>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

^It's like Shiny wants to be entirely rational about this subject...
But can't, cause all his thought and opinions are coated in a layer of bible nonsense.


I know exactly how the mind of a secular liberal works, GenjiKilpatrick, because I used to have one. It's not a mystery to me why you believe what you believe, or how you came to those conclusions. I used to think along the same lines and I used to buy the same things which the world is selling you.

The difference between us is, revealed truth versus autonomous reasoning. God has revealed Himself to me in such a way that His existence is undeniably true. I could no more deny God than I could my own reflection in the mirror. You, on the other hand, suppress the truth God has given you because you prefer your autonomous reasoning. Do you relate to this quotation?:

I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantegous to themselves...

For myself as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was an admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever.

-Aldous Huxley

God put you here for a reason but you would rather deny it and dream up your own reasoning, regardless of the truth. And you believe that your reasoning is superior, yet what is the basis of its validity? How do you justify it?

Ah, okay, thanks!
In reply to this comment by kir_mokum:
my only point is that she's really talking about an ancient story archetype that isn't new or contained in the realm of contemporary pop culture. it's going to be a long time before we breed this meme out of our cultural DNA.


In reply to this comment by hpqp:
I don't think I get your point. Care to elaborate?
In reply to this comment by kir_mokum:
damsel in distress is still used and is usually sexist. gotcha.

my only point is that she's really talking about an ancient story archetype that isn't new or contained in the realm of contemporary pop culture. it's going to be a long time before we breed this meme out of our cultural DNA.


In reply to this comment by hpqp:
I don't think I get your point. Care to elaborate?
In reply to this comment by kir_mokum:
damsel in distress is still used and is usually sexist. gotcha.

This idea of "a wall of seperation" of church and state came from a letter that Jefferson wrote to a baptist association while he was in France. It has been misinterpreted in recent times as a principle of exclusion of religion from government, but is this really what Jefferson intended? If he did, you might want to ask yourself why Jefferson attended church every sunday..in the house of representitives. You might want to ask why Jefferson closed presidential documents with "In the year of our Lord Jesus Christ", or why he negotiated treaties that used federal funding to pay for Christian missionaries to evangelize the indians. You also might want to ask why public education was teaching the scripture in schools, and why nearly every state had its own church..and why many states wouldn't allow non-christians to be elected to public office.

This idea of "freedom from religion" has no basis in history, or in the intentions of our founders. The secular community apparently feels that they can move in to this house that Christianity built and evict the ones who built it. It would be a bit like you inviting me to stay at your house and then I tell you that I am going to redecorate it the way I please and would you please stay in your room and never come out again.

Consider the words of William Rehnquist in a supreme court ruling about this issue:

It is impossible to build sound constitutional doctrine upon a mistaken understanding of constitutional history, but unfortunately the Establishment Clause has been expressly freighted with Jefferson's misleading metaphor for nearly 40 years. Thomas Jefferson was of course in France at the time the constitutional Amendments known as the Bill of Rights were passed by Congress and ratified by the States. His letter to the Danbury Baptist Association was a short note of courtesy, written 14 years after the Amendments were passed by Congress. He would seem to any detached observer as a less than ideal source of contemporary history as to the meaning of the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment.

But the greatest injury of the "wall" notion is its mischievous diversion of judges from the actual intentions of the drafters of the Bill of Rights. The "crucible of litigation," ante, at 2487, is well adapted to adjudicating factual disputes on the basis of testimony presented in court, but no amount of repetition of historical errors in judicial opinions can make the errors true. The "wall of separation between church and State" is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/971381/posts


>> ^jonny:
>> ^quantumushroom:
There is no legal anything found anywhere guaranteeing "freedom from religion". The State is not allowed to establish a religion or promote one religion above others. That's it.
The statements are plainly contradictory. The 1st amendment guarantees freedom from a government religion or any promotion of religion by the government. Also, as Boise_Lib notes above, it's impossible to have true freedom of religion without also having freedom from any other religion being imposed upon you. Intelligent people may disagree over whether certains actions constitute imposition of religious principles or doctrine, but the idea that the Constitution does not guarantee a level of freedom from religion is patently false.

