[operator error] Operative word is "can." Atheists "can" be just as dogmatic.

You clearly are not in that camp, thank the lord. Ha.

It may be that some day Science proves the existence of God. I'll change my mind then.

Thanks for your lucid and cogent statement. I really appreciate it.


>> ^Quboid:

Operative word is "can." Atheists "can" be just as dogmatic.

You clearly are not in that camp, thank the lord. Ha.

It may be that some day Science proves the existence of God. I'll change my mind then.

Thanks for your lucid and cogent statement. I really appreciate it.

>> ^bareboards2:
I have often thought that atheists can be just as dogmatic and rigid and intellectually bankrupt as any religious person. Here is the proof of it. You have your belief and no facts are going to get in your way.
You are the holder of the One Truth. There can be no Other Truth. If someone believes otherwise, they are a Heretic and an abomination.

But this is where atheism is different to theism - "no facts are going to get in your way" is a theist point of view. Yes, I believe what I believe is correct, of course I do, but if someone believes otherwise I will listen. I will debate and discuss and I will change my beliefs if the other argument convinces me. This is how I became an Atheist in the first place, by listening and considering facts.
I will not declare them to be a Heretic, I will hear them out and if they say there is a bearded man in the sky who we must all obey without any facts to back it up, only then I will consider them to be wrong.

>> ^joedirt:

Am I the only one who saw that as clearly bad acting? Like someone play acting drunk and doing a poor job?
I invite you to look at the BAC tables:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_alcohol_content
At over 0.30 this dude should have been unconscious or having trouble standing, and his motor skills seemed fine. Now, some hardcore alcoholics are able to have higher BAC with less lethal effects from decades of drinking, but I'm pretty sure this was just a gimmick to portray Ron Paul supporters as drunks.
Watch him walk at the end, and his ability to lean back with arms cuffed behind his back. There is no way he was 0.3 BAC.


Good call, I thought something seemed a bit off with his behavior in general for a drunk. His use of sarcasm directly towards the camera just before he gets in the car is a pretty clear sign of lucidity.

Well, I have to give it to Ron Paul. He could well be the most sane of the Republican nominees this year (with the exception of Huntsman). Although, saying 'the most sane Republican nominee' is like saying 'the warmest iceberg'. He's still batshit insane, he just has occasional bouts of lucidity.

I seriously thought you may have some connection to Hewlett Packard (stock symbol: HPQ)

In reply to this comment by hpqp:
1. One of my earliest memories is being on a boat between Japan and Korea during a sea storm. Rolling around in the room as the boat was rocked was terrible fun to the 3-year-old I was.

2. I been to more countries then I care to mention. People are really all the same all over. I hate big cities.

3. Played in a mine field for a whole afternoon. The next day a farmer died there. For the year we lived on Croatia's border we could hear/feel the bombs shake the house.

4. Am often told I do not act my gender. Sometimes I play it up on purpose.

5. Am not afraid of nor particularly moved by death. This causes me problems with my family when relatives/siblings die.

6. Am a pretty good shot with both ARs and handguns, even won a few medals in my teens. Stopped shooting because the atmosphere at the club was sexist/macho. At least I'm ready for the Zombie Apocalypse, and can take photos without a tripod at 1" exposure.

7. Like to use quotes from an opponent in a debate to attack their argument. Like to debate in general. i can be argumentative just for the sake of being contrary.

8. I dreamed of being multi-lingual as a child. I'm better at writing than talking. I was the first (and only) in my family to go to University.

9. Grew up in a fundie christian family. Read the Bible innumerable amount of times, learned verses and whole chapters by heart. Am now atheist and antitheist, like most of my family.

10. Been diagnosed schizoide, borderline, bipolar, etc. Take antidepressants to avoid incapacitating breakdowns.

11. 90% of my waking life has been spent procrastinating. VS is my latest fix, and the only online community I've ever become a part of.

12. I love dreaming. Most of my best memories are from my dreams. I daydream often, but retain full situational awareness. Lucid dreaming is awesome.

13. All of the major injuries I've sustained were self-inflicted, albeit by accident. Never broke a bone, but my body is always sore (and not always in a good way).

14. Originally left-handed, but forced to be right-handed during childhood because left-handedness is of the devil. Leftie is now my primary masturbation hand <img src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/xd3.gif" class="smiley" />

15. I watch porn at least once a week. Consider myself a feminist.

16. Grew up around boys. I don't really count my first time as my first time. Hardly any one I know knows about my first time.

