Jebus. Didn’t I just put one of these down? They seem to be coming faster — I’m gonna need more ammo.
TZT
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Jebus. Didn’t I just put one of these down? They seem to be coming faster — I’m gonna need more ammo.
Yes, one cremation, and a whole lot of Xian nonsense would never have happened.
Makes you think…ok, for half a second.
Glen Davidson
What happened to zombie Jesus?
I am trying to have a civil conversation
Yes, we can tell that much at least. However, when a cockroach tries to communicate, even “civilly”, it just tends to look frantic and ridiculous.
I doubt we’ll ever see a metamorphosis from you.
but you’ll continue to amuse with your obviousness to your own condition, we’re sure.
The problem is, you don’t see your own behaviour, which is why you like to victimize yourself.
You know, I’m quite sure I already told it to look up what “projection” means.
you’re fooked in da head, little cockroach.
seriously.
A bit rusty on the double tap, PZ? Perhaps it’s just not working anymore. After all, pretty much everyone keeps doing the double tap dance on Misogyniraj, and it just will not die. It’s stinking up the room, too.
“Civil”, “trying”, “victimize”, “conversation”, and “have” go on the list.
So, no one is interested in a serious discussion on magic mushrooms? I am almost certain thaat Sam Harris has one of his alter egos here wandering on this blog. Not even that alter ego?
Amphiox, I think we can toss the whole of the Oxford Dictionary into the ring.
OK. guess it’s time to leave. Nothing more to be seen here. Same old recycled jokes from the same old badly-trained clowns. If such clowns were in a circus, the circus would go bankrupt. Not just that, people would sue the management for hiring such bad clowns! That’s my closing statement.
with love
Bye Bye
Sad, it is, when to speak of waiting with baited breath is jejune.
<sigh>
(Heh)
(The bait is taken even before it’s proffered!)
—
Of its O so many flounces, this one almost merits adjudgement.
Hm.
<pretends to ponder>
Indices
indignity: 4/10
expletive: 1/10
stramentum: 2/10
exclamation: 0*/10
Flounce index: 0.175**
—
* such as was used was (!) used appropriately.
** almost amazingly, its best is worse than the previous worst!
@rajkumar
Learn to insult people. You suck at it.
Did someone say magic mushrooms? My favorite!
…Eeep. Oh. It’s only raj the misogynist.
Hey buddy. What is it you are trying to accomplish here?
Before you answer, please provide us with a working definition of the word “accomplish,” okay? If you don’t, us clowns will just mock you for being unable to comply with the simplest requirements of civility and courtesy.
jesus will save you all. im praying for you. pz, i love you. i’ve always loved everyone here, despite your assholishness. i seriously love you all. i love everyone else on freethought even tho ur all going to hell if you don’t let god into your hearts. but im confident you will. He is merciful. he will give you chances until you’re on your deathbed. please, keep your hearts open. He will save you.
#14: That’s nice, honey.
Perhaps it’s just not working anymore.
it’s not a zombie, that’s why.
ghoul maybe?
OTOH, cockroach still seems to fit. I’ve seen those things live for hours without their heads.
rey fox, burn in hell.
jesus will save you all
that’s not what he said.
im praying for you
why? don’t you know that’s useless?
i love you. i’ve always loved everyone here
I said the same thing to everyone at the party after drinking 13 tequila shots.
rey fox, burn in hell.
Rey, I think it stopped praying for you. you should be worried.
*bites nails*
I see that one of the symptoms of zombiehood is not wearing one’s tie.
Oooohh! TWO “bye”‘s this time! Double the gap for half the wit!
And a SECOND fapwit as the old one “flounces”.
Will rajafapmar be back? Will the sun rise tomorrow?
Tune in next time!
Fapfapfapfap.
I’m a child called it.
Isn’t that childcalleditism? Check ur privilege, dood.
It loves us all!
Except rey fox who complimented it with nice, sweet words.
Who called what now?
Most children are nicer, smarter, and more coherent than that.
Fapfapfap.
You may be fapping, but I’m hoggling.
Useless fuckheads. Awesome.
The funny thing about the Pharyngula commetariat is that you’re all SUCH assholes that you’ve sort of shot your wad at this point. We’re all used to it by now. It’s like the law of diminishing marginal returns, or something.
Is this FRANK?
We’re all
who all?
I suppose the irony of such a flaccid specimen saying we’ve “shot our wad” is at least a little bit amusing.
cool story bro.
FYI, I have a chiseled jaw, a jock physique, and a huge penis.
I miss Raj.
Is that all there is to a troll?
Is that all there is?
Man, you guys are really impotent when you take away the ad hominem, aren’t you? It’s actually sort of hilarious.
@35
Nah, you see, I don’t like ad hominems. Too much work. I prefer to stick to vicious personal attacks about your questionable cognitive and hygiene skills. Way more effective.
The utility of extraordinarily boring trolls: I actually care more about my homework.
@Cipher
School’s out for me and the trolls are making me wish I had classwork to do.
And it’s not like I ask that much of trolls. I just want them to say stupid things and give me at least a modicum of amusement, yet they can’t even reach that historically low bar that I’ve set for them.
I find more pleasure destroying my brain cells with tequila than pondering the whys and whats of a rather inert troll.
But I will say that somewhere, a baby sitter is not paying attention.
Man, you guys are really impotent when you take away the ad hominem, aren’t you?
sure sounds like Frank.
what need for potence?
you haven’t said anything yet, fuckwit.
eatsleepandshitthatswhatmendo:
Cool story, bro.
Where do you keep them? The freezer?
eatsshit,
I’m sure you won’t mind if I abbreviate your silly handle. Why not pray that your imaginary friend will reveal to you the mysteries of the shift key? That way, you might give at least a superficial impression of being literate.
Where do you keep them? The freezer?
oh wait, I think I know that guy…
Oh my, eatsleepeatshitanddie, that’s an extremely poor effort. Didn’t mummy and daddy teach you to hoggle in private? I’m afraid you get a full fail. Do better.
Why on earth do these idiots think they are capable of trolling?
Cipher:
I don’t. Besides, it will be back. It’s always back. Has anyone kept track of the amount of flounces the mali žohar* has flounced since it first showed up?
*Little cockroach in Croatian.
Isn’t hoggling done for an audience, by definition? Inappropriately, of course. If it’s private, it’s just good old masturbation.
Anyway, EatShit seems like a real fanboi. I’m available for bosom signings. Even got my handy sharpie right here.
+ 1
What’s In John’s Freezer?
eatsleepandshitthatswhatmendo is the dungeon escapee, matriarchy. Shall I toss him back? I do have lower standards for what goes on in TZT, but I don’t know that standards are nonexistent.
matriarchy never ever had anything to say that wasn’t a waste of photons. Nothing would be lost – even in here – by their absence.
Agree with Myeck. *gives thumbs down sign*
David Marjanović @ 48
Thanks. That’s a great site! Some good has come from the appearance of the rather sickly troll.
What a sad, sorry excuse for a person. Dungeonate it for its own good. After all, there’re women here, and it’s scared of them.
Matriarchy has never had a cogent thing to say and simply can’t cope around the uppity women. Dungeon.
@ PZ
Well, we do have very low standards here. “Low quality trolls are better than no trolls at all.” But in this particular case I may be wrong.
@ AR
Troll categorisation…
How about this idea: Rather than describing genus, family etc. Consider “troll” as your basic Margarita base. To this one adds various ingredients. One can then describe a troll as one would a pizza, according to the various ingredients added.
At least the Dalai Lama is good for something.
Dungeon.
Dungeon.
Death.
Wait a minute. I mean thumbs down.
Can’t believe I didn’t remember this Youtube UNSIN Acid
City, 2 in extra, AFTER United won the game and league… almost.
HAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
We would just explain to everyone, especially the children, that we were forced to fill in at the last moment because the real clowns were killed.
Wait a minute. I mean thumbs down.
actually, if you’re going all Roman, I do believe for death it would be thumbs up.
strange how it’s gotten turned around over the millenia.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I find rajmoron’s obsession with clowns to be on the creepy side. I have this image of rajmoron in JWG’s clown makeup and regalia, scouring the streets for acid and the countryside for shrooms and shrieking at the sky his desire to be experienced.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I find rajmoron’s obsession with clowns to be on the creepy side. I have this image of rajmoron in JWG’s clown makeup and regalia, scouring the streets for acid and the countryside for shrooms and shrieking at the sky his desire to be experienced.
Now I’m having a flashback to Hector Cat…
@Caine
WHY SO RATIONAL
Ing:
It’s my nature, man.
Wanders off to roll a joint.
Matriarchy shouldn’t be being given attention for his continual attention seeking; so back to the dungeon with him.
So yesterday my younger brother (48 yr old devout Mormon) complains to me that “They are teaching kids way too much in grade school, they need to stick to the basics; reading, writing and arithmetic”. When I looked puzzled he explained to me that they were teaching his kids all kind of crap like tolerance for those damn faggots, that the earth is billions of years old, that birds evolved from dinosaurs. My resulting face palm was of sufficient force that I may have injured both my cheek and forehead.
I’m with the rest: Dungeon for eatsshit.
Although my intermittent mild sadism does like the idea of everyone just ignoring him while he flails about trying to be provocative, too many around here (including me) have too much SIWOTI to make that work, and anyway it’d probably be bad to let the shit he spouts when he is actually trying to make substantive posts go unanswered, For The Lurkers and all.
snebo154,
Ouch.
Initially, IIRC, it was a thumb to the throat gesture, as in “stab the poor bastard right there”, and the spare-him gesture was a thumb flat to the side, as in “lay down the sword”.
If nobody minds, I think I’ll invoke the snowball principle on this vote:
{A.R puts on a black cap over his wig}
matriarchy, you will be taken hence to a place of lawful imprisonment, and from there to a place of dungeoning, where you will be cast into the dungeon for the remainder of your natural life, and may the Lord Cthulhu have mercy upon your soul”
—
theophontes: That might work
PZ
Dungeon.
If he wanted to discuss something, I might prefer to let him do that, however it appears that he came back to get “revenge” by throwing a tantrum.
Making arguments, dishonest, idiotic, or incoherent is one thing.
Just spouting pointlessly offensive gibberish is another.
Dungeon.
When you’re a zombie, every day is Casual Friday!
Late to the party, as usual, but – Raj on the last thread:
Finally worked that out, did you? Strange how you live in a Melbourne where the sun goes down at 9pm while for the rest of the people in the city, it went down nearly 4 hours earlier.
We don’t have to worry, Ichthyic. It’s the Welsh who are unfortunate.
The world’s bestest polymath can use his sharpened turd of a brain to look up what the time is in Melbourne but it takes him a day and a half to work out that the seasons are reversed? And then he goes into a flurry of local colour posts (Dandenongs and dingos) to cover himself.
Pathetic.
Wow, I forgot how stupid matriarchy was. Dungeon.
After due consideration, I’m with Amphiox @72. eatsleepandshitthatswhatmendo has committed the gravest offense of all: xe is fucking boring.
Xe bought xe’s ticket. Xe knew what xe was getting into. I say, let ’em crash.
BTW, how do “zombie threads” get started???
birgerjohansson:
It takes a reanimator.
(Paging Herbert West)
—
Alternatively, you could look at the very first instantiation of TZT and thus discover its genesis.
As a way to quarantine a couple of real idjits who were infesting and hijacking a number of threads short of the banhammer. Daniel Haven being a prime motivator. Proved successful in keeping Scifi/Shiloh and Rajkumar from bloviating all the blog.
As for the “Know the Signs” warning poster at the top of the segment, the one on the left is the zombie, the one on the right is just a homeless person.
theophontes and chigau: The weather here is quite nice today.
Re. 78, 79
Thank Zod! I was afraid it had something to do with extra-terrestrial nanotech.
“The weather here is quite nice today”
Yes, we have almost, but not quite +5 C here in Umeå.
Yesterday, it was too hot to work in the garden until after sundown.
@ llewelly
Mmmm… they have mispelled “tardigrade” in the watermark.
@ A.R
Hot and muggy...
@ chigau
Guangdong is horrible in the summer. 100% humidity.
They™ say our humidity is 31%, it feels like 0%.
@ chigau
Here supersaturation.
Not too humid today.
@ A.R
thank zombie jeebus for airconditioning...
Rajkumar =
Y’see, there’s your problem right there. Numuro uno, you fwaps completely miss the point. We are trying to have a LOGICAL conversation here with KNOWLEDGEABLE entities.
In fact, as soon as someone/thing uses the phrase ‘civil conversation,’ they are identifying themselves as wingnuts and/or sub-rational pietist, gosh darn it! But, civil doesn’t exclusively mean polite, it also entails RESPECT for yourself and others by not insulting our intelligence with infinitely debunked canards and cheap talking points.
For instance, let’s say you are invited to a swanky wedding – your boss’s daughters is the betrothed. It would be uncivil to show up in a nice Italian suit and shoes – well dressed – and hand her a bouquet of pleasantly arranged dandelions in a courteous manner, as if that is a perfectly proper display of gratitude and good tidings.
It either shows that you are a bleeding work of tosh, that you think everyone present is too unenlightened to tell the difference between weeds and roses, or that you are too bloody chickenshite to gather up your gonads and break into a posh garden and steal some classy roses and carnations, like a true gentleman/lady!
See, we can tell what you’re all about by the whine you bring to the table: is it a bouquet of Rosé, or a stench of fermented grass clippings?
Thus, the guest should not be surprised when he or she gets, very politely and gently, their offering rammed down their throat, producing massive pharyngeal rupture.
Hey, everyone! Know what will make for great conversation?
If everybody gave a weather report about their locale.
Fascinating!
Well Janine since you asked
It’s mostly shitty with a high chance of late afternoon anger.
Ceiling is low with little or no chance of job growth in the foreseeable future.
Scattered dumbfuckerry throughout the day dropping off around 5:00 PM.
The forecast calls for pain.
With a voodoo ritual involving a pufferfish, naturally.
And a virus. There’s always a virus.
Getting hotter by the minute!
It’s warm, kind of dark and the air is still.
I’m inside.
Do you have a blanket over your head?
Don’t be cruel. If I could afford a better toupee I’d get one.
You are likely to be eaten by a grue
flame onWyeck Waters, I am sorry that your hair is not as nice as Robin’s hair.
What if you have to com-shuck with the Groosalugg?
BREAKING NEWS!!1!1!!!
Dalai Lama sez self-immolation is a sensitive political issue. Since he’s retired, he’s not going to do shit about it, just like when he wasn’t retired. Also, he’s accepted the Templeton Prize.
Discuss. Or not. The weather is probably more interesting. It’s a nice day here.
Sorry, razor, but that is not cutting edge news. Some people at FTB were criticizing the Dalai Lama for accepting that prize weeks ago.
Templeton Prize the the Lama.
Now that makes sense.
I really should get to work.
Yeah, I knew about the Templeton shit already, and his evasiveness about self-immolation isn’t exactly news either. If he’s still in England, then I fart in his general direction.
It’s cool and nice here, and almost cold down in the river valleys. Light breeze and some places smell of honeysuckle.
@ chigau
—————————————————————————————————————————
Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet drumstick short loin tenderloin, turkey rump pastrami spare ribs sausage ground round chicken bacon brisket.————————————————————————————————————————–
I, too,,, should get to work…
I have sooo fucking much to do before I leave for a week, why am I not doing it?
