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At 8/16/06 02:20 PM, TwO_FaCeD_PaRaNoID wrote: Creationists calculate the beginning of the earth at around 5000 BC. THat is the time when men started to live together in cities and started practicing Agriculture.

To my knowledge, they usually calculate it at around 4,000 BC, not 5K. Regardless, that is not the time when men began organizing into stationary settlements and agriculture began. The earliest distinctive agriculture began at around 9,500 BC, and by 8,000 BC it was a strong practice in the peninsula that is now Turkey. By 7,000 BC agriculture was widespread in Mesopotamia, where many of the earliest civilizations were born.

Source: Ancient Agriculture

The truth is simple: the Creationists are wrong about the age of Earth. Agricultural civilizations were firmly in place thousands of years before Creationists claim the Earth even existed. For tens of thousands of years before that, nomadic civilizations of hunter-gatherers existed.

Also, I ask the Creationists, do you find it odd that the Jewish faith was not the first religion? If God played such a powerful role in the earliest history of men, wouldn't the truth about him have been passed down since the very first? Why was Abraham the first (supposed) Jew, not Adam (and progeny)?

At 8/16/06 06:19 PM, PenguinTamer wrote: I would. If she was too irresponsible, her kid shouldn't be killed. But if for example she was raped and becae pregnant, THEN I think she can get rid of it.

What about if she knew she couldn't raise the child? For example, what if an impoverished couple expected a stable life for awhile, so the woman became pregnant. Then the father was murdered in the crossfire of a gang shooting. Should she have the option of aborting the baby, when she has no money, no job, no spouse, and may not want the constant reminder of her grief, or for the child to have no father?

At 8/15/06 08:08 PM, Pwnage_In_A_Can wrote: ID is neither religious nor scientific, it is just a theory or belief.

"Theory" is a scientifically defined word. Intelligent Design has no proof whatsoever, which means it is not a theory at all.

Most people who hear of ID immediately understand that it is an attempt by Christian organizations to "validate" religion by introducing it into the scientific world. That obvious link makes ID religious.

If something requires facts to be taught in science class then macro and abiogenesis could not be taught. Since no one has ever seen these two aspects of evolution in progress and only theorized them.

You seem to be confusing "direct observation" and "factual evidence." You don't have to directly witness something to have factual evidence that strongly supports it. By the way, macro-evolution does actually have direct observational evidence, as evolution can progress at a different rate in different species and environments, which has allowed scientists to witness it in action.

Abiogenesis on the other hand is mostly an educated guess at this point. Little else makes sense, and a fair amount of evidence supports it. However, it has yet to be proven thoroughly as we haven't figured out what actually occurred yet.

For example, no one's ever seen a fish turn into an amphibious animal

Actually, through fossil series, you can actually see a fish turn into an amphibian. What you can't forget, though, is that a single individual never goes through the changes seen in evolution; it is always a long series of individuals, just like the fossils.

When the amount of violence reaches the point where it would be considered sick and demented in real life, then it is too much in a video game.

For example, in GTA, you shoot people with guns. That can be very violent, but it remains reasonable.

On the other end would be something like the BTK murders, where victims where slowly strangled while being assaulted (and raped?), and the nooses were repeatedly loosened to extend the torture, then the victims were killed. If anything of that sort showed up in a video game, it would be going way too far and should be banned outright from every store. Something like that goes beyond clean violence.

In general, the following things signal something that goes too far:
1. Torture
2. Killing purely for the pleasure of watching the victim die
3. Realistic and detailed wounds, injuries, and deaths
4. Prolonged painful deaths (similar to torture)

As others have mentioned, the answer is obvious: evolution in Science classes, and creationism in broad-religious learning classes, possibly philosophy, and definately in church.

It's simple, and only an idiot or a manipulative, single-issue propagandist would argue otherwise.

At 8/15/06 08:25 AM, White_hole wrote: Im not saying they run our lives now, but we are dependent on them and in future I can only see that dependence increase.