17. Have never been in a successful relationship. Longest and most enjoyable was as someone's lover/fuckbuddy.

18. I have no patience for stupid people.

19. I've never even been tempted to try drugs, cigarettes. Stopped drinking before turning 18. I have little enough control of my brain and emotions as is.

20. I love cinema, I think cinema is humanity reflected, our dreams, desires, hopes, fears and experiences. When watching a movie, I am frequently the only person laughing.

21. I don't really like being the center of attention.

22. My profile name is not an acronym. When I started using the webs I wanted a username that was anonymous and meaningless to all but myself. It is supposed to be an obscurely emoticon-ish version of Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet.

23. Forbidden Planet freaked me out when I first saw it as a kid. It is still one of my favourite sci-fi movies. I would like to write an SF novel, but fear I lack the discipline and talent.

24. Like to think I'm special/unique, but know that I'm not. Some of this list is copy-pasta'd from others' posts, but also applies for me. (can you find which parts? : )

25. I still have absolutely no clue what I want to do with my life.

1. One of my earliest memories is being on a boat between Japan and Korea during a sea storm. Rolling around in the room as the boat was rocked was terrible fun to the 3-year-old I was.

2. I been to more countries then I care to mention. People are really all the same all over. I hate big cities.

3. Played in a mine field for a whole afternoon. The next day a farmer died there. For the year we lived on Croatia's border we could hear/feel the bombs shake the house.

4. Am often told I do not act my gender. Sometimes I play it up on purpose.

5. Am not afraid of nor particularly moved by death. This causes me problems with my family when relatives/siblings die.

6. Am a pretty good shot with both ARs and handguns, even won a few medals in my teens. Stopped shooting because the atmosphere at the club was sexist/macho. At least I'm ready for the Zombie Apocalypse, and can take photos without a tripod at 1" exposure.

7. Like to use quotes from an opponent in a debate to attack their argument. Like to debate in general. i can be argumentative just for the sake of being contrary.

8. I dreamed of being multi-lingual as a child. I'm better at writing than talking. I was the first (and only) in my family to go to University.

9. Grew up in a fundie christian family. Read the Bible innumerable amount of times, learned verses and whole chapters by heart. Am now atheist and antitheist, like most of my family.

10. Been diagnosed schizoide, borderline, bipolar, etc. Take antidepressants to avoid incapacitating breakdowns.

11. 90% of my waking life has been spent procrastinating. VS is my latest fix, and the only online community I've ever become a part of.

12. I love dreaming. Most of my best memories are from my dreams. I daydream often, but retain full situational awareness. Lucid dreaming is awesome.

13. All of the major injuries I've sustained were self-inflicted, albeit by accident. Never broke a bone, but my body is always sore (and not always in a good way).

14. Originally left-handed, but forced to be right-handed during childhood because left-handedness is of the devil. Leftie is now my primary masturbation hand

15. I watch porn at least once a week. Consider myself a feminist.

16. Grew up around boys. I don't really count my first time as my first time. Hardly any one I know knows about my first time.

17. Have never been in a successful relationship. Longest and most enjoyable was as someone's lover/fuckbuddy.

18. I have no patience for stupid people.

19. I've never even been tempted to try drugs, cigarettes. Stopped drinking before turning 18. I have little enough control of my brain and emotions as is.

20. I love cinema, I think cinema is humanity reflected, our dreams, desires, hopes, fears and experiences. When watching a movie, I am frequently the only person laughing.

21. I don't really like being the center of attention.

22. My profile name is not an acronym. When I started using the webs I wanted a username that was anonymous and meaningless to all but myself. It is supposed to be an obscurely emoticon-ish version of Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet.

23. Forbidden Planet freaked me out when I first saw it as a kid. It is still one of my favourite sci-fi movies. I would like to write an SF novel, but fear I lack the discipline and talent.

24. Like to think I'm special/unique, but know that I'm not. Some of this list is copy-pasta'd from others' posts, but also applies for me. (can you find which parts? )

25. I still have absolutely no clue what I want to do with my life.

You think that's a blank-eyed look? He looks pretty focussed and lucid to me. You know he went to Harvard?

>> ^Confucius:

mhmmm...i can dredge sense out of what he said....i was talking about how he seemed blank eyed, and looked like he was parroting something 'shiny' he heard.

