I can't speak for chilaxe, but for me it's the tedium rather than the physicality I'd like to avoid. I can't see much of a health benefit from filling envelopes or scrubbing septic tanks. One could argue that it "builds character", but so does learning advanced physics or training for a marathon.

There are many jobs that people would rather not do if their livelihoods weren't dependent upon them, and many of those jobs could (or soon will) be performed by robots rather than people. I don't think that situation, in itself, is a bad thing. I'd rather spend my time improving myself both physically and intellectually, but I also have to eat so that means I need my jobs (I have three currently).

I do agree with you on the value of physical work, but if we end up in a world where people can choose their own methods rather than choosing those that pay well then I believe we will benefit from such a world both individually and societally.


In reply to this comment by Lodurr:
>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^Lodurr:
Studies are showing that the healthiest and longest-lived people in the world do some daily manual labor their whole life. There's nothing tedious about accomplishing something with your own sweat and two hands: in fact there's nothing more rewarding.
Physical activity is certainly a very healthy thing.
Personally though, I'd rather go hiking than bolt wheels to car frames every day.


I didn't think much of physical labor either until...

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Alrighy then. I'm sober and moderately coherent, so let's carry on.

We have a very different view of science. Science can't possibly work by ruling out things, because there the universe is infinite, or, as infinite as we are able to measure at this time. The experiment that produces a result never comes alone. It's always there to support a hypothesis, and to prove it, if successful.

There will always be things we can't perceive ourselves, and we will always work towards finding new ways to view the universe. If we would ever discover everything there is to know, the world would be rather dull, in my opinion.

This, however, does not grant anybody a license to invent facts, to make claims with no substantiating evidence and to basically invent a new universe and ask the rest of us to live in it.

Proving something by disproving every other possibility only works when there is a finite number of possible possibilities (I love that phrase, by the way). There is no finite group of Gods. Every person is free to come up with a new God every day. If someone were to ask 1000 Christians to describe their God, and then compile their replies into a profile, I'd be surprised if he wouldn't end up with at least 4-5 separate deities.

My problem with all religions, isn't about the nature of the faith, or of the God itself, but rather with the claim that they know something which they can't possibly know. Teaching Intelligent Design in a school and putting it on the same level as the science of Evolution, simply because a book tells you the world is 6000 years old, is ludicrous to me.

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I think we sort of diverged from the original point, and I don't have an actual argument to make anymore. Have a happy new year

In reply to this comment by Lodurr:
Let me phrase it differently: science defines which laws exist by ruling out alternatives. So an experiment that yields a certain predicted outcome doesn't itself prove a law. I brought that up because while we can rule out our old theistic theories on how the world operates, we can't yet rule out other aspects of their beliefs. We just have our five senses, and with those senses we can create tools that have other senses, but there is always more that we can't detect. Prior to the microscope, we had no idea germs existed. Prior to the discovery of radio waves, we had no reason to think they existed either. Similarly, we can't rule out the possibilities of extra dimensions that intersect ours, or new forms of energy and matter. That is why science only works in negatives and probabilities. It means more than "nothing at all."

When it comes to my personal beliefs on existence (which aren't Christian), my own reasoning is that my consciousness existing just once is more improbable than my consciousness existing more than once, given that time is infinite or recursive. A once-off universe doesn't make sense to me. Also, the idea that the force of my awareness is the result of atomic matter alone is implausible. My awareness is as of yet undetectable and unmeasurable, and even finding the consciousness switch in our brains wouldn't make it any more measurable. It'd be like theorizing that your light switch generates the electricity in your light bulb. Regarding the idea of god, I don't see any reason to seperate out another being to be the cause of all existence. I much prefer the idea of the Tao, the singularity with infinite regressions, in which everything is relative rather than absolute.

I don't think atheists are bad people--I am one, after all--but I find that we don't have the same easy access to community-based support groups that our theistic neighbors do. Of course there are secular alternatives to everything religion does, they just don't come as easily or automatically.