But the point is that machines don't even have the potential to cause any problems yet. How can they haven "risen" at all if we have yet to even program the critical danger of intelligence into them? They are mindless tools controlled entirely by physics and human-programmed pathways. Until such time as they become anything different, worrying about them "revolting" is paranoid and pointless.

At 8/15/06 04:19 AM, code_name wrote: why do most people take religion as the deafult answer to the universe. I mean it makes less sense and science has more proofs.

Religion is the default answer because almost everyone has been brainwashed from childhood into believing in religion. "Faith" is another way of saying "programmed acceptance" of a religion.

At 8/15/06 01:06 AM, abacacus wrote: i define intelligence as awarness and electric shcks arnt basic stimuli, basic stimuli is noise and contact.

If you knew even the slightest thing about Biology, you would know that noise and contact are electric shocks. Just because you have organs to convert pressure differentials into electrical charges (which then travel along your nervous system) doesn't make the stimuli any different.

and how am i hiding behing the word intelligence? do big words confuse you? let me simplify:
IT DOS NOT KNOW IT ECSIST'S YET YOU DUMBFUCK!

First of all, you really do suck at spelling. But anyways, you are hiding behind intelligence by using it to "prove" that fetal babies are equivalent to full-humans, even though you have no way to show that fetal babies are actually in any way intelligent. By making what is essentially an uncounterable claim (because "intelligent" is a very ambiguous, variable word) you attempt to justify your reasoning, even though your method is completely flawed.

Maybe you just don't understand the subleties and nuances of language. Sorry for overestimating your capabilities in understanding what you think, say, and claim.

At 8/15/06 12:26 AM, abacacus wrote: a fetus is intelligent life and is human when it can respond to basic stimuli, you know, they start to kick and all that, thats my limit. thats murder of an intelligent creature and should be illegal to abort at or after that satge. probably 4-7 monthes, i dunno....

"Intelligent"? We can't even define that word, let alone use it as a justification for forcing events upon another person. You can not hide behind that baseless claim.

How does responding to "basic stimuli" make you human? Even a single hand, completely detached from a body, will respond to basic stimuli in the form of electrical shocks, and will clench and unclench muscles in response. Does that make the dead, severed hand human? Not even close.

Fetal babies are mechanically no different than a hand. Without its host body, neither will survive. Both respond to "basic stimuli". Both are made of the same things. And each individual should have the right to opt for a surgical removal of the hand or fetal baby if they believe it will cause them harm (or some other strong justification).

Once a baby has detached from the umbilical cord of the mother, it is an independent being that will soon come into sentience as it develops means to comprehend the world around it. At that point, a "late" abortion is murder. Also, involuntary abortions are murder, in the same way that chopping another person's hand off is attempted murder or battery.

You're not human until you are your own individual.

At 8/14/06 09:52 PM, -Yayer- wrote: Its an artificial life and we should not toy with Gods creatist creations...us.

And when the hell did God ever say we shouldn't create things? Why is something unethical because a fictional pretense of an authority might be overshadowed by the powers of mankind, and because we might find we no longer need our myths and bedtime stories anymore?

At 8/14/06 08:11 PM, bradford1 wrote: The liquids rule sucks. I was in Canada when the policy was passed, which means I had to eat shit from airport security to get back home.

You could have just stuck the liquids in your suitcase and been done with it. At least in my area, they only care about carry-on luggage. You don't have to bring a crapload of makeup with you, or Napa Valley wine, or whatever liquid. Just stick it in your suitcase and get it back at the end of the flight.

Who allows machines to run their lives? So a calendar on your computer tells you what to do today. Who put that information on there? You (or some other human). Machines play no role in determining the direction of our lives, with the exception of machinery failing and causing damage in the process.

Machines have always be tools. They are physical extensions of the human minds that created and programmed them. The only work machines do is work humans instruct them to do-- including specific instructions of exactly how to do it.

Machines have not "risen" in any sense. They are nothing more than tools, and until such time as "sentient" robots are designed, machines can't even be considered as an opposing force in any sense. Even then, the "sentient" robots may still be just highly complex extensions of the programmer that seem intelligent, but in fact are not.

