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That reminds me of the experience that caused me to reject atheism:

I was in a pet store, and I saw this turtle in a tiny cage (perhaps a few cubic feet in size), leaning against the class walls. What's that turtle's perception of things? Of course it could try to posit grandiose theories of everything, but it lacks the intelligence or information to have a complete world view. More importantly, it's beyond the poor turtle's comprehension to even realize that its deductive reasoning has limits. When virtually every animal in the world has a world view that seems pathetically incomplete and local to us, isn't it sheer hubris for us humans to think that we know everything?

At 3/5/09 12:20 PM, EKublai wrote: It's a simple fact that we are 3-D people. As 3-D sentient objects we are able to create things at least theoretically in the 1st and 2nd demensions (we can only imagine true 1-D lines and the closest 2-D object we can create is a projection of an illusion image). It is also true that without the lower demensions of 2-D and 1-D, we as 3-D people could not exist. And without a 3-D object existing as a single point in time, we could not conceptualize the 4-D world which for each 3-D,2-D,-1-D object contians the entire existence of the objects. For example, the existence of a 3-D person in the 4-D world is like watching and an infinitely long line of the same person. You would see a sperm and egg cell converge into a single embryo and the line goes infinitely long as the corpse of the person decomposes and branches in infinite directions as it scatters about the earth.
But the point of this explanation is that as 3-D people we can conceptualize and create 2-D. However, we cannot have a sentient 2-D object no matter what. We can't even begin trying to create a 1-D object so we certainly can't create a sentient one. We are not aware of their existence and their activities. It stands then that the creator is not aware of the creation's existence as a possibly living being. But seeing as 2-D, from another point of view is the creator of 3-D, that means that the things we draw on paper are not aware that someone created, even if they are living breathing things in their world. This is a parallel to the 3-D. If a 4-D sentient being drew on a piece of 4-D paper, conceptually it would have created a 3-D object. Perhaps this object turns out to be sentient as well. But since 4-D beings will only recognize other living beings as Expanses of Time (4-D object) then they draw 3-D objects (Single points in expanses of time) It is not aware it has created a living breathing being in a different dimension, and we are not aware that we have been created.

That just means that a 4th dimensional quasi-omnipotent being is possible, not that such a being exists. That's a non-trivial point. If we're just projections of a 4-dimensional space, and there are 4-dimensional creatures, then they'd have as much power over us as you have over a piece of paper. They'd be able to withdraw from our space easily, insert themselves into any locus of points in our universe (i know what you're thinking, pervert). That's not exactly a God, because the 4-D beings wouldn't have true omnipotence. For example, if one came into your house, you'd still be able to use force against them, and maybe kill them so they wouldn't be able to retreat out of 3D space. But if they did manage to retreat you'd be screwed because they could go inside your body and mess things up (seriously, get your mind out of the gutter).

(Here I'm leaving out spacetime entirely, and assuming that all of these beings, 3D and 4D, are in space time).

@BrickTop, I don't think this is a satire. I had a math teacher who once said that a 4-D being would be comparable to God. And I think he's right.

At 3/3/09 03:46 AM, TheMason wrote:

A few things here.
1) I saw a graph that showed that currently, government expenditures on health care are within like 5% of how much the private sector pays in healthcare costs. Something has to be done about healthcare, but not single-payer/Universal health like many on the far Left want.

Of course if you implemented universal healthcare you'd have to tax people more. Whether or not people are net winners or net losers depends solely on whether universal healthcare is more efficient than the insurance system (assuming that the tax isn't progressive).

Universal healthcare is more efficient because it encourages people to use preventive medicine instead of getting expensive treatment at the emergency room. Suppose that you are a poor person with no health insurance and you have a high risk of getting cancer. Under the current system you probably will not get screened regularly or get check-ups because you cannot (or do not want to) pay for them. When your symptomns get really bad, you'll get treated at the emergency room and probably die because they detected it too late (never mind the expenses of the treatment).

With universal heatlhcare you'll probably get screened for cancer because you don't have to pay for it, and the tumor will be detected early. It will be very easy to treat, very inexpensive, and best of all you won't day.

That scenario is not absurd, it is in fact very common. Heart disease, stroke, cancer, AIDS, infections (I could go on all day) can be treated most efficiently if they are treated early.

