@Yogi, sure, I'm all for educating kids and helping people out, but this is collectivist speak. Let's break down what she says [emphasis mine]...

"We've never invested as much in public education as we should have."

I'd argue we've invested a lot, we just don't see the return because of whatever reason. I could cite references all day long that we, as taxpayers, pay more per child in public schools on average than parents pay per child for private schools.

"We've always had kind of a private notion of children."
"We haven't had a very collective notion of 'these are our children'."
"So part of it is we've got to kind of break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities."

That's scary language she's using. I'm all for giving opportunity and resources to kids to help them. And I do think that's what communities should feel compelled to do, but there's a difference between that and what I'm getting from her little soapbox diatribe. I hear, instead, a message of control disguised as opportunity. Words matter. Words have meaning. And this is nothing short of propaganda, in my opinion.

same phenom with Cannabis... its just taking time and the internet now.

i mean, i can type it out: anticancer, neuroprotectants, alt. nontoxic pain relief, antiinflammatory... plant fibers themselves used for many products, cheaply and quickly grown unlike wood... hemp seeds contain all essential amino acids.

quite literally manna from creation. ignorance alone is enough to deny our birthrights!~ /soapbox

good post

Careless. What you left is to be enjoyed throughout the United States of Unconsciousness, regardless of invisible borders between the hectares...This particular abuse of the machine notwithstanding, you ran from what's essentially your own shadow cast by the sun, and the suns' everywhere-Blame for the insanity of governing bodies rests upon everyone's shoulders, no one state can be singled-out-

I stay here because all there is to be had somewhere else is more ineffectual whining from Americans who have been groomed for the past 50+ years to enjoy the smell of their own shit as their heads reside comfortably, up their own asses.

Conservative, liberal, progressive, partisan, democrat, republican, socialist, etc., these terms and labels have become absolutely meaningless and the discourse to be had on forums where these terms are slung-about like they actually mean something actual or tangible (including this one), banal, tiresome, and lacking any practical substance to affect change of any kind.

Moronic and pointless iffn yer askin', and since this soapbox tirade be unsolicited, enjoy your "freedom" wherever the grass seems greener. It's only a picture of grass, the real stuff will cost you money.

Truth be told here folks, I was gonna post this video but I asked the opinion of another sifter who responded by saying that it was a bad idea & it could bring me some trouble......(looks like that person was right).

My own personal definition of "snuff" is when somebody is killed/murdered in front of a camera in a controlled environment for the "pleasure of the viewer" & neither of those situations are happening here. A guy pulls up to a cash machine to make a withdrawal, gets snuck up on from behind by a gunman, he responds likewise & criminal pays the price for his actions.

To those here who say "snuff", ..... I respond with the word "justice" & for the first time in my almost two years of membership, I invoke *return.

/climbs off soapbox.

DUI checkpoint are akin to the KGB or the SS demanding you produce your papers whenever asked-The police in the U.S. would NOT perform these fucked-up exercises if more citizens made it harder for them-OBSTRUCTING is bullshit: It's a free-ticket for cops to arrest someone for ANY reason.

(Perhaps the resident copper here on the VS can chime-in??)

If more people through this type of civil disobedience would protest they'd scrap the "checkpoint" bullshit for random drunks and maybe do something that benefits society???

MADD was created by busy-bodies who needed grief counseling instead of a soapbox. Prohibition is for herd animals.

Actually, fuck it, while I'm on this soapbox....

I'm usually pro-skater. I firmly believe that skater should be able to use parks, sidewalks etc, and cities actually need to start thinking about incorporating skating as a valid transport mechanism. It's cheap, carbon neutral, provides exercise and creates almost no congestion.

Most skaters I know are awesome people, but these little scumbags give them a bad name.

You raise an excellent point, which really tarnishes the possible good intentions that people surely put into this kind of publicity stunt. On the one hand it's a positive thing to try to expose the distorted self-image women are pressured to have of themselves, but it is ultimately a system of playing good cop bad cop in order to sustain the status quo and, above all, sell loads of shit.. "You're fat and ugly and a bad lover!" "No, you are beautiful and sexy and deserving of pampering!" Bottom ground: "you are all about looks and sex and gives us your money now please."

/steps off soapbox

yep. And while, I've got this soapbox, fuck "civil unions". Smacks of "separate but equal" to me. If I can get *married* to my wife in a secular ceremony, why the hell can't two people of the same sex get *married*?