@ chigau
——————————————————————————————————————-
Cum prefrontal cortex horribilem walking fornix dead resurgere brains de crazed limbic cortex optic nerve sepulcris creaturis, braaaaaiins zombie sicut hypothalamus de grave hippocampus feeding iride brainz et serpens. Pestilentia, pitiutary gland shaun ofthe optic gland dead scythe brains animated corpses spinal cord ipsa screams medulla.
——————————————————————————————————————-
Dunno .
So I’ve been having a discussion with someone who I do believe is actually on the verge of becoming an atheist. She is very open minded to factual information although she has sadly been blighted by Christian propaganda throughout her religious years. What she’s particularly intrigued to know is what people of an atheistic/secular persuasion would ideally like to see happen as a form of “progress” in Western society with regards to issues that relate to things that atheists debate about with theists and why secularists/atheists would like to see those changes happen. I managed to give a largely vague answer referencing certain rights of women and gay people as well as referencing the evolution thing, but I wasn’t able to quite deliver my answer as well as I’m sure many Pharyngulites here could give.
So yeah, something like a Top 10 or Top 5 or somewhere inbetween list of “Things I’d Personally Like To See” would be really handy.
Thanks in advance,
Jon Milne
Lie back and think of Pylea?
Weather, eh?
Morning: 8°C, rain, wind.
Afternoon: sunny, 13°C, wind.
Now: 8°C, thunderstorm, rain, wind.
Ne’er cast a clout till May be out, as they say.
In other news, the corporate nannyware finally unblocked Pharyngula, so from now on I’ll be getting even less work done!
jonmilne: I think this sums up our #1 issue. There are other ways of putting it — it’s basically Rawls’ point that if all citizens are of equal value, then in political arguments I cannot require others to assume my own “comprehensive doctrine” but must, instead, generously reach toward an “overlapping consensus”; that means I can only use evidence which other people can verify without faith.
Hi jonmilne -agree with the above, and with regard to its practical ramifications … I’d like to see an end to religion conferring special privileges “just because”: e.g. an end to the law turning a blind eye to child abuse just because it’s allegedly religious in nature. Ranging from physical abuse (such as FGM, or Pearl-type “discipline”, or marrying off young girls to church elders) to the abuse of teaching things which are known to be factually wrong (creationism etc.). I’d like preaching homophobia to be recognised as a hate crime and incitement to violence. I’d like to see religious organisations paying taxes like any other club or society (except where they are involved in genuine charity work. Charity work of course does not include church services or any kind of proselytising). And I’d like to see churches prevented as much as possible from funding and conducting specific hate campaigns, as in Uganda.
Well those are a few things I’d like to see come to an end … as for something I’d like to see starting, well I’d also like to see a better human rights record and society-wide recognition of the universal right to bodily autonomy.
You’re in Umeå??? I was there during the last week in February – what a pity I didn’t know that’s where you hang out, assuming it’s your normal abode. Impressive combined heat and power plant you have – though I was distressed to learn that while it burns all the local waste, it also imports it, and burns 40% peat.
OK, limiting it to question #1 “things that atheists debate about with theists”:
1. Evidence.
2. Evidence.
3. Evidence.
Rearranging question #2, “why secularists/atheists would like to see [“progress” in Western society with regards to [things that atheists debate about with theists]]”:
4. Understanding.
5. Scienctific advances.
6. People’s welfare.
I hope that helps.
PS. Grammar peeve. You don’t need “about” in “debate about”. ;)
“Scienctific”, what?! Spurious “c”: begone! *waves
wandpencil*@ A.R
Kan ons nie ryanwilkinson hierheen bring nie. Hy kan die pos van inneem.
RE: jonmilne
The ones you already touched on are important.
Proper Science Education (both evolution and global warming; the latter also has religious reasons for denial to some degree).
[I would add that religious “concerns” also sometimes stifle scientific progress, due to anti-scientific, semi-superstitious worries about “playing God”.]
Less discrimination and hostility towards LBGT, with that discrimination at present being endlessly supported by religious tropes.
Stopping the subjugation towards women; lessening double standards and undermining the Biblical views of women as subservient.
Beyond that, there’s also the basics: keeping the separation of church and state. The religious desperately want their God to remain stamped on the money, desperately want to pretend that the founders made this country Christian, desperately want to pretend that our laws are based in their holy book, and desperately want to have our schools to become indistinguishable from their churches. And, above all that, we want there to be less discrimination against atheists and other non-Christians. Anyone who isn’t Christian, or at least isn’t the right kind of Christian, should see the problem here. Hell, anyone who is a Christian but has the tiniest bit of reason and sympathy for the religious rights of minority religions should see the problem. Right-wing Christians are either too blind or bigoted to care, however.
There is also the child abuse angle, mentioned above. Child abuse arises both from those who refuse to spare the rod in 21st century society, and those who hide behind the guise of Moral Authority and dart from church to church to avoid being caught for sexual abuse. Atheists frown on this kind of abuse, and are especially apoplectic over the leeway given to the Holiest of Holyrollers on the issue.
There are also the warmongers, the Islamophobes. The people who clamor for war based on the belief that Muslims are an Other, which deserves death merely for being associated with a handful of people who killed Americans on American soil by a common, non-Christian religion. While some atheists happen to be just as Islamophobic as religionists, and while Islam is at least as bad as Christianity, we don’t appreciate the fact that religion was clearly used as a way to get so many in our population drooling over the prospects of war. To say nothing of the fact that religion is also used as a justification to continue using the death penalty in America, long past the point where other first world nations stopped such a barbaric practice.
Most perversely, there are the sexual politics, beyond even viewing as wives as subservient and submission, and beyond hating the gays due to the icky sex they have. Birth control and sex education are things that the a few among religious minded despise and will actively try to get legislation to oppose. Even if only a minority in the population have such odious views, the people in power aren’t quite representative of the people they represent on this issue. There’s the refusal to have anything to do with abortions, even if women’s lives are at risk, because people believe fetuses have souls or because they feel slutty sluts need to be punished with pregnancy, like the Lord intended when he first cursed Eve. And, of course, there is the need to actually fucking do something about rape culture, which the religionists boldly do nothing about, preferring to sit on their asses because they are far too busy blaming the victims or dismissing the charges. Who would’ve figured that the fundies wouldn’t be up in arms about such an outrageous crime, given how “seriously” the Bible treats rape?
Overall, we want tolerance. No more arbitrary divisions based on differing ideologies that are almost all definitely false anyway. We want critical thinking. We don’t want people thinking that blind faith is an accurate “way of knowing” . We want people to actually be informed, rather than misinformed. We don’t want people being regularly filled with lies and propaganda, especially if they aren’t properly equipped with the critical thinking skills to easily separate fact from fiction. We want people to believe that they can actually behave morally, and have that morally anchored in reality. No more of this “we are all sinful, and even the tiniest sin makes you as bad as a murderer” Christian “morality” where belief is as important as action, and where (divine) might makes right. We want people who are capable of appreciating this life without drooling over an afterlife. No more kids fearing hellfire, and no more suicide bombers or wannabe suicide bombers. We want no more discrimination and violence in the name of God. No more treating non-believers as moral inferiors. Hell, no more discrimination and violence period would be an even better ideal, but it would also be harder to attain. But I suppose it doesn’t matter too much, since all of this paragraph is a pipe dream.
All in all, the jist: Religion is incredibly linked with right-wing politics and right-wing politics are fucking awful. Even without that, however, religion still provides an unnecessary division between people, a poor (unreliable) moral code to abide by, and leads people away from accurate ways of reasoning about the world and thus stifles understanding and collective human potential. We would be better off without religion ( more possible evidence towards that conclusion ), even if a non-religious world doesn’t automatically mean Utopia.
jonmilne:
In no particular order:
1. Flying cars.
2. The de-politicization of science, especially evolution and AGW.
3. The application of reason to societal issues, especially gay rights and the continued understanding of racism in America.
4. Faster than light travel.
5. The recognition that religion is a personal choice, like color of socks or preference of sexual partner. It should not enter into politics.
6. Elitism. I hate it that Budweiser is the #1 beer in America, and both McDonalds and Microsoft dominate their respective fields.
7. Some kind of empathy from and towards my fellow humans. We’re all in this together, every gorram one of us.
8. Did I mention flying cars? I was promised flying cars.
9. The continued exploration of space.
10. More funding for science, and less for militaristic “adventures.”
But that’s just me.
theophontes: Ja, ek stem saam. Spesies atheisti.
I may be away from Pharyngula-access for almost a week.
Don’t do anything interesting, eh?
—
How did the PZ in Iceland thread go so strange?
Fuck. I forgot flying cars.
From what I can gather: Ego and the implicit belief that a request for evidence is a profound, personal insult.
I don’t want a flying car, I want one of them skateboard things.
y’know, like in that movie.
@ nigel
No,no,no…!
You did.
A thousand times: NO!
@ chigau
Oh noes… now I shall have to be *RESPONSIBLE* and take over teh twoic leadership duties!
@ anteprepro
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!
Flying cacas, that would be something to see!
Instead of flying deloreans, would you settle for an electric delorean?
One question for those who want flying cars:
A flying car does indeed sound cool.
Does a flying car driven by the typical kind of driver you might find on your average highway sound cool?
Good point, Amphiox. At least with flying cars, the odds of car x car collisions decreases though! Unfortunately, the odds of car x Upper Story of a Building collisions will be at an all time high. Will make the people who decided to live in massive underground bunkers seem like they were actually onto something.
@ All
Noooooooo!!! Think of the children.
1936:
Flying car – HG Wells
Underground cities – HG Wells
Fucking cell fucking phones – HG Wells
Now shush everyone! – before some “creative” thinks its their own novel idea and starts making this shit for real.
{attempts to shove flying car onto flaming hecatomb}
From a distance.
That would require monkeys…
With haptic smell-o-vision*!
—
* Flavour sachets sold separately.
Lorem ipsum dolor quod est in abscondito reversus mea notitia a mortem?
Perhaps a spell, sigh, better check my notes..success!
Abra-cadavera teh uncadavera familia abra-ffs-la
I think we saw that on the Island Thread.
Oy Vey, I should not have clicked the xtian linky above:
Are the goddists now resorting to the most primitive forms of superstition to make a few bucks? What is it exactly that passed from the stone to the cross? Squicky!
Woohoo!
Logged in!
Maybe
Flying cars would be awesome.
They’d also have to be almost completely automatic to be both useful and safe. But that’s even better. “Yes, I have a designated driver. My car.”
That would be almost certainly absolutely required before such a technology could be used by the masses in urban centers.
It does raise a few more questions on its own.
How willing would people be to turn over complete control of their vehicle to a machine? What would it take to convince them to do so?
And if the automatic control system malfunctioned, and an accident occurred, who would be liable? The owner, or the manufacturer?
If the owner, would this impact the willingness of people to buy such technology?
If the manufacturer, would this impact the willingness for private enterprise to invest in, produce, and sell such technology?
If neither (no-fault insurance, government assumes all liability, etc), what sorts of sociopolitical changes would have to take place before such a situation becomes viable?
Flying cars?
Where are the trolls of yesterthread?
@ chigau
(Thank FSM you are back. I thought I might have to be responsible for a while.)
Are we jumping the shark with flying cars? We need ideas to move the punters back to this thread…
Sizzling on the hecatombs of logic. I have tried to conscript a few new trolls, but to no effect. Are we NOTORIOUS?
Not sure if we jumped the shark, but I do remember one movie in which two Illinois Nazis (I hate Illinois Nazis) were in a flying Vega? Pinto? One of those POSs.
Amphiox @ 129:
No. Many people already have problems handling two dimensions; add a third, and it’s a recipe for disaster.
Proper training and licensure, as with aircraft, can help alleviate this.
(In case anyone didn’t get Og’s reference, and just because it’s funny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTT1qUswYL0.)
cm, never noticed it a the time, but the “American Socialist White People’s Party”, eh?
(Acronymic punning FTW)
I note humanape is now fodder for TZT.
ASWhiPe?
OMG, that’s awesome. I don’t think it was deliberate, but what happy, serendipitous outcome it was!
I am having difficulty making my hotel jacuzzi work.
Mwahaha! (peasants)
(get someone else to pay for it)
I have seen that movie twenty times or more. I never caught that. Apparently I really am an idiot.
I’ll be back to normal access in a few days.
Don’t let TZT die!
@ chigau
No wucking furries. If it dies it’ll be back soon enough. After all this is the zombie jeebus thread.
… oh wait, not good, not good…
We can’t wuck furries? What are we supposed to do with them?
The “open your eyes” thread has gone batshit crazy.
I expect aziraphale’s enfenestration here momentarily, as they say.
If you had to have this to operate it, though, it wouldn’t by a flying car anymore. It’d be a small airplane.
It takes both form and function to meaningfully qualify as a car. To be a car, it has to be able to be used as a car is used. If you need a pilot’s license and be bound by all the regulations pertaining to planes, then what you have is just a plane, not a car.
True. But then again, you can’t drive an airplane on the highway, either, and a pilot’s license isn’t good for the road.
Perhaps a variation on a class-based CDL, then — one class for ground vehicles, and another class for both ground and air.
I’m watching An American Werewolf in London.
It’s still pretty good.
@ ogremeister
I think it best to keep the-other-idiots-on-the-road out of the air. (You ever trod in a cowpat? Now imagine if cows could fly!)
@ chigau
I am an incorrigible wherewolf.
theophontes and chigau: We had some rain here today.
Okay, I only got up to halfway through the fourth zombie thread before my brain started to hurt from the stupid. Just so that I know I didn’t really miss out on anything I wasn’t seeing a shitload of times in the first few TZTs that I did read, were scifi, raj and danielhaven the only godbots that have showed up in the TZT threads, or were there others that appeared later on from when I read?
If there were indeed others, can someone provide me a basic Cliffnotes of what any of those others had to say?
Still, at least DH will be happy that his beloved West Ham are up. Though we can still bait him with the likelihood that they will yo-yo themselves straight back down to the Championship again.
As a United fan (no booing please), it’s been a fundamentally disappointing season, especially for those last few minutes. And I was rooting for Bayern as well.
Actually, on a related note, here’s something that can potentially fill this thread up. What I would really like to question to the United haters (if there are indeed any on the board) is how they can support either Man City or Chelsea in games against Man Utd when those two teams are doing more to ruin the nature of the Premier League than any other with the fact that they both try and buy success with money that has come directly from their owners? There’s a difference between buying and earning success, and unlike the latter two, Man Utd can say they EARNED it. All of the money they have gained and spent on transfer fees and contracts has been coming from prize money and an increase in merchandise sales which has come as a result of that success United have enjoyed, not from some wealthy tycoon looking for a new ball pit to play in.
Now this paragraph is generally ALWAYS rebutted by the following straw-men arguments: (my apologies, this may turn into something of a rant)
Well this one is easy: Manchester United won the very first Premier League and haven’t looked back since then. Since, oh, 1990, United have had something of a habit of winning at least one trophy of relative importance per season. One only needs to look at Blackburn Rovers to see that winning just one Premier League would not have been enough to ensure their guaranteed survival as a top class team able to compete with the world’s elite. Oh sure, United benefitted from the formation of the Premier League as a result of satellite television needing something it could sell and the old First Division needing a drastic reform, but nonetheless it was still skill that ensured United won the very first Premier League, and that they were the most successful team of the 90s and the 00s.
