So Zimmerman should NOT have followed Trayvon. Period. That caused the whole mess. Not sure how the legal system works there but that should have translated to manslaughter or assault with a weapon...dunno excatly.

ok that said what KEEPS killing me is the picture of smiling 12 year old Trayvon that the media (even the Turks) keep using. In many countries he's be old enough to be a father and hold a full time job, yes 17 is a young age but it is NOT a kid. (I'm thinking 12 and under as a kid)

Lastly I know some conceal carry courses (if not all) teach that NO MATTER WHAT YOU WANT TO AVOID PULLING YOUR GUN OUT.

You avoid confontation at all costs.

Your mother is a whore? ok no problem. Your GF sucks all the dicks in the world, ok. NOT a reason to pull a weapon.

Teaching the value of (human) life is paramount for all parents these days.

The universe is "just right"? Instead of too hot or too cold? Your tiny lifespan in this tiny fragment of the cosmos is only possible because the local conditions happen to be just right to sustain human life for the time being. That's easier to believe than some all-powerful sky-wizard waving a wand and creating stuff.

Just FYI VideoSifts definition of what snuff is has nothing to do with the dictionaries definition. What is and isn't snuff is an argument that has gone on a VS since the beginning of time itself I believe this video could be considered snuff by past videos that have been discarded as snuff. I however think it's a poor rule which is to difficult to define properly and will always cause debate.

Please do not post pornography or "snuff" films (which we define as the explicit depiction of loss of human life displayed for entertainment).

Note: The presence of human fatality is acceptable and not considered "snuff" if presented as a limited, incidental portion of a lengthy educational, informative news report or documentary that encompasses a much broader narrative. Our definition of "snuff" does include but is not exclusive to any short clip in which a human fatality occurs whether or not any victims are actually visible on camera.

Your fanaticism is in not being able to see that I'm not arguing against you, nor really against your true hurdles (the guy in the video above who will never see the merit in slugs or snails regardless of your evidence). I'm arguing against the need to see the other side as a combatant and instead as a group that has a different expertise and perspective. The 2nd voice in a complex evaluation at a national or global level.

Science minded people can easily project the benefits of research and have a lot of faith in science's ability to provide exponential benefits in the future. It's because this IS the case that this is even a debate. What WE seem incapable of doing is accepting that even exponential benefits and aggregate benefits can fall prey to scope and mass.

People on the other side don't see the long term or the exponential benefits however because theyre not science minded. Their focus has likely been somewhere else like business, healthcare, politics, social issues, etc. and so they will know more about THOSE lasting impacts than science minded people (including you and I). Unless youre suggesting science minded people are more experts on these topics as well?

So when using the explicit or implicit "greater good" as a measure it can be surprising how things unfold. I say "greater good" like that because the idea that the future benefit of current research is worth current spending over immediate problems implies "the greater good of society over time" and if you disagree with that then we can discuss that some other day.

Let me assist you quickly in countering my own comments so you can see why I feel we're not on the same page. The counter to the arguments i've expressed would be that "greater good" evaluation from moment to moment is NOT the correct way to fund research. Because the value that the general population will put on immediate issues (or support through public policy/voting/opinion) will always carry more weight than solving problems in the future (the immediacy bias of humans) it can not be used as a forward thinking way of funding research.

In other words, we don't need to convince people of greater good or of researches value over other uses of resources. The reason is that the only way to properly do science research is as a ongoing project on a mass scale with inter-dependencies that are too complex for anyone but the most informed to evaluate.

Arguing dollars and cents through cost benefit analysis or some other method would ultimately work against research funding, particularly when arguing with business and fiscal spending experts that can play on immediate human need/emotion.

As an aside, i enjoy this discussion but I truly think that there is a miscommunication about what topics you and I are concerned about and what our exact stances on them are. Perhaps this is my fault for not making my stance or opinion more clear because I was not trying to chime in on the debate at large, but chime in on the way people were undertaking the debate.

I believe research funding is even more important than immediate needs and that the justification for them does not have to meet any "greater good" measures because, having studied economics in college, I'm aware of how bad our evaluation of non-concrete goods/services are (ie the evaluation of human life or environmental impacts expressed in real world terms like money).

Because I believe this, I have to accept that it is an IMPORTANT balance to have people as biased in the opposite direction around to offset my opinion and I welcome open discussion (ie without assuming they don't know what theyre talking about from the beginning) with those people because it helps me to feel that our society IS actually meeting the needs of both types of people as best it can.

