That's really interesting, although I can't say I understood everything you said. If there were absolutely nothing, of course there would be no energy fields to generate anything. Where ever something comes into play, some force or dynamic, we aren't talking about nothing anymore.

I'm curious what you think about this paper:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4658

God is the best answer for why the Universe had a beginning, including a beginning to time itself, for many different reasons. I'll get to those a bit later, just wanted to hear what you thought about the paper.

I'll ask another question though: If something is eternal isn't it perfectly stable..doesn't that have to be the case? Why would it suddenly generate a Universe for no reason?

@transmorpher
so when i point out the historical implications,i am somehow automatically disregarding the inherent problems within islam itself?

and your counter is to not only NOT counter,but refuse to acknowledge the historical ramifications,because that is some political,agenda driven-drivel.

that the ONLY acceptable argument is to focus on the religion itself,and ignore all other considerations,because,again..just tools to be used and abused by the left to fuel the far right.

am i getting this right so far?

that to include history is actually the path that stops that path to move forward?

and here i was still hanging on to that tired old adage "those who refuse to recognize history,are doomed to repeat it".

i am glad that you found those authors so respectful and admired their analysis and dedication to research,but you didn't even bother to use one of THEIR arguments.you simply made claims and then told us you read some books.

dude..now i am just kinda...sad for you.

i am sorry that you are oblivious to your own myopia,and that you are coming across as condescending.yet really haven't posted anything of value that you have to contribute.

you are just pointing the finger and accusing people of their arguments being dishonest,when it appears to me that everyone here has taken the time to try to talk to you,and your replies have been fairly static.

hitchens tried to make the case,and failed in my opinion(i am not the only one),but a case i suspect you are referencing.that even if we took the history of neoliberalism,colonialism and empire building OFF the table.islam would STILL be a gaggle of extremist radicals seeking a one world caliphate.

which is why i referenced dearborn michigan.
it is why i mentioned kabul afghanistan.

we are talking about the radicalization of muslims.
why are they growing?
where do they come from?
why do they seem to be getting more and more extreme?

which many here have attempted to answer,including myself.

but YOU are addressing and entirely different question:
'what is wrong with islam as a religion"

well,a LOT in fact and i already mentioned islams dire need for a reformation,but it goes further than that.you see the epistemology of both judiaism and christianity have been thoroughly argued over and over....and over..that what you find today is a pretty succinct refinement of their respective theologies.

agree/disagree..maybe you are atheist or agnostic,that is not the point.the point is that the so-called "finished' product has pretty clear philosophies,that adherents can easily follow.

for judaism this is in large part to the talmud,which is a living document,where even to this day rabbis debate and argue the finer details.not to be confused with holy scripture the torah.

christianity was forced to acknowledge its failings and flaws,because the theology was weak,and was becoming more and more an amalgamation of other religious beliefs,but most of all,and i think most importantly,the in-fighting with the vatican and the church of england had exposed this weakness,and christianity was on the brink of collapse due to its own hubris and arrogance.

they had no central authority.no leadership that the people could come to in order to clarify scripture.

so thanks to the bravery of martin luther,who risked being labeled a heretic,challenged the political power,which in those days was religious,and so began the process of reformation.

and also ended the dark ages,and western civilization stepped into the "age of enlightenment".

islam has had no such reformation,though is in desperate need of one.they had no council of nicea to decide what was holy canon and what was not,which is why you have more gospels of jesus in the quran than you do in the actual bible.

the king james bible has over 38,000 mis-translations in the old testament alone,whereas the quran has....well...we don't know,because nobody challenges the veracity of the quran.

am i winning you over to my side yet?
still think i am leftist "stooge' and "useful idiot"?

look man,
words are inert.
they are simply symbols.
they are meaningless until we lay eyes on them and GIVE them meaning.

so if you are a violent,war-loving person-------your religion will be violent,and warmongering.

if you are a peaceful and loving person----then your religion will be peaceful and loving.

the problem is NOT religion itself,and i know my atheists really don't want to hear that,but it's true.religion is going nowhere.