>> ^budzos:
>> ^Confucius:

I'm simply pointing out that it is incredibly easy to fool, trick, damage, and poison your brain into thinking that things are real that are not. The brain is an amazing organ capable of many great things, but it is FAR from a perfect machine. Not only do many people do this on purpose for recreational purposes, but the brain does it on its own, in this case probably to protect him from some sort of shock while he collapses from his ailment. And that's not taking into account whatever the paramedics were sure to have given him. My experience was incredibly vivid and lucid to me at the time, despite the reality of it. You want there to be a difference, but I don't see it.
>> ^shinyblurry:


I think there is probably a bit of difference between tripping out on drugs and thinking that the Universe is trying to destroy you and having an experience where God comes to you, heals you on every level to the extent that your life is profoundly changed, and then proceeds to review your entire life with you before sending you back to your body. He explains all of this with an uncommon clarity..doesn't seem like it was a fever dream to me.

@GeeSussFreeK I'm going to pick and choose from your comment instead of quoting, since it's huge.


There are some major problems with this claim, IMO. I would like to clean up the wording of your second sentence. Something that doesn't interact in anyway with the cosmos, doesn't exist meaningfully. So something that does not, cannot, and will not interact with an object doesn't exist to that object. Indeed, when our own galaxy is racing away from the other galaxies at a speed faster than the speed of light (the space in-between being created at a rate which pushes us away faster than the speed of light) you can say the same thing, that our galaxy is the only object that exists in the universe. Other objects existed, but the no longer do. They might "exist" in some theoretical way, but they don't meaningfully exist. I completely agree with this position. If a being we want to call God doesn't exist here in any way physically, than he doesn't exist.

I'm not sure you can say that something doesn't exist, just because we cannot observe it directly anymore. Galaxies moving away from ours at greater than light speed still have had an effect on things around them and we can see the "traces" of them, which at least suggests that they exist - like black holes, which we cannot see directly either. Futhermore, we can observe on the galaxies moving parallel or at least along side our own, how they move and can thus estimate the position of the big bang and theorize from the given evidence that galaxies moving in the opposite direction should exist even if we cannot see them or in essence EVER interact with them again.

A similar argument can't be made for God.


Which brings us to your first point. How does the universe exist? I assure you we have more question in that than answers. And every answer brings forth new questions. We are no closer today to understand basic ideas than thousands of years ago.

You are being a bit facetious here, I suppose? We are quite a bit, actually a huge leap, closer to the basic ideas than we were thousands of years ago. The problem is that the target keeps moving further back. First cells, then molecules, then atoms, now quantum entanglement (or what its called).

For instance, how to objects move? Force is applied to an object making it move relative to the world. The world moves in the opposite direction, but only relative to the opposite force, which means very, very little.

If space is infinite, how do finite objects transverse infinite space in a finite time?
It isn't and they wouldn't.

What determines gravity attract at the rate it attracts?
I'm not a physicist, so I won't venture too far off ground here. It's understood as far as I know. @Ornthoron could you perhaps confirm for me?

Why are macro objects analog and quantum objects digital?
Macron objects are perceived as analog, because we don't look closely enough and in short enough time spans. Any perceived analog object can be simulated digitally if you use enough data to do it. This is my understanding, anyway.

We can't even show that the sky is blue, only that it exists as a wavelength of light that human preservers sometimes interpret as a mind object of blue, we are no closer to understanding if blue is a real thing or a thing of mind.
This is a distinction between what is and what something is perceived as. Essentially you're touching upon qualia, which some cognitive scientists believe in and others don't. Blue is a real thing in so far as it's a wavelength of light. As for the rest, I don't know. It's a much harder question than you lead on, because a theory of mind is one of the hardest questions there are left.

I think you give to much credence to our understanding for this claim to be sufficient. To my knowledge, we have little understanding of the functional dynamics of the cosmos. We have pretty good predictive models, but that is a far cry for absolute certainty, a necessary for a claim such as this.


There are many metaphysical examples of all powerful beings and absence of their direct physical interactions being detectable as well. One of the more famous is of the "God mind" example. In a dream, you are in control of all the elements. Let's call all the elements of your dream your dream physics. The dreamer is in 100% control of the dream physics. The dream itself is a creation of his dream physics. The dream physics themselves are evidence of the dreamer. In addition, the dream, being wholly created from dream physics is also evidence of the dreamer. Parallel that back to us and you have one of the easiest and elegant explanations of the universe.