What I don't do is raise my nose at them as being uninformed and incapable of understanding the issues at large because I believe they do, but with a different process all together which still has value. I also don't assume that my fact and science based arguments will always win out over arguments with immediacy and immediate human benefit (which are very difficult to put a value on).

I apologize for harping on greater good, but it was being thrown around and wielded (even if implicitly) as though it was a single edged sword when it is in fact a double edged sword when the issue is viewed with the proper scope. I also didn't feel the need to be yet another voice clamoring for science funding when the opposite side had little to no presence. Group think is dangerous and without voices to temper the enthusiasm it's easy to forget that debates have 2 sides and both typically have merit even if the other side wouldn't care to admit it.

@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

The problem with guns as self protection is it is wrong kind of approach to crime. It's essentially the mutual destruction situation, "I won't rob a house, rape someone, or murder, because they have gun/weapon of some kind." What really needs to be done is address the issue of why people are committing these crimes. If crime becomes less of an issue, then you'll have less of a reason to waste your money on guns.

the Biden clips, if I recall correctly Biden wasn't suggesting one "menaces" a neighborhood. In the clip he says if someone is *giving you a problem* (which would warrant a use of a weapon), fire your weapon. He didn't say once you get your weapon just fire rounds from your porch to declare to the neighborhood "I've got a gun."

On another note, do people really want to get in fire fights?! Or does it seem like dick waving to me? Sure you can scare someone with a gun, but regardless of whether a person is armed or not, and why they are robbing your house, do you really want to potentially kill a person? Are people that indifferent to human life that they would kill a person to save a T.V.?! No random person you don't know is going to want to come into your house and kill you, unless they were some crazed serial killer, and if that is the case you've got bigger problems.

I maintain that they best thing to do is hide until the burglars are gone, the last thing you want is a confrontation.

Lastly, my house was broken into several weeks ago, when they thought people were gone (a gun in the house is not going to do you any good when it gets robbed and no one is there). They saw my house mate, and fled. No gun required.

Well, you mention the unborn, yet on the main the thinking in environmental circles is that we have too many humans and that the Earth is unable to support them. Therefore, abortion (over 70 million unborn children murdered in the US since the 70s) is to be embraced, and even more extreme methods of population control are not only openly pondered, but have resulted in mass sterilization programs which have been mercilessly implemented in third world countries. Here are some of the greater atrocities committed in the name of preserving "mother earth":

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-population-control-holocaust

Among the intellectual elite, human lives are reduced to being paid the same consideration as one might the lowly cockroach. Contrary to your assertion, it is the Christian who affirms the sanctity of life and the inherent value of every person, whereas it is the opponents of Christianity that affirm infanticide:

Dawkins approves of infanticide

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFWt9cj3uj4

If you would reread my prior comment, you will see that I am in agreement with @RFlagg that we should be good stewards of the Earth. However, the mania of the environmentalists is to devalue human life and subordinate it to their misguided notions of preservation. The sickness of this world is sin, and the only one who can cure it is God. This world will continue to degenerate until the Lord returns because it is in rebellion against its Creator:

2 Chronicles 7:14

if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

Actually, I have read the details in the case, Canada is NOT a free for all where you can do whatever you want because you think you know better than everyone else. CANADA IS NOT AMERICA. You should properly store your firearms. There should be a trial regarding these charges, and if the situation (gun instructor, imminent threat to life) warrant that the charges be DROPPED in this case, I would find that to be fair. However, regulations such as these stop assholes from keeping their heat ready just in case they need to rapidly without thinking end a human life. You right wing Americans make me sick how you see everything in black and white, you've swallowed every lie told to you by the gun manufacturers and your right wing politicians you don't know how to see past your own blurring ignorance. But of course.... *I* must be wrong, and not the right wing wannabes at the SUN. LOL. Which is why the top search results for the story are all right wing papers beating the drums of war.

I want to talk about something that to my regard is pure lunacy. But, to me, though I appreciate the doubters, the ones who question everything; would change their attitudes completely. None of the atheists should go on ranting until they take the ultimate bungie jump a human can have: DMT. One thing I would note is that I do not know if it was put there by aliens, evil spirits, sacred spirits, the Earth itself, God. No, I do not know and no one knows. I do not know if there is a price to be paid by having witnessed the underpinnings of technology, soul, afterlife, the universe, consciousness, the brain or whatever the hell it is. I have no idea, I just know that this experience is as real as fuck. Mind blowing. Scary. Terrible and healing all at the same time.

