>> ^messenger:

IMO not funny, and in my estimation, unoriginal, poorly acted, poorly executed.
I generally downvote for the same reasons as most (something doesn't deserve to be on the Sift), but also when there's a Top 15 sift that I think is particularly undeserving of that position.>> ^alien_concept:
>> ^messenger:
If ant's not downvoting, then I will.

Any particular reason, or?



Zach is my own personal Jesus, so I do need to point out that you have committed an act of blasphemy and I will be watching you very closely from now on.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Freedom-Under-Fire-U-N-Anti-Blasphemy-Resolution

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by messenger. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

The bit from 0:25 to 0:38 is an interesting look at how religion is perceived. I'm sure this audience knew what they were getting into and only people who agreed would turn up, but the fact that he can say this and get that reaction is interesting. How recently would that have got him in trouble for blasphemy?

This routine isn't very tolerant or very nice, as is usual for Jim Jeffries, so although I agree with the points he makes, I could understand why a Christian would find this offensive. Presumably they would also find those earlier routines offensive too.

>> ^conan:

>> ^siftbot:
Invocations (lies) cannot be called by conan because conan is not privileged - sorry.

Blasphemy! Thy lord shall judge thee!


Matthew 16:19 Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour siftbot as thyself.

Good luck getting in the pearly gates :*(

>> ^siftbot:

Invocations (lies) cannot be called by conan because conan is not privileged - sorry.


Blasphemy! Thy lord shall judge thee!

I've swam through a few of her books,the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged,and I think her philosophy of Capitalism is Holy could work except for one basic problem:human nature. And her supporters in the GOP really don't get where she was coming from either. The protagonists of these books are people who run large companies struggling to provide their excellent products and services in spite of heavy regulations at the hands of the small minded government. They are personally involved with their companies,willing to go the extra mile and get their hands dirty in the persuit of delivering the goods and providing livings for their extended families of employees they feel responsible for. Yet the government in pettiness and jelousy scheme to thwart them in this:making the Creative Movers of Industry gasp under the strain of mad laws written by parasites to sap the energy of the Doers to feed the gluttony of the lazy masses. More or less this. Unfortunatelythis fairy story is a bit backwards nowadays...
Instead of clever creators marketing their dreams,we have souless corporations dissecting the labours of the many to feed the obscenely rich the lions share of profits,and existing only to figure out new ways of paying themselves incentive bonuses while the companies they run heave and expire beneathe them from the sheer weight of their greed. Emploees are not families to these executives,all cooporating with the mutual goal of seeing the company succeed,but disposable pawns easily replaced and forgotten,not worth providing benefits for and certainly not worth considering when cheap if not competant labour is available elsewhere.And regulations ? Taxes? Blasphemies!

Some of Rand's opinions I find valid:armies of the unambitious would swollow every dime you earn with demands for welfare and other government mandated largesses. For every brave sould with a creative spark there are a dozen happy to make them fall for the perverse pleasure of simply watching a great idea fail. These exist:but a socialism is not on the genda in this future of ours...it seems to be evolving into a new sort of feudalism where the Rich rule and the serfs provide the neccessaries. And I suppose there are entrepreneurs out there fighting the good fight,and fighting it with style and dignity for themselves and their employees.

They just don't make the headlines.

I'm not at all a scholar of the bible. I've read parts, I've been to
Sunday school before i was confirmed (age 14) and I have at times had
fun reading it.

Well, I would encourage you to try to understand it. Every conversation I've ever had with an atheist about the bible either brings up the same five things from the old testament or their doubts about who wrote the bible..and that's it. I've never actually spoken to an atheist, and I've spoken to many atheists, who even understood the basics. I think that if you're going to criticize something, you should at least try to understand it at a basic level..maybe that's just me. Although, the lack of understanding matches what the bible says, that the truth is spiritually discerned. Without the Holy Spirit, the atheist is going to find it fairly impossible to comprehend.

Arguing from authority is not a strong argument. Just because "the
intellectual scholarship" is much greater than I understand, doesn't
change what the book says. And since new evidence is not uncovered, it
is what it is, you are forced to "interpret new evidence" and that's
not the way the world works.

