>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

Bullshit.
AIM is a corporate front group funded by the Oil Industry. Last I checked, the Oil Industry was not super concerned with "Accuracy In Media."
The items this guy (a FOX NEWS analyst) is screaming about are conservative talking points that have been featured extensively on FOX, among other corporate media outlets.
This presentation (and organization) is every bit a part of the machine it pretends to protest.
I agree with the hyperbolic sentiment of the title, but not the hypocrisy within.
Yeah that's funny. Next you'll be telling us that media matters is a fully non-partisan group that isn't funded by george soros, and hasn't been having pow-wows with the white house on how to spin the news. And that fast and furious didn't result in the deaths of 300 mexicians, the death of an american, and the cold blooded gunning down of 16 kids at a party either.

I suggest watching the full 30min speech instead of the four minute clip, it's much better.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
It does feel like they are trying to distance themselves from Romney's stank, but they are also playing up Romney as an underdog victim of a liberal media. I've never known FOX to throw in the towel, so this must be part of some bigger strategy. October surprise?
>> ^Yogi:
Looks like Fox is preparing for when it has to say "Look these candidates sucked, we need better ones!"
Pretty interesting how this election is going to affect the Republican party going forward.


It seems to me that Fox would play the long game. They're not gonna put too many chips anywhere, they're here for keeps.


This would imply that truth, consistency and accuracy really mattered to FOX. Romney goes into the memory hole the day he loses. Bush was president for 8 fucking years and they've manage to wipe all records of his existence at FOX.

Bullshit.

AIM is a corporate front group funded by the Oil Industry. Last I checked, the Oil Industry was not super concerned with "Accuracy In Media."

The items this guy (a FOX NEWS analyst) is screaming about are conservative talking points that have been featured extensively on FOX, among other corporate media outlets.

This presentation (and organization) is every bit a part of the machine it pretends to protest.

I agree with the hyperbolic sentiment of the title, but not the hypocrisy within.

>> ^nach0s:

I was wondering why he was out in the open too. Then I read the video description... did you guys?


Reading FTW. I didn't read the description at first either and was like, "Did he just Leroy Jenkins down the hill?!?"

I'm a bit amazed at the accuracy of the Taliban shots. They seemed to be at a fairly far range (I can't make them out at all in the vid) and yet a lot of the shots are hitting him or just inches away from him.

>> ^Velocity5:

@BicycleRepairMan
Science isn't 100% or nothing. Creating someone who is 95% neanderthal would still be scientifically useful.


Well, thats not really how genes, genomes and sequencing works. You can sequence a genome 100% , but the accuracy might not be perfect, then you can sequence bits and peices to determine familiarity etc and that might be close to 100% in accuracy. The point is that just because someone says "we have sequenced the Neanderthal genome" that doesnt have to mean that that sequencing is even remotely useable as a cloning template or whatever.

And you cant just make a "95% neanderthal" and expect it to be "almost neanderthal".

The devil, or neanderthal in this case, is in the details, and what we have to work with, regardless of future technology is degraded bits of DNA thats tens of thousands of years old. Again, think about it like a video in recorded in low quality, its not going to be HD just because you have a fancy computer.

I googled this stuff to see if my skepticism was warranted: Here is a quote from one of the people who actually did the sequencing (taken from Wikipedia):

In February 2009, the Max Planck Institute's team, led by geneticist Svante Pääbo, announced that they had completed the first draft of the Neanderthal genome[3] An early analysis of the data suggested in "the genome of Neanderthals, a human species driven to extinction" "no significant trace of Neanderthal genes in modern humans".[17] New results suggested that some adult Neanderthals were lactose intolerant.[14] On the question of potentially cloning a Neanderthal, Pääbo commented, "Starting from the DNA extracted from a fossil, it is and will remain impossible."

So there you have it. Naku is, once again, talking shit, and should stick to his own field of study.

I cut out the words you don’t entirely agree with. The rest of my comment is all about our perception of you. That should be important to you if you think God wants you to talk to us and, one assumes, help us learn something. Right? Is that a consideration for you at all?

Sure, and I fully admit I have turned a blind eye to this in the past. I should have been more sensitive to peoples concerns than I have been. I'm sure I've wasted many opportunities with people here as Satan hoped I would. It's been a process of growth and maturity in my walk with Christ, and this will continue until the day I die.

If I decided it was my civic duty to start showing up at a certain church and talk atheism to the parishioners, I would expect resistance, of course. I would pay very strong attention to how people were reacting to me and what topics or phrases or types of argument were setting people against me, and see if I could understand their perspective and adjust the way I spoke to help them understand me more. In that scenario, my goals for being at the church are different from the parishioners' goals, and since their goals for being there could be fulfilled (perhaps better) by ignoring me and by my being quiet, I’m the one who has to make the effort if I want to engage them.

