Westy, the orgonal gangsta!

Okay, give dummy lady a break. She meant to say "Who inspired the bible" but put foot in mouth.

DFT confirmed that this was a parody so I think she meant to say what she did. But even if she were being earnest I don't know if I would go that far. Unless she then made a correction after the fact, say in a new video or in the video description, why would you infer something from her words if she didn't outright say what you were inferring? If we played along, would she have had a coherent point if we replaced "write" with "inspired"? Would her conclusion have made more or less sense, in context of the "gotcha!" moment she was going for? Less, imo.

But one side is not crap. There are two sides that are crap here. Those who believe in god and those who think lowly of those people

I think there are MANY "sides" when it comes to the number of levels/tiers of belief (or acknowledgment of certain assumptions) in the religious or the scientific and still MANY more varying degrees of self-righteousness and smug superiority within each of those.

What the hell am I saying, essentially? I'm saying, why the false dichotomy? Not everyone is either A or B. Life isn't binary.

Humanity created religion because it needed to be controlled.

There are many possible reasons for why religion is so ubiqitous, like our innate tendency to assign agency to things from a very young age, for one brief example. Your explanation sounds like a nominal fallacy, i.e. naming-explaining fallacy. Humans need to be controlled. How do we know humans need to be controlled? Because they created religion (which is a social tool for control). The only evidence provided for why we need to be controlled is the fact that religion can be used as a tool for control and that we created it. Does this really address the "why we need it" part? It's a totally post-hoc explanation which itself is not an explanation. I hope I made I sense there.

In fact, to add a point. Faith in god may be misplaced---but faith is still science based. It keeps people alive who should be dead, it is there from birth to death, it is a human condition.

Yes, we can scientifically measure the mental, consequential, and physiological effects religion(s) has on our bodies and brains in space and time. Is that the same as saying that the underlying explanation providing the foundation for the belief (a belief which has REAL, measurable effects in people's lives) is scientifically sound?

As an aside, Lawdeedaw, I just want to sincerely apologize for the overly aggressive tone and sometimes distracting ratio of "snark-to-common courtesy" I've taken with you in our past "encounters". I've been beginning to reevaluate my tact when bringing up objections with those I disagree with in the past weeks. I readily admit I have anger issues and am trying to truly address them rather than let them define my presence here on the Sift and in meatspace. I have a hard time playing nice with people I feel misrepresent me or others I may agree with. Many things have brought me to this realization, mostly meatspace issues. I am sorry (this also goes to anyone else I may have inadvertently or quite directly and thoughtlessly insulted in the past), there I said it!

See? How's that for a "smug, superior atheist" (I know you have thought this of me on occasion) being immutable in his viewpoint/outlook?

Idiocracy: The Game!

>> ^imstellar28:

You would wish such a thing on someone? From what I can see, democracy doesn't have the best track record especially here in the US in the last few decades. Just what they need, a McDonald's at every corner and a Haliburton running the government.
How about a prosperous, fair, and just government and leave it at that? No need to impart (force) our flawed values on the rest of world; lest you forget it's the democratic US that is backing the very authoritarian dictator Egypt is revolting against...
Democracy is a plague, and this is one of it's many petulant symptoms. Mubarak is a puppet, installed and supported with the help of the US...learn it for yourself instead of parroting the blind patriotism of your beloved "democracy."
I bet it sounds noble of you to those who don't know better, though.
>> ^Ti_Moth:
Good luck people of Egypt I wish you a prosperous, secular, fair and democratic government. (You will need the luck).



The US government sometimes does wrong/unjustifiable/corrupt things. The US's government is a democracy. Therefore, all democracy or democracy itself is wrong/unjustifiable/corrupt.

Care to tell us how this makes sense (i.e. follows logically) and what your alternative is?

>> ^shinyblurry:


The funny part about saying that "The Devil"™ runs things down here is funny. The reason it's funny is that even when I was a fairly religious person I could never quite figure out why "The Devil"™ was so evil.
He disobeyed "God"™, but that was about it. Apparently, now, he runs a place called Hel or Helle(or if you prefer the misspelled version: hille, hillja, hell, etc...). He's also able to tempt us (or if you wish, we let him tempt us, giving him even less power) to do things; who knows what though. He's also supposed to be a fallen angel that many think to be red and ugly with horns. It should also be noted that Hell (Hel) has lakes of fire (which sounds cool; almost like Hawaii), but seems to lack all the horrific stuff you hear of elsewhere.
I'm just wondering, why Lucifer (The Bringer of Light) is so "Evil"™? Also, last time I checked "Free Will"™ was sitting around; so if "The Devil"™ runs Earth, why do we need that? His role greatly differs throughout the Christian realm of knowledge as well as those that are linked (like Judaism, Islam, etc...). The idea of a bad guy against the ultimate good guy sent here or another place are in many religions world wide. Some of those religions pre-date Christianity by more than a thousand years and Judaism by hundreds (if not more). Sometimes these "figureheads" have been concentrated into one form as they were once in the form of many figureheads, besides "God" and "the Devil".
There is a litany of things attributed to: Satan, ha-sataan(Judaism has no "real" direct version), Baal Davar, the Devil, Lucifer, Lord of Flies, Dragon (or serpent; is "believed" to be the serpent in the Garden of Eden), Beelzubub (if you like the demon storyline; not a Mormon thing), Iblis, Shaitan, Jinn, Ying-Yang (pick one), Vishnu (atleast one aspect), Set, Apep,Sammael, Belial, ad nauseum...
Anyway, he disagreed with God "about something"; the "about something" depends on the flavor you belong to.
To cut it short: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Zoroastrianism... They all suffer from the same problem: cognitive dissonance. Not a one holds up to a double-blind scientific experiment, let alone a simple thought experiment. If we have a "God" they most certainly are not prescient or omnipotent. The fact that I can post this kills one half of the logic, the other logic "free will" seems to be negated by every law and fact of science ever put together. You have choice, but it most certainly is not absolute.


If you were formally religious I am surprised you don't understand why the Devil is evil. I'll elaborate on this..
In the beginning, when man still dwelled in the Garden of Eden, he existed in a perfect state of grace with God. There was no such thing as sin, or death. Adam and Eve, the first humans, walked and talked with God face to face. God, to test their hearts, only gave them one command..not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He promised them that if they did so they would surely die.
Now the devil enters the picture. God had made him the most beautiful of all the angels, and gave him great power and dominion. The devil was soon corrupted by his own vanity however, because he started to think "I will be like the Most High" and desired to have his throne beside Gods. His sin was/is pride. Because of this, he was cast down to Earth.
Now God gave Earth to Adam. He was its ruler. Satan knew this, and knew that if he could corrupt him, he would gain power over the whole world because he would gain power over Adam. So the devil came to them and said that God was lying about the apple. That, not only would they not die, but they would become like God by eating it. After eating, Adam and Eve lost their innocence and the state of grace they enjoyed with God by sinning, and brought death into the world. From that moment on they were mortal beings with mortal needs.
Satan has been the ruler of this world since then. His power, however, was broken at Calvary when Christ died on the cross. Christ, the new Adam, lived a sinless life. Being born of a virgin, he did not inherit the sin of Adam. By living a sinless life, he redeemed mankind and gave all people on Earth a way to know God, His Father, through Him. When He died He went down to hell, battered down the gates, and took the power of death from the devil. When He was resurrected, He liberated mankind from the power of death, and was the first fruits of the world to come.
Now, Satan is still the ruler but on the run. He knows his time is short and growing ever shorter. His last shot is when the antichrist comes to power. Now, free will is fairly simple. You have the choice to obey or disobey Gods commands. God doesn't make you love Him. All those who delight in wickedness, however, will be punished on judgment day. Hell was not created for humans, but anyone who throws their lot in with the devil will earn the devils reward. His sin was pride, and so too are the ones who reject God similarly prideful, for they believe his lies and reject the truth.
That about sums it up. I would ascribe some cognitive dissonance to your post also, for your conclusions have seemingly been pulled from a hat. How does posting what you did negate anything about Gods omniscience, and how do the arbitrary rules of science say anything about free will? You may want to read about determinism vs free will for some background before you answer.


Indeed, that does just about sum it up.

Kceaton doesn't need to try to negate your Christian god's omniscience (assuming the proposition that he exists in the first place is true, which you haven't even attempted to demonstrate). You did that just swimmingly all on your own, assuming again, that you're not a liar or playing Devil's Advocate and earnestly believe what you just typed.

Thanks for saving anyone with any inclination to refute your imaginary friend a whole lot of time by doing it for us. Also, cognitive dissonance doesn't mean what you think it means. I would say that you were a fantastic example of it in action but that means you would need to actually recognize (in some form) the incongruity of your own silly, self-contradictory beliefs and/or be bothered by it.

>> ^MaxWilder:

Michael Voris S.T.B.
Now accepting submissions on what S.T.B. stands for!
My guess is Seriously Traumatized Brain.


Suffocatingly Tedious Buttplug! Sexually transmitted bollocks! Superfluous Thought Barf!