the problem is fundamentalist thinking.
the problem is viewing holy scripture as the unerring word of god.
which is why you see creationists attempt,in vain,to convince the rest of us that the earth is only 6,000 yrs old,and their only proof or evidence is a book.

so we all point and laugh.....how silly..6,000yrs old.crazy talk.

but WHY is the creationist so adamant in his attempts to defend his holy text?
because to accept the reality that the earth is not 6,000 yrs old but 14 billion yrs old,is to go against the word of god,and god is unerring,and if the bible is the word of god....and god is unerring.........

now lets go back to dearborn michigan.
if hitchens and harris are RIGHT,then that relatively stable community of muslims are really just extremists waiting for the angels to blow their horn and announce the time for JIHAD!!!

and,to be fair,that is a possibility,but a small one.

why?
because of something the majority of christians experience here in the states,canada,europe,australia...they experience pushback.

does this mean that america does not have radical christians in our midst?

oh lawdy do we ever.

ok ok..i am doing it again.
me and my pedantic self.

suffice to say:
islam IS a problem,even taken as a singular dynamic,that religion has serious issues.
but they are not the ONLY problem,which is what many of here have been trying to talk about.

ALL religions have a problem,and that problem is fundamentalism.which for christianity is a fairly new phenom (less than 100 yrs old) whereas islam has suffered from this mental malady pretty much since its inception.

ok..thats it..im done.pooped,whipped and in need of sleep.

hope i clarified some things with ya mate,but i swear to god if you respond with a reiteration of all your comments.i am going to hunt you down,and BEAT you with a bible,and not that wimpy king james either!
the hefty scofield study bible!

radical islamic terrorism is the usage of a rigid fundamentalist interpretation as a justification predicated on abysmal politics.

ill-thought and short sighted politics is the tinder.
hyper-extremist fundamentalism is the match.

ISIS would never even have existed without al qeada,who themselves would not have existed without US interventionism into:iran,egypt and saudi arabia.

and this is going back almost 70 years.

so lets cut the shit with apologetics towards americas horrific blunders in regards to foreign policy.actions have consequences,there is a cause and effect,and when even in the 50's the CIA KNEW,and have stated as much,that there would be "blowback" from americas persistent interventionism in those regions.which stated goals (in more honest times) was to destabilize,dethrone (remove leaders not friendly to american business) and install leaders more pliant and easily manipulated (often times deposing democratically elected leaders to install despots.the shah and sadam come to mind).

see:chalmers johnson-blowback
see: Zbigniew Brzezinski-the grand chessboard.

or read this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-terror-group/5402881

so to act like islamic radicals just fell from the fucking sky,and popped out from thin air,due to something that has been boiling for almost 70 years is fucking ludicrous.

radicalization of certain groups in populations have long been understood,and well documented.

and religion,though the most popular,and easiest tool to motivate and justify heinous acts of violence for a political goal,is not the SOLE tool.

nationalism is another tool used to radicalize a population.
see:the nazi party.

but it always comes down to:tribalism of one kind or another.

@transmorpher

so when you use this "ISIS themselves, in their own magazine (Dabiq) go out of their way to explain that they are not motivated by the xenophobia or the US fighting wars in their countries. They make specifically state that their motivation is simply because you aren't muslim. You can go an read it for yourself. They are self confessed fanatics that need to kill you to go to heaven. "

to solidify your argument,all i see is someone ignoring the history and pertinent reasons why that group even exists.

you may recall that ISIS was once Al qeada,and they were SO radical,SO fanatical and SO violent in their execution of religious zeal..that even al qeada had to distance themselves.

because,again...
religion is used as the justification to enact terrorism due to bad politics.
but the GOAL is always political.

you may remember that in the early 90's the twin towers were attacked and it was the first time americans heard of al qeada,and osama bil laden.

who made a statement back in 1993 and then reiterated in 2001 after 9/11 that the stated goal (one of them at least) was for the removal of ALL american military presence in saudi arabia (there was more,but it mostly dealt with american military presence in the middle east).

