As an American living in Thailand, I've adjusted pretty well to metric units for most things (to the point that I'd prefer them for MOST things).

Celsius has more sensible set points (1 and 100 being freeze and boil of water), but I still prefer to think in Fahrenheit for temperatures. For some reason it is harder for me to overcome the inertia of ~25 years of using Fahrenheit than it was to get used to metric distances.

One other thing I noticed about this video is that you could easily make similar arguments about our system of time being backwards or primitive. For some reason we have days of 24 hours, which are sometimes divided into 12 AM and 12 PM hours. Each hour has an arbitrary 60 minutes. Each minute has 60 seconds. Sometimes we divide seconds into hundredths (1/100) or milliseconds (1/1000). We have 12 months, each containing somewhere between 28 and 31 days. One year has 365.242199 days, so we call it 365 and then add one more on leap years, or occasionally skip a leap year since that fraction isn't a perfect 1/4.

That is all very messy and based on local, non-universal phenomena -- just like all those silly antiquated imperial units. Maybe at some point we'll shift to metric time based on radioactive isotope decay rates or something.

Actually, I did get your intention, and I'd planned a much longer response, but I got distracted and just ended up posting that pithy comment.

But yes, I understand the argument is not so much "we are clay" as "we are as clay".

I can completely accept the possibility of some kind of hyper-advanced species that absolutely dwarfs us in intellect. In fact, I think it'd be really cool if such a thing existed. But I have a sneaking suspicion that actually, it doesn't really get a whole lot better than us. But that's only because I'm a cynical bastard and tend to believe that most species wipe themselves out before attaining that level of awesome.

But let's say that there is some kind of hypothetical super genius race/being out there. They should *still* be able to talk down to us. There are certain fundamental mathematical truths that are constant in the universe. As dumb as we are, we have already figured out ways to communicate using these (CETI, etc). Surely super intelligent beings would be able to respond even if it felt like talking to a particularly stupid child to them. Again, even we manage a very primitive form of communication with animals.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'love, emotion, attraction, primitive, biology, heart rate, ass' to 'love, emotion, attraction, primitive, biology, heart rate, ass, buzzfacts' - edited by xxovercastxx

Human behavior is primitive, but the bible outlines exactly how a man should live to be at peace with God, the world and himself. There is nothing primitive about that, and in fact, if everyone followed what the bible said there would be peace on Earth today. The knowledge transmitted by Jesus Christ is not primitive compared to modern understanding, it is transcendent of modern understanding. Western civilization owes quite a bit to the bible:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-that-Made-Your-World/dp/1595553223

The bible is concerned with Earth because this is the planet God created for us to live. As far as the rest of the Universe goes, we're on a need to know basis.

"The skies" make up >99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of everything there is, but the Bible contains only (primitive) human knowledge. Why is that?

I think I understand you, but correct me if I'm wrong. You're saying it's powerful not for what she's saying, but because of the context of her being a female activist for education in an area of the world with typically extreme patriarchal resistance to these ideas. Yeah?

Context is important, I suppose. It's just that talking about peace and education isn't new. And I wonder if in twenty years from now if some woman raised in a primitive tribe in the bush stood up and said "peace and education!" will we, Westerners, all again be awestruck like Jon Stewart in this video? It just seems ridiculous to be shocked and "speechless" over something so pedestrian and accepted in our culture.

I think people who hunt for machismo and bragging rights are a bit primitive, but I can still understand where @shang is coming from. Of course there's a thrill to the hunt; it's a challenge, a competition. Just because someone enjoys that thrill doesn't make them a sociopath.

My dad used to hunt when I was little, but he very rarely got anything. Years later he told me he started hunting because it was a way to spend time with his father, but he never really enjoyed shooting animals. At one point he had sat down against a tree to have lunch and a deer snuck up on him while he was eating. He gave her a piece of his sandwich and pet her for a few minutes while she ate it and then she wandered off.

After that, he stopped carrying a gun into the woods and started carrying a camera. From then on he was taking a different kind of shot, but the thrill of the hunt was still there.

Islam is definitively associated with cliterectomies (Shafi law, the hadiths, etc). (NSFW medical photos.)

For example, in Egypt, 95% of married women have been subject to genital mutilation.

I guess on some issues, Coulter isn't as ignorant as ourselves



Chechnya surely has lower rates, but:
1. Chechnya still has primitive, violent attitudes toward women ("honor" killings).
2. Coulter is talking about Islamic culture in general, the same way the Boston bombings were intended to be on behalf of Islam in general, rather than on behalf of Chechnya alone.

Work to decrease stats like the 95% in Egypt, rather than pretending associations don't exist

Great comment! You raised many interesting points.