2) To the Left: taking money from the private sector and giving it to the government for 'make work programs' does not solve unemployment. If it did, then after eight years of FDR's New Deal we would have had single digit unemployment rather than the double digit we had.

The problem is that if you give people tax cuts they will save some portion of the money. If the economy is bad, they will save a very large portion of that money. The only way that the government can stimulate the economy is by spending money directly.

3) Obama is counting on inflation. A devalued dollar is one way to halve the deficit quickly. How else do you think Obama is going to halve the deficit in four years whilst increasing spending? The end result is even more pain on individuals. The way I see it, Obama is going to take the Recession he inherited from Bush and turn it into a full-blown depression.

I think that you are right to be concerned about inflation. But I think it will work so long as other countries continue to buy our T-bills.

* FDR believed that one of the underlying causes of the Great Depression was "underconsumption". That people working in factories could not afford the products they produced. This was during the roaring twenties when people were buying things like new cars faster than anytime before in US history. Competition had made things like cars more affordable (and more technologically advanced) than before. For example Ford's innovative Model T was cheaper than GM's products, in response GM produced a car that was cheaper...but also had an ignition system and spedometer. One of the things that FDR did to fix the problem was the National Industrial Recorvery Act which created the National Recovery Administration (NRA). This body set price controls and wage standards that had the effect of stifling innovation and making it so that small businesses could not compete with the big guys and went out of business...thereby putting people out of work. This was later struck down as unconstitutional.

Wage controls are a dumb way of balancing supply and demand. It would have been much better if he had just made taxes more or less progressive.

Oh yeah. I'm 18, Alex Lamb, registered Republican (although I vote pretty evenly, I supported Obama in 2008), Male.

At 3/3/09 07:38 PM, punchyguy wrote: Hello there. Im conducting a political survey just for the hell of it. But this is serious. I will list some issues and you tell me your (unless of course you do not wish to share this information) Age, political party, gender and country. Tell me how you feel on these issues and I will come up with a generalization based on these awnser.
1 Abortion

Moderately pro-life. In general I oppose abortions on fetuses, and do not believe in legal restriction on aborting embryos. Aborting a fetus without a legitimate reason (health, extreme poverty with no ability to adopt, and severe fetal disability) should result in a charge of neglect. Likewise I believe that mothers who drink or abuse drugs during pregnancy and cause their children to have defects should be charged with neglect.

2Gay marriage

I support it. I don't really see a good reason for opposing it.

3Oil vs. Alternative energy (wind power, water power, etc.)

Nuclear is the best form of centralized power production. Solar and wind might be useful as residential/commercial backups. In anycase we'll still need oil for jet fighters, plastics manufacturing, and a few other applications.

4War on Terror (you dont need to be from the US to awnser)

I like Obama's strategy of hitting them with cruise missiles and airstrikes, instead of wasting money and lives on those messy invasions. Not having the ability to kill American troops makes the whole insurgency thing less romantic.

5George W. Bush (have fun with this one!)

I think that he's incompetent and divisive, but people go way to far when they criticize him. He's not stupid. He's not a criminal (any more than Al Gore is for parroting his lies about energy). And he's probably a good guy who's just made some mistakes.

I would highly prefer you be mature in your awnsers.

STFU!!!!!!! WTF!!!!! n000b.

At 3/4/09 04:07 PM, Christopherr wrote: Obama's recent plan regarding tax returns on charitable donations is taking a huge step away from the norm. Previously, charitable donation nearly always yielded tax returns, but Obama wants to cut tax returns for wealthy people, the same wealthy top 2% donating over 40% of all charity monies in the US.

I think that charities should be taxed like any other sort of spending.

I've been watching on the news that not only will he be destroying incentive for these people to donate, but that isn't my main objection. My main objection is, according to the news I've watched through the day, that the government gets to pick and choose what charities are eligible for tax returns. For example, Planned Parenthood, because it was a source of Democratic campaign funds, will be eligible, whereas something such as an anti-abortion charity could (and most likely would) be denied. Also, government charities obviously would be automatically given tax return status.

Now that's just ridiculous. Either all charities should be tax deductible, or all of them shouldn't be.

So the questions for discussion are:
-Does the federal government have a right to pick and choose what charities have tax return status?
-Is it even proper at all that the Democratic party, a party with a history of championing what is good for the public, be removing the incentive to give to charity?
-Should a government charity receive preferential treatment over a private one?