Any kind of forceful movement creates an unhelpful backlash. The Taoist way is to let change happen naturally. Education and rising standards of living made more atheists than Dawkins and Bill Maher ever will.

It's early in 2010, and I'm kinda drunk right now, but there's a response coming. Count on it. Just as soon as I'm sober enough to read what you wrote

But you just contradicted yourself... You say in one sentence that if the LHC fails to detect the Higgs boson, it'll be proven not to exist, and then you say that "what we can't prove doesn't exist" is a false statement.

Einstein's quote is correct, but it's meaning doesn't relate to what we're talking about. The best way to counter a scientific theory is by a single example of where that theory is fallacious. If someone were to claim that all odd numbers are prime, all you would have to do in order to "prove" him false is demonstrate that his statement fails in one specific point, like the number 9.

There is a massive difference between "what we can't prove doesn't exist" and "what we can prove doesn't exist, doesn't exist". The first statement actually should be "what we can't yet prove, may exist, but may not", which in scientific terms means nothing at all.

My gripe with your comment, though, wasn't because of the science remarks, but rather over the atheist ones. I'm not sure if you noticed it yourself, but your comment is built on a premise that atheists never do any of the good things Christians do, like participating in the community and so on.

I'm not sure why Christians believe Atheists are the scum of the earth. I don't know why you believe that if I don't believe in the story of the Jewish zombie who was his own father and is coming to save you, but only if you pretend to eat his flesh, drink his blood and communicate your desires to him telepathically, that makes me a bad person. I'm really not.

And about the argument from ignorance, believing in God is an argument from ignorance. You assert a claim that something exists, even though you yourself acknowledge there is no way to prove it, and that it has to be taken on faith alone. That is the very definition of an untestable theory. Your comment was based on the claim that religion is somehow superior, when the core of religion is the deity, or God.

To conclude, I'm a little annoyed right now at work, so don't take this post as me being offensive, please. It's really not meant that way. Maybe I should have put some emoticons all over it to express that

In reply to this comment by Lodurr:
Science does in fact work through falsifiability. If the LHC doesn't end up finding a Higgs Boson, then the Higgs Boson theory in its present form will have been disproven. That is just how science and experimentation works. "What we can't prove doesn't exist" is an inherently false statement and incorrect world view because there are countless things we cannot test or prove that must exist. To quote Einstein, "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."

I wasn't arguing from ignorance because I wasn't asserting an untestable theory. All I said in my comment was that many religious practices have personal and societal benefits that atheists tend to undervalue because they are associated with religion. I've seen data that supports my theory.

No, it was an incorrect use of the word. I'm not being emotional when I remind you there's no such thing as atheist dogma. Certitude is not dogma.

Wrong. There is no atheist dogma. Just like there's no dogma for people who don't believe in Santa Claus.

In reply to this comment by Lodurr:
>> ^budzos:
Okay, so you mean dogmatic with a completely OPPOSITE definition of what dogma is. Deceptive, manipulative, word-twisting harpy.


I didn't enjoy the schoolyard antics from either of these kids, but I have to clarify that dogma "is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization: it is authoritative and not to be disputed." It was a correct use of the word, and a real question for an atheist, if they believe in a hard rule stating that god doesn't exist and if they have any dogmatic rules at all (answer to both would be "no").

This is what happens when you get emotional about an intellectual subject--facts slip away from you. If atheism brings the same emotional BS as religion, what the hell is the point? You're reducing an intellectual movement to angsty counter-culture.

nice beard lodrr. are you related to kurt loder?

Thanks for the suggestions. Nouvelle Vagues version is already on the sift: http://www.videosift.com/video/Nouvelle-Vague-Love-will-tear-us-apart-LIVE

In reply to this comment by Lodurr:
No mashups?

How about Nouvelle Vague's version?

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Agreed!!

In reply to this comment by Lodurr:
I think it's better to be a species that dies selflessly for the following generations than to be a species that selfishly lives forever.

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