No one ever has the right to hate another. Hatred is a cancer and a stain that comes from within a person, and is never something that we can truly accept. No matter how justified, hatred is unacceptable, especially generalized hatred.

For example, why should a black person who may have been descended from slaves have the right to hate "all" white peoples, even though, for example, one of the people he hates is a second-generation Irish immigrant. They had nothing to do with American slavery, so why would anyone have the right to hate him for it?

Generalizations, which are oh so common with hatred and bigotry, must be eliminated. Forgiveness and rational solutions must be accepted.

According to a recent report I read in the newspaper, military experts estimate that the total A.Q. (terrorist) forces have been reduced by 60% since the War on Terror began, even counting all the new recruits, and the organizational structure has been shattered.

I call that progress. Sorry, no links. :/

Israel has no choice in the matter. Considering their position as "invading foreigners" in the minds of Arabic countries, and their precarious position and strength while surrounded by enemies, Israel must act to head off increasing threats before they occur, and act swiftly when they attack.

The threat posed by Hezbollah, along with Syrian and Iranian troops assisting them, which has been building up in southern Lebanon unhindered for decades is too dangerous for Israel to allow. This is a life and death game for Israel as a country, and also as a unified people and religion.

America is fighting to eradicate an ideology which poses a significant threat to our safety because fanatics won't stay in the craphole which they created for themsleves. If Islamic Fundamentalists would just hate in their own little holes, America wouldn't be bothering them. However, terrorists have hit us at home and this is no longer a game that America can afford to just wait out.

With respect to Israel, both America and Britain are stuck supporting Israel because they created the country. We will try to preserve peace, but Israel is fighting to defend itself. With the most recent conflict, the United States has tried to calm things down, but has otherwise stayed out of it.

I question the sample size of that survey. Out of a country of approximately 300,000,000 people, they asked 1,500 or so this survey. I do not consider 1 subject per 200,000 people a particularly accurate sample size. Considering how greatly cultural ideals, etc. vary over the width and breadth of the United States, local ideologies could easily have skewed the results.

For comparison, Iceland has a population of roughly 300,000 people. 500 were polled, which is one subject per 600 people.

Iceland = 1 in 600 polled = 0.17% of the population
United States = 1 in 200,000 polled = 0.000005% of the population

The polling in Iceland was more than 300 times more accurate than the polling in the United States. Considering the cultural and ideological variations throughout larger countries, this difference in accuracy and the small overall sampling size makes the survey effectively unreliable and worthless.

At 8/9/06 12:20 AM, LavaTemplar wrote: ...Notice the difference between the spike in the middle ages and the one projected for now

"projected"? Projections don't mean anything for something we don't even half-understand yet. Your cited graph isn't entirely accurate. The post-2000 section is not correct, as it is not consistent with recently reported data.

At 8/8/06 06:26 PM, RedScorpion wrote: Good picture.

RedScorpion, what your picture fails to show is that the average estimated global temperate of the late 1200s and early 1300s was the same as the 1980s.

Another thing your graph fails to show is that humanity was plagued by a well-documented cool period named the "Little Ice Age" for many centuries during the middle portion of the second millenium. 80% of the obvserved "global warming" is simply a return to the naturally warm temperates of the 1300s and earlier.

The current average temperature is only about 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celcius warmer than earlier known peak temperatures, and since 1995, the average global temperature appears to have dropped approximately 0.05 degrees Celcius.

Sorry, but in your arguments against Global Warming, you made one major mistake: local weather and information does not necessarily reflect global trends.

In fact, the majority of the warming from "Global Warming" is happening at the higher latitudes, at the tundra and ice. The closer you live to the equator, the less your actual average temperature has changed.

Most of the hullabaloo about Global Warming is just hot air and propaganda. We don't understand what will change, why it is changing, how much of an effect humans are actually having, how to counteract the warming, whether we should fight against it yet, and the likely extent and strength of this warming spell.