BTW @lurgee, it's Stanhope, not "Standhope".

>> ^deathcow:

He's got issues !!
I could give a f#%^ about strangers impressions of me in these situations.


couldn't

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>> ^Barseps:

@spoco2 .... Sorry bud, I have to disagree with you there. Potential international enemies will think TWICE before invading America because they are the most heavily armed civilian population on Earth. Guns may not be a good thing, but looking at it from from that angle, they're a bloody necessary evil.
Climbs off soapbox.
>> ^spoco2:
Guns have no upside.
At all.



Really? Let's let your hypothetical scenario play out.

Some other massive country with huge resources (let's say it rhymes with vagina) decides to invade the U.S.
Fuck knows why, given that they could simply buy you and be done with it. But for the sake of argument, lets assume that dfinitely not china whoever manages to overwhelm over 1 million of the best equipped, highly trained military in the history of the world on their home turf. Do you really think a bunch of amateur paranoid nutjobs are gonna stop them?

@spoco2 .... Sorry bud, I have to disagree with you there. Potential international enemies will think TWICE before invading America because they are the most heavily armed civilian population on Earth. Guns may not be a good thing, but looking at it from from that angle, they're a bloody necessary evil.

*Climbs off soapbox.

>> ^spoco2:

Guns have no upside.
At all.

>> ^bareboards2:

One word.
Kids.
This guy is an idiot to have his guns unsecured.
@radx just sent me a link -- http://www.technologyreview.com/
news/506466/given-tablets-but-no-teachers-ethiopian-children-teach-themselves/
This thing would not stop a kid.


Who said he had kids? WTF is wrong with you people? He likes guns. He probably enjoys collecting guns, (one of the points @deathcow was making that, apparently, flew right over several of your heads). Maybe he even enjoys shooting them. So what? You don't like guns? Fine. Don't buy them. JFC, so many paranoid leaps of logic here.

@spoco2
Guns can kill when people USE them to kill. It's a childish argument to claim that all guns are inherently dangerous. The vast, VAST majority of gun owners are responsible gun owners. Unless you're claiming this guy is a killer, or, as @L0cky lamely implied, wants to use them to justify the money he spent. Maybe he's a terrorist! There are about 350 million guns in this country and about 250 million vehicles, yet the number of fatalities for each is about the same each year (and over half of the gun fatalities are suicides). Why are you so worried about guns? I won't even mention alcohol, electricity, bathtubs, McDonald's, and icy sidewalks. Just because something isn't "designed to kill people" doesn't mean it isn't "inherently dangerous". Hunting rifles aren't "designed to kill people". Are they safe for kids? And what is the deal with using a red herring like kids? Using kids playing with loaded guns as the nails in your soapbox is almost as silly as decrying automobiles because they are dangerous for kids to play in with the engine running. And, again, WHO SAID HE HAD KIDS?

I don't own guns. I don't like to shoot guns. They don't do anything for me, although I would consider getting one some day if SHTF began to seem inevitable. I'm definitely not a fan of guns, but some of you people are just ridiculous.

Don't try and pawn this off on me. It's not my "excuse". I'm closed only to one idea: of my being absolutely certain about anything. I'm not closed to any other idea, period. You have failed to convince me. That's why I don't accept your story. And after all this, you revealed yourself to be absolutely certain of your own judgement that your numinous experiences are coming from God.

Let me get this straight..you're completely closed to the idea of being absolutely certain of something. Think about that for a minute and see if you can spot the inherent contradiction contained within this idea.

If I say there is absolute truth, and someone says no there isn't, and I say are you absolutely sure about that?, this isn't a trivial question. That's what I used to think, that it was some kind of cheap trick, and ultimately meaningless. Don't be like I was and just dismiss this without giving it a great deal of thought. The fact is, you can't deny the idea of absolute truth without confirming it. It's not a cheap parlor cheap of logic, it is a revelation of the framework of reality, of how things really work. That there really is a certain truth, and everything you ultimately believe, flawed logic and all, ultimately points to it. It actually could be no other way. There is a ground for everything we know and understand. The atheist says though that's he is standing on air. The issue is that subjective beings can't know anything about objective reality so they grope around in the dark trying to understand what truth is. An atheism has no route to get beyond his subjective understanding. The only way you can understand truth then is by the light of revelation. IE, someone without objective understanding (an omniscient being) would have to enlighten you. If you've never seen light then you won't understand what darkness is. Jesus said if the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

What I believe is that you were not systematic in trying to understand your experience. When you woke up from it and figured out that you were being led down a path to insanity, you just wrote the whole thing off as being entirely in your mind. I would liken this to coming home one day and finding a group of thieves moving furniture out of your house and loading it into a truck. You ask them what they're doing and they say that they are a moving company and that you called them and set up an appointment 2 weeks ago to move you out, and don't you remember? Oh wow, you say, it must have skipped my mind! It looks like it was just a rash idea of mine, really sorry for this inconvenience! You then proceed to help them move your furniture back into your house.