Every single one of those players that the United haters tend to mention were bought before the Glazers took over, rendering their entire point irrelevant and only strengthening the argument United fans including myself make about we utilised money we earned from winning prizes and the subsequent merchandise sales and the amount of money that was able to see us expand our stadium and thus get more gate receipts. Again, all as a result of the success.
What the United haters fail to take into account is that the Glazers share about the same level of popularity as the current Newcastle and Liverpool owners do, which is to say they’re not really popular at all. As for our really “notable” signings during our time under the Glazers, well admittedly there’s Van Der Sar, Evra and Vidic as well as Hernandez although the latter three all strike me as Fergie just recognising quality potential when he sees it, and Van Der Sar was that season’s “big signing” for United but it was for an “undisclosed” fee which hardly strikes me as that impressive. Carrick was signed for a fairly large fee, but he would hardly be the first name one would think of if one wanted to assemble a midfield for a “world-beating” team. Likewise for Anderson and Nani back then. Tevez was loaned. Fabio and Rafael were promising players bought for small fees. Berbatov is the ONLY big name player we’ve bought during the Glazer era for a large sum of money. We got Owen for free. Valencia was a promising player bought for a small fee. Same applies to a whole load of other current first teamers.
So during the Glazer era, the United haters basically have ONE really big name player bought for a high price to back up any arguments they make. Surely if they’re going to accuse United of buying success as a result of investments from rich owners as opposed to accumulating money as a result all the trophies they’ve been winning for decades, then they could at least try harder than that?
I don’t believe any intelligent United fans would dispute United’s role in the monopolisation of football. They would be foolish to. But compared to clubs like, say, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, and of recent Tottenham, the point remains that while these are all clubs that have gradually earned their success and have stood for the purity of the game, other clubs like Chelsea, Man City, PSG, Real Madrid and Barcelona stand for the highly boring future of the game where clubs wind up making their respective leagues incredibly boring by virtue of turning into who can win competitions via “who spends the most” rather than “who has the best tactical expertise and who has earned their way to the top”.
But as for the FA Cup? The United haters REALLY need to let this one go. That competition was devalued long before United dropped out of it. For the clubs competing in Europe, winning a European competition always takes precedence. Similarly, when you’re competing to either win the league/qualify for Europe/stay up/get promoted, achieving those goals in respective leagues is also more of a priority than winning a largely academic cup. In the end, the cup largely matters more to mid-table teams. Man Utd took advantage of their success, but hey that’s called being entrepreneurial. And who was really to blame for the FA Cup thing? Are the United haters forgetting that the club did it so England could potentially host the 2006 World Cup?
The fact of the matter is, the real cause of money starting to be a big feature of the English game was the formation of the Premier League, and that was because the old First Division was in dire straits and needed reform in stadium development and hospitality towards fans that attended matches, something that was particularly emphasised by disasters that happened like Bradford and Hillsborough. Aligning themselves with Sky provided the solution, and THAT’s why the Premier League is dominated by money. It does NOT lie solely at the door of Man Utd. No sir no sir it does not.
And finally…
Probably not. But what the United haters don’t understand is that’s a big part of why the Glazers are reviled by United fans. They saddled us with that debt. But the United haters are nonetheless still talking about a club that is, pre-hypothetical-takeover, already highly successful trophy-wise right now, so a new guy(s) coming in and investing a large sum of money into the club wouldn’t be nearly the big deal that it has been for when it’s happened with clubs like Chelsea/Man City/PSG.
A question I would always put to City (and also Chelsea) fans right now is this: do you believe either City or Chelsea would be close to getting the success they’re achieving if not for billionaire owners taking over?
@ A.R
Rather wet in Honkers .
Calgary is colder than Edmonton.
First off: the Calgary is colder than Edmonton paradox. Not that that doesn’t please me, it does. But I’ve noticed that there is a trend lately, for them to get more snow many, many times, as well.
Next, I found this site a while back: http://carm.org/ , to which I would like to point out their page on arguing with atheists.
I hope you will all join me in suppressing all knowledge of this site from Xians because, face it, it is brilliant.
Finally, does anyone have any idea why I cannot get e-mail updates from Pharyngula? My email has no filters, I have the sender in my contacts, I have it activated on the dashboard, and I do get all the regular service from all the other FTB.
BTW, only when you get salary caps will United be stopped from buying titles and championships, and then Leeds can assume their rightful place at the top. I can’t remember, oh yes, it was United that began the ransacking of the All Whites: “The first indication that the club was in financial trouble was the sale of Rio Ferdinand to Manchester United for approximately £30 million.” (also maybe perhaps Leeds may have had a slight bit of the odd financial difficulty and a wee slight hint of bad management, some continental legal issues controlling the lads, and the other, ah, ah… what was the question again?)
Man U is afraid of Leeds gaining promotion, last time they played – Jan 3, ’10 – a meaningful game, and the Whites handed Man U their balls on a platter, except for this slight, hardly noticeable, well, you know, dreary little kick about.
Man U are dismal wankers. There, I said it, Imnotproudbutithadtobesaid.
@ chigau
A refreshing breeze in Shenzhen.
mikmik
I’ve just proved that Man Utd DON’T buy championships, that every little bit of success they’ve gained has been EARNED as a result of a combination of a kickass manager, solid team-work and only most of the time with very few exceptions buying young players who aren’t quite world class yet but show great potential at the time they are bought. That or investing in players who come up via their youth squad of course.
Leeds United stopped being a threat the moment they sacked David O’Leary. If they ever get promoted from the Championship (still waiting for that to actually HAPPEN by the way, it’s been what 8 years since they were ever in the Premiership now?) they would pose no more threat to any title ambitions of Man Utd’s than Southampton, Reading, and West Ham. Leeds brought their financial implosion and relegations to the Championship and League 1 onto themselves, or are you forgetting that during when O’Leary was manager, Leeds spent £100m in four seasons attempting to win any kind of silverware?
Oh, and your stats about the last time Leeds and Man Utd played is wrong. The last time Leeds and Man Utd played, they played in the Carling Cup just last year in September in front of a very much packed crowd at Elland Road, and Leeds were humiliated in front of their own fans 3-0.
Also, “ransacking”? Who exactly, Rio aside, did Man Utd buy from Leeds? Alan Smith le
Aargh, accidentally pressed submit before finishing, lets try that again.
mikmik
I’ve just proved that Man Utd DON’T buy championships, that every little bit of success they’ve gained has been EARNED as a result of a combination of a kickass manager, solid team-work and only most of the time with very few exceptions buying young players who aren’t quite world class yet but show great potential at the time they are bought. That or investing in players who come up via their youth squad of course.
Leeds United stopped being a threat the moment they sacked David O’Leary. If they ever get promoted from the Championship (still waiting for that to actually HAPPEN by the way, it’s been what 8 years since they were ever in the Premiership now?) they would pose no more threat to any title ambitions of Man Utd’s than Southampton, Reading, and West Ham. Leeds brought their financial implosion and relegations to the Championship and League 1 onto themselves, or are you forgetting that during when O’Leary was manager, Leeds spent £100m in four seasons attempting to win any kind of silverware?
Oh, and your stats about the last time Leeds and Man Utd played is wrong. The last time Leeds and Man Utd played, they played in the Carling Cup just last year in September in front of a very much packed crowd at Elland Road, and Leeds were humiliated in front of their own fans 3-0.
Also, “ransacking”? Who exactly, Rio aside, did Man Utd buy from Leeds? Alan Smith left Leeds as a result of their relegation. Other than that, you have to look as far back as Eric Cantona to see the last time Man Utd bought anyone from Leeds, and unless you’re willing to say that the title winning Leeds side of 1991/2 was a one man team, I hardly think you can blame Leeds’s subsequent failure to win ANY trophies since then (20 years and counting buddy) on the Cantona sale.
I know, I linked to that Carling Cup article, that was my ONLY link. I have lived my whole life in Canada, and although I played Major League in Alberta and BC (and would’ve played University but showed up on final day tryouts coming down from acid and a weekend soccer tourney hung over and dehydrated – last 4 cuts ffs), my introduction to English soccer was through a friend that was born in Newcastle, and I only learned and read about it through books. It was late ’60s and Bobby Charlton was my favourite player, then Marsh, and when I heard that Best was an alcoholic, him, lol.
Arsenal won the double in ’72, Leeds was a powerhouse, (they won the double around then?) but I didn’t get soccer on TV much at all until the years of Kewel, Vukovic(another fave – fuck was he nifty and smooth), Bower, Ferdinand, and that solidified my support. Another buddy was Dutch, so I’ve always liked them in World cup and followed Kruyff(?) at Ajax and won Euro player back then.
So, I’m not overly familiar with the intricacies of British soccer, but you must understand that my Heritage is Scottish, ya wee ninny, and if I’d have grown up there, I would’ve nare tippled as a we-un and played for Glasgow Celtic – did I mention that I used to do acid and mushrooms? Then I would have transferred to Leeds for 5M lb, and beat Gatala…, the Greeks, and gone on to humiliate Man U. at Wembly.
I am, therefore, not quite intimate with the back room dealings of United, but it is plain to all that they had dealings with Satan, and that is the secret behind their temporary success of late.
However, it must have been excruciating to know City was into extra time trailing 2 – 1 and having just won the needed victory and eyeing the Cup in the Royal box, confident that heroism was nigh, and then the crowd suddenly erupt as the reports came in and realization that the cruelest fate had befallen them in a unprecedentedly vicious manner settled in their groins and their pee pees shriveled up into their pelvic cavities.
I know because I was watching it on telly while the commentators suddenly exclaimed, “Oh! A late goal at City … AND THEY’VE DONE IT AGAIN they’ve scored a second in addon!” and you could hear the cheering in the background from Etihad.
Look, I’m just happy to talk about football with you people that actually know what it is. Just because Rooney is a tosser doesn’t mean he isn’t fucking deadly in the box, or on the pitch. If I had a contract at Man U, I would have a wifey just like his instead of being a peasant in one of the colonies and cheering for the Canadiens. Only another couple of months and I’ll be able to lace up the skates again here did you know I’ve seen snow on the ground @Edmonton in every month of the year except July? The only thing worse would be being a Manchester United supporter 13 May, 2012.
I can’t believe how fricking superstitious they are around here; they didn’t use the number 13 in the elavator in my building! It only goes up to the third floor, mind
Won’t miss that link, will we? LOL @
Really? So’s mine! I lived the first 7 or 8 years of my life living in Glasgow, although on a religious related note I had absolutely no desire to support either Rangers or Celtic due to disgust that I held even then of how the Protestant/Catholic rivalry seemed to go on in those days (and of course, with stuff like what very nearly happened to Neil Lennon, it’s only gotten worse).
It was then my family moved to Wakefield, West Yorkshire (which does in fact play a part in how I can so confidently dismiss Leeds as a credible force), just before the 1998 FIFA World Cup, which is where my interest in football really began. Part of it was due to Scotland’s gut-wrenchingly awful run in the group stages where they got 1 point from 3 games, but the other more important part was what is commonly known as “THAT David Beckham red card”. I’m sure you may remember it.
That incidentally, was Part 1 of 2 reasons why I ended up becoming a Man Utd fan: sympathy and empathy felt for Beckham due to the absolutely ridiculous levels of blame and abuse that were heaped upon him for getting sent off in the Argentina match (never mind the fact that plenty teams go down to 10 men and still win their matches, and it would have helped if the England team had actually PRACTICED penalties in the lead-up to the tournament), and Part 2 was the fact that subsequently Manchester United were the first team I ever saw play live on television (drawing 3-3 with Barcelona at Old Trafford I do believe) and I was hooked from there.
I guess I do tend to be over-sensitive to criticism of them, but in turn I think it’s because so much of the criticisms of them are. as I said, utter crap. I mean, other arguments that I didn’t address in my initial post were the classics about how United apparently have the referees in their pocket and cheat and dive all the time. I didn’t bother addressing those because people said the exact same things about Liverpool and Nottingham Forest amongst others in the ’70s and ’80s. Success breeds jealousy and contempt, it’s that simple.
As for City’s success, all I can say is that in all my years as a United fan, of all the title races I’ve witnessed this is, 2003/04 aside, the title race I feel least bitter about. Yeah, we were bound to lose the title short of QPR pulling off a miracle, but then frankly the fact that we managed to even CONTEST this season in the title race while being owned by the Glazers is incredible. The owners of City have put something like a billion £s into the club while the Glazers have taken half that amount out of our club and put bugger all in. I hate to say it, but we’re gonna have to be absolutely revolutionary with regards to anything we do in the transfer market in the summer, because guys like Toure win matches, guys like Carrick don’t. What Fergie managed to do while being restricted by the Glazers was startling, thats for damn certain!
Oh and incidentally, I do believe Satan is subject to the same level of proof as God is, just to be pedantic while we’re on a secularist atheistic blog of course. :)
jonmilne:
<snicker>
Indeed; faitheism ain’t welcome here.
Well, I suppose it’s KINDA welcome here, as long as those sorts of people people stick to the rules like only posting in this thread when they are instructed to and don’t keep making baseless ad hominems.
Still, seems a shame that the total cumulative number of posts won’t have even reached 10,000 before this zombie thread dies. Which is a pity, because even though I find theist arguments to amount to little more than whining excuses about how they can’t answer questions properly and a whole lotta stuff where they insist they’re right because “totally our blind faith can’t POSSIBLY fail us RIGHT??”, it was still pretty entertaining to read throughout the three and a half TZTs I managed to actually read.
Is there absolutely no other theists around other than raj, DH and scifi? Can’t PZ do a special “one-time-only conditional” announcement now where he unbans all the godbots and just says something like…?
“You can post and debate in the Zombie thread ONLY. Post anywhere else on Pharyngula and it’s an immediate unlimited ban. You have been warned.”
Can’t that happen? I’d love to see the place livened up!
WTFUCK??? Now, I accidentally close this tab before I submit, and it’s not in my undo closed tab list or history?! Thank Hades for Lazarus, LMAO!:
Hey, jonmilne, thanks very much for telling me about your intro to Man U and the ins and outs in English soccer. I think it’s great hearing these things about others, and it’s fascinating how we developed our thinking and passions. I like your loyalty to Man U because I suffer the same problem here(nudge wink) with the teams I cheer for.
As for the 10,000 post mark, I agree, but was thinking that if a few Mollies were awarded for comments on TZT, we might gain a certain amount of respect and notoriety and, failing that, we could purchase William Lane ‘Two citations’ Craig from Talbot, or loan Alvin Plattinga from the Fighting Irish.
Again, though, I sure nobody that’s Christian ever finds this site, The Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry, where I hope they don’t see this
Personally, I am going to start on their ‘Cut and paste’ department in the Ways to Attack Atheism isle, to wit
i is fucking simple, but personally(again w/the personally) I have performed many experiments by praying before important meetings and interviews and court appearances along the lines of, ‘Our father, you are a fucking pedophilic sewer of vomit that would only be improved by the addition of my defecations and spit. If your bastard fuckslime of a buggering whore Son had any of your pregender balls, that have no reason for being but there you go, you insufferable colonic stew, then you would smite me a bad outcome and create a possible microsecond of doubt over my convictions that Jesus is an imaginary fuck toy for Lucifer. In Jesus name I pray, a-fucking-men.’