We're not even sure if the warming has anything to do with us, or if it is even worth our time to fight against it. Global Warming is simply a political issue at the moment, a means to influence voters, not something we can consider fully, or deal with.

At 7/28/06 09:41 AM, TonioMiguel wrote: If scientists would start to understand the basis of science an ever changing basis of observations that can be fact one day and fallacy the other...

Tonio, you are completely wrong. Observations never change from fact to fallacy; a few were fallacy all along, but true observations remain true forever. It is only explanations which humans apply to those observations which may change, and explanations are rarely changed or updated once an acceptable version has been produced. Science is not a fickle subject, and it is always based around finding the single truth and eliminating false explanations.

Religion, on the other hand, is all about opinion, and actually scorns proof. Religion often seems to conflict with Science because, by necessity, all but a couple religions must be false because religious ideas conflict with one another. For that reason, Scientists are force to view all religions as false, or at least seperate them from the substantive world which Science can accurately describe and explain.

Religion and Science relate in the same way as a Psychic and a Forensics Investigator working on the same case might. It's opinion and lies, against facts and educated guesses.

He's obviously not evil, and this can only deteriorate into a flame fest.

Also, there is an Official Bush Thread already on this forum, so this post should probably be there, not out here.

At 7/27/06 09:12 AM, Makaio wrote: No actually your math, or your information is flawed.
The Creationists believe the earth was created no longer than 6000 years ago,

What Thomas Aquinas (the Saint who "calculated" that number) didn't know is that there are actually African tribes which have an oral history and a calendar-year that is older than 6,000 years. When ancient African tribes are at 7,000 years and counting, 6,000 sounds bit unrealistic. 6,000 is simply wrong, and Thomas Aquinas was simply a fool who did not understand logic.

At 7/26/06 01:23 PM, JohnStephens wrote: Abortions are sins it is killing something that can become a human being and they do it because they dont want to have a child. Man are those people idiots.

Your God, who calls abortion a sin, has for thousands of years caused the deaths of 30% or more of children before they reach the age of 1 year. Giving hope and a future to a new life, then brutally destroying all of that by killing the child is a far worse sin. Ending a life before it even starts, especially one which may destroy the lives of two adults and never have a pleasant future itself, is humane compared to the horrors committed by God.

It is only in recent years that humans have "beaten" God and reduced the death rate of newborns to nearly 0% in Western (modern) civilization. When parents know they can never give a baby the life it truly deserves, "killing" the baby before it is even truly alive is far more humane than allowing it to live long enough to understand and love life, then murdering it as God used to do and continues to do in poorer countries.

Man, your God sure is a hypocrite.

Lightning rods aren't actually useful or necessary in many circumstances. For example, in my neighborhood, there are hundreds of trees standing far above the houses. A lightning rod is entirely pointless.

Lightning rods aren't very expensive, nor are they hard to install if you want to add one. It's simply a matter of developers cutting costs, lack of public interest, and aesthetics.

At 7/22/06 11:51 PM, Flashy_Jack wrote: Illegal immigration is happening most at our southern border, not to our North.
We have a completely open border with Canada, not Mexico.

Canada doesn't have a massively corrupt government that refuses to crack down on their own crime, poverty, etc. problems. In fact, Canada actually tries to help us in that respect, catching as many criminals and smugglers as they can before any can even cross the border. American police can rely on Canadian police to assist us in stopping dangerous criminals, and Canada is a good enough country that few people wish to sneak into the United States.

Plus, a majority of Americans like Canada.

Mexico, on the other hand, does nothing of the sort. They have a completely open border on the south to all the drug-lord countries of South America, they have a corrupt and ineffective government, and that government refuses to try to help us clean up their scum before it reaches us. The Mexican government actually works against our law enforcement at times, and they do nothing about their extremely dangerous criminal organizations.

Mexico is such a horrible country at this point, relatively, that millions of Mexican citizens are breaking US laws and putting themselves in unreasonable danger to escape.

If Mexico was not such a scum bucket overall, then our north border might be more dangerous than our south-- but Mexico is, so our southern border is the more dangerous one.

