88 Forum Posts by "SilentObserver"
Oh my God I just want to swim in your sea of grease and feel your rolls envelop me. :D
At 9/21/10 01:58 PM, Jercurpac wrote:
I hate birthday parties.
Why is it so hard for everybody to love everybody?
... on this, the day of the birth of BlindShoemaker.
In my many years of lurking these forums, I recall someone once saying that a happy birthday thread is the epitome of status in the Newgrounds community. Essentially, it is recognition of outstanding character, driven by a passion for advancing this great website. Perhaps more importantly, it is a realization of something. It is seeing that this world we have right here would not be the same without that individual. Today I'd like to recognize Blindshoemaker as that individual.
While most of my fellow Newgrounders probably don't know him, I certainly do. And I know he'll be supporting this site until Pico 2, Newgrounds Chat, and beyond. Hell, he drove 8 hours to the Baltimore meetup in May, and his Facebook pic has Tom Fulp in it. So happy 20th birthday BlindShoemaker. May you continue to dance with the matador for many years to come!
Larry has rage...LET THE RAGE OF THE BBS FUEL YOUR FISTS LARRY
Pico not really
Rogue Warrior...that game...just sucked.
Bethesda should just stick to making glitchy rpgs
oh God, what a greasy mofo
ARGHHH MY EYES
Hey.
Are you trying to tell us that a President needs to do more than play basketball?
Simply use the classic line "I think you're a really nice person, but we should just be friends."
the angry faic keychain from the NG store!
At 12/13/08 10:39 AM, life wrote: what the fuck? You weren't even with her before, so what's the big deal? you were too slow and she found a much better boyfriend.
yep, that's life.
but hey, you're still in high school. those relationships are more like learning experiences anyway.
At 12/4/08 08:41 PM, Strength wrote: so wait which one has the dick.
they both are full-flegged, 100% women
if there were two girls who we're willing to go out with you, both of equal hotness, one knows stoichiometry and the other one doesn't, which would you rather date?
both is not an answer
If you're going to convince anyone of anything, you'll need to do it in terms of their beliefs and desires, not your own. That's why we bait fish with worms, not money, right? Ask your mom why she wants you to go to Sunday service twice. When she answers, say that you don't blame her one iota for feeling that way, and that you would feel the same way if you were in her position. Be sympathetic and understanding when you're trying to win someone to your way of thinking. It goes a long way.
From there, match up the motive for her making you go to the night service with what you want. For example, if she says she just wants you to have the extra moral teaching or fellowship, you might say that having more study time at home would be useful for your grades to get into a good college, which will lead to a good job, that you might serve God better. Say that the sermons are great, but that you would be able to serve God better if they were balanced with, and not taking away from, your studies. Catch mah drift?
Ah, but perhaps instead of hating the twilight series, we could use it to better our understanding of the female mind? Dunno about you guys, but I'd really like to know why women are so attracted to these books.
Maybe they like the idea of getting caught up in a twisted adventure by some bloodthirsty vampire? Who knows.
I guess it depends if you're happy with where you live now. Like you said, you'd pretty much be giving up your friends and so much more that's familiar to you. How much is all that worth to you?
Also, London's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. It was pretty crowded, and the weather (cloudiness and frequent rainfall) got depressing since I wasn't used to it.
One more thing. It is the information age. You can live in the States and have a video chat with your dad across the Atlantic. Pretty sweet. It doesn't compare to seeing him in person, but it certainly lets you stay in touch.
I know you can't prove God 100% right or wrong. If He exists, He's not a part of the physical universe. I just want to get some arguments as to why the existence of a god is unlikely.
I'm looking for arguments such as the unfairness or injustice in the world or evolution offering the better explanation to the universe.
Things along those lines.
I
Hello fellow Newgrounders!
I just got an assignment from school today to deliver a persuasive speech come Monday.
Even though I go to a Christian school, I thought I would try to present a solid case against God. You see, people who hang out with those of the same beliefs all the time tend to get dogmatic.
That's where you guys can help me, seing as how God's existence such a popular topic here.
If you guys could post messages or links to sites with good, sound arguments against God, it would be much appreciated.