It almost seems that the two or four times I’ve done this, things have gone spankingly posh, or something, including an absolute discharge on my misunderstanding with financial protocol, shall we say.
ii Bait and switch, you unbelievable mutagens.
iii I can say that no one, including all humanity and research in history, has not provided any evidence. Is that close enough?
iv Huh? Of course, you hurricane of halitosis! That is OUR argument, oh for fuck without a condom’s sake. I do, however, believe that compared to god, Russell’s Teapot orbiting Your anus is far more possible or likely, .. oh, quit picking your nose, Christ!
Actually, here is a religion centred question, and it concerns the Courtier’s Reply.
I’ve just finished reading through the Lenski Dialogue, as like I’m sure many others are here as well, I’m a sucker for extremist fundie conservatives getting absolutely OWNED. There are three particular lead sentences from the second letter that jump out at me though, and I apologise if I end up inadvertently taking these out of context when showing these sentences to you guys like this:
“So, will we share the bacteria? Of course we will, with competent scientists…”
“Before I could send anyone any bacterial strains, in order to comply with good scientific practices I would require evidence of the requesting scientist’s credentials…”
“I would also generally ask what the requesting scientist intends to do with our strains. Why? It helps me to gauge the requester’s expertise…”
The underlying tone of these three particular quotes as well as the paragraphs around them, which is later confirmed in RW’s archiving of the original discussion on CP about the Lenski Dialogue (and again I apologise if I end up going wrong on this), is that if one wants to analyse the data that proves evolution, one must prove theirselves to have a great deal of competency in the scientific field in order to do so properly, to the point where if anyone is indeed presented with the evolution-proving-data, they must be able to UNDERSTAND it.
But this brings me to the Courtier’s Reply. As I’m sure everyone here knows, the Courtier’s Reply basically rebuts the claim that only clergy and theologians can properly analyse spiritual faith matters because, to quote RW’s article on Myers that gives a great brief summary on the Courtier’s Reply: “only they (the theologians) know the appropriate terms of art.” Myers of course counters this with a great analogy on the Emperor’s New Clothes.
But here’s where I see a problem and perhaps a contradiction of sorts between the Courtier’s Reply and Lenski’s correspondence with Conservapedia, and again I apologise if I’ve ended up misreading things. On the one hand, we have a well respected scientist and secularist and atheist saying that any data on a certain subject can only really be tackled by highly competent and qualified people who would understand the information when it’s presented to them (Lenski), but on the other hand we have a well respected scientist and secularist and atheist saying that actually you don’t need such high levels of competency and qualifications to handle data and that that isn’t necessary in order to achieve understanding (Myers). Again, I apologise if I’ve read stuff wrong and ended up misrepresenting stances.
I suppose I have to echo a question that was asked of Andrew Schlafly back when the whole Lenski thing was going on, namely: “If data was presented to you (which is to say, us secularist atheists and scientists) that proved the theory beyond doubt (that in that case being of God’s existence) would you (or in our case, “we”) be able to understand it?”
A full disclaimer: I am a secularist atheist humanist, and I genuinely did not mean to offend any by any comments I may have made that have without my knowledge ended up being fallacies. Ideally, since the Courtier’s Reply was his brainchild, I would love to hear a response from Myers on this, but since this is an open forum I would also appreciate any comments others can leave in response. :)
Cheers guys,
Jon
jonmilne,
I’m not sure about the regulations in the US, but where I live, it is illegal to send these kinds of samples to people who don’t have a licensed containment facility.
Besides which, without a -80 degree freezer, what would be the point?
At least in the quotes you’ve provided, Lenski was talking about actual bacteria, not ‘data’.
That said, yes, of course it takes knowledge, training, and practice to meaningfully analyze data. Or to plate bacteria.
jonmilne, the evidence supporting evolution is vast and varied. It ranges from the very straightforward to the very complicated. Obviously some of it requires substantial expertise to comprehend. But not all of it. Much of it is easily accessible to any reasonably educated and intellectually honest person.
The example you chose, re Lenski’s work, is illustrative. The RESULTS of Lenski’s experiments are quite straightforward. Special expertise is definitely not required to understand them or recognize their implications with respect to supporting evolution theory. But in this case Schaffly and his gang were actually insinuating fraud – they were implying that Lenski faked his results and were in essence demanding that Lenski give them proof that he didn’t. It was THIS odiously dishonest implication that prompted Lenski’s epic reply.
The expertise that Lenski refers to is all technical – it is what one needs to actually DO Lenski’s experiments for oneself. But it is not conceptual, it is not required to understand the results of Lenski’s work.
So to go back to the issue regarding the Courtier’s Reply, if data were to be presented to us that demonstrated the existence of God, we should absolutely expect to be able to understand it and recognize it without requiring subspecialist-level competence, ASSUMING that the presenter of that evidence was doing so in good faith, and was making an effort to present the data in a comprehensible fashion. If on the other hand fraud were involved, a greater level of specific expertise would be needed to uncover the fraud.
And the corollary to this is that the more complicated and difficult to comprehend the proposed evidence is, the more suspicious of it we should be. The principle of parsimony also applies. GOOD evidence, presented in good faith with an effort to make it comprehensible, should be easy and obvious to recognize.
@ Amphiox
The implication (and reasonably so) is that should such data ever come into our ambit, it will be through the efforts of scientists and not goddists (who would not recognise the relevant data if it hit them over the head with a haddock).
I do not consider the Lenski case as a Courtier’s Reply, for the reasons given above. However, I also believe that scientists are actually warranted to make Courtier’s Replies. Because science is actually, ultimately, rooted in facts, data, and evidence and all of that builds upon itself, making certain theories only comprehensible if you understand the relevant data, related theories, and the data relevant to those theories as well. Theology has no such grounding. It is built entirely upon assumptions, and makes little reference to actual data (and often cites stupid data related to the field’s assumptions, like Bible passages, or completely abuses the data, like in any argument that implies Design). Whereas philosophy is a field of rival hypotheses and little else, philosophy often uses logic well. Theology sneaks in some premises that they obtained only after throwing logic out the window, and then selectively uses logic after they are already working with the illogical hypotheses they desperately want to be on the table. Comparing science to theology is not an apples to apples comparison. It isn’t even an apples to oranges comparison. It is an apples to compost heap comparison.
The Courtier’s Reply (Essentially: *scoff* “You just don’t understand!” *shun*) is often dismissive, and it is a poor argument for that reason. But it is extra poor in defense of the subject of theology, because theology rests upon a flawed foundation that nothing actually within the field of theology actually clarifies or defends. Religionists accuse science of the same thing, ironically, when bashing that popular scapegoat of “scientism”. I think it is obvious that the (practical and obviously effective) assumptions of naturalism are minimal leaps of logic. The physical world exists, we can observe it, and, as far we can tell at the time, nothing else exists. These are simple assumptions that science relies upon, and should be uncontroversial, because even theology relies upon the first two! However, theology assumes that a supernatural realm also exists, and that supernatural has a specific, Christocentric flavor, with supernatural entities that also have the same flavor. It should be obvious which field is more reliable, based on the number of assumptions made and the quality and reasonability of those assumptions. Yet Christians, closet relativists that they are, will never make such an acknowledgment. And that same mentality has managed to corrupt us without us even knowing it. Atheists still manage to give theology the same intellectual weight as fields that don’t deal exclusively in bullshit. The religionists are master salesmen, aren’t they?
The Courtier’s Reply, as PZ described it, is more than just a “*scoff* you don’t understand” argument, though.
It is very specifically an evasive argument, an obfuscating argument, one in which irrelevant details are elaborated in a complicated and confusing manner, but the primary objection (I can’t see the Emperor’s Clothes!) is specifically not addressed AT ALL.
When scientists face objections to their work, they shouldn’t be making Courtier’s Replies, because, however complicated and difficult to comprehend for a layperson their response might end up being, they should be addressing the core complaint.
If a creationist challenges a biologist with the standard “Chance can’t account for X”, the reply might be quite complicated, having to address the fallacy of evolution being solely based on chance, and going into the mechanisms of natural selection, and so forth, but that wouldn’t be a Courtier’s Reply.
A Courtier’s Reply would be to ignore the challenge and go on to pontificate about the intricacies of the taxonomy of X.
I just realized something that was obvious: The alternative to Amphiox’s scenario above is that only the elite and most learned have the authority to understand what does and does not constitute evidence for God. This is an idea that should be offensive to every Protestant, since it is one of the controversial sentiments of the original Catholic Church that spurred the Reformation. The belief that only the clergy could accurately interpret the Bible. But this “Experts On Religion Only” has many more implications. It should mean that laymen cannot be expected to see a miracle when they see it, and that only trained theologians and priests can assess whether something is truly a fulfilled prophecy. It means that your average Joe can’t be expected to know whether or not something truly looks “designed,” and implies that the popular idea that evidence for God is obvious and all around us is actually wrong . It means that we shouldn’t trust the Gospels’ assessments on Jesus’s divinity unless we can confirm the authors were well-educated on religious matters, since they can’t be trusted to have known what constituted evidence for Jesus being a man-god if they weren’t equivalent in knowledge to theologians. It means that every believer who is absolutely convinced in their beliefs are simply overconfident unless they can show their PhDs. Yet, while theologians chastise New Atheists for being overconfident given their lack of knowledge of Sophisticated Theology, you will rarely see them level such charges against true believers, no matter how accurate it would be. True believers are “close enough,” apparently, and don’t need to actually know Sophisticated Theology to be right (for the wrong reasons). But non-believers better know at least three times as much as the average believer and roughly as much as someone who studies Christianity for a living in order to non-believe without receiving a stern finger-wagging. And God knows they’ll just assume we are uninformed anyway.
Anyway, even if every believer were simply deferring to the expertise of an elite, educated priest or theologian on religious matters in order to avoid misinterpreting evidence, those priests and theologians study “religious matters” that were recorded by Who Knows based on the assessment of Whoever the Fuck. The equivalent would be if everybody believed evolution was true because Bizarro biologists said it was true based on their expertise, which is established entirely by reading lots and lots of biologists writing about The Thirteen Monologues; accounts from the early 11th century from several different, but unknown, authors talking about livestock, pets, and gardening. In that case, the authorities are basing their authority on their knowledge of what other authorities are saying about the selected observations of a bunch of nobodies from a thousand years ago. They are presenting themselves as experts about a real topic in the real world, ultimately based upon their knowledge of what non-experts believed about the topic in a time where information and education was far more scarce. The biologists in that world would deserve to be laughed at everytime they pretend they are doing more than glorified book reports and obsessively constrained historical research. Yet the biologists in our world do nothing of the sort, theologians do, and the most confident believers side with the latter over the former, despite knowing far less about both theology and biology than the side of the religion debate that theologians scoff about. Go figure.
This is a good point. I just think that it might be hard to detect when something is intentionally obfuscating and needlessly complicated and confusing. It could seem like a sufficiently complex topic could sound like it is full of obfuscations and is needlessly complicated and confusing, when, really, that is as about as simplified as it can be without getting into near-lies. But it is often obvious when evasions and irrelevancies are being used, and it is a core part of a Courtier’s Reply. So, yeah, given those ingredients, scientists should not be using a Courtier’s Reply.
I actually had an even longer version of my original comment (yes, I know. Amazing!) where I showed that I understood that fact, by giving examples of things that theologians typically do in response to criticism from Gnus. Two were Courtier’s Replies, three were strawmen. I believe the two I thought of were “Says Gnu is wrong and blusters about the wrongness, but never says why they are wrong” or “Makes vague allusions to things Gnu might not be familiar with, but never both pinpoints a specific thing they said that was wrong and gives specific cite/quote showing it to be wrong”. (Actually, phrasing it like this, it also seems like this is what accomodationists do as well) I don’t quite recall why I removed that bit, but there ya go.
There was a theologian Craig
Who considered himself a real Egg,
He used obfuscatating
Not communicating
And the question, he really did beg.
Sorry, I just woke up. I know it’s not spelled ‘obfuscatating’, it’s obfuscating, but that is surprisingly difficult to fit into a limerick. Fuckin’ Irish, I hate George Best.
There’s another point about the Courtier’s Reply, one which I find particularly annoying. The goddists insist we know every jot and tittle about their particular, pet flavor of goddism yet they dismiss all other religions usually without knowing the basics of that theology. How often did human hearts have to be offered to Huitzilopchi [sic] so the Sun would continue to rise in the morning?* Even quite sophisticated Jesusite theologians don’t know, yet they automatically discard Huitzilopchism without knowing anything about it.
*Four times a year, at the solstices and equinoxes.
‘Tis Himself, this: “There’s another point about the Courtier’s Reply, one which I find particularly annoying. The goddists insist we know every jot and tittle about their particular, pet flavor of goddism yet they dismiss all other religions usually without knowing the basics of that theology” is a great point, and it illustrates an under-lying principle of almost, if not all, godist arguments, that of hypocrisy.
It is not, I think, accidental or unintentional in the end, for the very foundation of their world view is that normal rules of evidence and reasoning don’t apply to them.
While perusing the link for Gutman on Secular vs. Religious Standards of Reasoning, I found How to Tongue-Tie a Theist
(Questions to Ask Theists To Prevent Preaching).
Are You Here to Preach or to Talk?
Can You Define God?
What Would Qualify as Disproof?
If an Argument is Proven Wrong, Will You Reconsider?
And then the two killers,
If an Argument is Proven Wrong, Will You Stop Using It?
Will You Conform to Principles of Logic & Reason?
The last two define hypocrisy. For everyone but me, of course ;)
I just found out that Dictionary.com is fucking biased
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/atheism
Here is their Related Quotes page, atheism quotes.
Shite, so I look at freedictionary and merriam webster, and they are the fucking same! they ALL misdefine atheism, but apparently I’m not the first to notice this, regard – Popular Misconceptions: The Definition of Atheism, an entry on RagingRev.com
Screw this noise, I am only using Urban DICTIONARY.
Christ, I didn’t realize how insidious this shit caca is. Wait, Oxford is objective with the definition.
I find this to be a bizarre situation. I usually look up ‘religious’ to see if I approve of a dictionary; it should say something along the lines of ‘belief in, and worship of, a God or Higher Power’, with the notable inclusion of ‘higher power.’
Argghhh, I’m gonna go overdose on coffee… 4500 mgs? I meant two cups of instant, not 90! Energy Drinks: What’s the Big Deal?
Hmmm, 5 links…
This place is alive again…
Heh. You have an odd definition of ‘alive.’
It can never be alive with the brain dead like Scifi/Shiloh and Rajkumar showing us their intellectual death spasms…
Scifi was interesting. He was citing the works of Lawrence M Krauss — one of your own. I think Krauss is in the same university where Professor Schwartz is conducting some very unusual experiments on life after death and Spirit. Any thoughts on that?
No. Unless you have some evidence, go away.
Professor Gary Schwartz has written many books on his experiments. Read them if you need evidence. One is called ‘The Afterlife Experiments’.
Hey Raj, I got married and am on honeymoon.
Suck my ring you sexist piece of shit!
Good to know this. But sad to see you still have grudges in your heart against me, even when you are on honeymoon. Honey means sweet. Why add something bitter to your sweet sweet honeymoon?
And what sort of ring did you get? A diamond ring?
That’s sort of the point of obfuscating isn’t it?
Please, why on earth would I want some artificially priced rock clawed out of the living earth by child slave labor.
blatant lies.
Honey means bee hork.