Generally I don't think that any charities should have tax return status. It makes no sense that the government should prefer me giving another $10,000,000 to Harvard's endowment, instead of spending $10,000,000 on buying stuff or hiring employees. And it's not about narrowing inequality, charities are often transfers from one rich person to another rich person, not from a rich person to a poor person (see top colleges multi-billion dollar endowments).

NOTE: I ask these questions not to argue, but to gain knowledge on the issue (because frankly, I'm not an expert on charitable giving). I've given my opinion on it, and I would like to hear justification from the other sides of the issue (although, like me, I doubt most people here are experts on charitable giving). So please, try and remain civil, and aim not to disprove anyone, but instead use each other to grow in understanding.

Not an expert on charitable giving to be honest. Is there a lawyer on Newgrounds?

At 3/4/09 03:47 AM, homor wrote:

f*g news
f*ggot news
god, we liberals are so clever and enlightened!

The irony in those two is so incredibly rich...

At 3/3/09 11:37 PM, SynicalSatire wrote: I was recently in an argument with a woman about abortion, and how I felt it was murder, yet she claimed that at abortion clinics the doctors give the girl the choice to either kill the fetus, or have it surgicaly removed, frozen, and then later implanted in another woman. She claims this is a fact, and is a practiced medical process.

Huh. I think that it would be physically possible to do this, but I've never heard of it done. I know that sometimes they'll freeze embryos, but that's different than a fetus.

At 3/3/09 11:56 PM, Musician wrote:

I really like this structure. Also, I would like to point out that none of the rules I listed would be applied to every debate thread. The idea is that each debate would carry a different set of rules catered to the preferences of the posters participating in it.

Fair enough. But it seems like you don't want things to get too complicated...

At 3/3/09 07:04 PM, Musician wrote: I've been kicking this idea around in my head ever since I stumbled across this forum that hosts it's own structured debates: http://www.sciforums.com/forumdisplay.ph p?f=101

I like the idea. Have a stickied thread where two challengers agree to go through a pre-determined number of rounds on an agreed to topic.

1. The Idea

Harbor intelligent, structured debates between two people, where both sides of the argument agree to abide by certain rules. The rules are tailored to each specific debate, and each debate is presided over by a moderator.
2. Specifically, How it Might Work

I like it.

It would start with a proposal thread, where a member of NG Politics would challenge someone else to a structured debate of a set topic. Such a thread might look like this:

What if you just had a system where any two regulars could pm a moderator, and they could make a debate thread. Or perhaps other people could do nominations.

Topic: Prop: 9/11 was an inside job.

User:shaggytheclown

Text: I shaggytheclown hereby challenge Elfer to a structured debate on the topic "9/11 was an inside job". I will be taking the affirmative side of the argument, which is to say I will be making a case for 9/11 being an inside job. I propose the following rules for our debate:

Why not just PM him and a mod, and then set it up that way?

1) No personal insults in any way shape or form
2) No formal logical fallacies
3) No straying from the topic at hand

These are all somewhat subjective, but I don't think that anyone would disagree with them.

4) We must each wait at least one hour after the last response, to post our next response. This will give the opponent time to include additional information in a second post if he/she cannot fit all information in his/her first post.

I like the idea.

5) Each response must be submitted within one day of previous response. If one day passes and a response has not been posted, the thread will be locked and a discussion thread will be opened immediately afterwards(**NOTE: I'll describe discussion threads later in this post**)

Fair enough.

6) We will each receive 4 responses including the original post that starts the topic. After the last poster has made his fourth response, the thread will come to a formal end, be locked, and a discussion thread will be opened.
7) We will agree beforehand to restrain our use of scientific jargon for the benefit of those who may be reading our debate presently or in the future.