In response to the original poster:
Good and evil are more than just human inventions.
I do agree that we learn them from parents, teachers, and books just as we learn everything else. But we can't assume that everything we learn are human inventions.
For example, most of us have learned mathematics in school. But surely it does not follow that the core principles of mathematics are a human invention - something we could have made differently had we liked? I place right and wrong in the same category as mathematics.
When theologians maintain that God is omnipotent, they mean that he can bring about any state of affairs; whereas the paradox rests on taking omnipotent to mean "able to make any sentence true".
Most people understand "omnipotence" to mean omnipotence with respect to actions which are not logically contradictory, a position known as Essential Omnipotence. Using this definition avoids the paradox. An essentially omnipotent being would be able to lift stones, create the universe, etc, but would not be able to violate his own laws or create square circles.
We are not in any way claiming that he can make oxymoronic sentences true (or, for that matter, make tautological sentences false), but only that he can bring about any conceivable state of affairs.
No philosopher of any theological stripe takes the paradox at all seriously.
So what we're saying is that evolution is adequate to explain morality. At least we have come to an agreement that there is a morality that governs what we do. We just differ on how morality developed and whether it's relative or absolute. Well, I have a question that can't be answered by any evolutionary assessment of ethics. Why ought I be moral tomorrow?
More specifically, the question that needs to be answered is "Why shouldn't a human being be selfish?" The evolutionary answer is that if we're selfish, we hurt the group. That answer, though, presumes another moral value: We ought to be concerned about the welfare of the group. Why should that concern us? Well, because if the group doesn't survive, then the species doesn't survive. But why should I care about the survival of the species?
All these responses meant to explain morality ultimately depend on some prior moral notion to hold them together. It's impossible to explain, on an evolutionary view of things, why I should not be selfish, or steal, or rape, or even kill tomorrow without smuggling morality into the answer.
Here's the point. Evolution may be an explanation for the existence of conduct that we choose to call moral, but it gives no explanation of why I should obey any moral rules in the future.
At 9/4/06 11:39 AM, Togukawa wrote: Because we don't understand God, so how can we explain anything by including him in the explanation.
you can't see whether something is created by a designer, or through 'randomness'.
Whoops, forgot to include this in my last post. A few points.
First, just because we don't understand something doesn't mean it doesn't work. Chances are, you eat food every day without knowing exactly how it nourishes you, yet it does nourish you. Also an interesting point, you said yourself that we don't fully understand the theory of evolution, but you probably use it to explain the origin of life. There's nothing wrong with that.
Second, you're right on the point that we can't say with absolute certainty that the universe was random or designed. And I agree with you. No real scientist can say for sure based on observable phenomenon. However, I can't go on to my next point until a true morality is realized.
Of course, we feel a desire to help others - for the progression of the group, and no doubt that desire is due to the herd instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not.
Suppose you hear a man crying for help. You will probably feel two desires - one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the imuplse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away.
Now this thing that judges between the two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The moral law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.
At 9/4/06 05:40 AM, Togukawa wrote: The reason why all those cultures are similar in moral system, is because of indeed, imagine a culture where it was brave to run away. This culture will get its ass handed to it in battle by another culture, and it will be the other that that wins and passes on its moral systems. Basically, evolution and survival of the fittest on cultural level :)
You see, survival of the fittest, of course, entails self-preservation. From evolution's standpoint, the smart thing for you to do would be to run away in battle - so that you preserve yourself and pass on your genes. The instinct for self-preservation is much stronger than the instinct to help others. Point is: if our morality is the result of evolution, it would be considered fine to run away in battle. If our morality is the result of evolution, it would be considered fine not to help a man who was drowning - it's just survival of the fittest. And that's nonsense.
Design requires a designer, no doubt about that, but how do you know the world is designed? You can make a computer program splurt random blots of ink on a paper, and you'll get a post modern work of art. It wasn't designed, it's just the result of randomness (although of course there is no such thing as true random when dealing with computers).