One important thing to note that the modern human mind is essentially like an advanced piece of software which runs on antiquated hardware (sort of like running Skyrim on an N64). As many as 7% (though I don't currently have a source for this at hand) of the general population are estimated to experience auditory hallucinations, and surprisingly enough, most of those people aren't psychotically structured. This is why auditory hallucinations are seen as a secondary, rather than primary, symptom of schizophrenia.

Rather, what is actually happening is that the antiquated hardware, for whatever reason, is showing its faults. The primitive responses which tend to stay dormant for most people are finding their way to the surface.

In other words, the truth of schizophrenia is that it isn't so much an illness as it is a regression to a more primitive version of the human mind. And as both you an Eleanor pointed out, this can have both pros and cons. Another example of a broken system which can produce contextually positive results is eidetic memory, which causes a person to be unable to forget.

And this is also something that I find to be quite interesting, because what it means is that mental illnesses are, in fact, contextual illnesses. A schizophrenic person is essentially "sick" because he/she has a bug in his/her software and as a result is unable to download patches from the rest of society. Go back 3000 years and it is entirely possible that auditory hallucination would have been the norm.

The reason for the stigma being so harmful is that it simply focuses on the wrong thing. It takes a secondary symptom, i.e. hearing voices, and makes it seem like the actual disease. In truth, the auditory hallucination is just an externalized version of a process which is actually internal. Where most of us simply have thoughts, the schizophrenic might instead hear a voice. To turn stigmatize those auditory hallucinations is to potentially cripple the sufferer's ability to perform basic maintenance on themselves.

Good points all around. I consider myself to be a part of that minority, which seems to be the smallest minority of them all, and frankly, the loneliness of it kills. I meet others, here and there, but they are few and far between. I don't think society can be defined by them.

I also very much enjoy, and agree with, the example you added. It's the natural consequence of the inherently clannish structure of police forces, and it's exacerbated by many completely needless factors, such as a cultural leaning towards paranoia (considering modern, post-9/11 America in this case) and the fact that most cops are uneducated schmucks. Because of the constant climate of fear and the fact that its members just don't know any better, the group becomes close-knit, but antagonistic against outsiders, and extremely inflexible in its dealings with them.

Even worse, morals become highly relative as those who are outside the group are automatically dehumanized and thus do not become worthy of the groups regard. Especially when one of its members is perceived to be in danger. This is why it's so ridiculous to let the police police themselves. Put a cop on the stand and he's extremely unlikely to tell the truth if he thinks the truth might be against the interests of the police department because at this point him and the group he is a part of is functioning at a very primitive level, and at this level, the truth is perceived to be highly relative.

But then again, this is more or less true for all social groups. Human beings are a lot less advanced than we give ourselves credit for, and we constantly have to keep ourselves from slipping back into more primitive mindsets.

i think a more basic explanation is that humanity at this stage of our evolution is generally very self interested. and given the opportunity, humans gravitate towards self-interest.
it's really just another example of our present stage of evolution which, on a planetary timeline, is still in it's infancy.

On a grand scale, our overall tendency towards self-interest and our complete lack of species awareness is causing the rapid consumption of our ecosystem.

A more evolved understanding of species behavior suggest that cooperative behavior, rather than competitive, is much more beneficial to all, including the individual.

Everything good in our lives has come through a process of sharing, not competition. Whether it is language, art, science or mathematics. We are products of a communal effort, yet we continue to glorify the more primitive instinct -- competition.

(continued conversation from http://videosift.com/video/Democracy-Now-A-Massive-Surveillance-State-Exposed. Feel free to join in.)

@enoch - Specifically, what new power has the government gained here? (this is not a rhetorical question)

I'm with you on torture, warrantless wiretaps, illegal wars, assassinations (in general, thought I think Al Alakwi was justified considering the body count he had racked up), persecution of whistleblowers, persecution of journalists

The current NSA scandal encompasses none of these things. If they want to record your phone calls, they need a warrant. They didn't under Bush - but they do now - and PRISM can't go after your internet data at all.

Even if they did want to grab everyones' information, can you see how difficult it would be to pull off? How many phone calls are made in a day? (millions?) How many warrants would it take to get access to all those calls? How many man hours would it take to record and listen to all those calls? Even if the NSA were full of villainous mustache twirlers, doesn't that seem like a futile task? 99.9999% of the information would be useless.

I believe that the NSA genuinely works to stop terror attacks. I know there has been much bullshit done in the name of the "war on terror", but I believe there is a genuine need for an Agency that deals with National Security. I would imagine most countries have some kind of similar body.

I don't have a problem with information gained through search warrants. My major complaint is that this stuff is not better explained to the public. I know that there is plenty of specific information that needs to be kept secret in order to not blow the cover of agents who are wiretapping suspects, but I think the broad strokes should be put out there. Here's what we are doing. Here's why. Here are the problems we've had. Here are the successes we've had. How are we doing? How can we improve this?

