>> ^kir_mokum:

anything that takes deepak chopra, nassim haramein, and david icke seriously is not worth paying attention to.


i wasnt going to comment but curiosity has gotten the better of me.
why would you state that with such authority?
because you disagree with those people?
find their theories to be suspect?
are they crazy people whose insanity may infect others?
do they eat babies and kick puppies?

why the blanket dismissal?
because one is a spiritualist who has a different way of approaching the human condition?
or that another has wild conspiratorial theories?
does that invalidate them from participating in discussions on what we should do?

and if that is the case..
what about me?
i am a man of faith.everything i do and say is born from my faith.
yet the form my faith takes would make me an apostate and i would have been executed only a few hundred years ago.
does me being a man a faith invalidate my opinions?

the man who made this movie is from the gamble family.the proctor and gamble family.
he spent his wealth on researching and discovery and made a movie revealing his conclusions and possible solutions.
the movie has a very humanist philosophy.
and he uses many many people to help express what he sees as an end game with global elite to control us.chopra and icke are only one of many.

i guess i just dont understand absolutist thinking.
chopra and icke?
well it must be about a. b. or c. and therefore should be ignored.
that just seems so.......limiting......to me.

i found some of the claims in the movie to be questionable and other things i agreed with wholeheartedly,but i have to give gamble credit for putting his ideas out there.
that takes balls.

i didnt see anything new in this talk.
what he is talking about is humanism.
and an atheist can also be a humanist.
its like jesus lite.but without the jesus.

It's a farce to think contemplating how large the universe has nothing to do with the grand design.

The Universe itself is only the tip of the iceberg - it's not nihilism, the truth is we do not know anything at all ; but the journey to continue on the path of real Truth by piecing it together is one of the more beautiful and meaningful aspects of life in a world so closed-minded, fearful & narcissistic. It is all in the eye-of-the beholder but know that no religion knows what the powers that be are... we will probably never even develop the senses to get anywhere close to understanding.

I am speaking to the pale blue dot theory that humanists rejoice in, to wave the size of the Universe around as a magic wand that erases the idea of any absolute truth, especially when it pertains to a belief in God. To say that our perceived insignificance in the face of the deep invalidates the idea that God, if He even exists, could possibly care about what is going on here.

It is to see through everything and thus see nothing at all, which is essentially what nihilism is. You say we can't know anything; well, the obvious question is, how do you know that? I agree, this existence that we have now is only the tip of the iceberg, but in the manner that it is a poor reflection of what is to come. The size of cosmos is infantesimal in comparison to the depths of the mind that created it. It is not the material that is interesting, it is the glory of that one who spoke it into being, to which the cosmos testifies:

The heavens declare the glory of God;

And the firmament shows His handiwork.

Day unto day utters speech,

And night unto night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech nor language

Where their voice is not heard.

Their line has gone out through all the earth,

And their words to the end of the world.

The temporal is only temporary, because time is running out. What we see now is a pale rendition of the actual, eternal reality. We are spiritual beings, and these are just clay vessels, dust and ashes. The things that are seen are all perishing; it is the things that are unseen which are eternal.

I understand atheism, I used to consider myself one. But, I think atheism gives itself too much credit in face of the vastness amount of possibilities / possible impossibilities we will never understand but could maybe to a finite degree, comprehend.

I agree and so does francis collins:

"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."

Well, philosopher, what I will say is that the only thing that matters is what the truth is. If you cannot define what the truth is, it is impossible to understand anything at all. And unless you are omnipotent, you cannot know that truth, but one who is omnipotent could reveal it to you. That is the only reason anyone can know what is true, because we heard from the One who was there at the very beginning. Now if you can admit the validity of special revelation, then you are one step closer to understanding where I am coming from.

This guy says it best "It's humongous big." True that, brother. Keep on spacin' out, it's the closest we will get to any sort of truth.

I think this is a lot closer:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,b but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.






>> ^shagen454

Let's be clear, atheists have NO agenda. Atheists would prefer to be quiet on the subject. However, every day we see religion influencing politics, education and, as a result, restricting freedom of thought/action, so people who value their freedom will, obviously, speak out. Here is a good deal; keep your faith to yourself. Keep out of politics and stop brainwashing kids. In short, humanists/atheists/free thinkers do not care which bronze age myth you follow. Be a slave in private, keep your dark age practices private, and allow the rest of us to be free of your dogma. Do this, and we will have no need to comment on your "faith."

All the freedoms who enjoys? Who is free? You keep saying that everybody is free but we're far from it. The only other countries that we're more free than...are countries that are just slightly more religious than the US. That's right...the more religion, the less freedoms. Inverse relationship between religion and freedom. On the individual, on the community, in a country. Religion is ALWAYS a form of social control, it has never been used to "free" anybody.