Personally if you look at all the links in evolution we have discovered so far, with all the similarities in DNA, and add to that that the world has had a few billion years to develop, I don't find it that hard to accept that humans are formed through evolution, because it isn't complete randomness. It'slike a path that's constantly forking, and when you take a wrong turn you die. Have enough people start the path, and eventually someone will get at the end.
Well, first of all, post modern "art" isn't art at all. Rembrandt is art.
Obviously, you're taking the materialist view. You believe that matter and space just happen to exist, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, has just happened, by some sort of fluke, to produce creatures like ourselves who are able to think. By one chance in a thousand, something hit our sun and made it produce the planets; and by another thousandth chance the chemicals necessary for life, and the right temperature, occurred on one of these planets, and so some of the matter on this earth came alive; and then, by a very long series of chances, the living creatures developed into things like us.
I take the view that behind the universe is a mind that is conscious, has purpose, and prefers one thing to another. And on that view created the universe, partly for purposes unknown, but partly to produce creatures like ourselves - to the extent of having minds. Einstein said, "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings." He didn't believe in a personal God, but he understood the remarkable design and order of the cosmos.
These two views have been argued wherever there are thinking men.
But please don't think about this as a scientific question. If there is a mind behind the universe, it will have to remain unknown altogether, or make itself known in a different way. External observation cannot find God in this universe any more than you could find an architect as one of the panels in a house.
Of course evolution is still something we don't know that much about, and a lot of things still need explaining, but we're making progress.
Even if science knew every single thing in the whole universe, the questions "Why is there a universe?" "Why does it go on as it does?" and "Has it any meaning?" will still be present.
Hehe complex indeed... Correct me if I'm wrong here. So you're saying that our morality is a direct result of our ability to empathize - being able to experience the emotions and experiences of one another. Point being, there is no absolute morality - it's simply relative to upbringing and outside influences.
I'm pushing my perception about morality, and I disagree in 2 senses.
First, the core morality does not change; it is simply about matter of fact. I'd better explain myself... About three hundred years ago, people in England were putting witches to death. The reason we do not execute witches today is that we do not believe in such things. If we really did believe, as our outside influences would have it, that there were such people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbors or drive them mad or bring bad weather - surely we would agree that these quislings deserved punishment. There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.
Second, if you took the trouble to compare the moral teachings of the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans, it will really strike you to know how very like they are to each other and to our own, despite the different cultures and time periods. There are few differences, but nothing of a total difference, you see. Try to imagine a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing those who were kindest to him. May as well try to imagine a country where two and two make five.
Just 2 more things:
We do have the abilty to empathize with others, but I do not see how that leads to choosing right over wrong. As social creatures, we are born with a sort of herd instict, so that we operate as a group. Because of this herd instinct, we have empathy. But on the other hand, as we agreed before, all men are born with an instinct to be first - the most important. The latter is obviously the stronger instict. You probably want to be safe much more than you want to help the man who is drowning. I am saying that the moral law tells you to help anyway. We feel it is our duty to stimulate this herd instinct above self-preservation, getting up steam from our empathy and pity, so as to do the right thing. But clearly, we are not acting from the herd instict itself when we set about making it stronger. "Your herd instinct is asleep. Wake it up," cannot itself be the herd instinct.
And, yes, I do believe that God had a part in evolution's progress. I went to the practical conclusion that design requires a designer.
At 9/2/06 07:40 PM, Son_of_Heaven wrote: Has it never occured to you that human experience ultimately determines what we deel is right or wrong? Human mortality is the product of both experience and influence. The knowledge we gather from science, religion and personal experiences shape our own morality.
Does a new born child know what is right and wrong? Of course not. There is no deity to program into its mind what he/she can and can't do, only through trial and error can he/she know that. As the child grows, he/she will absorb new ideas and information, which ultimately governs the way he/she will find morally acceptable.
Of course, I fully agree that we learn Right and Wrong from parents, teachers, friends, and books, just as we learn everything else. I'll explain my point of view later on.
If 'god' truly directly tells us what is right and wrong from birth, why do people still do the wrong thing? why are there murders, assaults, rapes, harm against others? Surely god's influence will be so strong that we will be implied to do the right thing.