I also think there would be far less need to monitor if drugs were legalized and the war on terror ended.

Anyway, I think this kind of surveillance is going to become status quo, will not be overly problematic and will be completely uncontroversial in a few decades. As far as abuse goes, you don't need any of these high tech contraptions to listen to people's phone calls and track internet usage. These things can be done fairly easily with comparatively primitive tech that can be bought legally at spy stores.

http://www.spy.th.com/audiocat.html

@criticalthud I don't disagree with what you say. My point is that judge approved wiretaps and internet surveillance should be a legal part of the law enforcement/National Security arsenal. How to do it best is beyond me. I think warrants and constitutional protections are decent checks and balances, but I know they are not infallible. As I mentioned to enoch, if someone wants to listen to your calls, be that person a high ranking government agent or your grumpy neighbor, it can be done easily with low tech. Killing these guidelines would do nothing to protect you from a rogue agent or personal vendetta.

If all this leads to a real discussion on the war on terror or the war on drugs, I'd be thrilled. My prediction is that it will just be used as a politicians electoral bludgeoning device until everyone gets sick of hearing about it and it slides off the radar screen.

@enoch - Specifically, what new power has the government gained here?

I'm with you on torture, warrantless wiretaps, illegal wars, assassinations (in general, thought I think Al Alakwi was justified considering the body count he had racked up), persecution of whistleblowers, persecution of journalists

The current NSA scandal encompasses none of these things. If they want to record your phone calls, they need a warrant. They didn't under Bush - but they do now - and PRISM can't go after your internet data at all.

Even if they did want to grab everyones' information, can you see how difficult it would be to pull off? How many phone calls are made in a day? (millions?) How many warrants would it take to get access to all those calls? How many man hours would it take to record and listen to all those calls? Even if the NSA were full of villainous mustache twirlers, doesn't that seem like a futile task? 99.9999% of the information would be useless.

I believe that the NSA genuinely works to stop terror attacks. I know there has been much bullshit done in the name of the "war on terror", but I believe there is a genuine need for an Agency that deals with National Security. I would imagine most countries have some kind of similar body.

I don't have a problem with information gained with search warrants. My major complaint is that this stuff is not better explained to the public. I know that there is plenty of specific information that needs to be kept secret in order to not blow the cover of agents who are wiretapping suspects, but I think the broad strokes should be put out there. Here's what we are doing. Here's why. Here are the problems we've had. Here are the successes we've had. How are we doing? How can we improve this?

I also think there would be far less need to monitor if drugs were legalized and the war on terror ended.

Anyway, I think this kind of surveillance is going to become status quo and will be completely uncontroversial in a few decades. As far as abuse goes, you don't need any of these high tech contraptions to listen to peoples phone calls and track internet usage. These things can be done fairly easily with comparatively primitive tech that can be bought legally at spy stores.

@criticalthud I don't disagree with what you say. My point is that judge approved wiretaps and internet surveillance should be a legal part of law enforcement/National Security arsenal. How to do it best is beyond me. I think warrants and constitutional protections are decent checks and balances, but I know they are not infallible. As I mentioned to enoch, if someone wants to listen to your calls, be that person a high ranking government agent or your grumpy neighbor, it can be done easily with low tech. Killing these guidelines would do nothing to protect you from a rogue agent or personal vendetta.

If all this leads to a real discussion on the war on terror or on the war on drugs, I'd be thrilled. My prediction is that it will just be used as a politicians electoral weapon until everyone gets sick of hearing about it and it slides off the radar screen.

I guess they'd never heard of hormones, antibiotics and force-feeding. Such primitive people.

As an aside. The largest pig-farm in America produces more sewage than the city of New York. Big pig farms aren't more efficient than the small ones, they're environmental disasters as well, but big pig farms can afford lobbyists to make rules more friendly for them, small pig farms cannot.

@alcom

I hear you shinyblurry, but I feel that your argument meanders back to the original appeal to authority that most believers resort to when justifying their positions. I also find that the related video links provided by TheGenk provide a valid refutation of the idea that God is The One who put values of good and evil inside each of us.

There is always an appeal to authority, either to God or to men. There are either objective moral values which are imposed by God, or morality is relative and determined by men. If morality is relative then there is no good or evil, and what is considered good today may be evil tomorrow. If it isn't absolutely wrong to murder indiscriminately, for instance, then if enough people agreed that it was right, it would be. Yet, this does not cohere with reality because we all know that murdering indiscriminately is absolutely wrong. The true test of a worldview is its coherence to reality and atheism is incoherent with our experience, whereas Christian theism describes it perfectly.

If you feel the videos provide a valid refutation, could you articulate the argument that they are using so we can discuss them here?