I agree with you here.

That’s what I meant by "uninvited". It doesn’t mean anyone requires an invitation to join the Sift, or that anybody expects you to leave. It means nobody asked you to come and explain the "truth" of things to us. Our goal here is to kill time, follow political stories, discuss topics of interest to us and generally enjoy ourselves. Your goal here, however vague, is different from our goals, and often in conflict with them. I was enjoying thinking about Feynman’s points, then you come in with your arrogant opener, "It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it." Read it again to yourself. How would you react? Take @Quboid’s initial comments seriously too. Don’t nitpick phraseology like "pushing people away from your belief." Look past what you disagree with and address the real content. It's respectfully written and a valid question.

Well, the difference here on the sift is that it is not by default a place for atheists to hang out. It's a place for anyone to hang out and share their videos and opinions. It just so happens it has attracted a lot more atheists than theists and so everything done on the sift is bent towards their worldview, including the videos and conversations. You're right that nobody asked me to come, but I didn't need an invitation either. If you look at any video on religion here, people feel free to speak their mind about Christianity and Christians but for some reason they take exception when I do the same. I understand what your argument is about and what you're saying, which I appreciate and recognize as being essentially valid, but your comment about being uninvited doesn't apply. Atheists run the sift but the sift wasn't created for them.

And I'm actually saying this selfishly because I do want to understand what you’re saying.

And FWIW, everyone sees everyone through a funhouse mirror, especially types we don’t have a lot of contact with and don’t understand. For us, yep, that’s you.

Yes, I see people through my presuppositions. My worldview is the biblical worldview. I do understand you because I used to be in your shoes. I'm sure some of you will say the same thing.

I can provide evidence for any claim I make, if you ask for it. Find the body of Jesus? Don't be ridiculous. How could we? And if someone found the body of Jesus, you'd use bogus science to claim we hadn't proven it to be his, just like you still use bogus science to claim the universe is less than 10,000 years old or that macroevolution is a myth. I routinely claim the Bible is falsifiable on its face, but every time someone falsifies it, you change the meaning of the words, claim it's a metaphor, or do some other dodge, like how you handled the discrepancy between an omniscient God and a God who is surprised to discover that Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit.

Now you're just using fallacious arguments. Why don't you present your very best argument as to what you think falsifies the bible and let's see if it holds any water?

In the example of God being surprised, it is you who are assuming God was surprised. The text doesn't say He was surprised, it only says He asked Adam and Eve what they did. Why do you think that means that God didn't know what they did? How many parents have you heard asking their children whether they did such and such knowing full well that they did do it? That's exactly what God was doing.

OK. Here's the most clear-cut contradiction I’ve come across in the Bible. The topic seems so petty it's almost embarrassing to use it, but compare Matthew 1:8-9 with 1Chronicles 3:10-13. They give incompatible lineages from Joram to Joatham.

The genealogy in Matthew 1:8-9 isn't meant to be a complete record. It is actually a style of writing in Hebrew which is more concerned with symmetry than accuracy. That is why there are 3 groups of exactly 14 generations. Matthew would have assumed that his audience would know the details he left out for the sake of symmetry.

You pulled this out of thin air. Are your answers here divinely inspired?

We can scientifically test for, find and measure the efficacy of self-prayer. It's only prayer for others that consistently has no measurable effect. Science can and does test and prove some prayer effective, so you can't hold that God will not be tested. I've just disproven that.

So I'll ask you again: considering that we can reliably measure the effectiveness of self-prayer, why can't we measure any effects from intercessory prayer on behalf of others?

I didn't pull it out of thin air. Scripture says do not test the Lord thy God. You haven't proven anything. God will not let you test Him with personal prayer any more than He will let you test Him through the prayers of others. Scripture says God doesn't answer prayers that aren't prayed in faith, so when you are praying just to test Him, you aren't going to get proof He is there. Although there is one test I think God will accept. If you prayed this prayer I think He would answer it:

"God....if Jesus is your Son and He really is the way....and if He really is everything the Bible says about Him....then I will follow Him"

>> ^messenger:
stuff

Does anyone else think that Bill Nye has the right facial features to play a very convincing Abraham Lincoln?

Anyhow, I know that I am on sacred ground here at videosift, so instead of arguing with you, or the video, I'll just say why I believe in Creationism.