I think you are confusing a dream with the idea of a dream. You rarely have any control in dreams and even lucid dreamers don't have 100 % control. How a dream actually is made/dreamed is also a point of discussion in itself. A fundamental problem with this hypothesis is that WE think. Actors in our dreams don't think or do anything that has any effect in the world other than our memory of them. Like our thoughts, dreams don't have wills of their own.

Indeed, it is so comprehensible other views of the metaphysical nature of the cosmos will seem overly complex and lauded with burdensome hyper explanations, making this model satisfy an occam's razor over other possibilities. But complexity is hardly a model for evaluating truth, so I leave that just as an aside.

All other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. But all other things aren't really equal here. Some thing are just inherently complex, like gravity or magnets. When you don't think about the details, it's easy to think your hypothesis is correct, but when you dig deeper it falls apart.

Actually, even if you accept the premise, it still means that the dreamer is completely removed from us; he has no control, because not even traces of it has been observed in our reality (the dream). So the complete lack of evidence also points to this hypothesis being false.

When you think it even further, we run into the ever present homunculus argument. Who's dreaming of the dreamer? And so on.

That our reality is actually a real, physical one is a much better explanation, because it neatly explains itself more completely - thereby actually fulfilling Occam's razor better.


Indeed, there are further explanations that would seemingly leave little evidence for God except for things happening just as they "should". One being the Occasionalism model, which interestingly enough, comes from the same mind as the previous example, George Berkeley. There is no proof that causation is the actuality of the universe. Just as if I setup a room full of clocks, and from left to right the clocks would sound off 5 seconds from the previous clock. To the observer, the clocks "caused" the next clock to sound, and on down the line they go. The problem is, there is actually no causal link to bind them, I created it after seeing A then B happen again and again. The fact is, no such link is there, I, the clock creator created it to appear that way, or maybe I didn't and you just jumped to conclusions. It is a classic example that Hume also highlights in his problems on induction.

Correlation does not imply causation. We have much supporting evidence of causation though. Forces are demonstrably interactive. Whether they were secretly set up to seem as if they interact aren't necessarily relevant, because demonstrably they do. There is no evidence to the contrary at all.

In your clock example, it is a physical room, so there are plenty of things to test the hypothesis that the clocks cause each other to ring. Are the clocks identical? Are there cogs inside the clocks? If we break one, will the chain still go on without it? Etc etc.

From observing X number of clocks you cannot strictly speaking extrapolate that to all clocks. That's the essence of the induction problem. Your hypothesis is based on limited data, and on further analysis it falls apart. Causality itself hasn't fallen apart yet. I'd like to see a proper argument against it, for certain.

I will leave it there. I am resolved to say I don't know. I also don't know that can or can't know. I am uber agnostic on all points, I just can't say. And I don't even know if time will tell.

It's a good start to all questions to say "I don't know". I do that too on many, many things. It's a much better starting point than when preachers usually say, "I know".

Your questions are interesting to me, because they deal with a lot of philosophical and physical stuff, I like those.

On a purely pragmatic level though, they are largely not that important. look at it this way, do you live your life as if causality exists? If you do and it works as you expected, then causality probably exist. If you live as if it doesn't exist, then the world is suddenly a very strange place. Do you live as if what you observe as blue is actually blue? Do others see it as blue as well? If they all do, then it's probably just blue. Does it make a difference if some people see it as green? Not really, I'd think.

Do you live your life as if there's a God? Do others? Does it make a difference? That's a very basic test of whether he actually exists. I argue that it doesn't make any difference at all, other than expected behavior of either party - some live as if a God exists and other live as if he doesn't exist. If the only difference in the people themselves, then the God falls out of the equation.

I think I've sufficiently trudged through this now. Sorry for the wall of text, hope it makes sense.

The Tau Manifesto
Michael Hartl
http://tauday.com


Vi Hart — Blog
http://vihart.com/

I am a recreational mathemusician currently living on Long Island, NY.

