On the contrary, I intrinsically understand the arguments being presented here because I used to use many of them myself. I am making an effort to provide answers to everyones objections, yet some of this is hard to take seriously as you might have seen. My belief is that two reasonable people can come to a reasonable conclusion about something, so I'll keep trying. I have noticed people tend to have a filter where they just skip over everything looking for a ripe cherry to pick. I don't do that..I attempt to address someones entire point..it isn't a contest to me. I perceive all of it spiritually, and it's from my heart..I wouldn't bother if I didn't care.


>> ^peggedbea:
i think that probably has more to do with a difference in world view than anything else. nothing you say makes a lot of sense to me, like you seem to be missing the points being made here, and by hitchens in the video. it's a difference in view point. not that everyone else is full of "hot air." but their world and out look is completely different. 2 different wavelengths.
it's like how when sarah palin talks, i don't hear anything.. but millions of people do hear something. and they profoundly relate to it. i think the differences in peoples points of view account for a pretty big portion of misunderstandings.
btw, i read all comment threads from bottom to top.>> ^shinyblurry:
I've seen no atheists, and I mean zero, who have a comprehensive understanding of what's in the bible, how it all interrelates, could construct a theological argument or debunk it on theological terms, or apply its meaning. This includes the famous atheists debators. Most of them are extremely poor scholars. They have their incindiary talking points which lure in the easily misled, but other than hot air, there isn't much else.

i think that probably has more to do with a difference in world view than anything else. nothing you say makes a lot of sense to me, like you seem to be missing the points being made here, and by hitchens in the video. it's a difference in view point. not that everyone else is full of "hot air." but their world and out look is completely different. 2 different wavelengths.

it's like how when sarah palin talks, i don't hear anything.. but millions of people do hear something. and they profoundly relate to it. i think the differences in peoples points of view account for a pretty big portion of misunderstandings.


btw, i read all comment threads from bottom to top.>> ^shinyblurry:

I've seen no atheists, and I mean zero, who have a comprehensive understanding of what's in the bible, how it all interrelates, could construct a theological argument or debunk it on theological terms, or apply its meaning. This includes the famous atheists debators. Most of them are extremely poor scholars. They have their incindiary talking points which lure in the easily misled, but other than hot air, there isn't much else.

What's always amazing to me is that someone could look at a HUGE page full of evidence against..pick out one thing that supports their view, and then discard everything else. Anyway, this doesn't help your case at all, it actually continues to disprove your theory that bible is unreliable. I will concede that some translations of the bible contain errors, or "emotional baggage." But again, it's really not a problem because we have the originals. You can find translations of the originals online or in book stores. So, maybe *you* should read the bible, especially before you critisize it.

As far as your contention about atheists knowing more about religion than the average Christian, in general, I might concede that. You have to remember there are 2 billion Christians in the world..33 percent of the population. That's a big pool to average from To me it just proves how obsessed atheists are over something that they all claim to not care one lick about.

It's amusing to me that there are atheists out there who think more about God than Christians do. However, in general is where the comparison ends. I've seen no atheists, and I mean zero, who have a comprehensive understanding of what's in the bible, how it all interrelates, could construct a theological argument or debunk it on theological terms, or apply its meaning. This includes the famous atheists debators. Most of them are extremely poor scholars. They have their incindiary talking points which lure in the easily misled, but other than hot air, there isn't much else.

>> ^JiggaJonson:
@<A rel="nofollow" class=profilelink title="member since January 21st, 2011" href="http://videosift.com/member/shinyblurry">shinyblurry from the link you posted to me "At the same time, Ehrman implicitly raises a valid issue. A glance at virtually any English Bible today reveals that the longer ending of Mark and the pericope adulterae are to be found in their usual places. Thus, not only do the KJV and NKJV have these passages (as would be expected), but so do the ASV, RSV, NRSV, NIV, TNIV, NASB, ESV, TEV, NAB, NJB, and NET. Yet the scholars who produced these translations, by and large, do not subscribe to the authenticity of such texts. The reasons are simple enough: they don’t show up in the oldest and best manuscripts and their internal evidence is decidedly against authenticity. Why then are they still in these Bibles?"
Your author goes on to explain that the only reason some passages are kept in the bible at all is not because they are authentic but because of emotional baggage that people have attached to said passages. He even flatly says: "This is not to say that everything Ehrman has written in this book is of that ilk. But these three passages are."
This is HARDLY a "debunk"ing as you suggest. If anything it's a re-affirmation of what I stated before and further proof that the bible is a very fallible text.
I think the real problem here is maybe you aren't even reading the bible/your own sources as I suggested earlier with this link: http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/09/28/survey-atheists-know-more-about-religion-than-believers/

what an unbelievable bag of hot air and bullshit.

I'm wondering, how much the hot air from fox news presenters cost?