How about:

Pro Constructive
Con Constructive
Pro rebuttal
Con rebuttal
Pro closing points
Con closing points

8) I will make the first post in our debate.
9) 911truth.com will be considered a legitimate source without question.
10) Any violation of the aforementioned rules will result in post deletion, a lock of the debate thread, and the creation of an informal discussion thread.
/Text

I don't see how you can objectively determine if someone is using, say, a strawman. It is rather easy to get caught up in technicalities,

After the original post, Elfer would post in the thread either accepting, accepting with terms, or declining shaggy's proposal. For example, Elfer may ask for rule #9 to be edited out, and ask for several additional rules to be added before he agrees to a formal debate with shaggy. In the case that the challenged poster declines (or does not post for an extended period of time) it should be allowed for another poster on NG to volunteer to debate shaggy. For example, if Elfer decides to drop out, poxpower may decide to volunteer to take his place and debate. In that case poxpower and shaggy would haggle over which rules they should debate under until they are in agreement. If 2 weeks pass and nobody has accepted the challenge, the proposition thread will be locked.

That seems rather anal to me. Why not just let people debate under rules like "No personal insults, no lying". And obviously if someone uses a fallacy than it will be pointed out. In general there are some people who abuse fallacies that don't really exist. I've even heard of a "Appeal to Numbers fallacy". WTF does that even mean?

The second step would be the debate itself (the topic for our previous example might look like [Dbte: 9/11 was an inside job]). After both posters have agreed upon the rules, one of them would start a topic and make the initial post. The rules agreed upon would be reposted at the top of the initial post for the benefit of any moderator presiding over the debate. This stage does not need much describing as it is similar to any other debate we have on the forums, only both participants must abide by the rules agreed upon in the proposition thread.
** NOTE: The only people allowed to post in the debate thread are those who agreed to debate in the proposition thread.**

After the formal debate has come to a close, the thread will be locked and someone will start a discussion thread (it might look like [Disc: 9/11 was an inside job]), where the rest of NG could further debate the topic (informally), and comment on the structured debate.

I think it also would be a good idea to start another thread similar to AS:Main, where we'd archive all of the structured debate and discussion threads so that NG posters could use them as a resource.

3. Why I'm Suggesting This

I'm suggesting this because, without naming any names, I feel that a lot of times NG is a hostile environment for a debator with an unpopular opinion, and that many of the topics on NG are railroaded by popular opinions rather than logical arguments. By allowing users to challenge other users to enforced formal debates, those with minority opinions will have a chance to present their case to the rest of NG, without the fear of being drowned in a sea of emotionally charged posts.

I also think it would help to solve a lot of the aggressive posting that happens on NG. For example, if you've been posting here for a while you'll know that there is a commonly held opinion that whoever posts last in the thread is the 'winner' of the debate. In formal debate you have the option to restrict the number of posts, which means that posters will have to actually work to make their posts more logical and persuasive and not just work at slowly wearing their opponent down with multiple posts.

Ideally the pro should get the last word, so they have the chance to defend their position completely.

Finally, the AS: Main-esque thread we would create (I'm thinking we'd call it 'Formal Debate: Main' or 'NG Debate Archive' or something similar), would provide an invaluable resource to those debating in NG politics, and raise the quality of posting throughout NG politics in general. Furthermore, it may even persuade a more scholarly crowd to sign up and debate on NG, which would expose us an even wider variety of educated points of view.
4. What We Should Discuss In This Thread

Ehhhh. Not sure about that.

I would like to hear all of your opinions on this, especially those of the mods who would be somewhat more burdened having to regulate individual debate threads based on their individual rules. We should discuss all the possible pros and cons of the issue. We should also discuss how we may want to proceed further if we go forward with this (Perhaps we can also have structured 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 debates alongside 1v1 debates). Also, are there any changes that should be made? Please share your opinions.
**NOTE: I'm not suggesting the end to informal debating on NG, rather I'm suggesting that these threads exist alongside informal threads**

I like the idea quite a bit. Right now I'm at school and quite busy, but over the summer I could probably do a few formal debates.

At 3/2/09 11:01 PM, Korriken wrote: You forget to mention that the Demagogue party is moving forward with "health reform" saying that "We can't fix the economy without first fixing the health system" Which makes absolutely no sense in my mind. How could the health system in its current state possibly be holding the economy down?

A single hospital visit for a family without insurance (or with insurance, for that matter) is financially crippling. That is the argument that can be made.

At 3/2/09 07:53 PM, aninjaman wrote:

So shutting borders to people simply because they are of seperate races and cultures is a good thing?
Is perserving cultural identity important enough to be what seems basically racist?

Not necessarily shutting borders, but preventing immigration (in this case borders literally need to be shut for security reasons).