That’s not a link…And it doesn’t matter. A psychologist isn’t a hard scientist like Krauss, and shouldn’t be compared in the same idea, thought, or breath. Psychologists can be very flaky and unbelieved by real scientists due to their inane obsessions.
I assumed you were a man… Giving a diamond to a woman by a man is not just a good gesture, but is also a good indicator of the man’s strong financial position, thus a good way to win a woman’s heart. Less importantly, it also shows you love her…
Yeah. But symbolically, it means something sweet! Bee’s hork is sweet.
No, he was. YOu know what? A universe from nothing makes perfect sense. In fact, every famous mystic, including the Buddah, has taught the same teaching throughout history. The universe comes from nothing. Isn’t it surprising how ancient spirituality and mysticism and modern science can be reconciled so easily?
]
Un-evidenced assertion.
Welcome back raj-misogynist.
Ing #196
That’s going in my notebook under “possible song titles”.
That is highly debatable, and controversial too, given he is much more than a plain psychologist. And I am more into books than the Internet. This is why I can cite books, and can’t give links that often.
By the way, if you really want to understand his research and his standpoint, then you gotta know the larger context, too, in which to place his research. Otherwise, nothing is going to make much sense to you. It would be like someone trying to understand The Theory of Relativity without any prior knowledge of what relativity is. Not impossible, but would be extremely hard to understand in this way.
Both your sexism, callous disregard for unethical systems, and blatent superficial materialism are not noted.
We exchanged things that mean something and have rings that show personal value tailored to the individual. You regard that as being less loving because it doesn’t conform to a display of financial penis length. I’m sorry in your view that love has to be bought…I hope you tip well
Again, your religion has provided what in terms of ethical or aesthetic value?
Meh.
Total waste of perfectly good money.
A real man demonstrates is love with something useful or fun. Or both.
A Xeon-powered server for instance.
Or a nice doomsday device.
And seriously, I don’t need any man to show his “financial position” to me. I earn my keep very well thank you, and fully expect to continue doing so for the rest of my active life.
Any man who will try to keep me at home will get a goodbye letter and a call from my lawyer.
As I recall, our wedding rings cost a combined $30 plus whatever the sales tax was in Wisconsin in 1981. Sadly, they didn’t come with Cracker Jack.
Hey! The raja is actually conceding, no, arguing, that it is possible to understand something??
The veiled misogyny is still much in evidence, though.
Well Raj ain’t saying she’s a gold digger, but he ain’t seen her with no broke folk.
It was just a friendly question that people usually ask to newly-wed couples. I don’t know what kind of ethical and moral values you have been imbued with during the course of your atheistic lifespan, that even such harmless and benign and good-intentioned questions can trigger volatile emotions in you.
I ask you the same question. Replace ‘religion’ with ‘atheism’, and tell me: Why these questions, which most people would see as harmless and friendly, can cause you to jump all over the place?
“did your spouse buy you/did you buy your spouse?” is good natured?
See above?
For one I wouldn’t want to support an industry that promotes war and slavery.
Why should we answer your fuckwitted questions. Why can’t you say “this is what I believe, and this (link) is the evidence to back it up”. Oh, that’s right, you are too unscholarly and unthinking to understand evidence. An abject ignorant loser…
Raj, do you molest children?
I ask in benign and good natured intentions
It can be bad natured too. But I meant it in a good sense. You gotta know the difference when people are being mean to you, and when they are being nice. My guess is, atheism and a constant resentment towards those who are not as angry as you are has inverted your perception.
Yeah. Good point. Might as well stop using all Nike products, and everything that is made in the sweat shops of third world countries. Tell you what, you aren’t gonna be left with too many things for your bleeding heart. Maybe just a couple of dirty underwear that were Made in the USA some thirty years ago.
It’s not atheism per se it’s just common decency.
Because they show just how little you think of women, however much you try to call that “love”.
Poor little fragile things hankering after financial security that they cannot get on their own.
Shallow, emotional things that you can buy with shiny rocks. Which do come from child slave labor in third world countries.
Here’s a clue, my cluelessly misogynist friend:
Love can only happen between two people.
Not between a “real man” and his newly bought thing.
No, I don’t. See? I answered your benign and good natured question without jumping like a popcorn kernel that is about to pop in a popcorn machine.
Never did use any Nike products. Always prefered Asics, not that I even know where it’s made.
But you’re right.
Nothing says “I love you” better than the blood of poor children.
Or the skin of endangered animals.
Why if you really love your spouse, you’ll buy a hundred hectares of amazonian forest and burn it down just to show your “financial proficiency”.
Or would it perhaps be better to buy a company just for the sake of firing all its employees.
I’m sure all that child molestation you do has confused you.
ACting like an asshole and claiming victory when people treat you like an asshole isn’t clever.
I’d like it to be put on the record that the theist is bitching at the atheist for not being materialistic and not being willing to damn other people for toys.
Yeah I could do better, a lot of products come from bad corporate policies…but I can also avoid the worst of it whenever I can…such as not promoting kleptocracys and slavery for a functionless faux-rare rock.
You’re seriously going to criticize me for caring about things?
I also don’t use Nike or Wallmart despite their low low prices. And I drive a sensible car!
Teh horrors of atheism apparently.
I have already told you. I read books more than I read stuff on the Internet. Is it my fault if there are links available for me on the Internet? But I can cite some books if you are interested and are familair with the concept of reading books:
1- The Afterlife Experiments by Gary Schwartz
2- Life After Life by Raymond Moody
3- The Book – On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts
Oh and here are a few links, too, to give these books a context:
http://www.fredalanwolf.com/
http://www.closertotruth.com/
if there are NO links available
Atheist: I worry about how the products are made
Theist: Bah who cares about child slavery and bloody wars, DON’T YOU WANT TO OWN SHIT!?
If I were a religious being I would probably feel parallels to Christ’s Temptation in the Desert and suspect that you were knowingly or not, an agent of the horned one.
Exactly.
They’re just worthless carbon, slowly reverting back to its most stable form, graphite. You know, the stuff pencils are made of.
Want something really cool ?
Pure, plain platinum rings.
@Kemist
Engagement ring is a trilobite. It’s meaningful to us, and of course has lasted the test of time.
In that case, I only use Kmart products, all anti-childlabour and anti-sweatshop approved, and drive a cheap Mitsubishi that drips oil. The horrors of not being an atheist.
Except I’m not lying while you clearly are.
Being a decent person isn’t a contest. I’m starting to suspect you are either incredibly emotionally stunted or a sociopath.
Could you believe how it all started? I just asked you a question about a diamond ring. And I only asked that question because you, without any attempts of enquiry from my part, informed me about your recent wedding and your honeymoon. Truly, my apologies for asking such an immoral and unethical question.
By the way, and by the same rationale, have you ever thought about those poor people who can’t afford to get married, let alone getting married and then off to a honeymoon? Doesn’t your heart bleed for them? And what is with wasting so much money on getting married anyway? After all, it is a religious thing, isn’t it?
Could you believe how it all started? I just asked you a question about a diamond ring. And I only asked that question because you, without any attempts of enquiry from my part, informed me about your recent wedding and your honeymoon. Truly, my apologies for asking such an immoral and unethical question.
red herring.
Communism?
of course has lasted the test of time.
?
I love the little buggers, but if they stood the test of time, wouldn’t that mean they are still around?
well, at least in non-robotic form…
Communism?
*rolleyes*
Yes you just asked the question
You do remember people can read what you previously wrote right?
Idiot.
Marriage can be done very cheaply if need be. No need for a costly party if you don’t want, or can’t afford one.
Nope.
Social contract thing.
You know, tax and insurance benefits for your spouse & children.
Marriage has always been a social, secular contract first. In some cases a sort of ownership agreement, in others a way to cement relationship between two families, tribes or nations.
Love and religion got into it as a modern afterthought.
The fossil has, not the bugger itself ;)
Yes, and they can read up why I wrote that. I wrote that because you asked me why would you buy a diamond ring for your spouse.
I just told you why. The way I see it, the way a lot of people see it, this is what giving a diamond ring to a woman ordinarily signify. You can turn away from the facts, put a veil before your eyes, but that doesn’t mean the facts do not exist. I was just reporting facts, without having any emotional involvement in them. Being neutral is the other way of putting it.
We requested guests donate to help achieve marriage equality so people can be married if they want to be.
The fact that you sneer at basic decency is rather telling. Again, you’re trying to make someone feel bad, about not being an asshole. See I’m not religious, but you are…and I recall from my Catholic education that the very worst evil someone can do is to corrupt another. If I were you I’d be examining how I interact with people.
But when will Raj stop beating his wife?
If I were you I’d be examining how I interact with people.
self examination is a skill entirely lacking in authoritarian personalities.
I’m quite convinced Raj has a strongly authoritarian leaning personality.
@Ichthyic
See a normal person WOULD get angry at such an accusation…just answering like that is a bit TOO eager to give a flat denial for my taste. Almost as if someone has for a long time been prepared to be accused of such a crime.
You see, in Australia, marriage is not required to get these benefits. They call it ‘defecto’ couples here. All you have to do is, live together for six months or more and you are officially a defecto couple, entitled to all the benefits a married couple is. Having said this, marriage is seen, at least where I live, more of a religious thing than a social thing. Many people I know of never got married because they couldn’t afford to, or they didn’t want to waste money on it. ‘Couldn’t be bothered with’ is the expression they usually use here.
yup.
You see, in Australia
it’s still winter there, right?
Seems to fit with being ok with buying women and enslaving children.
Sorry! I just checked. It is “de facto” not “defecto”
240 was in response to 238, btw.
I can’t see myself agreeing with Raj on much of anything, really, if he said the sky is blue in OZ, I think I’d have to stop and check.
They call it ‘defecto’ couples here.
defecto… Freudian slip?
From your grasp of human nature I’m guessing “people Raj knows” is an incredibly small set.
Maybe you should ask the larger set of “People who know Raj and try to stay as far away from him as possible”
That the raja would even THINK that a third world sweat shop is equivalent to conflict diamonds, and even think it appropriate to make this post, pretty much tells us all we ever needed to know about its moral character, or lack thereof.
Not that this is anything new.
The raja would like to pretend that this is an innocuous statement, but it is a classic example of veiled venom masquerading as the benign, as the bolded portions indicate. A truly benign, nonmisogynistic statement WOULD NOT CONTAIN EITHER OF THOSE STATEMENTS.
Hint to the raja, though we already know by now that it is useless, a diamond is a gift that a man might choose to give to a woman (or vice versa) AFTER winning her heart (actually the very phrase, “winning her heart”, as if her affection were a prize to be won, is already problematic), it is NOT the way to “win” her heart, unless you have already relegated her to the status of a commodity to be bought.
And the “less importantly” part? Well one would think that would be self-evident.
(Though not to the raja, evidently.)
The raja would like to pretend that this is an innocuous statement, but it is a classic example of veiled venom masquerading as the benign
add passive aggressive to his other outstanding personality traits.
Oh Raja is just doing his trick of saying something insulting and acting like it’s not. Because he seems to think acting all innocent and offended when people call him on that makes him look good instead of like an idiot. It’s all part of his main problem of confusing losing with winning. Fast to fist technique!
They lasted some 276 million odd years, (more than four times longer than the time from the KT extinction to the present). I’d say that’s pretty impressive, relatively. Nothing, after all, passes the test of time in the absolute.
The way I see it, the way a lot of people see it,
argumentum ad populum
At the rate we’re going, it may not be long before these are only fossils, too.
And future generations may not ever be able to figure out what color they actually were….
Also, assertion without evidence. Citation requested.
Nothing, after all, passes the test of time in the absolute.</i
yes, nothing does do that indeed.
but nothing would make a terrible ring.
;)
Raja actually reminds me of Admiral Zhao from the bad Airbender movie.
damn tag fail
Whoa trippy! durring wedding prep we had joking talked about owning a “nothing”. “I’d like to have nothing, but where would I keep it!”
Nothing, after all, passes the test of time in the absolute.
…but Shirley Bassey told me…
Diamonds are Forever…
I’d like to have nothing, but where would I keep it!
now why am I feeling like breaking out in a Dr Seuss rhyme?
you could keep it in a box…
Seriously, I never tried to say anything insulting to you. Maybe the confusion arouse, because from my standpoint, it is really hard to predict what might trigger what in a certain person here. Some are obviously extremely emotional and sensitive about many things. So, I didn’t know how a simple question about a poor diamond ring could and would lead to issues like ‘slavery’, ‘child labour’, and ‘blood money’. Stop buying Apple products too. They are all made in China. Not in sweat shops, but the workers there get at least 20 times less than they would get in the US.
Sure Raj, whatever you say.
Seriously, I never tried to say anything insulting to you.
and there it goes again. The obliviousness is actually palpable.
authoritarian personality through and through.
remarkable.
Hey Icthy!
Old fish New fish, RED FISH
It’s not obliviousness it’s double think
Old fish New fish, RED FISH
heh.
I think the logical fallacy angle would work fine with raj’s output, but the problem is, he appears entirely oblivious and unconscious of his output.
it truly has an unexamined life, in all aspects.
makes me wonder if it lives by itself in the middle of the outback.
And yet, apparently knowing this, the raja STILL goes on posting with the same arrogant obliviousness, again and again and again and again.
Shorter version: It doesn’t have the common decency to CARE who it might offend.
Pitiful.
Now what was it that they say about the unexamined life?
ANYONE who could EVEN THINK that this is at all equivalent to the situation with conflict diamonds (the very reference to is itself a pathetic transparent attempt at deflecting attention from the ACTUAL objectionable content of its posts), especially after IT HAS ALREADY BEEN EXPLICITLY TOLD THIS, and even think it is appropriate to even START posting a statement like this, is an individual of the lowest imaginable ethical character.
But of course we already knew this about the raja.
Pathetic.
We should report Raj to the Aussie tourist board.
surely they would want to know how badly he makes OZ look all by himself?
*shrug*
well, as an alternative, at least OZ has good news coming out of it economically…
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303610504577419320948930402.html?mod=whats_now
Raja knows, as evidenced by his baffling decision to actively shame me for not wanting a conflict diamond.
I presume that if anyone mentioned giving money to a homeless person he’d call you a pussy for not curb stomping them.
And Nerd, here is one more book for you
Man and his Symbols by Carl Gustav Jung (Switzerland)
The concept of time is important here.
Now what was it that they say about the unexamined life?
I’ll leave it to the Raj to google it.
;)
Of course a “simple” question about a diamond ring DIDN’T, it was the REST of the statement that did.
But naturally the raja dishonestly deflects attention from that.
Truly odious.
Man and his Symbols by Carl Gustav Jung
now why doesn’t it surprise me that a woo-besotted dolt like Raj has Jung as one of his “trusted” references?
dear me.
Out of curiosity Raj, would you trust the word of an adulterer?
Yep, a comment to NofR, who last posted over 60 comments ago (which didn’t even mention time), while ignoring everyone else’s challenges.
No, no, not dishonestly deflecting attention from the matter at hand, not at all. Not at all.
And poor, poor, raja seems to not realize precisely how ludicrously outdated Jung’s ideas are, and how irrelevant they are now, to all fields except literature(fiction), and history.