I like most creative activities that involve making a lot of noise, mess, or both. Aside from composing, I love improvising on various instruments, drawing, sculpting, and other methods of making things. My main hobby is mathematics, with special interests in symmetry, polyhedra, and surreal complexity. This usually manifests as collaborative research in computational geometry and other areas of theoretical computer science, or as mathematical art. I think the human brain is incredible and strange, so I have developed a great interest in dreaming and consciousness. As a result, I am a trained hypnotist and a lucid dreamer. The human body is pretty neat as well, so I enjoy dancing and judo. I always love to learn new things—variety is the food of creativity!
You can email me at vi (at) vihart.com.
If you'd like to leave me voicemail or send me an SMS, call or text (+1) 530‑7VI‑HART [530‑784‑4278].

such a lucid intellect and mind -- and such capacities for articulation.

@lucky760, when are we gonna be able to quality/promote comments already??>> ^WKB:

What a great clip. Humor is so important in bad times. I buried my Grandmother last week and was happy to get a laugh from the gathering when I spoke about memories of her. In the hospital the day before she died she had about 15 minutes of pure lucidity. She started telling dirty jokes and insisted everyone else tell her any dirty jokes we could think of. Tear stained faces erupted with laughter. This was the last conversation I had with her and it was perfect. I will treasure that moment forever.

What a great clip. Humor is so important in bad times. I buried my Grandmother last week and was happy to get a laugh from the gathering when I spoke about memories of her. In the hospital the day before she died she had about 15 minutes of pure lucidity. She started telling dirty jokes and insisted everyone else tell her any dirty jokes we could think of. Tear stained faces erupted with laughter. This was the last conversation I had with her and it was perfect. I will treasure that moment forever.

pushin for the big D..need a vote plz=)
http://videosift.com/video/BT-dreaming-movement-in-still-life-lucid-12-club-mix

The problem with this video is that it presents a political standpoint as cold science, yet the data upon which the point is based are deeply flawed.

For example, the claim that muslims make up 20% of the world but that muslims only account for 1% of peer-reviewed papers is incongrous; many muslims don't live in muslim countries, but their scientific output is ignored. By the same reckoning, Jews are bad scientists because Israel only produces a relatively small number of patent applications per year (about 100,000 in 2002, compared to 250,000 for Turkey and about the same number granted as Saudi Arabia, for example). Once you put it in those terms, the absurdity of this cherry-picking should become apparent - jews have the highest nobel prizes per capita of any ethnic group, but that fact is ignored by this rather convenient form of analysis. Incidentally, Turkey apply for much more patents per capita per head than the US, for example, so does that mean you'll admit you're wrong?

Quote: "If you can show me a country that practice a sincerely devout version of islam while soaring in reason, philosophy scientific advances, free speech, human rights, equality, freedom, tolerance and justice you might have had some reason to say the correlation is bullshit and the argument is just simplistic prejudice" - don't bother replying, just winding you up.

Furthermore, the article fails to take into account other factors that could contribute to this scientific underachievement: for example, how Islamic countries compare to other countries with similar GDPs? A few contributors have claimed that islamic countries are rich, but this is not actually true. The islamic state with the highest GDP is Kuwait(followed by UAE) - both of these countries have about the same average income as that bastion of richess, um, Ireland. Most of the others are in the poor house: Oman and the Saudis pull in the same as the Greeks, and the rest straddle Ukraine. Hardly money to burn on particle accelerators.

Of course religion is overtly obstructive to scientific progress - just google 'texas school board'; that's not the point made in this video, probably because the main determinant of scientific prowess is actually how much money you spend on it.

Speaking of scientific lucidity, all of the stats I cited were from Gapminder.org, who dredged them from UN reports.

Israel was a strange country. In the summer and fall of 1992 you'd have found me in either Tel Aviv or within the walls of the old city of Jerusalem. I often went for long walks in the evenings and it happened several times that on Allenby Street or maybe Dizengoff that an Israeli would strike up a conversation and then quickly jump to explain how "we are the same you and me, but the Arabs are animals." Or it was dogs. Or cockroaches. It always shocked me and I'd look at my watch and say something about being late.

I'd been having a wonderful time playing backgammon and chain-smoking Nelsons with the Palestinian and Egyptian friends I'd made at the open-sided cafes in Arab east Jerusalem.

Israeli racism is not unique. Franz Fanon wrote the definitive work on the racism of colonialism. (The Wretched of the Earth)

Gabriel Ash is an Israeli journalist, originally from Romania. Ash's article "Diagnosing Benny Morris: The Mind of a European Settler" is a lucid and powerful indictment.

http://dissidentvoice.org/Jan04/Ash0126.htm