@Boise_Lib

The term "agnostic" is often used by people who are atheists for all intents and purposes, but fear the stigma that comes with the word atheist, or (worse) think that being atheist means believing no god(s) exist(s).

Gnostic/Agnostic is about one's position towards the knowledge (gnosis="knowledge") of god(s)(and the metaphysical in general); theism/atheism is about one's belief/lack of belief in god(s).

Here's a helpful chart: http://freethinker.co.uk/2009/09/25/8419/

I agree with Richard Dawkins' two categories of agnosticism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism#Atheist

If you meet a self-proclaimed agnostic, ask them whether they are agnostic about vampires, fairies, goblins or Santa Claus. If the answer is a categorical "no", then you can assume that person's "agnosticism" is really just the result of their fear of being rejected/stigmatised as an atheist by religious people.

As @Phreezdryd mentioned, the eleventh Doctor used psychic paper in "The Eleventh Hour." Apart from that, he used it in the episodes "The Vampires of Venice," "The Hungry Earth," "Vincent and the Doctor," "The Lodger," "A Christmas Carol," "The Rebel Flesh," "A Good Man Goes to War," and finally, "Night Terrors". I don't think that's much less often than his predecessors.

>> ^brycewi19:

On another note, I just realized that the 11th Doctor doesn't use the psychic paper any more.
What gives?

>> ^NetRunner:

The modern news media is just a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.
No wait, that's Goldman Sachs.
The modern news media is the vampire squid's public relations representative.
Oh, you don't like the vampire squid? Well, then you must be a bad mother, and an unfaithful wife...


Speaking of Goldman Sachs, I wonder what they're up to right now...

>> ^NetRunner:

The modern news media is just a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.
No wait, that's Goldman Sachs.
The modern news media is the vampire squid's public relations representative.
Oh, you don't like the vampire squid? Well, then you must be a bad mother, and an unfaithful wife...


Actually, I feel you are being disrespectful to the vampire squid. It is actually a very cool animal, unlike these douches...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_squid

The modern news media is just a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.

No wait, that's Goldman Sachs.

The modern news media is the vampire squid's public relations representative.

Oh, you don't like the vampire squid? Well, then you must be a bad mother, and an unfaithful wife...

Is Steve Martin one of those non-aging Vampire people? this was almost 40 years ago?

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Animation, monochromatic, vampire, music, subtitles' to 'Animation, monochromatic, vampire, music, subtitles, bach, passacaglia in c minor' - edited by dystopianfuturetoday

Ah, my favorite holiday. Lotsa fun and totally free from overtones of religion or patriotism. Also, I'm a sexy vampire.

I think *death is more appropriate than *undead (which is for zombies and vampires, right?), but leave it to you.

Obvious in disguise vampire hunters...especially with that last move.

Since we're nitpicking, for FSM's sake get rid of that terrible 70s vampire film organ music...

In other "news", the earth orbits the sun, and Rand Paul is an ignorant fuckwad.

Man I don't know about you guys, but to me the guy at the start sure looked like he wasn't a vampire.

@SDGundamX

On the So-Called Benifits of Religious Belief

First, I'm going to assume that you simply googled "religion+health+studies" or stg like that, and did not read before posting; frankly, I don't blame you. I can only hope you are not as intellectually (and downright) dishonest as the second link you posted: the very first study cited is completely misinterpreted; basically, since kissing multiple partners can increase probability of meningococcal disease, and strict religious tradition would prevent that, religion prevents meningococcal disease. Yeah, really strong science in favour of faith right there. Some of the studies cited actually prove the opposite of what the site is peddling, but they excuse this by accusing the meddling of "Jews and Buddhists" in the prayer groups. I'm actually surprised at some of the studies the website cites, one of which concludes that "Certain forms of religiousness may increase the risk of death." Some of the studies make no mention of religion whatsoever. I could go on, but the point is made.

As for the studies - and they exist - that show positive correlation between health and religion, they concern only the social benefits of religion as community*. The so-called "New Atheists" are the first to point out this positive role, although the uniting and socially reinforcing factor of religion is the same force that fosters and reinforces hate, prejudice and discrimination against the self (guilt) and the "Other" (non-members of the ingroup, "heathens", gays, blacks, "Westerners", you name it). When people use the socially unifying and reinforcing benefits of religious organisations to defend religious beliefs, a certain comparison quickly comes to mind, which Godwin's law prohibits me from making...