What the hell? Mixing apples and oranges. Giving money to homeless person and buying a diamond ring? Do you know how many jobs you support when you buy a diamond ring? And not every diamond is a so-called conflict diamond. Maybe a few are, but most aren’t. They can’t be. Buy from DeBeers. I am sure they are a very moral and ethical company. Or, don’t buy diamond. Buy an Emerald ring. Or Australian Topaz.
here, Raj, have a woo-meister fest:
http://mythosandlogos.com/Jung.html
after you read all of Jung’s output, come back here and name ONE SINGLE THEORY proposed by Jung in any of those books that was scientifically testable.
note i said “testable” even, because they aren’t even testable hypothetically, let alone have they ever actually BEEN tested empirically.
when you understand that, and why it is so… oh wait, that’s asking way too much of you.
oh well.
blunder onwards!
As in what? An adulterer can, otherwise, be a very honest person. I am sure many honest lawyers and judges have indulged in adultery from time to time. Why get married in the first place? Why not keep tasting different flavour without any fear of bondage and guilt?
Going to go by faith on that one?
You never disappoint.
IMO, Jung’s ramblings can be best boiled down to confirmation and recall bias (from his subjects in many cases), combined with anthropic bias.
No. I found this on the UN site:
“How can a conflict diamond be distinguished from a legitimate diamond?
A well-structured ‘Certificate of Origin’ regime can be an effective way of ensuring that only legitimate diamonds — that is, those from government-controlled areas — reach market. Additional controls by Member States and the diamond industry are needed to ensure that such a regime is effective. These measures might include the standardization of the certificate among diamond exporting countries, transparency, auditing and monitoring of the regime and new legislation against those who fail to comply.”
http://www.un.org/peace/africa/Diamond.html
Jung was going through spiritual crisis. And he had a near death experience that changed his life.
So we’re again just going to pretend that Raja didn’t yell at me for not being materialistic. Ok sure, double think on herp a derp black is white
Jung was going through spiritual crisis.
*yawn*
And he had a near death experience that changed his life.
double-irrelevant-red-herring YAWN.
So we’re again just going to pretend that Raja didn’t yell at me for not being materialistic.
evidently.
want me to kick his ass for you when I next visit OZ?
David McDonald had a TV experience that changed his life.
Utterly irrelevant with respect to the point of argument at hand, and an utterly transparent dishonest attempt at deflection, YET AGAIN.
Pitiful.
If I say no he’ll just yell at me again for being a bleeding heart.
David McDonald had a TV experience that changed his life.
George W Bush snorted a line of coke off a hooker’s ass that change his.
or so I hear.
Don’t take any offence, but being an atheist means that you are supposed to be a materialistic. Things like love, empathy, emotions, feelings, should have no ultimate value for you, because we are just bio mechanical individual units in a dog-eat-dog world, evolving through natural selection for our own very selfish reasons.
If I say no he’ll just yell at me again for being a bleeding heart.
fucking pansy-ass hippie liberal.
*sigh*
;)
Don’t take any offense, but the world would be a better place if your mother had just bitten your head off the second you exited her tract.
I “apologize’ for not conforming to your bigoted preconceptions and I am so sorry that being a decent person makes you uncomfortable. I guess it must suck to realize that nonbelievers are more ethical than you are.
Don’t take any offence, but
does one even need to read past this?
no.
To bring it again to everyone’s attention.
also Raj, I am not atypical for atheists. Your ideas of what we’re supposed to be is due to religious ideas we don’t hold.
It’s actually a squirrel-eat-nut world.
…
You wouldn’t understand.
btw, you have pictures of your trilo ring up anywhere?
love to see it.
That’s OK. No offence taken. I am quite OK with conflicting views of other people, and screaming children. I respect their opinions, too. But you haven’t really addressed the point I made in my last comment. You, once again, got carried away by your extremely intense emotions.
See some people would think that atheists not being immoral pricks would be a good thing, Raj takes offense at it and tries to argue they’re not acting as they should. Again Raj, have you ever considered that you might be doing the devil’s work? I mean my religion believed in faith through work so your actions would be seen as incredibly evil
It’s actually a squirrel-eat-nut world.
Daddy, I want a squirrel.
What presumptive arrogance of the raja to think it can tell atheists what being an atheist means. (Of course we already know that “being”, “an”, and “atheist” are words that it cannot properly define.”
A lie.
A BLATANT LIE. And a slander.
Another LIE.
Irrelevant and deliberately intellectually dishonest to even mention it here.
A complete and utter failure at comprehension of what the theory of evolution through natural selection actually says. But whose surprised by this.
Raja the pitiful slandering LIAR caught LYING again.
Not surprising at all, of course.
In fact, IIRC, it pretty much SAID THE EXACT SAME THING ALREADY EARLIER IN THE THREAD, and was called out on it. Obviously, dishonest fapwit that it is, it has ignored the prior call out.
Pathetic ethical and moral midget.
It wasn’t about being ethical or unethical. It was about being materialistic and being the opposite of it.
More insults, charming.
I wonder how soon till we dump this boring hateful asshole
A clear and OBVIOUS lie.
Another blatant LIE.
ANOTHER lie and SLANDER.
Pitiful odious immoral fapwit.
I repeat. The point I made was about materialism, which had nothing to do with ethics or morality.
You, once again, got carried away by your extremely intense emotions.
yeah, those dames, always overwrought with emotion.
Amirite, rajmeister?
*fistbump*
ugh, I feel ill even being sarcastic.
Raj seems to not understand this human thing called emotion and holds it in contempt. Odd because as a theist is he not supposed to be empathetic and all spiritual and shit?
No wait he’s supposed to be a self righteous greedy little sexist pig
More pitifully dishonest evasion of the point.
oh, my bad, I should have said “sheila” instead of “dame”.
You think atheists are Vulcan?
Didn’t you ever watch Star Trek?
Vulcans are supremely ethical people, with myyyyyyssterious <waggles fingers> mystical rituals!
(I guess we’re still to develop the ritual of Kolinahr, as David is wont to note)
Raj, remember who is the Prince of Lies.
And yet ANOTHER pathetic dishonest evasion of the point.
Oh look! I think that squirrel has found a bad nut! (→ rajkumar)
Hell no, Johnnie. Don’t give yourself the credit you do not deserve. If you ask me, I think atheists are like ‘Chewbacca’.
But NOOOOOOOOOOTHING about ethics.
As a side note: as a pure materialist why would I not value intelligent life above all other things. It’s insanely rare in the universe, incredibly fragile, no two are alike, and it can’t be fixed or repaired when damaged. ANd it provides stuff like sex and Doctor Who and trilobite rings
raj is a misogynist asswipe suffering from extreme authoritarianism combined with Dunning Kruger.
I have seen nothing to alter my conclusion in days of seeing it post.
done.
Who is a being not a species
and does not live on endor
So what atheist are courageous, loyal, stick firmly to ethics and are more feared than they deserve?
You’re right! We’re just food! Food for the worms!
(fashions noose out of handy extension cord)
I suggest a new strategy raj, let the wookie win
you know rajster, there actually IS a religion concocted from a materialistic perspective?
http://www.naturalism.org/
now, for 10 points, tell me:
do atheists belong to naturalists, naturalists belong to atheists, or neither to neither?
The fapwit raja still fapping, I see.
Pathetic.
God the only thing more painful than hearing Raj talk about what atheists are supposed to do is see him try to speak geek.
I suggest a new strategy raj, let the wookie win
Ha!
Truth hurts.
Thus Christianity cruelly exterminated the heretical Cathars, its most anti-materialistic sect.
(The Albigensian Crusade)
Truth is beauty
What makes you think that’s a religion? And how about humanism?
rajkumar:
Must be nice to be pain-free.
@JM
Zing
The raja is well anesthetized.
Truth hurts.
how would you know?
you’ve armored your poor addled brain so heavily against “truth”, it would take a fucking hydraulic press to crack it.
you know, like the press the scientist used to crush his fly head in the movie “The Fly“?
A more obvious example of a naturalistic religion would be something like the Raëlism or some kinds of watered-down Buddhism. Owen Flanagan comes to mind.
What makes you think that’s a religion?
thanks for spoiling my fun.
*sigh*
ING:
You still are evading my questions
Don’t worry. I gave you two more godless religions to play with.
I haven’t bothered wading through his shit, but I’m guessing the misrajonist doesn’t understand the difference between the kind of consumerism that people call “materialism” and what scientists and philosophers call “materialism.”
I am always open to receiving from the fountain of wisdom and intelligence. No sarcasm.
Many of have already shown just how intelligent you are. I can take a few more surprises from the (not so) evolved apes.
You didn’t put this into the form of a question:
Who are ‘proud to be’ African apes.
Yes. And if you can go back into my comments, I actually called this ‘making a point’. I asked him/her (ING) to address the point. Then I asked some questions. Got no answers.
Except that emotions are things that we feel because they’re a part of brain function, ignorant shithead. Of course they’re going to matter.
Unless you somehow know how to turn them off. In which case, please enlighten me so that I can use such an ability whenever my emotions get so bad that I can’t function properly.
rajkumar, how do you expect to be taken seriously when you make posts that consist of nothing but insulting your opponents’ intelligence? =/
rajkumar, you dill.
(Even your straw-atheists are laughing at you)
Maybe that’s one of your problems. Wisdom and intelligence don’t come from a fountain.
1) Materialism (consumerism) = buying stuff is good
2) Materialism (naturalism) = the world is made of matter, which is neither good nor bad
Note the differences. To make sure you get it, which one do you think might be applied in each example?
-A Catholic buying indulgences.
-A scientist studying dark matter.
It’s always pleasantly surprising to see new participant jumping into the discussion with so much energy, passion and vigour.
Anyways, the point is, brain functions or not, love and empathy do not fit into ‘survival of the fittest’ world-view. Plus, and a very important point, what level of love we experience and how we experience it, depends entirely on our state of mind, our state of being. Which means, if we could ‘truly’ feel this emotion of love, in its entirety, all thoughts about ‘competition’ and all corresponding negative emotions, would literally evaporate in thin air. This is what usually happens when people take the love drug ecstasy. This is how, I suppose, babies experience love.
OK. My mistake. Philosophy is one of my Achilles heels. Mathematics is the other.
rajkumar wrote:
Of course they do if having them makes an organism (and its genes) more likely to survive. Only a completely clueless idiot would say something as brainless as that.
rajkumar:
Pretty pathetic putative pummelling of that straw-atheist you’ve built, I gotta say.
(You’ve outdone yourself, to reach the level of pathetic. Who knows? Perhaps, one day, you may yet become almost mediocre at attacking those straw dummies.)
So, your weak areas are thinking and counting. At least you make up for it with your excellent trolling skills.
Yes. But, then the world is not a ‘survival of the fittest’ world any more. Love means there is no competition any more, and there is now cooperation. This is, if we are able to feel love, the love that is in us, in its entirety.
So, the point is, we being unaware of most of our emotional state, cannot make an informed decision about the workings of the universe.
Which makes it a horrible worldview, and thus not one I subscribe to. I doubt anyone else here subscribes to it either.
So why are you bringing it up?
Explain. I think I understand you, but at the same time I think we might be on different tacks.
Uh, excuse me, but who the fuck are you to tell me what I feel?
Except that emotions aren’t rational, nor are they zero-sum. They’re the product of brain chemistry, and it’s very, very easy to get into feedback loops where emotions conflict with one another.
That’s because of the drug affecting brain chemistry. Being able to use a drug to accentuate certain emotions and suppress others doesn’t say anything about how one’s emotions will work when sober.
Case in point, I use pot to calm myself down when I am in emotional overload. This does not get rid of the overload, but the effect of pot is enough to suppress the emotional distress to the point where I can somewhat function and work on the distress itself. The distress is still there, and is going to come back when the pot wears off unless I work on it. All I’ve done is intervened in my own brain chemistry in order to make it work better for me at the current moment.
Ecstacy/MDMA, or any other psychoactive drug, is the same concept. It’s an intervention in one’s brain chemistry to induce an altered — pleasurable, more manageable, or just plain interesting — state of consciousness.
Does not follow, please explain =/
You’ve never read A Midsummer Night’s Dream, have you?
OF COURSE IT IS STILL ‘SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST’ WORLD.
WHERE, IN THE PHRASE ‘SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST’ DOES IT SAY ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT IT BEING ONLY COMPETITION?
WHERE, IN THE PHRASE, DOES IT SAY THAT COOPERATION DOES NOT COUNT?
Yet ANOTHER example of the raja dishonestly twisted words around and outright LYING.
Yet ANOTHER example of the raja trying to repeat an earlier lie that had ALREADY BEEN CORRECTED, and deliberately IGNORING THE PREVIOUS CORRECTION.
More PATHETIC LYING from the raja.
This from the raja, who explicitly stated that it would REFUSE to read ANYTHING in the psychology literature, EVEN WHEN THE LINK IS DIRECTLY GIVEN TO IT. Now it claims an error in philosophy a MISTAKE? And just wants to brush it off like that?
What PATHETIC intellectual dishonesty.
FAPFAPFAPFAPFAP.
Pitiful.
I have seen this happening many times before here. We have already gone full circle many times before. If you have nothing new to say, it’s a goodbye from me. But I’ll lurk around, just in case some fresh ideas or questions pop in your mind.
until then
Bye
Yet ANOTHER disingenous LIE from the fapwit raja.
FAPFAPFAP.
Pathetic.
Says the raja who HAS NOT INTRODUCED ONE NEW ARGUMENT SINCE ITS VERY FIRST POST, and who has done NOTHING but REPEAT, over and over and over and over and over again, the same discredited arguments over and over and over again, outright ignoring every reply made to it, going so far as the repeat some of them almost word for word between ‘flounces’.
This from the raja. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
More pathetic intellectual dishonesty.
Racist as well as misogynist.
Unsurprising.
Pitiful.
I haven’t bothered wading through his shit, but I’m guessing the misrajonist doesn’t understand the difference between the kind of consumerism that people call “materialism” and what scientists and philosophers call “materialism.”
go figure. that’s kinda why I was poking him with naturalism.
grr.
oh well, it likely would have ended up in something tedious anyway.
How long will it take our little mirajonist to understand that On the Origin of Species wasn’t an ethical treatise?
misrajonist. Drinking too much tonight. Hail Tpyso
And note that the raja’s latest flounce was a response to this:
A COWARD as well as a liar.
But of course we already knew that.
Oops. That should read philosophy literature.
Mirajonist, misrajonist, what does it matter?
What’s one single letter when the whole thing can’t be properly defined by our puny human brains with our limited human perspectives anyways?
WHOA dude far out.
fapfapfapfapfapfap
-shrug- Sorry for my comparable lack of anger, I’ve been splitting my time between this idiot and a couple 9/11 troofers.
We may as well wait for a proton to decay instead. It’ll take just as long, and we’ll learn more useful things in the interim.
raj doesn’t know what “fit” or “fittest” mean. Xe thinks they must be something to do with going to the gym.
rajkumar, do yourself a favour – look up what “survival of the fittest” actually means before you post any more about it. Hint: “fittest” doesn’t mean biggest or strongest or fastest or meanest or has-the-sharpest-teeth … think about it.
until then
Bye
please consider moving to a different hemisphere? yer stinkin’ up this one.
So why are you bringing it up?
because, being the authoritarian toad that he is, he can’t escape the strawman army he has built to describe the world.
you see, to him, we aren’t even here. We’re just figments of his imagination.
no kidding.
Okay, I can’t read the whole thread my comment awaiting moderation @187 through 373 without skipping ahead and commenting, rajkumar:
I assume you meant “is it my fault if there are no links for me on the internet”? Because that is a logical fallacy right there, not to mention childish. It also is a transparent attempt to avoid providing anything of substance to support your ignorant suppositions. There is shitloads of links if you would just look, but that would take integrity.