>> ^shinyblurry:

Everyone who voted for this video and (mockingly) for the other one is a hypocrite. Bashing Christians in the name of tolerance? As far as his claims go, this country was founded by Christians, and it has always been Christian. All of the wonderful freedoms that secular humanists enjoy today are only because of Christian principles. If you want to rip out the foundation you're going to sink the boat, and that's exactly what is happening today.

Everyone who voted for this video and (mockingly) for the other one is a hypocrite. Bashing Christians in the name of tolerance? As far as his claims go, this country was founded by Christians, and it has always been Christian. All of the wonderful freedoms that secular humanists enjoy today are only because of Christian principles. If you want to rip out the foundation you're going to sink the boat, and that's exactly what is happening today.

Humanism is a religion and evolution is its creation story.

"I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level -- preschool day care center or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new -- the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism."

John Dunphy THE HUMANIST MAGAZINE

As you can see, these humanists are proselytizers too, and their stated goal is the indoctrination of our children with humanist values, and the destruction of Christianity, which they will replace with their humanist faith. So much for tolerance and unity, right? How hypocritical can you get? This is the kind of insanity you get when you try to replace God with man.

These are the very people trying to establish a one world government, which is what will usher in the antichrist to power. So when that happens by sure to thank them for ending the world.

>> ^artician:

How can anyone who works in marketing consider themselves a secular humanist?


He's in Marketing...ergo he's lying.

How can anyone who works in marketing consider themselves a secular humanist?

Obama hesitates to mention God as any it irritates his base, which are the humanists. Also, since he was raised a muslim he probably would prefer saying 'Allah'.

Must create a cognitive dissonance problem with him, on top of all of his other problems.

Upvoting because
(a) It's awesome, and Right and
(b) I know it'll piss off shinyblurry, who I have no respect for whatsoever.

In fact, I'll go further; Shinyblurry, with the greatest possible disrespect intended: please f**k off and take your frankly insane, utterly irrational, pre-medieval beliefs with you.

I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but... damn, man. That's a Good video. Capital G. It encourages Goodness, love for other people, tolerance and peace. And if your "unchanging", irrelevant, politically-founded, socially-created, dated, pre-enlightenment, anti-humanist god doesn't recognise the rightness of that argument, your god is an idiot. As are his believers.

Dammit, now I want to upvote again, just to piss him off even more.

1. You're still using your subjective experience to prove Premise Two.

It's all subjective experience; again, if you want to claim that subjective determinations cannot lead to objective truths, then you can throw out any claim of an objective world and we can drown in relativism. Care to take another stab at it?

2. In the other threads you quoted one Wikipedia page at me without even reading the other one (Check the second paragraph of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical to see the difference). You ignore the fact that empiricism as a philosophy is an unscientific world view on its face due to its unverifiable claims of where information can and cannot come from.

What? What do you think empiricism is based on?

Definition of EMPIRICAL
1: originating in or based on observation or experience <empirical data>
2: relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory <an empirical basis for the theory>
3: capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment <empirical laws>
4: of or relating to empiricism

It's clear now you have no idea what you're talking about. Yes, empiricism is a philosophy, and yes, it was one of my major points that you cannot verify empiricism without engaging in tautologies. You're just proving my point here. Yet, you show complete ignorance here as empiricism is a major foundation for the scientific method. The fact that I would have to prove this to you says it all..

http://davies-linguistics.byu.edu/elang273/notes/empirical.htm

"Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation."

I also guess you missed this:

"The standard positivist view of empirically acquired information has been that observation, experience, and experiment serve as neutral arbiters between competing theories. However, since the 1960s, Thomas Kuhn [2] has promoted the concept that these methods are influenced by prior beliefs and experiences. Consequently it cannot be expected that two scientists when observing, experiencing, or experimenting on the same event will make the same theory-neutral observations. The role of observation as a theory-neutral arbiter may not be possible. Theory-dependence of observation means that, even if there were agreed methods of inference and interpretation, scientists may still disagree on the nature of empirical data."

Meaning, the interpretation of data is philosophical.

3. You quoted people who haven't even graduated university at me???

The OP said he had not yet graduated, it doesn't mean all the participants have not. Did you even read it?

4. You equate spectators at a football game who are there to support their team with scientists collecting data (Scientists at that match would have been making a record of each foul), and on and on with analogies that all demonstrate a sad lack of understanding of how science works, or, in one case, modelling it somewhat accurately, but presenting it as if bias was something scientists didn't openly acknowledge, and didn't have processes to mitigate impact. If religion ever acknowledged its bias, it would cease to exist instantly, because its bias is the entire religion. At the very least, this makes science more mature and credible in the objective world.