Because, as soon as there is a self, there is the possibility of putting yourself first - wanting to be the center - wanting to be God. As free will beings, we can choose Right or Wrong. God cannot force the choice you make.
Laws made by governments are directly influenced by the morals of society. These morals are in turn influenced by our own experiences through both Knowledge and possibly religion, but it provides no solid evidence of the existence of a god. There is no way to seperate what parts of morality stems from religions and what stems from knowledge. It is a combination of both that governs human morality.
You are saying that the moral law is simply a social convention put into us by education. But there is a misunderstanding here. You must realize that things we learn from parents and teachers are not all necessarily human inventions.
I'll give an illustration. We learn the multiplication table from school, parents, etc. A boy who grew up on a desert island would not know this table. However, it does not follow that the multiplication table was simply a human convention - something humans could have made differently if they liked.
Right and Wrong belongs to the same class as mathematics for 2 reasons.
First, though there are differences between the moral ideas of one time or country and those of another, the differences are not really very great. You can recognize the same law running through them all - whereas human conventions - such as clothing and rules of the road - can differ to any extent.
Next, when you think about the existing differences between the morality of one people and another, do you ever think of one people is ever better or worse than that of another? If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilized morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality. The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. If Right and Wrong is simply what each nation happens to push upon us, there is no sense in saying that any one nation had ever been more correct in its approval than any other; no sense in saying that the world could ever grow morally better or morally worse.
If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something - a real morality - for them to be true about.
I would like to see more people try to physically and solidly prove the existence of god, because i see no way that is possible. Can someone prove me wrong?
Only when the "real world" fades away and the Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable.
First, any belief that is afraid of science is not worth following.
Second, you won't find anything in the Bible, Torah, or Koran about forcing your beliefs on to others. Just as it would be foolish to say that terrorism has any backing from the Koran, it would be foolish to say that the Inquisition had any Biblical backing.
I believe that the best evidence for God is the reality of Right and Wrong. First, all human beings over the earth have this idea of behaving in a certain way, and can't seem to get rid of it. Second, we break this law. We know Right from Wrong; we break it.
It's a real law which we did not invent and which we know we ought to obey. Surely this does not arouse your suspicions?
Well, our life comes to us moment by moment. One moment disappearing before the next comes along, with room for very little in each. You and I tend to take for granted that this Time series - this arrangement of past, present, and future - is not simply the way life comes to us, but the way all things really exist. We do tend to assume that the universe and God Himself are always moving on from past to future just as we do.
But certainly God is not in time - timeless, if you will. Basically, every moment from the beginning to the end of the world is always the Present from Him.
How about an illustration:
Suppose I am writing a novel. I write "Mary laid down her work; next moment came a knock at the door!" For Mary who has to live in the imaginary time of my story there is no interval between putting down the work and hearing the knock. But I, Mary's maker, do not live in that imaginary time at all. God is not hurried along in the Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel. It's not a perfect illustration, of course, but it offers a glimpse of what I believe to be the truth.
If you picture Time as a straight line, from A, to B, to C, then you must picture God as the page on which that line is drawn. We come to parts of the line one by one: we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from above or outside or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all.
At 8/16/06 04:38 AM, Dante4 wrote: when that unborn baby is inside the mother , the mother calls the shots, if it was possible for the fetus to protest against the mother's decisions then i would be on the other side of the argument, but until then, who the fuck cares about something thats unborn, they have no ties to the fetus. they don't know the fetus, and certainly the fetus isn't inside them which means they cannot call the shots.
Now, you know that 6 million children die each year from starvation. That is a tragedy, of course, and surely you have compassion on those children. Yet you don't directly know them or have ties to them. It is perfectly sane to wish the well-being of people who you may or may not directly know.
Next point, an example. Say someone murders one of your family members during their sleep with an injection of poison that kills quickly and painlessly. You agree that this is murder and that it is wrong, and I agree with you. I would see the murderer get the death penalty. Even if he had said that the victim didn't protest at the time (sleeping) and that the victim didn't know what he/she was missing, it wouldn't change that fact that it was murder. I'm sure you see how this relates to abortion.
