Please can someone give this the last vote it needs - cheers!

"If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world."

Wittgenstein

Occam's Razor: entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem - entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. This is often paraphrased as "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one."

The famous Oxford philosopher of religion - Richard Swinburne - employed the principal of Occam's razor to argue that God is the simplest explanation for the existence of the universe - far simpler than any explanation offered by science.

This film is great! Both the original short and the full movie are worth watching - I personally prefer the short. There is also a great deal of *politics and social commentary in the movie about the difference between rural and urban China. The film taps into the fear and awe which characterises the way many rich urban dwellers perceive the rural poor.

Great post!

Great post!

There is an interesting interview with Damir Niksic here.

Interesting post - it is also worth reading the section on their website about the relationship between the evangelical Christians and the Zionists - http://www.theocracywatch.org/christian_zionism.htm The influence of reactionary Zionist thinking on American foreign policy is just as worrying as the influence of reactionary Evangelical Christian thought on American domestic policy.

But then you lose the video and one published post?

Cheers for the save!

Great post!

(this was published on the Sift before - so it may be a dupe or the original may have gone dead)

Looking at your answers to these questions it is clear why the atheism of Dawkin's will never appeal to most people. Although it may appeal to our reason, it doesn't appeal to our hearts. Take your answer to the question 'Why do we exist?'. You state that "That question can plainly be answered by science. We exist because of natural selection and simple laws of physics that have been operating since the beginning of the universe." That is a good answer. But it is not an answer to the question I asked. I asked WHY do we exist - not HOW do we exist. Natural selection and the laws of physics may explain HOW I came to exist in a physical sense. But they do not explain WHY I exist. You may not like my distinction between HOW and WHY, and you may say that asking WHY I exist is nonsensical. But the problem you face is that the vast majority of people are seeking an answer to WHY they exist not HOW they exist. And if you try and equate the two questions then the answer you provide is deeply unsatisfying.

The Dead Pool is an ingenious idea. But surely the more videos you have published the more time you will have to spend maintaining/fixing them. So in order to keep your rank you will have to spend even more time on the Sift???

Anti-semitism is a big problem in the Islamic world. I have experienced it myself first hand. There are three major causes of this anti-semitism. Firstly, many corrupt rulers indulge and often encourage hatred of the Jews and Israel in order to deflect criticism away from their own corrupt and cruel regimes. Secondly, in many countries the relevant areas of history and politics are excluded from the educational syllabuses, and the public debate of important and contentious political issues is restricted. Thirdly, the single greatest factor contributing to anti-semitism is that for over fifty years we have seen the Israelis oppress the Palestinians - including daily humiliation, terrorism and murder and a concerted effort to steal Palestinian land and annex Jerusalem. People need to learn that they can be strong supporters of Palestinian independence and strong critics of Israeli government policy without resorting to anti-semitism or calling for the destruction of Israel. Criticising Israeli government policy is NOT anti-semitic.

MEMRI TV - A WARNING:

In my daily trawl through YouTube I have encountered many videos from the following site: Memri TV This website only shows the very worst of the Islamic world - radical fringe preachers with little or no public support, unobjective critics of America and Israel, anti-semites, holocaust deniers, misogynists, etc. However, it presents these opinions as if they are widely held, rarely questioned, and representative of the Islamic world. Further more - and this is particularly worrying - the site often mistranslates, or takes out of context, what major Islamic leaders are saying in order to make them seem more extreme and bigotted. The site uses an Arabic title and icon in order to try and disguise its real agenda.

Who are Memri? They send out their videos to all senators and congressmen, and all mainstream media, so we should really know something about them!

MEMRI was founded in 1998 by its president Yigal Carmon, a retired colonel from Israeli military intelligence, and the academic Dr. Meyrav Wurmser. Meyrav Wurmser and her husband David Wurmser were both co authors of A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (Israel) which was the precursor for the Wolfowitz doctrine- which led to PNAC - Project for the New American Century. Dr. Meyrav Wurmser received her doctorate at George Washington University, by researching the life and works of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism. Her husband David Wurmser works directly under Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby. It was David Wurmser that told Dick Cheney that Wilson's wife Plame was the one that sent Wilson to Niger.

MEMRI's headquarters are in Washington DC. It is a non-profit organization, exempt from taxation, that has private donors. MEMRI's largest donor is The Bradley Foundation. The Bradley Foundation has also provided funding for the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). PNAC brought together prominent members of the (George W) Bush Administration (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz) in the late 1990s to articulate their neoconservative foreign policy.

*congrats!

*congrats!