherently complex, like gravity or magnets. When you don't think about the details, it's easy to think your hypothesis is correct, but when you dig deeper it falls apart.

Actually, even if you accept the premise, it still means that the dreamer is completely removed from us; he has no control, because not even traces of it has been observed in our reality (the dream). So the complete lack of evidence also points to this hypothesis being false.

When you think it even further, we run into the ever present homunculus argument. Who's dreaming of the dreamer? And so on.

That our reality is actually a real, physical one is a much better explanation, because it neatly explains itself more completely - thereby actually fulfilling Occam's razor better.


Indeed, there are further explanations that would seemingly leave little evidence for God except for things happening just as they "should". One being the Occasionalism model, which interestingly enough, comes from the same mind as the previous example, George Berkeley. There is no proof that causation is the actuality of the universe. Just as if I setup a room full of clocks, and from left to right the clocks would sound off 5 seconds from the previous clock. To the observer, the clocks "caused" the next clock to sound, and on down the line they go. The problem is, there is actually no causal link to bind them, I created it after seeing A then B happen again and again. The fact is, no such link is there, I, the clock creator created it to appear that way, or maybe I didn't and you just jumped to conclusions. It is a classic example that Hume also highlights in his problems on induction.

Correlation does not imply causation. We have much supporting evidence of causation though. Forces are demonstrably interactive. Whether they were secretly set up to seem as if they interact aren't necessarily relevant, because demonstrably they do. There is no evidence to the contrary at all.

In your clock example, it is a physical room, so there are plenty of things to test the hypothesis that the clocks cause each other to ring. Are the clocks identical? Are there cogs inside the clocks? If we break one, will the chain still go on without it? Etc etc.

From observing X number of clocks you cannot strictly speaking extrapolate that to all clocks. That's the essence of the induction problem. Your hypothesis is based on limited data, and on further analysis it falls apart. Causality itself hasn't fallen apart yet. I'd like to see a proper argument against it, for certain.

I will leave it there. I am resolved to say I don't know. I also don't know that can or can't know. I am uber agnostic on all points, I just can't say. And I don't even know if time will tell.

It's a good start to all questions to say "I don't know". I do that too on many, many things. It's a much better starting point than when preachers usually say, "I know".

Your questions are interesting to me, because they deal with a lot of philosophical and physical stuff, I like those.

On a purely pragmatic level though, they are largely not that important. look at it this way, do you live your life as if causality exists? If you do and it works as you expected, then causality probably exist. If you live as if it doesn't exist, then the world is suddenly a very strange place. Do you live as if what you observe as blue is actually blue? Do others see it as blue as well? If they all do, then it's probably just blue. Does it make a difference if some people see it as green? Not really, I'd think.

Do you live your life as if there's a God? Do others? Does it make a difference? That's a very basic test of whether he actually exists. I argue that it doesn't make any difference at all, other than expected behavior of either party - some live as if a God exists and other live as if he doesn't exist. If the only difference in the people themselves, then the God falls out of the equation.

I think I've sufficiently trudged through this now. Sorry for the wall of text, hope it makes sense.

There are some major problems with this claim, IMO. I would like to clean up the wording of your second sentence. Something that doesn't interact in anyway with the cosmos, doesn't exist meaningfully. So something that does not, cannot, and will not interact with an object doesn't exist to that object. Indeed, when our own galaxy is racing away from the other galaxies at a speed faster than the speed of light (the space in-between being created at a rate which pushes us away faster than the speed of light) you can say the same thing, that our galaxy is the only object that exists in the universe. Other objects existed, but the no longer do. They might "exist" in some theoretical way, but they don't meaningfully exist. I completely agree with this position. If a being we want to call God doesn't exist here in any way physically, than he doesn't exist.

Which brings us to your first point. How does the universe exist? I assure you we have more question in that than answers. And every answer brings forth new questions. We are no closer today to understand basic ideas than thousands of years ago. For instance, how to objects move? If space is infinite, how do finite objects transverse infinite space in a finite time? What determines gravity attract at the rate it attracts? Why are macro objects analog and quantum objects digital? We can't even show that the sky is blue, only that it exists as a wavelength of light that human preservers sometimes interpret as a mind object of blue, we are no closer to understanding if blue is a real thing or a thing of mind. I think you give to much credence to our understanding for this claim to be sufficient. To my knowledge, we have little understanding of the functional dynamics of the cosmos. We have pretty good predictive models, but that is a far cry for absolute certainty, a necessary for a claim such as this.

There are many metaphysical examples of all powerful beings and absence of their direct physical interactions being detectable as well. One of the more famous is of the "God mind" example. In a dream, you are in control of all the elements. Let's call all the elements of your dream your dream physics. The dreamer is in 100% control of the dream physics. The dream itself is a creation of his dream physics. The dream physics themselves are evidence of the dreamer. In addition, the dream, being wholly created from dream physics is also evidence of the dreamer. Parallel that back to us and you have one of the easiest and elegant explanations of the universe. Indeed, it is so comprehensible other views of the metaphysical nature of the cosmos will seem overly complex and lauded with burdensome hyper explanations, making this model satisfy an occam's razor over other possibilities. But complexity is hardly a model for evaluating truth, so I leave that just as an aside.