What you, and many others try to imply, is that what is the bible is simplistic, and for people without any intellectual standards. The truth is that what is in the bible is complex, and it takes a real intellect (supplanted with godly wisdom) to be able to understand it. The intellectual scholarship is vast because the bible is inexaustible. It functions as a cogent whole, and address all the deep questions that human beings have. It is not simple by any stretch of the imagination.

1) Personal evidence cannot be verified. What things were revealed to
you before you ever read or understood them? How were they revealed,
what was revealed, how did you later understand them / where did you
read them?

I would like to understand your thought process, which is why I ask.

Is it possible that you already had a forgone conclusion when you read
X, and therefore you interpreted X the way you wanted?

God had revealed to me through signs that He is a triune God, and that He has a Messiah, someone whose job it is to save the world. So when I finally read the bible, those signs are what initially confirmed it to be true. I didn't have any foregone conclusions about the bible before I read it. I had no actual idea what Christianity was all about.

What happened? How has your life improved, what did you do before,
what do you do now? How can you tell that it happened supernaturally?
Is there any difference from that to just having a profound change of
heart. If you are talking about addiction, it is possible to fill the
void of that addiction with other things - some people exchange
cigarettes with food, why not religion/faith? Does your faith take up
as much of your time as "the unhealthy things" you did before?

Before I became a Christian I was a theist, and before I was a theist I was an agnostic. When I became a theist my bad behavior didn't change. I was like Enoch, in that I believed that none of the religions were true, or that all of them just had pieces of who God is. I believed in a God that loved you the way you are and didn't particularly enforce any kind of behavior upon you, as long as your heart was in the right place. I would think that God, knowing me intimately, and knowing my good intentions, was very understanding if I did something which was out of line. Of course God is very patient with all of us, but the point is that I had plenty of faith in God at the time, and spent my time thinking about Him and pursuing the truth. The difference is that once I accepted Jesus into my heart as my Lord and Savior, everything changed.

It was only when I became a Christian that my behavior changed, and much of that practically overnight. When you're born again, you are spiritually cleansed and start out with a blank slate. You become like new. I had addictions, depression, anger, pain, sadness, and other issues that left me in short order. Some of those things I never thought I would give up, some of them I never wanted to give up, but I immediately lost the desire for them. It was a change of heart; God gave me a new one. It was supernatural because as I said, I didn't do any work. People spend their entire lives in therapy or counseling and spend tens of thousands of dollars or more to get rid of just some of these problems, and often don't see any results. I lost almost all of my baggage in just a few short months.

3) Not really. It only accounts for a visual interpretation of how men act. The writers of it has observed how people act and guessed at reasons why that is. Some are close to reality, some are way off. Which human behaviors does it predict? How and where does it describe in finite detail how those behaviors are created? I'm looking for actual citations here, because this is complete news to me.

It predicts all kinds of human behaviors by describing the mechanisms which motivate them to act. It shows the fundemental dichotomy of the heart of man. As an example:

James 3:3-10

When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.

and

Matthew 12:34

O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.

and

Matthew 15:19-20

But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.

For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:

4) I disagree. It describes a point of view. The morality of the God of the bible is hardly any good morality. We have an ingrown moral compass, I can agree on that, it's been naturally selected against because it helped our ancestors to survive and procreate. "His moral law" is atrocious, if the bible is any indicator.

If everyone followed the morality that Jesus taught us, this planet would be as close to a utopia it could possibly get. He taught us to love one another, to forgive as a rule, to do good to even those who hate you, to help everyone in need, and to follow the moral law. Your idea of Gods morality being atrocious is plainly false. The passages that you feel are atrocious have an explanation, its just whether you want to hear them or not. As far as natural selection goes, all it cares about is passing on its genes. That is the only criteria for success. This doesn't explain noble behavior in the least, such as sacrificing your life for someone else. That's a bad way to pass on your genes.