As you're moving everything back in, you notice the door has been busted open and the house has been ransacked. You ask them about this and they say that just earlier you were here trying to let them into house but you couldn't find your key so you kicked the door in because you didn't want to keep them waiting. You then tore the house apart looking for your keys, and when you found them you left to go get something to eat and that's where you've been this whole time. Pondering this you decide that if you could forget about calling them in the first place then you could most certainly forget about doing all of those other things too.

So you finally get everything back in the house and you again apologize profusely for wasting their time, but as they are leaving, they say don't worry about it because we were never here. We're just part of a dream you're having. Goodbye! You think to yourself, considering the memory problems I've been having, this seems very reasonable. The next day a friend stops by and asks you what happened to your house. Oh, it was all a bad dream, you say. I apparently did all of this in my sleep, but it's over now, not to worry!

I don't know what your experience was; typically, they try to convince you that you're some kind of Messiah-like figure, or that reality is centered around you in some way. What I do know is that things happened to you which you cannot explain; signs and wonders, strange "coincidences", etc. These were the signposts in your journey that reinforced your paradigm and kept you on that road. You want to believe that it was all in your head rather than a strategic plan to destroy you, so you chalk it up to delusion. It wasn't all delusion, though; you were being herded down a path, probably with the goal of getting you to kill yourself, and it's only because they went too far that you woke up from that spell.

You have failed to convince me. That's why I don't accept your story.

I can't convince you of anything. This isn't an intellectual problem that you're having, it is an issue of your heart. Only God can convince you, but your heart is hardened towards Him and you refuse to come near to Him.

And after all this, you revealed yourself to be absolutely certain of your own judgement that your numinous experiences are coming from God.

That's just what I've been saying all along, that there is a certain truth, and God reveals it to those who seek Him. That truth is Jesus Christ. You've admitted that God could convince me, so it isn't an inherently irrational position.

All you're telling me is that you are convinced of something, and FWIW, I believe that you are. You have no grounds to believe that your human perceived conviction is warranted, especially given that you know of many other humans who are equally convicted about things that contradict what you believe. That alone should give you doubt about your convictions, as it gives me doubt. If it doesn't give you doubt, you're not being rational. What's more likely: that you alone are correct among all the millions of equally convicted people, or that all equally convicted people, including you, are wrong? What makes you so special?

Nothing makes me special; I simply responded to Gods calling. I can explain why people follow false religion in imitation of the true God, which is that Satan blinds the eyes of unbelievers so that they cannot know the truth about God. He backs up their experiences with supernatural signs and wonders so that they believe they are on the right path. Satan is an imitator of God:

2Co 11:13 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.
2Co 11:14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
2Co 11:15 Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

I DO doubt my own existence -- at least, I don't take it as fact that I exist. I could be a brain in a vat, etc. I don't accept my own senses either as categorical evidence. I live as if they're accurate because it's instinctive and it serves me to do so. Skepticism is not ignorance. Accepting something absolutely and uncritically is ignorance. You expect me to accept your word on faith. Why should I believe you? You're just some random person on their internet soapbox who claims to have visions of god. See how stupid it would be for me to change my life because of that? You wouldn't.

I don't think you're actually that skeptical, because I haven't really seen you critically examine your own presuppositions. You say that you don't have any preference for the truth, but that is clearly not true. You are very slanted in favor of a liberal/humanistic/naturalistic mindset, and you oppose any ideas which contradict it. You clearly do accept some things, like evolution for instance, as the gospel truth. This is very inconsistent with your statements about uncertainty. You've seen the human capacity to delude itself, so you keep saying, but you don't seem to question the thought process that leads you to any of these conclusions.