I was agnostic going into this, did not believe in soul, appreciate string theory, quantum mechanics but do not believe in it at some factual level, did not believe in any sort of God, or the afterlife. In mere seconds all my notions of what I thought or did not think or could never had merely thought up, all my permeating existential beliefs were thrown off like a nuclear bomb had gone off; revealing some partial truth of what we really are, witnessing an alien computer program, based on simple equations that manifests consciousness itself. Not a new conclusion and one I thought only drug addled scifi writer or schizos would ever believe.

It were as though I had found some way to put my head into the Large Hadron Collider itself whilst every proton turned into Higgs Boson; I then found out that this is not uncommon for such an experience. I know that can sound incredibly narcissistic, incredulous, unbearable, impossible. But what I got out of it was humble and that is another story.

There are experiences out there in which a person can feel as though they had been thrown into another dimension, experienced the Big Bang and met Gods of the Ultimate Power, they may or may not be and died on levels not many ever knew possible. In mere seconds the regular doors of perception are shut and a new life is born. That is where it gets tricky.

Until any of these guys can figure out why the human mind can explode on an infinite universe level of pure digital consciousness, think it can perceive these things and witness them on all levels and in new ways and come back to a normal human life in a normal brain without having in fact died? Well, I think they ought to stop talking and do more research. We have no facts and an experience like that will make it very apparent that the walls of reality can be so easily shattered to see new alien worlds, languages, dimensions, spirits, births and rebirths beyond all human comprehension. It sounds like the ultimate atheist experience, right? Not at all, it leaves room for something of the highest power that is manifested through pretty much any religion. We have to remember... you have to go to school, you have to get a job, we get wrapped up in our world. We have to act like we know what we are talking about and I am saying there is no evidence out there to support the fact that anyone can say that there is absolutely no God. There is absolutely no afterlife. Anyone that feels that they know anything about the nature of reality and who they are or what any of it means and apply lectures to it in the event that they become so arrogant and stubborn that they say what they think is absolutely correct when it is not accounted for by science, should do this. Do it after a lot of research. I say science but it is a paradox, I believe in Science first and foremost, it is our hope for tangible evolution, repeatable fact, but I am fairly sure this is something Science will never figure out. And after reading a similar experience: http://ewwty.com/2012/02/24/dimethyltryptamine-dmt-experience it seems in this experience there are some reoccurring themes. Science has so far written this off in the easiest way it can: to call it a psychedelic or a hallucinogen. So, find out. We know absolutely nothing in a very non existential way.

Drug use has a far more pervasive impact on society than guns ever will because of how it affects lives.

Drug users health and the health of the people around them are impacted (the harder the drug the further that reaches). Drug use is a primary motivator to commit crime. Drug trafficking is yet another of the primary motivators and it grows as drug use grows.

This is not even addressing injuries and deaths related to drug use and people causing accidents while under the influence. The impact of drug related incarceration and its social impact are also numerous.

One could argue that some drug users may cause more aggregate damage over the course of their life than a murderer might, but that requires putting a value on human life which I'm not sure is possible.

This is a great example of how people do not weigh out the full impact of things in complex comparisons, particularly when there is a heavy bias clouding their comparison (not saying you are but it happens often with this topic and others).

They don't just need $1000! Even if you give them what they need, they still need more! You cannot have $1000 everytime they ask you for or everytime they need it. The major cause of today's sex movement in young people is the shift in our human life pattern or style that involves adult's (parents') liberality about sex, from women's rights, gender's struggle for equality, separation, divorce, same sex marriage, domestic violence, single-motherhood etc. Children are almost abandoned while adults are busy chasing after their own pleasures and freedoms. They also immitate adults' lifestyle. No cure!

@enoch

The problem with the gun control debate is that both options are authoritarian. Which do you prefer, the government having the power to limit your access to guns, or individuals having the power to easily end your life at will? It's a lose/lose proposition from that POV.

After a gun enthusiast massacred 35 people in Australia in 1996, the government got serious about gun reform. They enacted strict gun control measures and gun homicides dropped 59% over the course of 10 years. In the decade before gun reform, they suffered 11 gun rampages; they have not suffered another gun rampage since.

In your opinion, what is the downside of only police and military having weapons? (for the sake of argument, let's assume that hunting weapons remain legal, because their main function is not to end human life.)

Source:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2012/1224/Could-the-US-learn-from-Australia-s-gun-control-laws

"Please do not post pornography or "snuff" films (which we define as the explicit depiction of loss of human life displayed for entertainment).

Note: The presence of human fatality is acceptable and not considered "snuff" if presented as a limited portion of a lengthy educational, informative news report or documentary. Our definition of "snuff" does include but is not exclusive to any short clip in which a human fatality occurs whether or not any victims are actually visible on camera."