No, it's not because I believe the bible. Unlike many of the Christians that you know, I was not raised in the faith, or any faith, and I converted later in life. My default position was agnosticism, and I was a firm believer in evolution and the old age of the Earth. When I became a follower of Jesus Christ, I automatically didn't ditch those beliefs. I assumed, probably like many atheists turned Christian, that these things were absolutely proven scientifically and there was no room for doubt. Therefore, I further assumed that where the bible differed from the conclusions of science, either the bible was wrong, or it had to be looked at metaphorically.

I was very comfortable with this position, and would have remained there if I hadn't been challenged about the accuracy of this belief. What I found out was that my assumption that science was correct and evolution from universal common descent was absolutely proven was not based on my understanding of the theory, or the evidence behind it, but rather my cultural indoctrination into it.

If you grew up in a secular home like I did, then you might know what I am talking about. It's what they teach you in school, first of all. All of the textbooks you read about science support this theory, and so do your teachers. It's all over the culture as well. It's in the books that you read, the movies that you watch, and the music that you listen to. It's in conversations, it's in euphamisms, basically, it's everywhere. It's always presented to you as a proven fact and you have no reason to ever question it. I had no idea, really, that so many people (40 percent of our population) do question it.

In any case, I started investigating it. I studied the history of how this theory came to be accepted as truth, the evidence that supports it, and how it interrelates with many different branches of science. What I was shocked to find, and I do mean shocked, was that the absolute proof of the theory that every authority in my life who taught on these things told me was there, wasn't there. What I found was that, when it came to the evidence, sooner or later you came upon a giant assumption (read: leap of faith). What I found was that the case for evolution was not resting on a bedrock of proof, but rather a mountain of circumstantial evidence.

The only logical conclusion at this point was that if I was going to continue to believe in evolution, I would have to take it on faith. Instead of doing that, I decided to put my faith in the bible instead. So I changed my mind because of the evidence, not in spite of it.

Now, I said I am not going to argue with Bill Nye, but I will address a point that he brought up. Specifically, deep time. Deep time is the fundamental assumption which much of modern science is built upon, but what is the proof for deep time?

Well, the first proof that is usually brought up is radiometric dating. When someone hears "radiometric dating" they associate the very mention as conclusive proof, as if the rock being dated had a timestamp on it, and radiometric dating just reads it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Radiometric dating has a few assumptions built into it:

1. Constant decay rate
2. Ratio of daughter to natural
3. Beginning conditions known
4. No leaching or addition of parent
5. No leaching or addition of daughter
6. All assumptions valid for billions of years

If all of those assumptions are valid, the date can be trusted. The problem is that there is no way to determine whether all of those assumptions are true or not. And that is, if there were just one date. The experiment actually gives a range of dates, which is then further interpreted by what is called "field relationships" between the rocks. There are many technical problems with this, but I won't get into them here. There is also the problem that different dating methods give different results for the same rock, and that when we measure things we know the age of, we get incorrect dates. If we get incorrect dates for things we know the age of, why should we trust the dates it gives for things we don't?

So, it's not so cut and dry. Evolution should be questioned; after all, that's how new theories are made. If you want to teach children that evolution shouldn't be questioned, then you are teaching them something antithetical to science. What it comes down to is what is true. You can argue creationism vs evolutionism all day long. You can know it's true simply from the bible. What proves the bible to me is that when I gave my life to Jesus Christ, He sent me the Holy Spirit to dwell within me, and He supernaturally changed my life and made me a new person. The bible says this is exactly what will happen, and it did happen. It proves that what Jesus said is true, which validates the Old and New Testament, since Jesus personally validated all of the major facts of the Old Testament. Intellectually, I can pick these theories apart, but in the end, God proves Himself. It is nothing you have to speculate about because God will personally demonstrate it to you.

Here's an interesting editorial from a moderate conservative:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/opinion/brooks-more-capitalism-please.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212_20120717

Excerpt:

The accuracy of the ad has been questioned by the various fact-checking outfits. That need not detain us. It’s safest to assume that all the ads you see this year will be at least somewhat inaccurate because the ad-makers now take dishonesty as a mark of their professional toughness.

>> ^bmacs27:

I like our system for small measurements. I prefer fractional divisions, especially with the multiple of two in the denominator. It's easier to think about bisecting graduations than it is to divide them by ten when you are talking about small distances. I mean, a tenth of a mm is just stupid. I'd rather a system that has a finer resolution to its units, i.e. half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, etc... It gives me a bit more freedom to pick the best unit given the precision of what I'm working with.
I'd never use it in a scientific context however. I'm mostly talking about workshop stuff.