Okay, I'm going to buck the popular trend here and defend Jewish nationalism. Opening up Israel's borders to unlimited non-Jewish immigration from Palestine would inevitably make the Jewish people a minority (because they have fewer kids on average).

There is no way that a group of people who share a common heritage can maintain their social and cultural distinctness unless they prevent other groups of people from entering into their population.

At 3/2/09 03:37 PM, Drakim wrote: Al6200 called me out for my bullshit and ruined all the fun D:

Pfft. I think that there are still counter-arguments that you can make, namely:

1. Land is finite, no matter what technology you use (excepting perhaps a Mars colony, which would still require a lot of time and something beyond a space elevator for transportation).

2. Water (I think cheap energy makes this a moot point, but you could argue it anyway).

3. Food (cheap energy would allow you to grow food in more locations, but likewise you could actually argue this point).

At 3/2/09 08:08 AM, Drakim wrote: I think the opinions people have on overpopulation is hilarious, in a slightly retarded, slightly I-just-want-to-cry, way. I mean, as a long term problem for humanity, it's a pretty grave issue. As a problem for people personally and their personal well being, it's a very grave issue. What I find hilarious is that people reject all the realistic solutions, while holding some vague dreams about living on the moon and Mars.

Overpopulation is not a problem.

The situation is quite simple actually. The earth is of limited size, and only has so much resources to produce so much food for so many people. For every person added to the planet earth, we all have to give up a little of our resources so that this person can live too. If too many people are added, they either have to die of starvation, or we all have to give away too much and become poor and lacking. That's it, that's the choices. If you have 10 apples but 15 kids, well, you do the math.

This is not true. Aside from conservation of energy, we do not have a fixed amount of resources. And the amount of energy that we do produce is so much smaller than the amount that we could potentially produce that it's not a relevant constraint.

Science and technology is able to greatly enhance the amount of food we can produce, the amount of living space that we have (skyscrapers anyone?) and so on, but the population is growing a gazillion times faster than what science can cope with. And the growth of the human population is exponential, meaning that the growth itself is going faster and faster. And the more people who need food and resources to live, the less resources we have to assign to things like science.

Wrong. The amount of resources we can produce goes up much faster than population goes up.

There are, however, a number of proposed solutions to this problem. But they are constantly rejected for one reason or another. The problem in my view is that the consequences of overpopulation appears much worse than the consequences that these solutions might have.

That's because your Malthusian view of things is wrong. Our population has grown exponentially since the 1800s, but our standard of living has continued to go up.

1. Restricting the number of children people may have? Absolutely not! It's fascist for the government to impose upon our freedoms like that!

2. Using genetic modification to greatly enhance the amount of food we can produce? Absolutely not! It's possible that it's dangerous and it's not our place to play God!

3. We could leave people to starve and die. Absolutely not! That's inhuman! We must continue to send money and food to poor overpopulated countries to save lives!

These are all unnecessary.

The list goes on. We could try to genetically make people gay, start with cannibalism, mandatory abortion, forced sterilization. But all these solutions are rejected on the grounds of morality, while ignoring the everlooming shadowy problem of overpopulation that threatens to tear asunder civilization like it was a rag doll in a glitchy game.

Now, whenever I bring this topic up, people seem to instantly cling to the idea of living on the moon, Mars, and soon, more planets as they come within out reach. Indeed, it seems like the final solution. If earth is not big enough to sustain humanity, then humanity must expand!

Earth is big enough to sustain many times the population that we have today, for billions of years.

The problem with this is simply a matter of transportation. But, is this a problem? Surely science can come up with an effective way to mass produce rockets which can get a large portion of us to the moon?

Well, let's do a small thought experiment then. Let's say we design a rocket that could carry, let's say, 5000 people (that's a fucking lot for a single rocket, think about it), and we sent up 50 rockets like this every single day. That's a wicked insane effort. That means we can transport 250 000 people a day to the moon. With 365 days in a year that's 91 250 000 (91 million) people a year to the moon.

Obviously you'd need transportation into space more sophisticated than rockets (it's almost like you're a villager saying that traveling across oceans is impossible because you'd need too many canoes). A space elevator would fit the bill.

According to the US Cenus Bureau, the annual world population growth will in 2011 be at 80.9 million

Great, with what would be by far the biggest project ever to be done by mankind, we could counter our yearly growth and a little extra. yay.