His conclusion was also horseshit. The Death of Superman was an obvious marketing gimmick from the start, and death in comics was most certainly not a new thing. None of the comics industry coverage, and none of my contemporary readers, expected Superman to *really* be dead. You'd literally have to be retarded to believe that or feel ripped off by his return (go ahead and feel ripped off by the *way* it was done though).

@Kofi 's definition is a good and meaningful one, but of the type I already said was too narrow to be useful to anyone but historians.

Stripping away historical context, which is ultimately trivia; the negations, which define what fascism was reacting against rather than what it actually is; mere observations about the behaviour of fascist states in practice - suppression of dissent is inevitable in any authoritarian and particularly collectivist society, and not unique to fascism or in any way one of its core ideals; its arbitrary and debatable place on the political spectrum; and assuming that it is in fact useful to use the term fascist outside the very limited area of italian political history - you're left with a definition very like mine:

Fascism is a radical political ideal defined by its emphasis on social unity, nationalism and authoritarian leadership.

This is almost exactly the method I used to arrive at my definition in the first place. So; Nationalism, Collectivism, Authoritarianism (inward aggression). To that I've added Militarism (outward aggression) and Stupidity (we could say anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism, but we're avoiding negation and Stupidity is anyway genuinely more relevant - fascists are proudly and unapologetically stupid).

Do we like this definition? I say it applies to Obama, his two predecessors, and all of their contemporary peers.

>> ^Enzoblue:

Russians have crap, numbers-wise, for their next generation of workers. Birth rates are down and death rates so high that they stand to lose more than 20% of their population by 2050. Putin said of this in 2006, "The most acute problem of contemporary Russia". They're trying to up the sexcapades to get kids pumping out more. They even had a kiss-fest in Moscow and a 'day of conception' in June, offering prizes for babies etc.


It's like Panda's...soon we'll have russians in zoos and people will be shoving them together yelling "SAVE YOUR SPECIES!!!"

Russians have crap, numbers-wise, for their next generation of workers. Birth rates are down and death rates so high that they stand to lose more than 20% of their population by 2050. Putin said of this in 2006, "The most acute problem of contemporary Russia". They're trying to up the sexcapades to get kids pumping out more. They even had a kiss-fest in Moscow and a 'day of conception' in June, offering prizes for babies etc.

There are a few contemporary jewelers, sculptors and woodworkers that do this but this is the first time I've seen it with painting.

Are you really genre bending if the genres you bend are all firmly within contemporary electronic music tradition? I think these electronic guys would be much more free if they thought of these sub-genres as 'techniques' rather than trying to conform to a narrow set of sub-genre-specific aesthetic rules. I love electronic music, but it has more conformist tendencies than just about any other genre I can think of, which is ironic, because when you use a computer as your musical instrument there are few limits to what you can do sonically.

>> ^AnimalsForCrackers:

I think they should have kept the setting more contemporary.
The whole "cultural mainstays of yesteryear in modern fish out of water situations" is a comedic dead-horse to me. I mean, Snooky, reeeally? Fer fucks sake, Hollywood.
Looks like the setup is them being raised in the Sisters of Mercy Orphanage so "fish out of water" would make more sense, and could account for Curly's innocence (as WP mentioned).

I think they should have kept the setting more contemporary. The whole "cultural mainstays of yesteryear in modern fish out of water situations" is a comedic dead-horse to me. I mean, Snooky, really?

I also sort of get annoyed when they take things from the past and stick them in a clearly 'current time' setting. My overall preference is for a movie to be designed in such a way as to be relatively 'timeless'. When you make a movie in such a way that it constantly spotlights a subject or idea from a very specific modern time period then it becomes VERY obvious and then the show becomes dated very quickly as time goes on. The end result is that a good movie that would have otherwise been a 'classic' ends up seeming very cheesy. I think the Stooges movie would have been better off avoiding that kind of thing. Just have the Stooges there, keep the setting vague and non-specific in terms of its period, and let the hijinks ensue.

That being said - I loved seeing Snookie get poked in the eyes... Give her a few triple-slaps while you're at it, Moe.

I think they should have kept the setting more contemporary.