If you do not obey our laws from the get-go, you shouldn't be in our country.

I consider the issue with illegal immigration fairly simple:

Swarms of poverty-stricken people enter our country without obeying our rules, and make themselves extremely vulnerable to every form of predator that exists in our country. Most of the money they earn (while breaking our rules) is sent out of our country.

If these people simply followed our rules, there would not be a problem. However, we must enforce our laws. And, if you hadn't noticed, they are called illegal immigrants for a reason. Either they follow our rules or they need to leave.

However, regardless of how we deal with illegal immigrants, we must crack down on the border. With all of our concern about terrorist attacks, the war on drugs, and diseases entering our country, why do we have a completly open border? Smugglers and criminals are a massive problem along most of the border, especially drug lords and human smugglers. We must clean up the border for the sake of all our laws; because regardless of what you think of the poor people sneaking into our country, we can not accept weapons smugglers, drug lords, etc. to enter our country freely.

At 7/22/06 07:21 PM, PwnageInACan wrote: Hell, while we're on the subject of paradoxes what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

The unstoppable force bounces off of the immovable object, proceeding un-slowed in a new direction. The unstoppable force has not been stopped, just redirected, and the immovable object has not moved.

Duh. It's like throwing a tennis ball at a brick wall.

At 7/13/06 06:30 AM, natwel wrote: I think you have a point there, thousands of years ago we were very pure and spiritual, e.g. aztec, ancient egypt, greek and roman gods.

There is a great gap between religion and spiritual development. When we rely on books and priests to explain to us our own spirituality, we are not truly developing at all. Instead, we become like sheep spiritually, to be herded and controlled by ancient, and likely false, books and myths.

True spirituality can only be developed outside of religion and the great frameworks humans have created to deceive ourselves into a peaceful existance. Blind faith is not true spirituality; it is an illusion you choose to believe to allay your fears of death and pain.

True spirituality and insight is found not through ancient books and speakers, but within your own mind and heart, and out in the world of experiences. When you come to understand those things which scare you, and which truly set you to trembling, then you can seek to conquer those fears and achieve a real peace.

Death. It is a frightful end, a sudden blade cutting off your life. All of your loose ends, all of your friends, everything you have ever known is lost. Many respond to the innate fear of death by placing their faith in an insubstantial "afterlife." Rather than facing death itself, those people instead believe that life never ends, so death never actually happens to them. But that is not defeating death, that is running from it.

What everyone must come to realize is that an end is not necessarily a horrible thing. No matter the method, death is peace of one sort or another. Oblivion or afterlife, you have still finsihed your time on Earth and there is nothing more for you to worry about. Death is exactly like the gateway into sleep, but it is a peaceful dream or dreamless rest, not a nightmare of any sort or a gnawing yearning for wakefulness. Are you afraid to sleep at night, fearing that you will be shut off from the day and life?

However, never forget that even in sleeping, you savor the joy of wakefulness. Death is not something to fear, but neither is it something to embrace or hasten. Do not sleep until the night is upon you, but do not fear sleep when it arrives.

Final Statements/Summary: If you wish to become spiritual, truly spiritual, you must face reality and life head-on. Do not accept the promises of religion to escape your fears. You must meet those fears and defeat them, regardless of your method, even if you eventually return to those same religions with a deeper faith. When you return, you will know that you truly found an answer in faith, rather than using faith as a blinder to hide your fears from sight.

The Romanticists are exactly like the blind religious in this sense. Looking to the past and nature is not a spiritual thing in and of itself. You must see the truth of the past-- and humanity's progress --not just the nostalgic moments of fictional histories. Life is never as grand as the stories describe it, so do not blindly accept the past as a wonderful place simply because the present appears boring or empty. In truth, the past is no different from the present except when viewed with ignorance.

Nature is similar. Although it may hint of deep secrets and a peaceful world, what you see at first glance is never as it truly exists. The world of humans exists exactly like the world of nature, but the great size of nature often suggests a bigger picture that simply does not exist as you imagine it. A tranquil forest during twilight may calm you heart when a city is buzzing with traffic, but you are missing the noisome bustle of animal commuters soon after the sun sets. What do you find in toads and bees that you can not find or make in a city?