In my mind, Zacharias' incoherence with the atheist's ability to love and live morally is influenced by his own understanding of the source of moral truth. Because he defines the origin of pure love as Jesus' sacrifice on behalf of mankind, it is unfathomable to him that love could be found as a result of human survival/selection based of traits of cooperation, peace and mutual benefits of our social structure. His logic is therefore coloured and his mind is closed to certain ideas and possibilities.

The idea of agape love is a Christian idea, and agape love is unconditional love. You do not get agape love out of natural selection because it is sacrificial and sacrificing your well being or your life has a very negative impact on your chance to survive and pass on your genes. However, Christ provided the perfect example of agape love by sacrificing His life not only for His friends and family, but for people who hate and despise Him. In the natural sense, since Jesus failed to pass on His genes His traits should be selected out of the gene pool. Christ demonstrated a higher love that transcends the worldly idea of love. Often when the world speaks of love, it is speaking of eros love, which is love based on physical attraction, or philial love, which is brotherly love. The world knows very little of agape love outside of Christ. Christ taught agape love as the universal duty of men towards God:

Luke 6:27 "But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
Luke 6:28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
Luke 6:29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.
Luke 6:30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.
Luke 6:31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
Luke 6:32 "If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.
Luke 6:33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.
Luke 6:34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount.
Luke 6:35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.
Luke 6:36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

Indeed, moral foundations can and must change with the times. As our understanding of empathy, personal freedoms and the greater good of mankind develops with our societal and cultural evolution, so too must our standards of morality. This is most evident when concepts such as slavery and revenge (an eye for an eye) are seen as commonplace and acceptable throughout old scripture where modern society has evolved a greater understanding of the need for equality and basic human rights and policing and corrections as a measure of deterrence and rehabilitation for those individuals that stray from the path of greatest utility.

This is why slavery is no more, why racism is in decline and why eventually gay rights and green thought will be universal and our struggle to stifle the rights of gays and exploit the planet's resources to the point of our own self-extinction simply will be seen by future historians as sheer ignorance. Leviticus still pops up when people try to brand gays as deviant, even though most it is itself incoherent by today's standards. Remember that "defecating within the camp was unacceptable lest God step in it while walking in the evening." Well, today we just call that sewage management.

Some people, like Richard Dawkins, see infanticide as being the greatest utility. Some believe that to save the planet around 70 percent of the population must be exterminated. Green thought is to value the health of the planet above individual lives; to basically say that human lives are expendable to preserve the collective. This is why abortion is not questionable to many who hold these ideals; because human life isn't that valuable to them. I see many who have green thoughts contrast human beings to cattle or cockroaches. Utility is an insufficient moral standard because it is in the eye of the beholder.

In regards to the Levitical laws, those were given to the Jews and not the world, and for that time and place. God made a covenant with the Jewish people which they agreed to follow. The covenant God made with the world through Christ is different than the Mosaic law, and it makes those older laws irrelevant. If you would like to understand why God would give laws regarding slavery, or homosexuality, I can elucidate further.

In regards to your paraphrasing of Deuteronomy 23:13-14, this is really a classic example of how the scripture can be made to look like it is saying one thing, when it is actually saying something completely different. Did you read this scripture? It does not say that:

Deuteronomy 23:13 And you shall have a trowel with your tools, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement.

Deuteronomy 23:14 Because the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and to give up your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you.

Gods home on Earth was in the tabernacle, and because God dwelled with His people, He exorted them to keep the camp holy out of reverence for Him.

The rules that God gave for cleanliness were 2500 years ahead of their time:

"In the Bible greater stress was placed upon prevention of disease than was given to the treatment of bodily ailments, and in this no race of people, before or since, has left us such a wealth of LAWS RELATIVE TO HYGIENE AND SANITATION as the Hebrews. These important laws, coming down through the ages, are still used to a marked degree in every country in the world sufficiently enlightened to observe them. One has but to read the book of Leviticus carefully and thoughtfully to conclude that the admonitions of Moses contained therein are, in fact, the groundwork of most of today's sanitary laws. As one closes the book, he must, regardless of his spiritual leanings, feel that the wisdom therein expressed regarding the rules to protect health are superior to any which then existed in the world and that to this day they have been little improved upon" (Magic, Myth and Medicine, Atkinson, p. 20). Dr. D. T. Atkinson

What's interesting about that is that Moses was trained in the knowledge of the Egyptians, the most advanced civilization in the world at that time. Yet you will not find even a shred of it in the bible. Their understanding of medicine at that time led to them doing things like rubbing feces into wounds; ie, it was completely primitive in comparison to the commands that God gave to Moses about cleanliness. Moses didn't know about germs but God did.

Paedophilia will never emerge as acceptable because it violates our basic understanding of human rights and the acceptable age of sexual consent. I know this is a common warning about the "slippery slope of a Godless definition of morality," but it's really a red herring. Do you honestly think society would someday deem that it carries a benefit to society? I just can't see it happening.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_Ancient_Greece