As primarily a metric user, I'm just the opposite. When faced with adding 5/8 and 17/32, I'd have an easier time using 15.9 and 13.5. For accuracy I always use fractions though. But the best is when I'm working with something designed in metric so I'm adding 16 and 14...

That approximation of civilian casualties alone is reason enough to question the intent of this video: objective journalism or propaganda?

Add the "almost supernatural effectiveness" or the grossly misleading "inherent right to self-defence under international law" and I'm inclined to say that this is a disgusting propaganda piece.

When he emphasized the "humane" behaviour of operators (let the children leave before pulling the trigger) and the insinuation that victims of drone attacks are actually thankful for it, well that's just icing on the cake.


What he fails to mention:

-- low rate of civilian casualties: every male of fighting age in the target area is now considered a militant, so everything you hit is a target, unless there is concrete intelligence to prove otherwise, posthumously.

-- pinpoint accuracy: UAVs hit their targets, but the targets themselves are defined as such by piss-poor intelligence or no intelligence at all.

-- guilt by proximity: if you are near a suspect or, generally speaking, in a strike-zone, your mere presence makes you a suspect yourself, as defined by the Obama administration. Now try to square this definition with previous accusations that terrorists embed themselves into the civilian population.

-- double-tap: again, your mere presence at the site of a strike, even if your intent is to provide medical assistance, turns you into a target (eg Collateral Murder). And better stay away from funerals as well, or else they send you a present.

-- US citizens Anwar al-Awlaki, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were intentionally killed by drone strikes, without trial.

-- collateral damage: when you kill a person's family, you provide that person with a non-ideological reason to fight the US, a personal vendetta. Recent drone attacks in Yemen increased the numbers of AQAP members by killing civilians left, right and center.

-- covert killings, proxy warfare: the use of UAVs, particularly in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, reminds us of the good old days. Death from above or how I learned to love the drone.

Woah, just woah. His whole argument was based on the words that came out of his ass-mouth. I guess the fact that he sounded like a fucking prejudice douchebag didn't ruin his argument at all. Because intelligence, research and sophistication are not required for good arguments, just say the right shit that appeals to people's simplistic emotions and you will be a-okay. If this material is uninspired, repeated over and over again just for effect, all the better.

However, reverse this and the guy in the video would be very mad. He would say, "How dare they lump gay people together!" A case in point. I hear so many douchebags say that gays just wanna stir shit up and cause a ruckus and that they don't truly care about gay rights. And while that may be true for a lot of gays who just want to be heard, I am offended. It may not ruin their argument but it's still fucked up to generalize period.

We see mostly eye-to-eye but not here. Not here ever...



>> ^messenger:

Meh. "Failed hard" would be fair if his mistake had had some impact on his argument.>> ^Lawdeedaw:
Okay, so my point is this. He says marriage is forever to most Christians, and then he includes Jews. Wrong douchebag. This is highly inaccurate and he is ignorantly stereotyping Jews. I claim that this guy, while making a great point that gay marriage should be legal, failed hard against accuracy...
http://www.jewfaq.org/divorce.htm
Besides that, many lay followers in the religious orders he names, which are the majority of a religious order, do divorce and consider divorce a freedom (At least in America.)

Meh. "Failed hard" would be fair if his mistake had had some impact on his argument.>> ^Lawdeedaw:

Okay, so my point is this. He says marriage is forever to most Christians, and then he includes Jews. Wrong douchebag. This is highly inaccurate and he is ignorantly stereotyping Jews. I claim that this guy, while making a great point that gay marriage should be legal, failed hard against accuracy...
http://www.jewfaq.org/divorce.htm
Besides that, many lay followers in the religious orders he names, which are the majority of a religious order, do divorce and consider divorce a freedom (At least in America.)

Still ain't so easy to get a get.>> ^Lawdeedaw:

Okay, so my point is this. He says marriage is forever to most Christians, and then he includes Jews. Wrong douchebag. This is highly inaccurate and he is ignorantly stereotyping Jews. I claim that this guy, while making a great point that gay marriage should be legal, failed hard against accuracy...
http://www.jewfaq.org/divorce.htm
Besides that, many lay followers in the religious orders he names, which are the majority of a religious order, do divorce and consider divorce a freedom (At least in America.)

Okay, so my point is this. He says marriage is forever to most Christians, and then he includes Jews. Wrong douchebag. This is highly inaccurate and he is ignorantly stereotyping Jews. I claim that this guy, while making a great point that gay marriage should be legal, failed hard against accuracy...

http://www.jewfaq.org/divorce.htm

Besides that, many lay followers in the religious orders he names, which are the majority of a religious order, do divorce and consider divorce a freedom (At least in America.)