No one died in this video (though there were fatalities during this accident). This video has been played during several news broadcasts and linked to several online print news articles like http://www.theage.com.au/world/bad-brakes-cited-in-moscow-crash-landing-20121230-2c140.html, and think qualifies as educational over entertainment.

>> ^L0cky:
I'm not sure who's disagreeing with who here.
The fact that you can teach a child in order to make their access to guns safer doesn't mean that every child that has access to guns will be taught this in a sufficient way. Besides, how many children had lots of training and still ended up shooting themselves or someone else.
You can get very detailed statistics from the CDC, unfortunately I can't link to them because they are generated by a search and the URLs generated are session specific. The statistics, as detailed as they are, don't state weather the child was educated in the use of firearms, but accidental firearms death in children is quite low. According to the CDC, between 1999 and 2010 the leading cause of accidental deaths to children ages 1-4 is motor vehicle accidents (28.9%), poisoning is 8th (2.4%) and firearms is 12th (1.0%). Going up to the 5-9 age range MVA is still the leading cause of accidental death (46.7%), with poisoning still 8th (1.8%) and firearms still 12th (1.5%). You can look them up yourself at the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention & Control.

>> ^L0cky:
If you don't think having a gun in your home would automatically make it the most dangerous thing in that home then you're either being disingenuous or you have some freaky shit going on in your house.
Having a gun in your home does not make it the most dangerous thing in the house, and the statistics I posted above back me up. There are plenty of things even in a gunless household that are lethal if a child gets its hands on it. I would argue that a gun is far safer because it can be unloaded and therefore be rendered harmless if a kid gets a hold of it. A bottle of drain cleaner, bug spray, bottle of medicine, etc. is always going to be dangerous if a child gets a hold of it. With those items, all you can do is lock them away in a safe place where a child can't get them until they are old enough to understand that they are dangerous. Any responsible gun owner would treat a gun the same as any other dangerous object in the home, by unloading it and/or locking it up until the child is old enough to be taught that it's dangerous and not something to play with.

I don't understand your objection to teaching a kid how to properly operate a firearm when the're old enough. I was taught by my father as his father taught him, and I've never killed anyone on purpose or accident.

>> ^L0cky:
So my question is: despite the fact that some kids can be taught to be careful with a firearm, what is the justification of owning one...
I can't speak for every gun owner, but I have several reasons. I personally own four guns, two rifles and two pistols. It's a hobby, I like to shoot them, but I also own them for self defense. I also like archery and own a bow. A bow is also an instrument of war and designed for the taking of human life as well as hunting, just as a rifle, but how come no one pitches a fit about bows like they do guns? I don't hunt, but I have friends that do, so there's another reason for you.

I also have gone through the steps to acquire a license to carry a concealed firearm in my state. I think of it as insurance. I have car insurance, but I don't intend to get in a wreck, and I also have home owners insurance though I don't intend for my home to get damaged or destroyed. I don't carry a gun intending to kill someone, but just like car and home insurance I have it just in case.

>> ^L0cky:
I'll play devil's advocate and say 5: to defend your property and family against an armed burgler. Yet if you take a look at the rest of the world, at countries where guns are not prolific, gun assisted burglaries are so rare that it doesn't even bear thinking about.

The fact that you need a gun to defend yourself against someone with a gun is because you both have guns. - Captain "Circular" Obvious

From everything you've posted, you seem to be thinking that someone needs a gun to defend oneself from an attacker with a gun. The majority violent of crimes do NOT involve the use of a gun, and up to 2.5 million reported crimes (many are unreported) are prevented by lawful gun owners each year, most of which do not involve discharging the weapon.

Ninety percent of violent crimes are committed by persons not carrying handguns. This is one reason why the mere brandishing of a gun by a potential victim of violence often is a sufficient response to a would-be attacker. In most cases where a gun is used in self-defense, it is not fired." [source]

>> ^L0cky:
I can't really budge on this unless you can somehow convince me that it's not preferable to live in a western society where almost all people have never even seen a real gun, therefore removing all their associated problems.
That's not an idealism, that's pretty much most of Europe.

Personally I would rather live in a society where people are educated and non violent so that we can own guns for sport, collecting, hunting, etc. and not have to deal with people's irrational fear of them. You seem to have some delusional idea that removing guns from society is going stop crime and violence. Removing guns isn't going to magically stop people from being violent and committing crimes. The UK and Australia did ban personal ownership of guns and their crime rates went up because the only ones left with guns were the criminals. [1][2][3][4]

What a waste of human life. How does so much money and power land in the hands of a sack of shit?