I don't have an education in IT, and neither am I extremely knowledgeable in programming and actual administrating, and yet I think I can relate, at least somewhat - I've dabbled in some types of languages and databases, and am on first-name terms with hardware and software in general, and as a result I have just wound up as an "IT Project Implementation Lead" in a nationalized bank (don't assume I'm loaded though - my monthly salary is 3 figures in USD). I like what I currently do and I like working in general, in part because every day is full of validation, since I've discovered that the majority of people, especially those in middle-management, are a terrible mix of incredibly lazy, incompetent and ineffective (i.e. I chose the second answer in the poll), so it's rather easy to stand out for your work-ethics. Anyway, thought you (and other IT folks) might enjoy this one, if you haven't heard it already:


A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces altitude and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"

The man below says: "Yes, you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field."

"You must work in Information Technology" says the balloonist.

"I do" replies the man. "How did you know?"

"Well" says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but it's of no use to anyone."

The man below says "You must work in business."

"I do" replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well", says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault."

In reply to this comment by xxovercastxx:
I'm temporarily unemployed as I moved from NY to MO last month, but I went ahead and chose #2 since I'll be working again in a few weeks.

I've been in IT and Network Administration for 14 years now. I enjoy it so long as things are moving forward. The downside to IT is that you're almost always in a power struggle of sorts. The users hate the system and blame you for everything that goes wrong but they also fight you on everything you try to do to improve things. Management is also an issue as they rarely have any understanding of the decisions that IT faces, but they also tend to ignore the input you give them. The end result is that someone makes a decision with no knowledge of the situation and then you spend all your time putting out fires.

The one significant regret I have in my line of work is the lack of creativity. I like doing design, drawing, painting, photography, etc and there's almost no place for any of those skills in IT. I really always wanted to be a game designer, but could never find the road to take me there.

I'll upvote for the simple fact that no-one added techno music to this!

I imagine the smoke is as said before: sound barrier, casing, plasma flow dynamics ("hot air"), etc... Plus whatever gets pwned at impact via kinetics.

And, just like the movie (just different words):
"There Will Be A Fiery Boom"

I dont think i would enjoy this ( unless i had a parashoot ) blody hot air ballons I just dont trust them

randomly because of the weardness of the situatoin , floating at x hight on a glass flore its so weard i think my mind would find it esear to accomidate the glass floor than if it was a glass flore in a bulding.

lol weard how although i trust phisics my brain has a hard time trusting hot air baloons.

What part about it isn't real? The footage is real, as far as him doing all that stuff underwater goes. As was said, he didn't actually reach the bottom without flippers and a rope, but there wasn't any trick photography or anything.

What happens to the human body while quickly rising and lowering in deep water? Nothing if you are free diving. You get "the bends" if you are using compressed oxygen but if you are holding your breath you can rise to the surface as fast as you want.

As far as human body density goes, yes, in general, it is very close to that of water. More fat makes you less dense, more muscle makes you more dense. Going deeper will make you less buoyant. Wearing a weight belt (as the guy in the video is) will make you sink even further/faster.

And some people can't swim so are afraid of deep water, give them a break - not everyone can be full of hot air.

>> ^Chinspinigcra:

Anybody else annoyed at the fact that some people think this is real? Learn about what happens to the human body while quickly rising and lowering in deep water. Look up human body density and how close it is to water. Then you simply must say eureka as you uncover the workings of flotation. Honest to god, just being afraid of swimming in water, at all, is complete nonsense. That is like a bird being afraid to hop around on the ground.

@ponceleon (for a response to your Dark Matter questions see above)

First off, I'd like to thank you for a very interesting discussion. It is through such dialogue that we clarify our thoughts, and your responses have really helped me explore many different ideas.

I'd like to start out by explaining why I responded to your post in the first place. Your initial post called for the end of all religion. It seemed to be a gross overreaction to the clip. You seemed to be equating every single religious person with a fanatic Muslim willing to kill for his beliefs.

You very clearly place a high value on reason and logical thought. My initial purpose in posting, then, was to show you how illogical it is to condemn an entire group of people for the actions of a few individuals. You would not consider it reasonable to call for an end to Democracy simply because some people have started wars in the name of Democracy (see Lawdeedaw's post above). It is just as illogical to call for an end to all religion because some people have committed evil in the name of religion. Likewise, just because Sarah Palin blew some hot air on national TV about fruit flies, it doesn't logically follow that all religious people are against science. Or that they all want to convert you. That's another gross over-generalization. As a refutation, I provide the example of two of the worlds biggest religions--Buddhism and Hinduism--which co-exist peacefully with multiple other religions and do not try impose their teachings on those who don't voluntarily come seeking them.