The reason I came to be a Christian, and no one ever witnessed to me by the way, is because I wanted to know the truth and God showed me what it is. I had sufficient evidence from God to give my life to Jesus, and then Jesus completely transformed me and made me a new person. I didn't expect any of that to happen. I had no idea what it would mean to become a Christian. But it did happen, supernaturally, and I found out later that it matched up to everything the bible said would happen. It's one thing to use confirmation bias to make a bunch of coincidence and happenstance into some kind of experience of God. It's another to be transformed at the core of your being into an entirely new person, losing all the negatives and gaining an unlimited supply of peace, joy, hope and love. Even more so when it happens within a moment in time. I've seen miracles, and I've seen things like demon possession. I am certain because God made me certain, but there is plenty of evidence to justify my certainty.

You are certain about God's revelation to you because God has given you certainty of it. That's tautology, if you're a rational agent.

Actually, it's circular reasoning. You will find that every inductive argument suffers from this problem. You cannot actually ultimately justify a single one of your beliefs to me. The conversation could go like this:

You: (objection to a stated fact or belief)
Me: Is that a rational statement?
You: Yes, it is logical.
Me: How do you know it is logical?
You: Because I reason it to be so.
Me: How do you know your reasoning is valid?
You: Because I reason it to be so.

Repeat ad infinitum. You've admitted that you can't trust your senses, and you just assume that you're rational because it's instinctive, which provides you no ultimate justification for anything you believe. That you're telling me it's wrong to use circular reason is absurd since everything you believe is based on it.

Circular reasoning is not necessarily fallacious because you cannot point to an ultimate authority for any claim without using it. Look at the issues this problem of induction causes when it comes to proving scientific theory:

"Joel Feinberg and Russ Shafer-Landau note that “using the scientific method to judge the scientific method is circular reasoning”. Scientists attempt to discover the laws of nature and to predict what will happen in the future, based on those laws. However, per David Hume's problem of induction, science cannot be proven inductively by empirical evidence, and thus science cannot be proven scientifically. An appeal to a principle of the uniformity of nature would be required to deductively necessitate the continued accuracy of predictions based on laws that have only succeeded in generalizing past observations. But as Bertrand Russell observed, “The method of ‘postulating’ what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil”

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

You cannot use empirical evidence to prove empiricism is valid, just as you can't use the scientific method to prove the scientific method is valid. Therefore science cannot be proven scientifically! It needs an ultimate justification which cannot be proven inductively. Therefore, you would have to use a deductive argument by presupposing the uniformity of nature to justify the continued accuracy of the predictions of science. But again, just assuming the uniformity in nature leads you to the same problem. The only evidence you have that the future will be like the past is in the past. Therefore it would be fallacious reasoning to say the future will be like the past because of the past.

This is where the problem comes in for the atheist, because he must use viciously circular reasoning, which is always fallacious. I can point to God to justify logic, truth, the uniformity in nature, and my own rationality. These concepts don't make any sense in an atheistic worldview, because there is no way to justify them. My reasoning isn't viciously circular..I can point to an ultimate authority. Your reason is viciously circular because you must point to yourself as the authority.

You want God to be real so you deny all evidence even to other *possibilities*, let alone facts.

I didn't originally go looking for God. He tapped me on the shoulder. I didn't become a Christian because I wanted God to be real, I became a Christian because the evidence indicated He is real.

I don't want anything in particular to be real. I only want to be as sure as possible of what I do believe.

I don't think you want the Christian God to be real, and would prefer that He wasn't. What you can be sure of is that you cannot ultimately justify any of your beliefs.

Yes, of course a god could convince you, but just because you're convinced, doesn't mean it was God who did it. That would be a faulty syllogism. Minds can play the most amazing tricks on people. That's documented fact.

How is it that when you have evidence that confirms your belief, it's faulty, but when you reject that evidence, it's rational? Just because you can potentially falsify an idea doesn't mean it has been falsified. I have a path to the truth, as you've admitted. God could make me certain, and He could reveal truth, so it isn't irrational to believe it, considering the overwhelming evidence that I have received, and continue to receive, each and every day. When God touches your life, you have a justified true belief in Him. In every case, when God makes someone certain, they are going to justified in saying that they're certain. You would say all these people are delusional, but you have no way to be able to tell the difference. Only the individual could really know that they've been touched by God. The only way you could find out is if you were yourself touched by God. That's what I've been trying to tell you all along. I can't convince you, but God can. He loves you and He is waiting for you to soften your heart and seek His face. That is the only thing which will prove or disprove my claim.


>> ^messenger:

stuff

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