The whole "cultural mainstays of yesteryear in modern fish out of water situations" is a comedic dead-horse to me. I mean, Snooky, reeeally? Fer fucks sake, Hollywood.

It's natural that atheists proselytize, because atheism is a religion:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/6034949/Atheism-Is-Protected-As-a-Religion-says-Court-

It has its own creation story:

"Thus, a century ago, [it was] Darwinism against Christian orthodoxy. To-day the tables are turned. The modified, but still characteristically Darwinian theory has itself become an orthodoxy, preached by its adherents with religious fervour, and doubted, they feel, only by a few muddlers imperfect in scientific faith."

Grene, Marjorie [Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of California, Davis], "The Faith of Darwinism," Encounter, Vol. 74, November 1959, pp.48-56, p.49

with its own miracles:

"Time is, in fact, the hero of the plot... given so much time the 'impossible' becomes possible, the possible probable and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs miracles."
George Wald, "The Origin of Life," Physics and Chemistry of Life, 1955, p. 12.

In which its adherants have total faith:

I have faith and belief myself... I believe that nothing beyond those natural laws is needed. I have no evidence for this. It is simply what I have faith in and what I believe.

Isaac Asimov
Counting the Eons P.10

I do not want to believe in God, therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible: spontaneous generation arising to evolution

George Wald - Harvard Professor
Nobel Laureate

They believe it even in the face of contradicting evidence

Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved.

Francis Crick Nobel Laureate
What Mad Pursuit p.138 1988

Much evidence can be adduced in favor of the Theory of Evolution from Biology, Biogeography, and Paleontology, but I still think that to the unprejudiced the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation.

EJH Cornor, Cambridge
Contemporary Botanical Thought p.61

It provides a comprehensive belief system:

Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideaology, a secular religion- a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with its meaning and morality...

Michael Ruse Florida State University
National Post 5/13/00

Atheists know they are right no matter what:

No evidence would be sufficient to create a change in mind; that it is not a commitment to evidence, but a commitment to naturalism. ...Because there are no alternatives, we would almost have to accept natural selection as the explanation of life on this planet even if there were no evidence for it.

Steven Pinker MIT
How the mind works p.182

Even if they have to suppress the truth to prove it:

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

Lewontin, Richard C. [Professor of Zoology and Biology, Harvard University], "Billions and Billions of Demons", Review of "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark," by Carl Sagan, New York Review, January 9, 1997. (Emphasis in original)

"In fact the a priori reasoning is so entirely satisfactory to me that if the facts won't fit in, why so much the worse for the facts is my feeling."

Erasmus Darwin, in a letter to his brother Charles, after reading his new book, "The Origin of Species," in Darwin, F., ed., "The Life of Charles Darwin," [1902], Senate: London, 1995, reprint, p215.

They are true believers:

of all choices, atheism requires the greatest faith, as it demands that ones limited store of human knowledge is sufficient to exclude the possibility of God.

francis collins human genome project

It won't be long before there are atheists churches and street preachers handing out tracks.

Serious Sam was a good game. Serious Sam 2 was a horribad impression of some other game. With number 3, it looks like at least they've figured out what was good about the original (ie. a million enemies, and shooting them) and are bringing the good gameplay ideas back.

But the writing needs serious help. It's funny; they owe much of their success to good comedy writing. Not in their game, but by Eric Wolpaw, who wrote about it on OldManMurray. Eric would later go on to write for Portal, and help create probably the best games of the last decade.

Do you think Valve regrets hiring Eric? And yet, other game companies haven't figured this out. If you want to do comedy in a game, hire someone who's proven successful at doing comedy.

The one-liners in this video are sad crap. Yes, I understand that they're supposed to be over-the-top. That's the problem: they aren't, and they aren't funny.

Without any digging, you can see Wolpaw had plenty of contemporaries that are still around, still being funny, and still available for hire. Seanbaby is slumming it at Cracked. Lowtax has to be bored over at SomethingAwful. Hell, there are tons of great writers at SA who'd be great for a comedy video game. I don't think it would take crazy money to get Yahtzee (or one of the other current generation) doing game writing either.

Why aren't they being picked up by someone? How do you still get crap like this in a high budget title?