Do you hear a bird song? Where is the difference between that and the drunkard singing to women in a bar? Both seek the same effect: mates. One only sounds better you because you can not understand the intent and message; to put it bluntly, you are ignorant of the true situation. The same is true for almost every aspect of nature and humanity.

The past and wilderness provide what you seek simply because ignorance clouds your vision. It is not an ignorance to be condemned because few or no humans ever truly see those things clearly. However, that does not excuse a misguided faith in incomplete things. The only truly complete thing is your own mind, and what you gather from life. Seek those things, not a fanciful "history" story or sense-filling, but ultimately incomplete, look at nature.

End.

I would point to three main reasons which cause the negative focus on homosexual men instead of homosexual women.

1. Anal sex, an act closely tied with gay male sex, is simply disgusting and offensive to many people. Regardless of whether it is a man and a woman, or a man and a man, anal sex is disgusting to a large portion of the population. In this sense, people react negatively to the "unnatural" actions of gay males.

However, the same is not true for gay females. The classic image of gay males may be anal sex, but the classic images of gay females is kissing and oral sex. Neither of those are "unnatural" because both are considered common actions. Males may condone lesbians because they do not disagree with oral sex on a female, or kissing a female. Both are natural actions to direct at a female. However, anal sex is not a natural action to direct at a male; quite the opposite is true.

2. Most of the vocal internet posters and political debaters are male. The personal inclinations of each person affect how they view everything. Straight males react negatively to the thought of male-on-male sex simply because they do not find males attractive.

Additionally, the greatest personal violation any male can imagine is involuntary anal sex. It is simply an act that few straight males will condone, voluntary or not. People can never stop their opinions from influencing their political views because that is simply how people work. It is unavoidable.

3. Gay males are the most vocal and aggressive in the media. Through their metrosexual (feminine males) stereotype, gay males assault the core principles of manhood. This offends men, and there is nothing more to it. In all truth, men dominate our political and social spheres at this point in time, so the male opinion will tend to dominate. The gay male sexuality aligns with neither males nor females.

Gay females, however, have been popularized through another form of media, porn. Thus, through "positive" exposure to a very large audience, lesbians have become a sort of fantasy character. Instead of attacking everything it means to be male (or female), the stereotype for lesbians is a sort of sedductress or erotic character who matches up perfectly with the male sentiments in the sex issue.

Due to the somewhat positive stereotype of hot lesbians, and how their sexual actions match perfectly with about 50% of the population, they are much less of an issue for people. Gay men, on the other hand, not only have a stereotype that deeply offends and assaults the ideals of males in general, but they also clash with the natural sentiments involved with anal sex for both genders.

Gay males are in no way similar to anyone else in their primary sexual activities, so gay males are rejected as foreign and disgusting, while gay females are grudgingly accepted as oddballs.

Final Statement: The entire issue is about clashing with popular sentiments. Gay males assault the ideals, stomaches, and sexual desire of the rest of the populace. Gay females agree with the sexual desires of half the population and don't directly offend the other half. Thus gay males are in a sense counter-attacked, while gay females are accepted as oddball members of the populace.

At a certain point, a crime just becomes too heinous and the criminal too vile for the Penal system to rehabilitate the criminal. At that point, punishing the criminal is no longer important. Jails and Prisons are for rehabilitating straying citizens; those who can not possibly be saved are only a danger for as long as they live.

At some point, removing the cancer of a criminal's existance becomes more important than punishing that criminal. No matter how nice vengeance sounds to you, we can never punish someone simply to punish them. When no rehabilitation is ever possible, a person simply must be removed to prevent his or her taint from spreading to all the other saveable people nearby, and to remove any chance that monster might escape into the world again.

Vengeance is a foolish motivation. When we stand no chance of ever saving a criminal, then the wisest thing to do is simply to erase them from our society to forever remove any chance of further taint spreading from that criminal's cancerous heart.