but where did this osama dude come from?
why was he so pissed at america?
just what was this dudes deal?

turns out he was already on the road to radicalization during the 80's.coming from an extremely wealthy saudi arabian family but had become extremely religious,and he saw western interventionism as a plague,and western culture as a disease.

he left the comforts of his extremely wealthy family to fight against this western incursion into his religious homeland.he traveled to afghanistan to join the mujahideen to combat the russians,who were actually fighting the americans in a proxy war.and WE trained osama.WE armed him and trained him in the tactics of warfare to,behind the scenes,slowly drain russia of resources in our 50 year long cold war.

how's that for irony.

osama was not,as american media like to paint the picture "anti-democratic or anti-freedom".he saw the culture of consumerism,greed and sexual liberation as an affront to his religious understandings.

this attitude can be directly linked to sayyid qtib from egypt.who visited the united states as an exchange student in 1954.now he wasnt radicalized yet,but when he returned to egypt he didnt recognize his own country.

he saw coco cola signs everywhere,and women wearing shorts skirts,and jukeboxs playing that devils music "rock and roll".

he feared for his country,his neighbors,his community.
just like a southern baptist fears for your soul,sayyid feared for the soul of his country and that this new "westernization" was a direct threat to the tenants laid down by islam.

so he began to speak out.
he began to hold rallies challenging the leadership to turn away from this evil,and people started to take notice,and some people agreed.

change does not come easy for some people,and this is especially true for those who hold strong religious ideologies.
(insert religion here) tends to be extremely traditional.

so sayyid started to gain popularity for his challenge if this new "westernization",and this did not go un-noticed by the egyptian leadership,who at that time WANTED western companies to invest in egypt.(that whole political landscape is totally different now,but back then egypt was fairly liberal,and moderately secular).

so instead of allowing sayyid to speak his mind.
they threw him in prison.
for 4 years.
in solitary.

well,he wasn't radicalized when he went IN to prison,but when he came OUT he sure was.

and to shorten this story,sayyid was the first founder of the muslim brotherhood,whose later incarnation broke off to form?

can you guess?
i bet you can!
al qeade

@Fairbs ,@newtboy and @Asmo have all laid out points why radicalization happens,and the conditions that can enflame and amplify that radicalization.

so i wont repeat what they have already said.

but let us take dearborn michigan as an example.
the largest muslim community in america.
how many terrorists come from dearborn?
how many radicals reside there?
how many mosque preach intolerance and "death to america"?
how many imams quietly sanction fatwas from the local IHOP against american imperialistic pigs?

none.

becuase if you live in stable community,with a functioning government,and you are able to find work and support your family,and your kids can get an education.

the chances of you become radicalized is pretty much:zippo.

the specific religion has NOTHING to do with terrorism.
religion is simply the means in which the justifications to enact violent atrocities is born.

it's the politics stupid.

you could do a thought experiment and flip the religions around,but keep the same political parameters and do you know WHAT we find?

that the terrorists would be CHRISTIAN terrorists.

or do i really need to go all the way back to the fucking dark ages to make my point?

it's
the
politics
stupid.

Absolutely. We've had our share of - primarily Austrian and French - mercenaries as part of our internal wars. These were groups who enlisted for one of the fighting parties.

In Syria, however, you've had thousands of mercenaries who were not fighting for the government or the "rebels", but for their own. And we're not just talking about ISIS carving out pieces of Syria for their own caliphate, but also other jihadists who merely want to turn Syria into another failed state, like Libya.

To describe this as a civil war distorts the nature of this conflict, it makes it sound as if it were a struggle for control between two groups of Syrians. It may have been at some point years ago, but it hasn't been for a long time.

Mali is looking awfully similar by now, too. Lots of foreign fighters in nation states that were only ever stable on paper anyway -- a recipe for disaster.

Ah. Late last night after 11 PM PST, VS was showing:

"Secure Connection Failed

An error occurred during a connection to videosift.com.

Cannot communicate securely with peer: no common encryption algorithm(s).

Error code: <a rel="nofollow" id="errorCode" title="SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP">SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP

The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.

Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem."


https://s28.postimg.org/9id7f2tjx/ssl.jpg for a screen shot/capture from SM's Page Info's Security tab.


I could reproduce this error in both of my computers (64-bit W7 HPE SP1 OS & 64-bit Linux/Debian Jessie/stable)'s SeaMonkey v2.46 web browsers. Also, Firefox v51 in my Debian box. I could not reproduce it in W7's IE11 & Debian's Chrome v50 web browsers that aren't based on Mozilla's Gecko engine.


I told Dag and Lucky760 about it, and it was fixed about 1.5 hours later. Kudos to the quick fixes!

It's weird, I can go up to the observation deck of the CN tower, stand at the edge of a cliff or building without any issue, but I feel nervous as shit hanging Christmas lights using an aluminum extension ladder (which never seem stable). lol. I guess as long as whatever I'm standing on is secure and stable, I'm good.

With that said, no way in hell would you get me doing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40F8mALRukA

Mutually assured destruction I think is often woefully overlooked as a stabilising force in the world.

I don't think it's at all a co-incidence that since nuclear proliferation we have only seen wars vs non nuclear nations. You can never really win meaningfully vs a nation that has the thermo-nuclear trump card in their back pocket.

When superpowers come to blows now, proxy wars are the only realistic option. That may still suck for the poor bastards that get caught up with it, but it does mean a world war is somewhat off the table (even if they like to rattle the sabres from time to time).

Also Starship troopers is an oft misunderstood book I think. Some people get so hung up on the underlying idea of a Military dictatorship that they miss much of the nuance and wisdom woven into it.
I'm not even sure Heinlein was even necessarily advocating such a world, but rather using it as a narrative device to explore how our societies really work once you drop the wishful pretences (especially the stable ones).

It seems like there is perhaps some intrinsic relationship between peace and the capacity for effective and controlled violence. There are few people as calm and non aggressive as the ones who truly know they have nothing to fear from you in a fight.

I very much enjoy the home I live in, thanks. What was your point?

Living my life as I write has rarely been an issue, I'm not often attacked by crazed elderly women and their dogs, and I can defend myself. Not everyone is so lucky or able....or stable.
I just wouldn't have stopped in the first place.

Suddenly accuracy and detail become popular, and all it took was for the worst developed world leadership candidate in modern history to win the presidency of the US.

Do the words horse, stable and bolted mean anything to anyone?

We're about 10 years into post truth politics by now, and it seems a strange thing to me to start the fight-back here, on individual comments made by people beholden to themselves. Rather than opinion-shaping mass media printing literal lies.

Let he who did not engage in hyperbole during Trump's campaign cast the first stone. Everyone's suddenly twice the pedantic nerd I ever am when the phrase "post truth" becomes en vogue.

I don't want to be a dick or anything, but look at the backlash to all this policing of PC language. People were happy to give a potential president of the US the leeway to be sexist and xenophobic because of political correctness fatigue. Do you really want to do the same thing but with FACTS? Because that's where this ends...

2024 -- "Oh you can't say anything these days without being sure you're 100% correct and accurate and can't be misconstrued! So what if the president's opinion on climate change doesn't involve facts? It's about time someone spoke their mind without the fact-checking police getting involved!"

I genuinely don't want to be a dick about it. But if I am one, I'm pretty sure I do also have a good point.

This is still very amazing and very well done. They definitely would be pulling some incredibly high G's in that crew capsule when it aborts, but it did look to be stable enough to let them be alright. I'm sure they have sensor'ed up that thing like crazy, so in a few days, they'll know how well it would turn out...

The notion that guns and mercenaries from the west are flooding in is simply untrue. You have the curious responsibility of explaining how the US has been incapable of removing Assad if it has provided such overwhelming support as you claim. What is true, is that Assad overreacted to the Arab Spring protests, unlike say Jordan decided to fire on protests almost immediately and brought a civil war on his hands.