So I looked stuff up, and you remind me of the wiccan dungtoid girlfriens I had for a bit, the apparently atheist science tech understanding of scientific methodokogy, who in reality dwelled in the morass of choprawoo dingbattery that you reference – almost to a t!
Fuck, she never met a crystal that didn’t possess great quantities universal energy consciousness and vibrations, and yet she had the gall to dismiss my involvement with spirituous mind states!
You know, kumar, no matter how inebriated, or time dilated and hallucinatorily(lol) blasted from reality I ever got, I never once lost my marbles in regards to being in contact with god, spirits, or orange elephants being real – and I was into exploring psychedelic pathways to enlightenment! No matter how totally fucked up I got, I always knew where concrete reality stopped, and mind-fuck intergalactic expansion began – no matter how real my senses and thoughts told me it was.
There was always the presence of a logical framework, no matter how distorted and dismembered, that understood the difference between 1 + 1 equaling 2, or equaling universe-mind fusion experience.
I am one of those super-sensitive naive, and gullible and overly trusting mamby-pambies, but when self deluded psuedo-scientific bullshit weavers vomit fountains of deluded astro-piss, it is very easy to identify it for what it is, because when you know how reality works, how logic and empiricism and truth fits together, dismantling the utter crud you, and scifi etc, reference is child’s play.
I know all this is anecdotal and subjective reporting, but there is no thing greater than the ability to understand what is truth, what is real, and never worry about a conflict between what I believe, and what is verifiable.
That is fucking FREEDOM, the kind bible thumping, cosmic psuedo-faddist, afterlife claiming children will never know.
You have no idea how powerful it is to have the confidence in knowing that you don’t have to dance and distort your thinking to conform to what all else is known – to know that you can say, without hesitation, that what you think has intellectual and emotional coherence and integrity.
Anyways, try putting the guru’s works you reference into google along with the word ‘reviews’ sometime. You might be surprised that sometimes, these fools aren’t really fooling anyone… Oh, Sorry!!
Book Review
The Afterlife Experiments How not to conduct scientific research
(My comment is far to verbose already, I’ll return to your other ‘sources of knowledge’ later)
You don’t have the slightest understanding of what time is, or its implications, or its function or part in reality. “The concept of time is important here” is one of the stupidest and insulting pretensions that a moron can say to a bunch of scientists and physicists, especially when fucking promoting the ravings of a discredited century old psychologist. Like Ing said @267.
Perhaps you should read up on ego protection, or some discussion on cognitive distortion, to try and gain some insight into why you fall for pseudo-scientific dreamscapes.(Okay I see Ichthyic has already shattered your feeble grasp at credibility @278)
Like your recommendation will have me read bullshit by a discredited psychologist???? Your egotism and ignorance is truly astounding, fuckwitted idjit.
@Raj
I gave you the addressing your “points” deserved.
I’m reminded of the immortal line from the film Plan 9 From Outerspace:
@consciousness razor, re:
This is a prime example of why I make sure I never drink liquids while reading this thread. LMAO!!!
Veeeerrry interesting.
But stupid.
rajkumar
Can you move cleaning products with your mind from across the room?
The whole recent rajkumaring, not mikmik’s comment.
Rev
Cleaning products?
Except when women do it.
Then he’s all for emotional stuff.
Berated me not so long ago for saying women can be logical like real people.
Respects women a lot, our misogyniraj does.
Oh, and I missed this last night :
Pshaa. I thought he was a man.
A real man can fix a car.
I am a man. Not sure what real man means, but I did try to fix the leak. Couldn’t find the source, and didn’t have the tools to begin with.
A real man can fix a car? You open the hood of an AMG, and even your best mechanics start trembling with a mix of fear and respect and sheer joy…. Take it away, they say, before I start crying …
I don’t know. You asked for citations, and I gave you some. Read them or not, it is not my concern. By the way, the book ‘Man and His Symbols’ was written specifically for lay people like you. Jung is hard to understand, but this particular book is the most accessible book by Jung. It even has colour pictures to explain the concepts he is discussing. You’ll feel like you are back in grade 1, learning the alphabets — given you have finished grade 1 already.
mikmik
No, read the book first. It is just stupid to rely on a third person’s opinion. Read the book for yourself first. Even Dawkins’ fans keep saying this to his critics: read his books. Don’t just read the reviews.
Raj anymore criticisms on my sex or married life? It’s always funny when you try that
Jung is not a good source for information on how The Mind works.
Jung is hard to understand
there’s a reason for that impenetrability, and it’s exactly your personality type that falls for it.
What is that reason?
No dear. You are one sensitive guy/gal. By the way, who, or what, are you anyway? A Male or Female? You never did tell.
Of course.
What’s the use of keeping one in the house otherwise.
Though inability to fix a car might be forgiven if he can cook.
My father is a mechanic and his absolute worst nightmare is camping cars.
With regular cars you get grease, oil, rust, slush – that’s what the snow that sticks to your car becomes when it’s taken inside, a kind of wet, cold mush with varying kinds of dirt best not identified in it. It produces a most marvellous sensation upon falling on your unprotected neck when you work under the car.
With camping cars you get all these plus a mess of tubing with, among others, human shit in them.
Bon appetit.
Tee-hee. Clearly spoken from a position of non-experience.
Only to be expected, I suppose.
What is that reason?
it’s entirely nebulous; there is nothing to it in the end.
but then, I’ve already told you that, and you’re incapable of understanding it, which leads us back to square one.
we are all strawman erections in your mind.
we never really existed.
you simply can’t accept existence outside of the world you’ve created for yourself.
sad.
What the hell? Who said anything about camping cars? You use an AMG as a camping car? It is going to break all your camping gear into pieces. AMGs customarily sports cars, and very sophisticated sports cars. Ordinary car mechanics just look at their engines in awe, without even touching them. Only specially trained ‘mechanics’ can do any servicing on AMGs. And I have heard, for some models, the mechanic comes on a plane from Germany!
AMGs ARE customarily sports cars
you see, raj, the reason you like Jung is because it *sounds* profound, but really, all that is happening is it is so nebulous, like a cold reading, that it allows you to project your own wishes onto it, and find a connection there.
it’s confirmation and anthropic bias, all the way down.
Though inability to fix a car might be forgiven if he can cook.
I can do both. and housework, dishes, and gardening.
though I stop at spinning and knitting.
Ichthyic
Do you do windows?
You’re in India, right ? You ever been to north america ?
A camping car is a kind of truck that (mostly older) people use for camping trips. It has a kitchen, toilet (hence tubing with shit in it), sleeping bunk and everything. Kind of a portable home.
If you go down to florida you can see lots and lots of them.
It induces tears in mechanics, kind of like magnificent sports car, but not out of joy. More like despair.
I like Freud too, even Charles Darwin.
But if you study Jung, or any person who claimed to have gone through ‘spiritual crises or experiences’, you would most likely notice that they all have many things in common, despite the fact all the them lived in different times and very different locations. Take Emanuel Swedenborg for example. He was a scientist of his time. But he was a scientists who firmly believed in the existence is spirit. The same thing happened to Jung. Maybe Einstein too.
AMGs are engines and customisation packages for existing cars.
/pedant
(They are awesome pieces of engineering, but, um, relevance?)
Fixing or breaking in through?
OK. Got your point. You were a little vague before.
No, I am not in India. No, I have never been to North America. Poor me. But if I ever go there, I am going to visit two countries only: Canada and Mexico.
re windows
Washing. It’s very dark in here.
Do you do windows?
never.
But if you study Jung, or any person who claimed to have gone through ‘spiritual crises or experiences’, you would most likely notice that they all have many things in common,
yes, you would.
hence, why it’s anthropic and confirmation bias.
I know you can’t grasp this, but do you mind if I continue to laugh at you while you blithely and obliviously plug away?
LOL
Heh. Never been out of north america myself.
Well maybe except for Cuba.
Only ?
That’s already a big program.
I live in canuckistan and I’ve never been in all the places in here. Flying from Halifax to Vancouver will take you 6 hours.
can we talk about freezing gin here?
Will gin freeze here?
No, I don’t mind at all. By all means, keep laughing at me till your head falls off… Given this hasn’t happened already. Chances are, it has … long time ago.
But do try to think outside your little box for a second. The books you have memorized, they were all written by people like you and me. Why treat them like holy scriptures? Try to un-memorize some of your contents, and then, only then, would you be able to absorb new information.
A mistake again. I keep confusing ’till’ and ‘until’…
But do try to think outside your little box for a second.
the irony, it BURNS LIKE THE SUN!
Yeah. Canada is like Australia, isn’t it? Too large a place, and only a handful of people… I am in Australia. I once drove from Darwin to Melbourne in a 1600 cc Suzuki. Took me three days and two nights.
Canada is off my itinerary then. Mexico it is. I am dying to see the pyramids.
Why treat them like holy scriptures?
Smoke is literally pouring from my fingers as I type this.
how can you contain such irony and not fucking explode?
Icthyic, #408,
Are we rubbing it on our Parts to achieve a refreshing feeling?
Louis
Will gin freeze here?
well, if I ever see anything other than denial and projection from Raj, hell itself might freeze over, so seems as good a place as any to talk about freezing alcohol.
so… about the icy gin…
shots?
dry gin martinis?
what?
Are we rubbing it on our Parts to achieve a refreshing feeling?
I’m thinking I need to after being so badly burned by Raj’s irony-splosion.
Yeah I know. It’s not easy. Especially if one was living under the impression that he or she was on the verge of solving all the mysteries of the universe.
But you know what? Look at all those people who made discoveries and breakthroughs in the course of human history. They were all highly creative people, and they all gave us something completely new. They were not trying to prove to the world how good their memories were…
Rajkumar, #403,
Then you are an undiluted, unadulterated fuckwit.
There’s beauty everywhere.
If you the chance to go to the USA take it, the scenery alone is worth the trouble. You could lose yourself endlessly on the California coast or the forests in the Carolinas, or in any of the mountain ranges or deserts.
It’s also a pretty fascinating culture for an outsider. I’m a Brit and I lived there for a short while and it was remarkably different from the media impression of it. In a positive sense.
Fuck it, I can find good things to say about Buffalo!
Louis
Look at all those people who made discoveries and breakthroughs in the course of human history.
ah, and here we go with the Galileo Gambit…
pass the frozen gin, eh chigau?
I still think it might work well in a very dry martini… where you just wave the vermouth over the top…
rajkumar
You are too stupid to come to Canada.
I don’t know what standards Mexico has.
—
gin
Open the bottle have a drink.
If you the chance to go to the USA take it, the scenery alone is worth the trouble. You could lose yourself endlessly on the California coast or the forests in the Carolinas, or in any of the mountain ranges or deserts.
grand canyon… yellowstone… everglades…
nobody would have a problem with Raj the tourist.
…so long as he keeps his wallet open and his mouth shut.
gin to TET?
… oh, and let me know when you’re planning a visit, so I can contact Homeland Security there and you can experience that too.
maybe they’ll keep you even, and my goal of getting you out of this hemisphere will be fulfilled!
Icthyic,
Best kind of grockle is rich, thick, stupid and silent.
Louis
gin to TET?
and vodka, tequila, rum…
yup.
done here.
I was just kidding. Actually, the magnitude of the sheer charm that this country posses… it scares me. Like a woman who is too beautiful, actually starts to scare you. What if you fall in love with her, and she lets you love her? You would become her slave for the rest of your life! In the same manner, what if I go to the US for a visit, and the whole country turns itself into a magnet for me, and I get turned into a small piece of iron? I wouldn’t be able to come back! The country’s already got enough of ‘illegal aliens’ living there. Why one more?
Where I am living right now, they actually ask people to come here and live. So, I think I am in the right spot. No sowing here too. Plenty of sunshine and kangaroos.
snowing not sowing
blowing not bowing
What if you fall in love with her, and she lets you love her? You would become her slave for the rest of your life! In the same manner, what if I go to the US for a visit, and the whole country turns itself into a magnet for me, and I get turned into a small piece of iron?
*envisions Monty Burns tenting his hands*
Excellent.
And I have never been out of my shithole of a third-world country!!! Woohoo!!! Take that, gringos!!!
I wins!!! I wins, I says!!! Sweet, sweet victory at last!!!
*falls into stupor*
rajkumar
fuck
you are creepy
More arrogant, pretentious, oblivious, odious, mindless fapping from raja the fapwit.
Another deliberately dishonest mischaracterization.
Fapfap.
More irrelevant misdirection.
Fapfapfap.
An outright slander and blatant lie.
Fapfapfapfap.
Nothing new from rajafapmore.
Nothing new at all.
Pathetic.
Yet more evidence of the fapwit’s veiled racism on full display here.
It cannot even snark without exposing the full depths of its ethical depravity.
What if you fall in love with her, and she lets you love her? You would become her slave for the rest of your life! In the same manner, what if I go to the US for a visit, and the whole country turns itself into a magnet for me, and I get turned into a small piece of iron?
OTOH, that also calls for posting THIS.
OMG
Burton was sooo haaawwt!
raj =
Look, raj, Einstein, PZ Meyers, Stephen Hawking, Thunderf00t, and Sarah Kavassalis, could all become Pentecostals and I would still be 100% sure that there is no universal spirit or consciousness or divinities, or God(s).
Every person on the planet could as well,(present company excepted) and I would still form my own beliefs and knowledge structure/world view on what I reasoned was true.
This is a major roadblock to understanding what knowledge is for religious and simpleminded and indoctrinated peoples who have been brainwashed into accepting whatever authorities tell them as true. Simple people have not the means to determine if what ‘experts’ say is correct, and in any event, all these people, and even very intelligent people, can be, and are, susceptible to propaganda and distorted reporting.
It seems impossible for people like you to grasp the very simple idea that ALL OPINIONS are subject to the same evaluational criteria, and also as importantly, every single authority or leader or ‘hero’ is just a person like us.
They make mistakes, they have quirks and emotional bruises and even become Man U supporters, no matter that they are brilliant and legendary!
I will say it again. The deepest happiness I feel about my self and my life, is that I have the confidence to tell right from wrong by figuring it out for myself. My conclusions are then subject to rigorous reality checking, and if my conclusions are found to be discordant with apparent facts and reality, I have the honest desire to change my beliefs to be the correct, or most rational, viewpoint I know.
I, and most of us here, I think, are free to accept reality on its terms, without fears or expectations to satisfy any external authority or dogma. I don’t know how to express it, raj, the satisfaction and security I feel to be less and less vulnerable to lies and deception, the more I learn, and to be more and more open and unafraid to have my opinions and reasoning questioned.
Mystery is not to be feared or awed by, but to be excitingly embraced and explored.
(I really wonder if I take myself too seriously sometimes!)
(BTW, it is not the case that Einstein was spiritual in any fucking variation or contortion of a metaphysical sense, and it pisses me off no end that people keep trying this bullshit play. He was perhaps pantheist, but he meant nature, or the universe and its properties, when he used the term ‘god’.)
This is why we ask for citations, links, and quotes. It’s because we don’t accept anything, on anybody’s word, until we check it out against our own stringent standards of rationality – no matter who or what(God? lol) said it, or if it even was said in that context, rajeinstein.