So that was my original point, basically. Your initial call for an end to religion wasn't logical, reasonable, or even plausible. How could you accomplish it? By force? That would rob you of the moral high ground. By law? In the U.S., at least, you would face the problem that freedom of religion is guaranteed in the Constitution.

Given the improbability of a religious-free world anytime in the near future (almost certainly not our lifetimes) wouldn't it be better to use our intellectual powers for figuring out how to get along? And how to deal humanely with those radicals and fundamentalists who refuse to try to get along or insist on imposing their views on others? Personally, I feel that is a much better use of our time and energy than trying to ban religion outright.

This will be my last post here. I'll let you have the last word on the matter. If you want to continue talking about this or other things, send me a profile reply. However, I'm very busy with work right now and might not be able to reply right away, so I apologize for that.

>> ^ponceleon:

@SGD Ah I think we are coming a bit closer together here, but you are backpeddling a bit.
There is a BIG difference between you telling me that it is MY job as a rational person to disprove the existance of God the Son and the Holy ghost, v. telling me that dark matter is unmeasurable.
You see, Dark Matter is based on actual calculations and rational deliberation which leads scientists to see that something is missing from their model. As it turns out, I'm willing to CONSIDER dark matter as a possibility because it is based on something thought out and observable (though itself it may not be). That said, I would not be surprised at all if it turns out to be bunk. But that's the great part of science, Dark Matter can turn out to be real or not real and NO SCIENTIST is going to FATWAH me for believing on either side. It's exactly as you say.
As for why religion needs to go, well it is exactly for the reason you state: they DO try to force their views on others. When Sarah Palin, champion of the religious nuts in this country, gets up and tells us that fruit fly research is "silly and pointless" I see that as highly dangerous and definitely something that needs to be addressed. Killing and threatening artists. Suicide Bombers, child-abuse cover-ups, intelligent design, Jesus camps, invading the west bank, female oppression, and good christians don't vote for Obama.... all great examples of how "good teachings" of a religion have been cast aside in favor of fear, hate mongering, and irrational behavior.
Religion has forced itself on human culture for all of our history and while some good has come of it, a great portion of the bad in the world can be traced back to someone listening to a magical being in their head (or as I often suspect, saying they do in order to sway uneducated masses).
So in conclusion, I think you are now a lot closer to me in what I mean (though I fall on the other side of the argument when it comes to the usefulness of religion), but I do think you backpedaled a bit. Dark Matter /= Jesus.

>> ^blankfist:

Words are words. Rights are too important to split hairs over what falls into a right and what doesn't. People will instantly upon hearing that go to the extreme to point out instances where the right may be harmful. But how often have you heard someone threaten to kill someone, though someone did threaten to kill me via one of my video tags and made it all weird, but I digress.
It happens, but usually it's just hot air. There's no way to differentiate. So, I say a right is natural and shouldn't be infringed upon, and it's not just something to be protected from the government, but something we must protected from others who want to infringe upon it.


@blankfist

I'm not taking sides in whatever beef you two have, but your power of creating siftbot comments should be taken away because you have clearly been abusing them in a personal squabble with knivesout. People argue here all the time, that's life. And I do like that some people can give Sifty a little personality .. it's usually funny, but you went way beyond that and tried to make it look like another member made threats against you. Those siftbot comments were later edited to reflect that knivesout didn't make those invocations, but that's not the point. When you did it, you made it look like knivesout made those invocations and threats. And you're still now, here spouting off about how someone threatened to kill you, which is total bullshit. It's kind of ironic that you did this on a sift about manners.

It's also ironic that your own actions are in themselves an argument for why there are restrictions on free speech. You are on thin ice here, not just breaking the rules of the sift, but of breaking the law. I would be very careful about making false accusations and trying to manufacture evidence that someone is threatening your life.

Words are words. Rights are too important to split hairs over what falls into a right and what doesn't. People will instantly upon hearing that go to the extreme to point out instances where the right may be harmful. But how often have you heard someone threaten to kill someone, though someone did threaten to kill me via one of my video tags and made it all weird, but I digress.

It happens, but usually it's just hot air. There's no way to differentiate. So, I say a right is natural and shouldn't be infringed upon, and it's not just something to be protected from the government, but something we must protect from others who want to infringe upon it.

Yes, of course...being unemployed for months or years with no end in sight is just like losing your iPod.

Says the cocksucker who pulls 6 figures for blowing hot air out his ass...

Pennypacker you're just a bunch of hot air

- Somehow in your head you equate angry conviction with irrefutable truth

.... but there's nothing there.

Just for fun have you ever tried to prove each of your assertions with objective proof or is this all we can ever expect of you?

Grayson is hot air, he's made a name for himself with strong speeches but around 6 weeks ago he came out and did a u-turn on healthcare, so i assume the plan all along was for him to get a following, then when he flipped for people to just say "oh well" and kinda give up on it. Looks like it's working too.