5) Which prophecies have been fulfilled? You don't think Israel chose their currency based on the bible instead? Which captivities have been prophecied down to the year and where in the bible?

http://www.khouse.org/articles/2004/552/


6) This is hardly uncontested. There are parts of the bible that seem to be true, but because some of it is true, does not mean that all of it is. http://www.theskepticalreview.com/tsrmag/982front.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_history#Historical_accuracy_of_biblical_stories

It's positive evidence in the bibles favor when it is verified by archaelogical evidence. There are many things in the bible that historians denied were true in the bible, like the hittite civilization, until archaelogy proved the bible correct.

7) Citation needed. Saying that the universe has a beginning is hardly proof of anything. That's the easy way to say it, anyone apart from earlier theories said that, so of course they did it in there too. In actuality the bible claims that God is eternal, which there is no basis for.

These claims are just claims, there is no basis for saying them in the bible. Blood clotting could be found by trial and error back then, ocean currents can to a great extent be measured by fishermen even back then. Scientists who believed in an eternal universe have since changed their mind, when evidence discredited the theory. It's all about being able to back up your claims. the bible just claims.

This guy discovered and mapped the ocean currents, and he did so being inspired by psalm 8, which is the one that mentions the "paths of the seas"

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

Abraham didn't learn from trial and error. They were doing circumcisions on the 8th day from the beginning.

You must think something is eternal, unless you believe something came from nothing. So your problem isn't really with eternal things, just an eternal person.

Here is a list of them

http://www.inplainsite.org/html/scientific_facts_in_the_bible.html

8 ) How did you experience the holy spirit?

It's really impossible quite impossible to describe since it effects every level of your being at the same time, but experientially you could say it's like going from 110 to 220v. It's like you lived all your life being covered in filth and suddenly you're washed off and sparkling clean. It's like being remade into something brand new.

>> ^gwiz665

Tolkein to me is the Stanley Kubrik of fiction books - to fans he's untouchable; to the few of us who aren't into it, he's long-winded and self-indulgent. People are going to throw things at me for saying this, but he could have written a much better story in two books than three

No one is going to throw things at you. Reading is a very individual experience. Not everyone is going to or has to like the same stuff any more than they have to like the same clothes or food. Your tastes in literature are just different. Nothing wrong with that.

I personally felt that every Harry Potter book (after Azkaban) could be cut in half and it would have made a far better reading experience. But to some people that would be blasphemy. I got sick of JK "The Exposition" Rowling pulling the Scooby-Doo revelation of the "Old Man Jenkins du jour" mystery at the end of every book. She took chapters and chapters to do it - sometimes hundreds of pages - and she's so addicted to exposition that she invented entire plot devices just so she could do more of them (Pensieve, I'm lookin' at you). But to some readers that was good stuff. Me - I skimmed right past it. If Tolkien's descriptions of terrain, histories, and such bog you down then just skim 'em.

Sometimes I feel bad that some folks don't get the same soul-rush I get from LOTR's language though. But there it is. You either appreciate that aspect of a text or you don't. To some people JRR's perfect craftsmanship, literary power, and brightness of theme/setting have no value - just as Rowling's redundant expositions mean nothing to me.

When I walked out of my first showing of the Fellowship of the Ring movie, I was pretty jazzed. I felt the movie (while having flaws) still managed to capture the essence of the story which was loyalty, honor, and sacrifice in the face of temptation and darkness. I heard some gal talking to her friend walking out of the movie saying how boring it was, how stupid parts were, and how the whole thing dragged out way longer than it should. Two different people with totally different opinions about the same thing. One person saw value, depth, and goodness. The other was just bored. Same logic applies to the book.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

He was a senile, clueless, puppet president who advanced some of the most damaging and costly policy in US history, he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, he introduced free market economic reforms that have ravaged our economy, middle class and labor sector, he cravenly targeted the weakest and most powerless people in the country, and he sold weapons to Iran and drugs in inner cities to fund death squads in South America.....
...but, he sure new how to deliver a joke.
Blasphemy.