Incidentally, I’d just like to thank people for their very educational and enlightening and overall kind responses to my Courtier’s Reply subjected post. See Raj? It is in fact possible to say something that is factually wrong here and still nonetheless be treated with utmost respect. I believe the fact that a good chunk of posters here have gotten royally pissed off at your posts shows just how “So horrible it’s shit” that the quality of your posts are.
And I can’t believe I end up having to do this AGAIN, but here is the Scientific Process:
1) make an observation and create a hypothesis.
2) experiment and repeat it constantly.
3) submit for peer review.
4) revise your claim.
5) retest it to resubmit it with a 10% chance of being published.
6) if published, other scientists become vultures, and they (hoping to disprove) analyze your results for years, seeing if they get inconsistent results.
7) many years later, after many trials, the scientific community may accept it.
8) finally, it becomes a theory.
This is my second time at requesting this within a Zombie thread I do believe: Raj, demonstrate to us how your God claim manages to even pass Stage 1 of the Scientific Process. If you end up answering with something like your God being “beyond science”, then please go on to demonstrate with evidence a better method for discerning truth than the Scientific Method.
If you ignore these requests, I will keep on posting these requests until you actually address them.
If you do in fact respond and then prove that you are unable to provide satisfactory answers for either of those requests, then I will forego all future attempts at civility with you and will finally have my patience threshold with you snap after having finally managed to read all seven of the existing zombie threads and witnessing every single one of the constant fallacies and dishonesties that you have spouted throughout this time.
And believe me, Raj, that it will have taken this long for me to hypothetically lose my patience with you and start getting angry will be a HELL of a mean feat, speaking as someone who used to get bullied a lot and constantly lash out.
I look forward to your response,
Jon
meaning exactly nothing
There is no better method for ‘discerning truth’ than the scientific method. This is why I asked some people to read Gary Schwartz’s books. He is a scientist, and he is trying to prove the existence of God through following the scientific method, like a good old properly trained scientist. I know he’s got lots of critics, but he’s also got lots of supporters. Look at both sides when you make a judgement about his work.
Also note, to understand this God concept, you have to do some background study on what this God Concept actually is. Remember, we are NOT talking about God as some BEING, as described in religions like Christianity and Islam. If you have read most of my comments here, then you should know this.
Great! And I love this attitude. And mind you, I have given already citations. More could be arranged if you are interested. Let me know.
I have given already citations.
to books with no scientific support, and website full of nothing but bias.
sorry, we don’t classify those as “citations” here.
you’ll need to do much better.
try the primary literature.
we have.
There is no better method for ‘discerning truth’ than the scientific method.
but you don’t even understand what that is.
how can you be a judge of its pragmatism, if you haven’t a clue what you’re talking about?
He is a scientist, and he is trying to prove the existence of God
like I said, you don’t understand the scientific method, if you think what he is doing there is science.
-what is the definition of God as a observable phenomenon?
-what hypothesis is generated from this observation to test?
-how is the hypothesis tested in the field?
-what are the predictions that come from the collection of data regarding this hypothesis?
I already know you don’t know any of the answers to these.
If one has read most of the raja’s comments here, then what one KNOWS is that raja DOESN’T have a God concept, it only thinks it has one.
And it also thinks word salad makes a viable argument.
Ichthyic
You state your scientific qualifications, then I’ll state his. Then we’ll leave it the general audience who is a real scientist. Mind you, even you mentor, Richard Dawkins, doesn’t come close.
Your
You state your scientific qualifications, then I’ll state his.
argument from authority.
Ken Miller has more extensive scientific publications than I do.
when he puts his definition of god into quantum gaps, he’s still wrong, and it’s still not science.
Mind you, even you mentor, Richard Dawkins, doesn’t come close.
but, Dawkins wasn’t a mentor. He wasn’t even on my advisory committee.
see, this is where your gross ignorance keep getting in your way.
you really don’t know how science works, and you don’t know how scientists learn their fields.
you just… haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.
Now, why describe the best of Rajkumar’s fuckwittery? Cluelessness is a given considering it couldn’t link to evidence with a gun pointed at its micron sized head….
It’s not argument from authority. **You** actually challenged him as a scientist, and in a way, indicated that you knew more science than he does. This is why I said this. Again, what you think about him as a scientist is irrelevant. He’s got his extraordinary scientific background to prove he is a proper scientist. If you must, refute his work with more science. What you are saying about him is not science.
It’s not argument from authority.
yes, it is.
**You** actually challenged him as a scientist,
no, I didn’t. I challenged whether what he was doing IS science.
you just love your little strawmen, don’t ya?
indicated that you knew more science than he does.
irrelevant, which is why I mentioned Ken Miller in reference.
I’m sure I know more about my own field than Miller does, or Schwartz for that matter.
means fuck all when it comes to delineating what is and is not science.
it really is that simple. The scientific method is quite well defined, and even someone as idiotic as yourself COULD do science.
You seem to think that because someone has credentials, that enables them to redefine the very nature of what science is.
THAT is the very essence of an argument from authority.
seriously, Raj…
you need to get over this whole authoritarian schtick you’ve got going.
you might start with some self-analysis:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
that guy didn’t just pull his conclusions out of his ass, like you do.
He spent 30 years running experiments to refine his index, and it fits quite well. It describes your behavior to a proverbial “T”.
You, Mr King of Spin, would make an excellent politician. If you even remotely consider yourself a scientist, do consider contesting in the next election, because you are in the wrong field. VERY wrong field…
When you challenge a scientist’s work, which is supposed to based on science given he or she is a SCIENTIST, then you are challenging that person as a scientist. And also implying you know more science.
What a fuckwit…No scientist knows all of science. Some just know more of certain area’s than others, and anything over fifty years old may be obsolete. What is your excuse, other than ignorance, for your abject stoopidity concern science and how science is done??? Oh yes, that requires actually reading…
Ah yes. The raja caught plainly lying yet again.
And caught deliberately distorting someone else’s words in a dishonest fashion, YET AGAIN.
A completely irrelevant and nakedly dishonest red herring. Also yet more fallacy from authority (further illustrating the blatant lie, earlier in the very same post)!
A scientist’s background is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to the question of whether what they are doing At THE MOMENT, is science or not. There are plenty of very accomplished scientists who also indulged in blatantly unscientific activities at other times in their careers. Such as, say, Isaac Newton, Lyn Margulis, Kary Mullis.
What matters is whether or not the ACTIVITY in question is or is not science. The identity of the person doing it is completely irrelevant.
And since this has already been explained in detail to the raja long before and many times over, that fact that it is bringing it up yet again now is just more evidence of the shameless intellectual dishonesty of the fapwit liar.
Fapfapfapfap.
When you challenge a scientist’s work, which is supposed to based on science given he or she is a SCIENTIST, then you are challenging that person as a scientist
no… again, you fail to understand.
people can do this thing called compartmentalization, see?
I don’t know Schwartz’s actual scientific work to judge it, but I DO know that there is no scientific way of defining and testing a god hypothesis that isn’t immediately rejectable.
that’s based on much longer and more thorough knowledge than you have in this area.
it’s easy for me to conclude the pursuit of a god hypothesis is not scientific, while still feeling just fine saying that the person involved in it can do acceptable and good science in the field they were trained in.
I see this all the time, which, again, is why I mentioned Ken Miller.
his work in cell biology is top notch, but whenever he tries to justify his belief in a god scientifically, he falls completely flat.
do I say he is not a good scientist?
no.
I say he compartmentalizes, and call him on the stuff that isn’t science, and is poorly thought out.
I feel sorry for you that you are unable to grasp this. Maybe someday you will. However, until you do, you will be thought of as little more than an irrational child with an authoritarian personality complex.
er, mabye raj actually doesn’t know what compartmentalization means?
here:
http://www.psych-it.com.au/Psychlopedia/article.asp?id=54
WRONG. No work is “supposed to be based on science” just because the person doing it is a scientist who did other work based on science.
WRONG.
WRONG.
Also, fallacy from authority yet again.
The shameless lying continues.
Fapfapfapfapfap.
or the wiki version:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmentalization_%28psychology%29
Sorry, my post #454 is incomplete:
Obviously Rajkumar understands nothing about science, scientists, and the scientific method. Nothing but OPINION, which *POOF* is dismissed without evidence as it never presents evidence….Chritopher Hitchens (link to CH Quotes, which is evidence for him actually saying that).
“Compartmentalization” is most definitely on the list of english language words that the raja cannot properly define.
It’s got more than 2 syllables in it, after all.
ObRef: Then a miracle occurs
Nerd, you are quoting a JOURNALIST to explain what science is, and what evidence is? A Journalist? Who the hell is Christopher Hitchens? Did you see the debate where George Galloway ripped his single nut off, many time? Want a link?
If its got more than half a syllable, the chances of Raja understanding it are minimal…
Well. this is where you don’t get it. It is NOT a god hypothesis in the traditional sense. His book is called The Afterlife Experiments. Does this give any hints? There is no God here. But if it could be proved that life does exist after this life, then there is a **possibility** is some God for sure.
OK. I agree. But who is going to determine that? You? Without even being familiar with his works?
Chritopher Hitchens. You and your thoughts . See the difference? We do….
Yet MORE fallacy from authority. AGAIN.
The raja demonstrates its lying once again.
Pitiful.
MASSIVE logic fail right there, presupposing without a shred of evidence that the phenomena of “god” and “afterlife” need be linked in any way at all.
But that’s hardly surprising, given the raja’s pathetic track record.
FAPFAPFAPFAPFAP.
That’s what peer review is for.
Not that the raja has any inkling whatsoever as to how that aspect of the scientific method actually works.
Will the fapwit make another deliberately dishonest attempt to distort this point? And make yet more of a fool of itself? And reveal more of its intellectual and ethical bankruptcy in the process?
We shall see!
The *possibility* is certainly there!
Fapfap.
And note how the raja has cycled all the way back to its pathetic and already discredited **possibility** schtick.
Fapfapfap.
Peer reviews are quite irrelevant when you are not familiar with the actual works on which the reviews are based on. Relying solely on peer reviews, without getting into the actual works, you’d be doing the same thing called ‘argument from authority’. The peer reviews, and the reviewers, become your authority.
You are a stupid stupid person.
Jesus. Do you know the definition of PEER?
stupid stupid person.
You really have no clue what the term ‘peer review’ actually means, do you?
Sure I do. Why do you ask such stupid question? The old trick from the same old bag when you have nothing useful to say?
…wait
Not drink enough yet. back in an hour.
Based on your earlier writing, I don’t think so.
Look, I’m an historian. Specifically, labour and industrial history. I also read extensively in mesozoic palaeontology — a subject in which I am a dilletante. So how do I, as a non-scientist, judge whether or not a paper is worth reading? How do I figure out if the person presenting the paper knows their arse from their elbow? Simple. If the paper has been published in a reputable peer-reviewed publication, I know that, even if other experts in that field may disagree with the conclusions reached in that paper, the person has, at the very least, presented the factual material in a competent manor and, thus, I can read the paper without being led off into lala land.
Peer-review means that, before the paper is published, it has been vetted by other recognized experts in the field. They do not publish the actual review. Instead, they can say that yes, this is a good paper, that no this writer has no clue, or can send it back to the author to address specific weaknesses. I do not read the reviews, I read the papers. And I can be confident that the writer really does have the education and experience to be able to speak on the subject.
In a case like that, argument from authority is not a logical fallacy — it is a way for me, and other scientists, to avoid wasting their time. This does not mean that new and amazing hypotheosae are blocked; it does mean that the new ideas are supported adequately enough to at least be considered.
rajkumar
Did you think a “peer review” is like a “movie review”?
rajkumar is a moron.
Here, cupcake, is the Wiki article on the subject. I suggest you read it.
If you are not a scientist, and you rely solely on ‘reputable peer-reviewed publications’ for your scientific knowledge, then …You shouldn’t be reading these reviews to begin with. Stick to Encyclopaedias and Science For Dummies series.
Actually, no. You show no comprehension of anything whatsoever, that is over a half syllable. That your idiocy in action. Show otherwise by citing every claim you make with third party evidence, including your existence. We don’t even presume that…
But I am fuckwitted loser…
That depends upon the peers. Creobots claim peer reviewed literature, but the peer must acknowledge biblical inerrancy. Your fuckwitter on peer review is bullshit. Any scientist knows what it means. You don’t…
Why? We wrote the science, not fuckwits who ignore what peer review, like you really means…
He said he was a HISTORIAN you … Why don’t you read before you comment?
Rajkumar, peer review is not some dude sitting around saying, “I think that this paper is the shit! 4 stars!”
Rather, it is a process whereby people who are experts in what it is you do critiquing your science, your methodology. If you pass muster – as producing something notable, as not being a steaming moron, your work gets published.
Why don’t you???Who the fuck are YOU??? WHAT ARE YOUR CREDENTIALS???? WHY DON’T YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP IN THE PRESENCE OF YOUR BETTERS, WHICH IS ANYBODY WHO UNDERSTANDS ONE SYLLABLE OR MORE…..
Try here, instead of your OPINION, WHICH IS BULLSHIT AND IGNORANCE….
Yes, but my point is, peer reviews help only if you are familiar with the work on which the review is based upon. I am not saying don’t read peer reviews or they have no value. I am saying, get yoursefl familiarized with the actual work, before, in conjunction with the peer reviews, or even after you’ve read the peer review — but you gotta have a first hand knowledge of the actual work, too. Peer reviews can have mistakes and professional bias too, and they do.
CITATION NEEDED LIAR AND BULLSHITTER…PUT UP OR SHUT THE FUCK UP. I linked to where you need to show links to prove you are not a liar and bullshitter, like my quote, without your link, shows you to be……Always the fuckwitted loser rajkumar….
How does rajkumar avoid drowning in the smug that pours out of him?
rajkumar, no one reads peer reviews except the editors of the journals.
They are not for public consumption.
Rajkumar, without evidence, your OPINIONS can be dismissed *POOF*, without evidence. And all you offer is OPINIONS. Citations needed for every claim you make liar and bullshitter…
You seem to have a very vivid imagination. You must be huge fan of cult movies?
Your are a fucking moron. That’s what PEER REVIEW MEANS.
No, you ARE A FAN OF LYING AND BULLSHITTING….Where’s your link to third party evidence to show you aren’t a liar and bullshitter, liar and bullshitter….
Having written them, I can tell you their exact format:
“The authors, [names], say [whatever]. This is [supported/not supported] by the evidence they provide. This paper [is/is not] recommended for publication [with/without] further editing.”
Even from Raj I’m astounded on the stupidity he is displaying.
Wrong. Anybody can read them. A lot of them are freely available on the Internet.
The reviews are not published. Many journals, in fact, destroy the reviews after the process is complete.
rajkumar
In a peer-reviewed journal, only the original work is published.
The only people who read the reviews are the editors of the journal and the author of the original work.
No one else ever sees the review.
No they aren’t. They are confidential except to the authors and editors liar and bullshitter. Link or you are a liar and bullshitter, and what you say is WRONG…..
So on what, exactly, do you rely for your scientific knowledge, raj? Your own internal barometer of truthiness?
One function of peer review, as I understand it, is to review the methodology behind a paper. Did the writer properly control for outside influences and biases that might have skewed the results? You want to listen to people knowledgeable in the field here, who are aware of the obvious and common pitfalls when setting up a study.
Results and conclusions are subject to actual replication, pretty much the opposite of argument from authority.
Damn, you’re thick.