SD, congrats, I thought it'd be a given that words can have more than one meaning. I specifically said common usage for a reason, as in, the meaning the average person would be most likely to derive from the word. Keep playing semantic games to push this retarded narrative of yours. I just figured you could be more precise when describing other people's intent instead of lazily tossing around generalized blanket terms which end up meaning different things for different people. By your own definition, any one person who is not some apathetic nihilist, who has any interest in shaping the future of the world in the human marketplace of ideas (I hate using that phrase but it is apt) is basically a "militant".

MLK, to use your flawed example in a previous argument, was one militant motherfucker for daring to change the status quo and it's unsurprising that there were people like you, not racists, just tone trolls, saying the exact same thing.

Here's a good word, secularist. Was that so hard? Put "atheist" in front of that and at least you have something accurate. Expressing a personal desire to see religion gone and supposedly attempting to destroy it on those grounds are two different things. The New Atheists are of the former; they think it has no place in governance or science. New Atheism was a label foisted upon them by the media that ended up sticking, it was never something they came up with, there's nothing new about their form of atheism as they have all but given up exasperatedly trying to say so and disown the label. They think people should be free to practice religion in private and certainly want people to be educated about them in schools, via comparative religion. The fact that I even have to mention this just shows how uneducated you are on their positions. Out of context quote-mining is worthless when they have expanded on what they actually mean by those quotes in exhaustive detail to AVOID the very confusion you are trying your very hardest to sow. They are actively trying to minimize its status through education, not outright destroy it.

It's pretty clear to me what your intent is. You're trying to smear any atheist who dares not keep it to him/her self. You're too worried about atheists merely speaking out, yet I hear nothing from you about the vastly disproportionate amount of influence and entanglement religion (a bunch of imaginary ideas with no basis in reality used to control, kill, and enslave people for thousands of years) has in society and politics right now, fucking up my country in the process. Where's your indignation when it comes to that? Oh, but BOOHOO, we're sooooo militant. Give me a fucking break.

I'm not replying here to sway anyone through pleasant-sounding yet essentially hollow rhetoric, just to correct your nonsense.

I use a program called Reason, I don't have much experience with other audio editing proggies but this one seems amazing and very professional, if an unmusical pleb like me can use it effectively.

This is assuming you have no moral qualms with the torrents, of course, fairly large DL from what I remember and very expensive otherwise.

Finally, I think there is definitely a need to distinguish atheists (i.e. people who don't believe in a deity or deities) from people like Sam Harris and the other "new atheists" who are on a crusade to destroy religion. The term militant atheism is not an attempt to subvert Sam's argument; it's a practical necessity to differentiate his ideas and the people who share them from those atheists who aren't hostile to religion.



What a blatant strawman of a loaded argument. Just because you say so, doesn't make it true. You might want to demonstrate that they are on a "crusade" to "destroy" religion before assuming it, prima facie. If you had read anything from Harris, Dennett, Stenger, Grayling, Dawkins, Hitchens, and so on, you would know this, that they do not want to "destroy" religion. You're being totally unfair and/or unintentionally using imprecise, inflammatory language or playing semantic games, which does a great disservice to your original point.

No, "militant" is not a fit descriptor. The common usage of Militancy implies the willingness to do violence to achieve one's ends, which you already know is patently false of . I ask you to stop spreading misinformation and false equivalences, please. You're helping to water down the actual meaning of the word "militancy" by including an essentially peaceful and non-violent movement under that umbrella. There are plenty of other words which fit the bill in a far more practical and truthful, less ideologically loaded way. Cut it out.

I want to hug this guy. I don't care if he smells.

In Soviet Russia, plain sight hides YOU!

>> ^Opus_Moderandi:

Call me a tree hugger but, seems a little cruel to hold an electric eel on a string and let an alligator bite it just to see what would happen...


A bit wasteful too. I don't know the population density of these gators wherever this was filmed but it now has one less apex predator.

Find myself in a church for weddings and funerals, and the occasional baptism. Even though I'm not a member, I often get in line to take the sacrament if I'm feeling peckish. /trollface

Also, Orthodox wine does have its uses for those long, monotonous sermons... get a little buzzed and stare at the pretty stained-glass murals and ideograms on the ceiling to pass the time.

Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes? I hate snakes.

>> ^Matthu:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/AnimalsForCrackers" title="member since December 13th, 2006" class="profilelink">AnimalsForCrackers
Wait so the separation letter came after the first amendment? The separation letter is specifically meant to explain? Wtf are we arguing about? Damn sophists...


Err, wait, was the letter not written afterward with "seperation of church and state" subsequently becoming a retroactive shorthand for referring to the establishment clause, even though those exact words weren't actually in there? That was my limited understanding.

I'm confused now. And the quote function is acting weird.