Um - No...,
Visual media and propaganda of Heaven and Hell was around long before Television and motion pictures. Artisans through the ages have depicted them throughout history. At one point, the Catholic church controlled what could be painted and what could not. An artist had to have the churches stamp of approval before they could release the painting and/or profit by it. To go against this edict was by default blasphemy. The Catholic Church commissioned and controlled all visual media the people saw and used it as a tool of control. (much like corporations use modern-day media)

If anything, the prophesying of Hell for sinners and the horrors within hell was more effective before modern cinematography. People are always more afraid of what they can picture in their own mind than fear someone else's depiction. I think the Satire of modern day cinema has softened the blow and made many people re-examine Hell, what it is and what it represents, and look on it as a man made experience instead of a wrath of God/Devil experience.


>> ^sfarias40k:

I really believe that most peoples view of hell don't come from a church but from TV & movies, like almost everything else.

Blasphemy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! "Hell" yeah!

The other point to make here, is that google/facebook/twitter/whatever do no make LAWS that punishes people. They are private companies that are free to choose what not to publish/allow on their servers/channels. That is THEIR right. Being banned from youtube is not the same as being put in jail.
>> ^hpqp:

I imagine you're referencing those instances in which he speaks out against blasphemy laws, which have absolutely nothing to do with hate speech. Blasphemy laws make it illegal to criticise someone's beliefs, hate speech laws make it illegal to incite hatred and violence against people because of their nature (gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation).
I am all against blasphemy laws, but I support legislation against hate speech. It is not hate speech to say, for example, that the Qur'an (and the Bible/Torah for that matter) is full of violence, hate and intolerance, and that Mohammad was a warmongerer and a pedophile. It is hate speech to say that men and women deserve death and eternal torture for loving someone of the same sex, and I would go further: teaching that ignorant belief to children is not only spiteful and irresponsible, but is a form of child abuse.
>> ^marinara:
So hpqp, when Pat Condell complains about free speech being impinged by hate speech legislation, you're all against it. But when Christians say the exact same thing, you have to switch sides? Rhetorical question OFC.

I imagine you're referencing those instances in which he speaks out against blasphemy laws, which have absolutely nothing to do with hate speech. Blasphemy laws make it illegal to criticise someone's beliefs, hate speech laws make it illegal to incite hatred and violence against people because of their nature (gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation).

I am all against blasphemy laws, but I support legislation against hate speech. It is not hate speech to say, for example, that the Qur'an (and the Bible/Torah for that matter) is full of violence, hate and intolerance, and that Mohammad was a warmongerer and a pedophile. It is hate speech to say that men and women deserve death and eternal torture for loving someone of the same sex, and I would go further: teaching that ignorant belief to children is not only spiteful and irresponsible, but is a form of child abuse.

>> ^marinara:

So hpqp, when Pat Condell complains about free speech being impinged by hate speech legislation, you're all against it. But when Christians say the exact same thing, you have to switch sides? Rhetorical question OFC.

The bible always gives clarification in this way, that it gives a blanket distinction of what is right and wrong, (killing) and then further clarifies how this may be applied in different situations (self-defense).

As far your comment regarding blasphemy and the like, that is part of the Mosaic law which was given to the Jewish people. Christians are not under the Mosaic law because Jesus did away with it. That was only for the nation of israel in that time and place. If I killed someone for blasphemy I would be guilty of murder. Jesus told us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and murder I don't think would be very loving.

>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^shinyblurry:
Yes, there are some exceptions made, such as for self defense. I am not speaking of the law of the land but within the bible.
If the christian bible makes exceptions to "Thou shall not kill" then the distinction is the reader's choice. Many christians believe it is wrong to kill ever, even in self-defense. I tend to hold your view, that the moral justification is relative to the situation.
That's very similar to what Dawkins believes. People follow religious texts when they agree with them and ignore the parts they don't agree with. Would you feel morally justified killing someone for blasphemy or adultery if your god said it's the right thing to do? I doubt it (at least I would hope not).
Discussion about morality is a good thing. People are much more likely to behave morally when they understand why a certain behavior is positive or negative rather than simply being told to do (or avoid) a behavior.