As for faith itself, a recent study suggests that it can actually have negative effects on health, because of the stress and guilt believers put upon themselves when prayed for (link). Regardless, even if a positive placebo effect could/can be attributed to faith/rel. belief, it does not make it any less idiotic or objectionable than the belief in homeopathy or vaudou.
_{(if interested in what I think of the "faith is comforting" argument, pm me, I'm filling this thread enough as is)}

Your "two-sides of same coin" analogy fails entirely: telling a believer they're delusional is not denying their perception of their own happiness. A child happy at the prospect of Santa delivering presents is delusional, but truly happy. The idea that there is the same amount of evidence against and for religious belief is pure ludicrous. The Abrahamic God (let's not bring in the thousand and one others for now) has been logically disproven, even before el Jeebs showed up with his promise of hellfire. There is also substantial evidence that he is man-made, as are the book(s) describing him, which are full of inconsistencies (and outright fallacies) themselves.

Your comment about John Smith suggests that the only evidence that could convict a fraudster is confession; good thing you aren't a judge! Seriously though, your doubt probably stems from your lack of acquaintance with the evidence. You can start by reading his brief biography on Wikipedia; his con trick of "glass-seeing" (looking at shiny stones in a hat and pretending to see the location of treasure), for which he was arrested several times, is eerily familiar to the birth of the Book of Mormon (looking into a hat and "transcribing" gold plates that probably did not exist). He even had to change a passage after losing some pages of the transcript He received a divine revelation that the exact pages of the transcript that he lost needed to be changed, and that God had foreseen the loss of those papers (link).

The further one goes back in history, the harder it is to get historical evidence against religious beliefs, but there are always logical arguments that count as evidence as well (in arguing the idiocy of certain beliefs). Since my Santa analogy above seems not to have appealed to you, here's a different one. Imagine Kate were to have said "I do not believe in witchcraft/vampires because I'm not an idiot." Audience response? "Duh!" or stg similar. And yet there is the same amount of evidence for witches and vampires as there is for deities and afterlife**. The only difference between these three once highly common delusions is that one of them persists, even demanding respect, when it deserves at best critical scrutiny, at worst nothing but scorn.


<sub>*(and sometimes those benefits stemming from certain rules, like no alcohol/extra-marital sex etc... still nothing to do with belief.)

**Actually, there is relatively more evidence in favour of vampirism than of deities and afterlife</sub>


tl;dr: faith/rel. belief has no health benefits (check sources b4 posting); argument of religion's social role is double-edged; delusions are still delusions if they make you happy (try drugs); Joseph Smith Jr was a (convicted) fraud; idiotic beliefs are still idiotic when shared by the majority, just more socially unacceptable to mock.

>> ^SDGundamX:


See my answer to @BicycleRepairMan--what people accept as evidence in this matter and how much evidence is required for people to believe (or not believe) in a religion varies from person to person. Further complicating matters is that belief is not binary--it's a very wide continuum that includes people who aren't sure but practice the religion anyway.
My point about the New Atheists is that they feel the evidence against religion is sufficient. They are entitled to that opinion--but at the end of the day it is only an opinion. They should be free to express that opinion and tell people their reasons why they came to that conclusion. But they shouldn't pretend that their opinion is "fact" or belittle those who haven't come to the same conclusion.
About the "faith improving lives" bit--there is a fair bit of empirical evidence for the benefits of religious faith (in terms of both physical and psychological health: see here and here for more info) so I can't see how you can argue it is "delusional." Unless you meant that religion isn't the only way to obtain the same benefits, in which case I absolutely agree. But I find an interesting parallel in your thinking the New Atheists can tell a religious person that he/she is delusional if that religious person believes religion has a positive effect on their life with Christians who claim that atheists think they are happy but in reality suffering because they aren't one with Christ. Seems like two sides of the same coin to me.
I'm glad I amused you with my reference to Scientology. But this is a very rare case where we have a "smoking gun" so to speak. While I agree with you that there is a some suspicious stuff going on with Mormonism (how some passages in the Book of Mormon are very similar to other books available at the time John Smith lived), I'm unaware of any hard evidence that John Smith actually admitted to making it all up. Again with Mormonism, we're back to people having to personally decide for themselves what to believe (and all the issues that entails). [...]

LOL. No really I just don't like horror movies. I remember watching "Fright Night" when I was 15 on VHS. It was an ordeal.

I really love the Aliens movies, they're the exception.

1 more thing, I had so many nightmares after watching "True blood" i had to stop watching.

anyway.... I like Jeffery Combs just because I love Weyun from star trek, and I thought that video was really campy!

In reply to this comment by enoch:
ok,
so let me get this straight.
you dont like vampire flicks,especially child vampires...
but sucking and eyeball out to get to the delicious brains using your engorged third eye is somehow less creepy?

i sense a story there...

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Night, Watch, Trailer, Vampires, light, dark' to 'Night Watch, Trailer, Vampires, light, dark' - edited by xxovercastxx