Nothing you said here refutes any of the data provided, but is rather just you stating your opinion that it is wrong without backing it up. You also pass off the (now admitted) bias as being mitigated without explaining how. And then you create a false dichotomy by constrasting science and religion, and then attacking religion as "biased" and saying science is superior. If anything it just shows your religious devotion to science and your faith in the secular humanist worldview. Religion and science aren't in a competition, and science has no data on the existence of God. You may believe certain "discoveries" disprove things in the bible, but that is a different conversation. On the essential question, does God exist, science is deaf dumb and blind.

5. You go on with your, "There is plenty of evidence which suggests that God created the universe" spiel which is always countered with "Religion just catalogues things we cannot explain nor ever prove and ascribe them to a deity, knowing (hoping, hoping, please!!!) it will never be possible to disprove them, and all the while ignoring former claims for God that have been shown not to be God, but a newly understood and measurable force.

There are many lines of evidence which show it is reasonable to conclude that the Universe has an intelligent causation. There is evidence from logic, from morality, from design, from biology and cosmology, personal experience, culture, etc. It is not just appealing to some gaps, because special creation, as in the example of DNA, is a superior explanation to random chance. You're also going on about mechanisms which doesn't rule out Agency. You seem very overconfident and this is unwarrented, because there isn't much positive evidence on your side.

6. You are still conflating your "God" (I'm going to start calling him "Yahweh" to prevent this in the future) with any old god. The Big Bang Theory, which you alternately endorse and claim is bunk, could point to a creator, but by no means a god with any of the properties of Yahweh, except the singular property of the ability to create the universe as we know it.

Since time, space, matter and energy began at the big bang, the cause of the Universe would be timeless, spaceless, immaterial, unimaginably powerful and transcendent. You can also make a case for a personal God from these conclusions. Before you go on about how no one says the Universe was created from nothing:

In the realm of the universe, nothing really means nothing. Not only matter and energy would disappear, but also space and time. However, physicists theorize that from this state of nothingness, the universe began in a gigantic explosion about 16.5 billion years ago.

HBJ General Science 1983 Page 362

the universe burst into something from absolutely nothing - zero, nada. And as it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere. How is that possible? Ask Alan Guth. His theory of inflation helps explain everything.

discover April 2002

7. You quote scientists' opinions on religious issues like I think they're infallible prophets or something. Science doesn't work that way. Only religion does.

You seem to believe everything they say when their statements agree with your preconceived notions of reality. How about these statements?

innumerable transitional forms must have existed but why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? ..why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links?

Geologoy assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this perhaps is the greatest objection which can be urged against my theory.

Charles Darwin
Origin of the Species

Well we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. ..ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwins time.

By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as the result of more detailed information.

David M. Raup Chicago Field Museum of Natural History
F.M.O.N.H.B v.50 p.35

8. There's nothing we are "interpreting differently". You are interpreting everything as "Yahweh did it", and I'm not interpreting anything: There observably is CMBR, and it points to a Big Bang billions of years ago. That is all. You leap from this "suggestion" to "therefore it was Yahweh a few thousand years ago".

You're interpreting the evidence as pointing to random chance, I am interpreting it as being the result of intelligent causation.

And actually, without the hypothetical inflation, the smoothness of the CMBR contradicts the predictions of the theory. The CMBR should also all be moving away from the big bang but it is actually going in different directions.

9. I would never scoff at infallibility in anything that can be tested. I scoff only at claims of infallibility where by definition there is no possibility of failure only because there lacks any measure of success, just like every piece of dogma in the Bible, except for the ones that have been proven false, like the shape of the Earth, the orbit of the planets, and so on. Every scientific hypothesis has a measure of success or failure, and when one is disproven, that hypothesis is discarded, except to keep a record of how it was proven false.

Yet billions of people have tested the claims of Jesus and found them to be true. You believe because you fooled yourself with an elaborate delusion that any claim that disagrees with your naturalistic worldview is also an elaborate delusion that people have fallen into. I'm sorry but this does not follow. You're also wrong about your interpretation of the bible; it never claimed the Earth is flat or anything else you are suggesting.

10. I like your story of the scientist who climbs to find a bunch of theologians who have been sitting on a mountain of ignorance for centuries. Apt image. And I don't get the intent anyway. It suggests both that science could one day arrive at total knowledge (doubtful), and that religion has ever produced a shred of useful knowledge (it hasn't).

This is the problem with atheists, is that they are incapable of seeing the other side of the issue. Are you honestly this close-minded that you can't see the implications that Gods existence has for our knowledge? Or are you so pathological in your beliefs that you can't even allow for it hypothetically?

If God has revealed Himself, then obviously this is the most important piece of knowledge there is, and it is only through that revelation that we could understand anything about the world. It is only through that lens that any piece of information could be interpreted, or the truth of it sussed out. So, anyone having that knowledge, would instantly be at the top of the mountain of knowledge. The scientist only reached the top when he became aware of Gods existence by observing the obvious design in the Universe.