Indeed, there are further explanations that would seemingly leave little evidence for God except for things happening just as they "should". One being the Occasionalism model, which interestingly enough, comes from the same mind as the previous example, George Berkeley. There is no proof that causation is the actuality of the universe. Just as if I setup a room full of clocks, and from left to right the clocks would sound off 5 seconds from the previous clock. To the observer, the clocks "caused" the next clock to sound, and on down the line they go. The problem is, there is actually no causal link to bind them, I created it after seeing A then B happen again and again. The fact is, no such link is there, I, the clock creator created it to appear that way, or maybe I didn't and you just jumped to conclusions. It is a classic example that Hume also highlights in his problems on induction.

I will leave it there. I am resolved to say I don't know. I also don't know that can or can't know. I am uber agnostic on all points, I just can't say. And I don't even know if time will tell.
>> ^gwiz665:

It can be know, because that's the way the world works. There is nothing "outside" the world as it exists. While you technically might say that there could be something wholly removed from the physical universe, there is no overlap - there is no manifestation here or there of the other. Therefore, even though you could on a purely theoretical basis make the argument, it is ultimately a waste of time and futile.
>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^gwiz665:
If a god is like the regular God, a deity that just is eternal, then no they cannot exist.

"Cannot"? As is the existence of a being that exists outside of what we perceive as time is impossible? How can that be known?

Sounds like a Vicious Cycle that should be stopped. Maybe not all jumping to conclusions like an internet message board is the way to go. Oh the ironing.

I would assume that shiny represents himself truthfully in his comments, and from that we can draw quite a few conclusions.

He may give candy to orphans or be an axewielding mass murderer, but that doesn't change the fact that through his comments we get insight into his mind - and from what he has put forth, and certainly the tone and presentation of it, I am less than impressed.

I would argue that there is more hatred streaming from his comments than from the comments mocking him and his beliefs... after all, we don't tell him that he will burn in hell for ever and ever unless he buys charter or gives to charity, or support the republican party. We just point and laugh.

Opinions that are wrong deserve enlightenment and help, but when they are presented as they have been here, they deserve scorn.

Religion strikes so much to the base of a person, his morals, that you learn a lot from a comment. Some devout christians and spiritual people are genuinely nice and good while others are genuinely bad. So far, I've not seen much evidence presented here that puts shiny in the first category.
>> ^enoch:

>> ^shinyblurry:
God will get the last word on this one. Hitchens, justifying his life of sin to himself, has an ego a mile wide. His will, his way. He thinks he has the right to do whatever he pleases. He is trotting out his illness in national forums to stick it to God one last time. Well, when he is judged he won't have any excuse. God has been trying to save him and Chris has rejected that help, even belittled and made fun of it. Even being a loudmouthed arrogant braggart with delusions of grandeur, who has made a career teaching others to sin, God shows him mercy. The whole thing is just heartbreaking to me. I pray he wakes up and finds the truth before its too late.

so shiny puts forth a comment.
a comment based upon his/her religion concerning sin-repentance-absolution in regards to hitchens possible judgment.
and what does he/she get for his comment?
name-calling and disdain.
way to keep it classy guys.
do you KNOW shiny?
maybe he/she is a great person.spending time with the dying in their time of need or donates to local charities.
or maybe he/she is part of fred phelps "god hates fags" group.
i dont know and neither do you.
and to base a personal judgment on a comment is the height of presumption.
you can disagree with his ideology which is obviously based in dogma but to jump to conclusions based on so little and with such self righteous vigor is shameful.
might i suggest that you check yourselves before you begin to resemble the very thing i see so many of you admonish time and time again concerning religious hypocrisy.

>> ^shinyblurry:

God will get the last word on this one. Hitchens, justifying his life of sin to himself, has an ego a mile wide. His will, his way. He thinks he has the right to do whatever he pleases. He is trotting out his illness in national forums to stick it to God one last time. Well, when he is judged he won't have any excuse. God has been trying to save him and Chris has rejected that help, even belittled and made fun of it. Even being a loudmouthed arrogant braggart with delusions of grandeur, who has made a career teaching others to sin, God shows him mercy. The whole thing is just heartbreaking to me. I pray he wakes up and finds the truth before its too late.


so shiny puts forth a comment.
a comment based upon his/her religion concerning sin-repentance-absolution in regards to hitchens possible judgment.
and what does he/she get for his comment?
name-calling and disdain.
way to keep it classy guys.
do you KNOW shiny?
maybe he/she is a great person.spending time with the dying in their time of need or donates to local charities.
or maybe he/she is part of fred phelps "god hates fags" group.
i dont know and neither do you.
and to base a personal judgment on a comment is the height of presumption.

you can disagree with his ideology which is obviously based in dogma but to jump to conclusions based on so little and with such self righteous vigor is shameful.
might i suggest that you check yourselves before you begin to resemble the very thing i see so many of you admonish time and time again concerning religious hypocrisy.