Meanwhile, we also know the origin of the trajectory of the Sarin rockets fired were from areas of government control. We know Assad had a chemical weapons program. We know the volume of the attacks was almost certainly unattainable by anyone other than a state actor. We know that most of the victims were either civilians or the opposition. It's also a curious that these attacks only seemed to occur in Syria.

Again your idea that oil is still a motivation for US involvement in the Middle East is an outdated concept. The US surpassed Saudi Arabia as the largest global producer in the world thank to shale oil. The price of oil has crashed as a result and will likely remain low for a prolonged time as a result. The only beneficiary who stands to gains from revisiting the conflict between the US and Russia is Putin because it boosts his domestic popularity to be locked in a struggle with the US.

Many governments in the Middle East regularly throw out the excuse that anything that goes wrong (and is usually their fault) is a result of a US conspiracy. Egypt has regularly done it, Turkey has just recently blamed the attempted coup on the US even though the incentives for the US are clearly for a stable government there to provide a base from which to attack ISIS in Iraq. You should not be so gullible as to believe this is always the case just because the US has intervened covertly in the past.

I looked, and the mapping shown is incredibly idealize/generalized estimates, not actual mapping in detail that would give useful information. The only thing actually mapped is surface springs.

But this isn't radon. It's particulate contamination suspended in water. I'm pretty sure it doesn't act as you suggest, or the pond would not retain radioactivity, it would quickly release it to the environment. Since the pond was not 'capped', I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it's fairly stable, otherwise they would be contaminating the area with radioactive air constantly...which would never be allowed today.

I think perhaps we have more of a semantic disagreement here than a conceptual one.

That's fine, "meaning is use" as Wittgenstein would say.

I do take some contention with the idea that rule by intellectual elite would be necessarily "depressing". I'd happily take something like that over the kind of chucklefucks we get now. (as I said before, just trading one kind of political elite for another)

& the kind of meritocracy I'm talking about can be very broad. Any citizen could earn their votes within each branch of governance (and if they were very accomplished, most/all of them). It's just a matter of limiting the influence of mindlessly held opinions, which undermine the whole idea of "democracy" as you are defining it.

I don't think the existing examples of stable quasi meritocratic governments occurred by luck. Those places (Norway, Denmark and such) have considerably better educated populations and a greater cultural emphasis on intellectual elites.

As for the AI thing, I suspect we won't have a great deal of choice in the matter anyway.

I for one welcome our new robot overlords!

Much Love.

Democracy IS the main check and balance.

Unlimited democracy is a theoretical construct.
Democracy is always "limited". There is always some "merit" bar for voting. There is always a limited agenda of what one can vote for (and get it too). One can experiment with the constraints and see what results one gets. Some experiments can be frightening, but as long as the basic principle remains (that you can attempt to repair the damage next time you vote), thats fine.

Levels of democracy (limits by "merit" and agenda or candidate availability) vary to an incredible extent among countries which on the surface look similar or even within one country.

Noocracy on the other hand proposes to find geniuses and let them loose. I am against that. Same with philosophers (that one is really funny), and technocrats (and their robots and AI).

Perfect government - humans dont need perfect day care centres. Humans need motivation to live. AI or aliens ruling us would be very depressing.

In specialised fields meritocratic peer reviewed groups work reasonably well if they are constantly renewed, and political parties can be like that for periods of time. But meritocratic peer review breaks down with political power, populism, bribery, backstabbing, nepotism and the rest of politics. Parties usually seem well organised when they are in opposition. When in government, things (people) start falling apart.

Granted there are countries where governments are democratically elected yet stable for decades and appear to be working as a meritocratic peer reviewed system. They are just lucky I guess.

Maybe if the noo tried harder they could achieve that?

The simplest counter argument to your catastrophic prediction is the stability of the paleo-temperature record. If there has been a methane 'time-bomb' just sitting there waiting to be set off anytime the temperature got an extra degree warmer then temperatures wouldn't be stable as they have been over the last millenia. The gradual shifts from ice-age to global rain forests wouldn't have been gradual at all, and likely wouldn't have been reversible either.

The more likely answer is our understanding of climate functions and things like just how much methane is likely to escape in a certain time frame is incomplete.