In short, I'm through talking about anything logical with you, or attempting to prove anything. You really, really do not understand the essential (or useless) elements of a logical discussion of proof. If you knew them, I would enjoy this debate. If you acknowledged this weakness and were keen to learn them, I would enjoy showing you how they work -- you seem keen. But neither seems the case. [edit -- This may be due to the fact that you're connected to both the objective world and the God world, and you're having trouble only using input from the one stream and not the other, like using input you received from your right eye, but not your left, as our memories are not stored that way. Either way, it is a weakness.]

Your arrogance knows no bounds. You've made it clear from your confusion about empiricism that you really don't know what you're talking about, and you tried to use that as a platform to condescend to me the entire reply. This isn't a logical discussion, this is an exposition of your obvious prejudice. You have no basis for judging my intelligence or capabilities..it's clear that your trite analysis is founded upon a bloated ego and nothing else.

When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. Proverbs 11:2

>> ^messenger

Christianity doesn't make distinction between people, or races. We're all equal before God. It does make a distinction between male and female, however, as well it should. It is abnormal to want to eliminate that distinction. Look at the abnormal behavior this is breeding:

http://mommyish.com/childrearing/parents-treat-newborn-child-as-massive-social-experiment-on-sex-and-gender/

That child is going to be screwed up for life, guaranteed. Homosexuality isn't natural. If you were to put 20 homosexuals on an island, what would happen? Within a generation, they would die out.

Homosexuality is a sin and at odds with Gods plan. The humanist position of eliminating all distinctions is what is abnormal and is sign of a sinful culture that is in rebellion against God. It didn't go well for Sodom and Gemorrah, and it certainly won't go well for us either.

>> ^alcom:
Excellent point, luxury_pie.
In a broader sense, I was thinking that rather than poking fun at Canucks for indicting people or groups for advocating genocide or inciting hatred, it is a sign of inevitable progress as evidenced by the numerous developed and developing countries listed on the wiki. This shift towards a humanist coexistence rather than one divided by religious, gender and racial intolerance seems only logical. Unfortunately, we have a long way to go as a species.
>> ^luxury_pie:
Way to go comparing apples with pedophiles @shinyblurry.
@quantumushroom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech
not only the canucks, my dear troll.

Excellent point, luxury_pie.

In a broader sense, I was thinking that rather than poking fun at Canucks for indicting people or groups for advocating genocide or inciting hatred, it is a sign of inevitable progress as evidenced by the numerous developed and developing countries listed on the wiki. This shift towards a humanist coexistence rather than one divided by religious, gender and racial intolerance seems only logical. Unfortunately, we have a long way to go as a species.

>> ^luxury_pie:

Way to go comparing apples with pedophiles @shinyblurry.

@quantumushroom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech
not only the canucks, my dear troll.

>> ^chilaxe:

@NetRunner said: "What about the needs of people who have no money? Is helping them literally worthless? Are you a better servant of humanity if you make diamond jewelry than you are if you work for a public school in an underprivileged neighborhood?"
Salary is a reasonable measure of societal contribution, but it's not a perfect measure, so there are of course exceptions to the rule. That being said, all lines of evidence point to that teaching in underprivileged neighborhoods is an ineffective form of philanthropy, even though it's heart-warming.

@NetRunner said: "And "advocating careerism" isn't particularly useful if what you really mean is you like to yell "get a job" at homeless people."
One of the best things we can do for society is to argue against the flaws in the zeitgeist. If those flaws predictably create poverty, showing people there's another path that their opinion leaders and teachers have strangely never exposed them to should be a high priority.
>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^chilaxe:
The 'jobless economic recovery' we've experienced means all those people who don't like to read weren't contributing much to the economy.
That sounds like nonsense to me. Are you saying that the only reason why unemployment ever was low in the first place was because corporations hired people whose labor they couldn't profit from out of charity? What changed in 2007-2008 that made them all stop being charitable simultaneously?
>> ^chilaxe:
Netrunner said: "Also, it's not really healthy to define your self-worth and the worthiness of others solely on the basis of their salary. I doubt your "friends" would care much for you referring to them as mediocre or lazy, either."
1. Salary is a reasonable measure of how much we're contributing to humankind. If society values something, it will be willing to pay for it.
2. Advocating careerism is humanistic and good for the world.
Ahh, so you do think markets are perfectly moral systems. What about the needs of people who have no money? Is helping them literally worthless? Are you a better servant of humanity if you make diamond jewelry than you are if you work for a public school in an underprivileged neighborhood?
And "advocating careerism" isn't particularly useful if what you really mean is you like to yell "get a job" at homeless people.



Can you please describe the other path you speak of? So far all I've identified from the OWS message is a general upset with wealth disparity, but no coherent or unified solution. It'd be great to hear what they are advocating for. It's the required next step from rallying against something, or this will all go either no where, or somewhere much worse.