You're approach to this is backwards. You're assuming that technology is stagnant more or less, while it is obviously not. You're also creating arbitrary bounds and limitations that do not exist.

That is, until the moon gets full, or we run out of resources to keep producing these rockets and fueling them. It appears that the technology needed to save mankind off earth would have to be so vast and grand that such petty things like death by starvation would be irrelevant. We would have to invent teleports, or such advanced spaceships that we could just fuck earth and live in space. But that's just my opinion :o

A space elevator is certainly not going to happen in the near future, but it is possible.

At 3/2/09 03:11 AM, n64kid wrote:

At 3/1/09 11:46 PM, Al6200 wrote:

the evil business strategy known as six sigma

Six sigma is the greatest. You take that back, Al.

It's great when you're the statistician or the manager. Not so great for the worker. Let's look at all of the dumb things that I have to record for my job:

-How many people leave, every hour (yes, there is a machine that can detect when people leave, but I have to actually write that number down).

-Where everyone is in the building and what they are doing (I'm not kidding)

-Every question that is asked, when it was asked, and who answered it (but no one actually does it).

-How many people we had to deny a room or resource (I actually don't mind recording this, because it gives the managers a good sense of what they need to buy).

You'd base the value of the mineral on how much energy you can extract from it using the mainstream technology. For example, you can't say that a two pound rock has 25 billion kilowatt hours of energy in it (calculated with E = MC^2), because no one has a technique for extracting all of the energy from an ordinary rock.

Basically, this is just like the current system except the government can't print money unless we produce enough energy (or have enough oil hoarded, which we do) to back the amount of currency in circulation.

Kids don't have religions in the adult sense of the world. But they do have axioms and value systems that are analogous to religious beliefs. For example, kids will say "Fair is fair" or "Mommy said" as justifications. These are the sorts of axioms that little kids use when they try to reason through problems.

Work has gotten a lot nicer. Right now I work part time at the library, and I might do 30 minutes of real work in a 4 hour shift. Fast food and customer service jobs are considerably worse, but there still are cushy jobs.

The biggest threat to those cushy jobs is the evil business strategy known as six sigma, where businesses are supposed to write down every single thing that happens. It makes easy clerical work a pain (but, to be fair, it does work).

At 3/1/09 09:05 PM, Memorize wrote:

How exactly does that work?

The rich have more money saved. So if inflation hits, the people who are going to be the least affected are the rich and wealthy due their class.

I don't think that's true. Let's say we have a middle class man, Bob, who has a $100,000 home loan, and a rich man who owns that home loan. If we double the amount of currency in circulation, than Bob only owes $50,000 and the rich man only owns a $50,000 loan. The people who are in debt get relief.

Point being: Currency may be devalued, but they can still buy a lot of crap.

Inflation hits the poor the hardest. People who could hardly afford anything then become even more broke, while the middle class becomes destroyed.

How the hell does inflation benefit the middle class?

Inflation means both rising prices and rising salaries.

At 3/1/09 04:39 PM, SolInvictus wrote:

At 2/28/09 11:06 PM, poxpower wrote: 1. Religion is inherently built to convert others. The religious cannot, by definition, "live and let live". The only way a religion can thrive is if they convert other people.

Hinduism disagrees.

Actually, the only major religions that do try to convert people are Christianity and Islam (I'm not sure about Buddhism).

In general inflation is good for the middle class because it devalues the savings of the upper class and reduces the value of the common person's debt.

At 3/1/09 02:13 PM, Tancrisism wrote: I've never understood the concept of criticizing for the sake of criticizing. It seems to me that Fox does it because they know who their clientele are and they have to pay the bills.

There needs to be a con side so that the people don't just get endless praise of Obama.

Think of it as a court case. Yes, the defense attorneys might just be defending a guilty client because they want the money. But we need defense attorneys, even for the defense of clients which we know are guilty, to ensure that the judge has access to all of the arguments.

If the people are sane and capable, they will assimilate the pro and con cases and build a position.

Give me one example. I don't recall "socialism" killing anybody, I seem to remember totalitarian dictators killing people. Not the economic system.

The people killed in the great leap forward (under Mao) were the direct result of poor centralized planning, and Hitler's holocaust was part of a large program of persecuting the country's wealthy capitalist class (namely, the Jewish people). The reason why the Nazi's persecuted the Jewish people was because they were largely bankers and business owners.

In a free market, capitalist society neither of those atrocities could have happened.

At 3/1/09 01:27 AM, poxpower wrote:

Except we live in bizzaro world and some people think that "God did it" is an actual explanation :o

How dumb would someone have to be to actually think that saying "It's because God made this" is a satisfactory final explanation?

You have to have axioms at some point. I think that "God does things" is a strange axiom, but in an objective sense I don't see it as any more valid than "Whatever allows us to make stuff is true" or "Whatever allows us to reproduce is true".

At 2/28/09 03:39 PM, Tancrisism wrote: Or is Fox News getting desperate?

Honestly I think it's a good thing that there are people who are criticizing Obama. I voted for him, and I think that he has many good ideas, but we need people opposing him every step of the way to make sure that he doesn't let his plans get too extreme or unreasonable.

It's strange that the socialist scare is still active.

Given that socialism has killed more people than any other ideology, event, or world view in all of human history, I don't think that we're wrong to distrust it. But with that said, socialism does not necessarily lead to destruction (see Scandinavia), so we should be willing to keep an open mind.

At 2/27/09 10:42 PM, poxpower wrote:

haha I really wouldn't call that graph "atheists are bunched into lots of stupid and lots of smart and little in between" like you interpreted.
Aside from that first little hump, the curve goes straight down.

Fair enough, but if you were to go left of that hump (into lower intelligence, since I'm pretty sure illiterate people didn't do the GSS) it might keep going up.

You seemed to say that it was somehow equal on both sides, but there's a huge trend for intelligence being in relation to thinking the bible is bullcrap.

This graph is slightly clearer, probably because there are people who don't like the bible but aren't atheists.

At 2/27/09 04:24 PM, Christopherr wrote: Using monkeys to represent a politician viewed by the author as unintelligent is not a new thing. I can't source anyone, but over the years I've seen plenty of white people portrayed as primates in political cartoons. It's not racist, it's just making a connection between what is viewed as the less intelligent evolutionary ancestors of humans and certain humans.

It's a pretty nasty to thing to say to someone in any case. I'm honestly pretty disappointed that it's acceptable to call someone a monkey as long as they're from a certain ethnic group.

At 2/27/09 06:51 PM, poxpower wrote:

A church is by definition not legit in the USA.
They regulate themselves. You can be anyone, and I mean ANYONE and be at the head of a congregation / cult.

Well, when I say legit I mean major division that's been around for a while. Lutherans, Methodists, Catholics, etc.

A lot of people with lots of education and very little education.

Never heard of that, where are you stats?

Data from the GSS, variables are view of bible and score on wordsum vocabulary test.

At 2/27/09 03:35 PM, poxpower wrote: It strikes me that when they invite atheists to talk on tv shows/ news, they always have to go for some academic with an "education" and "degrees" and they oppose their views with some pastor from a hick town with a high school diploma ( B average).

I'm pretty sure that pastors have to go to seminary for any sort of legit church. In fact, my most recent pastor was a brain surgeon before he went to seminary (not saying this is typical, but still).

Like, if you're a "reverend", in the news circle, that makes you a brilliant person and an expert. But as we know, that most likely means you have an extra crust of dumb coating the insides of your skull.

I don't see reverends as brilliant. Really the most important skill a reverend needs is speaking ability.

So I think it's high time that the news stop being so unfair to the religious communities. Why keep opposing the views of these intellectual peons with some academic's take on reality? They should level the playing field from now on and only invite atheists with a similar level of education / intellect.
Actors, college freshmen, rebellious teenagers ( with piercings ), hippies, geriatrics etc.

They should simply take whoever best represents the community. Anything else would be intellectually dishonest.

Why keep pitting morons with a degree in "theology" from Liberty University with Biologists, Astrophysicists and chemists?

Or they could find biochemists who are religious (yes, they exist).

I think that's a real good strategy.

What do you think?

If you actually look at the education of atheists, you see a bimodal distribution. A lot of people with lots of education and very little education.

At 2/27/09 02:07 PM, AntiangelicAngel wrote: Saying "I'm against embryonic stem cell research because [insert other type of stem cell here] is safer and shows more potential" is like saying "I'm against technical colleges because we should build more universities because they offer better education."

Not really, because technical schools offer a strong education for certain people in certain fields.