Respectfully asking, what's wrong with saying, "What if?" You are correct, we haven't discovered any of what you described. But what I fail to understand is why you are so quick and so adamant to cite what we don't know and imply that speculation is pointless. The impression I get from your post is that we're better off limiting ourself to what we do know--which eventually just leads us to an endless loop because we never move beyond what we don't know.
Because draw and quartering, not to mention hanging served as such an effective deterrent back in the good ol' days. Didn't they used to throw big parties at those events? Draw and quartering only serves to sate the bloodlust of those who have been wronged (and those who imagine themselves to be). It doesn't actually deter crime.
I'd like to argue this... but the whole walnut stock thing just defies sanity... Seriously???? Oh dear...that does weaken the logic of the assault weapon ban by quite a bit.
Allow me to illustrate for you who your REAL enemy is in terms of gun control. It's not the politicians. Contrary to popular/. opinion, our politicians are not stupid. It has, I guarantee you, occurred to at least some of our elected representatives that a ban on assault rifles is stupid and doesn't solve the problem. It has also occurred to many of them that the problem really is mentally ill people. However, there are two constituencies that are driving them to gun control measures. The first constituency happens to be socially & fiscally conservative pro-gun owners who insist on better policing of existing firearm regulations (good), and also reduce taxation for everyone in general, thus cutting down government waste and programs. This is admirable, except that mental health programs, asylums, and facilities in general that would benefit society by taking the mentally ill out of mainstream society and rehabilitating them are among the first local/county/state/federal funding expenditures to get cut because there's not enough of a constituency to represent them.
The second constituency, and the one with FAR more electoral power than the NRA, are suburban women voters. If you want to know WHO exactly is driving the push for gun control and pushing all the politicians in the country to do something about guns, it is this group. These are the voters who are working mothers, who have never grown up in a house with guns. Their children go to suburban schools very similar to Columbine and Sandy Hook. They've never been victims of violent crime. They've never had cause to fear a tyrannical government. But they DO know gun nuts. They all know at least one person who talks about government conspiracies, who brings up Obama at holiday dinners and how he's taking the county to damnation and socialism, who whispers darkly of the coming apocalypse over beers with their husbands on the back porch, and who owns a goddamn arsenal of scary-looking assault weapons. To these women, and their families, the Enemy is not urban black thugs. Nor is it black-clad government agents. The Enemy is the crazy gun nut down the street who doesn't seem to have his head screwed on straight, is paranoid and suspicious of everyone, has a whole lot of guns, and is constantly ranting about the government and conspiracies, and how stupid his or her fellow citizens are.
If you want to know the real reason why your gun rights are being taken away, go look in the mirror. You, and others like you, scare the hell out of these people who have no reason to fear the entities you fear. They fear YOU, and they are asking our government to do something about YOU. And they outnumber the NRA, they outnumber the responsible gun owners, and their voices will be heard. It is not a question of if gun control and an assault weapon ban is going to be enacted, but when. And bear this in mind: the day that women take to the streets and march in favor of gun control, is the day the Second Amendment will fall. Why? Because your Enemy won't be the black-clad federal troops coming to take away your guns, it's going to be the scared mothers, grandmothers, daughters, and sisters who are marching in the streets demanding political action because they don't feel safe around YOU. And let me ask you this: when it comes to that, are you willing to kill those women to keep your guns? Because THEY are the ones who the federal troops will obey. And THEY outnumber YOU.
So let me ask you this: as a contractor, do you sleep/live/eat/live your job then? Because what you're describing to me sounds like you enjoy being your own boss, and taking on all the responsibility that comes with it. The way you describe having to track all of your expenses, hold aside revenue made due to taxes, and then having to sit down and either do your own taxes or hire a CPA to do it, plus itemize all your expenses, plus make sure you've got gigs lined up once the current one ends, plus money set aside for dry spells (which will come), appears to me to be almost all-consuming and similar to the necessary habits of a lot of SMB owners I've known (who for the most part are cantankerous bastards who think everyone's robbing them blind, work 90 hours a week, and force their private/family life to conform to the demands of their work life). Do you honestly enjoy what you do then?
And another thing: my father was the head of the Farm Service Agency in Nevada, and he worked with the Sierra Club, the ranchers, and the BLM to repair damage to the environment using cattle. Free-range grass-fed cattle are very good for the environment, and they're one of the reasons that wild horses have managed to thrive to the point now where they are the culprit for destroying the environment by over-eating on the range land and thus starving themselves. We'd be doing wild horses a huge favor by shooting the ones we currently have penned up now and sending them north for meat. The wild horses are now the ones responsible for driving other wild species close to extinction on the desert.
Dude, I've grown up in Nevada in the heart of cattle country. I've seen first-hand how cattle herds have converted old mining tracts that were almost completely stripped of vegetation back into riparian habitat. That's how the BLM is reconverting damaged environments--by allowing cattle rights to ranchers to go free range and graze. Where the cattle go and graze, the wildlife soon follow. Savory's right, and you're wrong.
I wonder if the blowback is coming because people expect Science (as opposed to science) to always work upon demand without variation, just like all the wondrous inventions and improvements that It has brought us... and when Science starts behaving like science, people lose faith because it's no longer working on demand.
Actually, this last post of yours was pretty human and not that obnoxious--I appreciate you acknowledging that you can come across that way, thank you. Anyway, I'm done flinging psychic poo at you. I had some aggression stored up yesterday and had to vent it--and since you're a somewhat anonymous real person on the internet whose posts were embodying some of the self-righteous behavior that really pisses me off, I decided to let you have it. From what I can tell, it pretty much bounced off your buffers, which is good in the long run.
As you can tell, my arguing capabilities aren't that great, since I didn't take debate classes (and I didn't want to spend the time to really get into the detailed line-by-line rebuttals you require). The real issue is, you and I will always live in separate realities. I can walk in your world and have, but the thing is, you and those like you will never walk in mine because you're not capable of it and you never will be. When confronted by the possibility of the paranormal, you're always going to push for clinical results based on rigorous empirical process. Those two books I mentioned indeed list such results and if I'd had the time I would have cited those research projects along with links for you to investigate, but it'll never be good enough for you, or for the people who posted below in response. You'll always find--or invent--some flaw in the research or the data to justify your own beliefs that the reality we inhabit is ultimately materialistic and that anything that cannot be reliably reproduced under controlled conditions in a laboratory cannot logically be said to exist. You can't help it, it's who and what you are--and if I were to really pry at your beliefs and crack them, the results wouldn't be good. I've seen what happens to people like you when they come face to face with phenomena that they flat-out believe doesn't exist; you break down and either don't recover, or spend the rest of your life wildly attempting to cling to your definition of sanity and refuse any contact with anything that could repeat that experience.
So I concede. I'm the douchebag delusional asshat who sucks at trolling. You can have the moral victory and walk away knowing you've vanquished me. Good day.
Happily, douchebag supreme. Prepare to suck on your wrongness, provided you're willing to do a little reading, which I highly doubt, oh skeptical one. By the way, nice rhetorical dodge on the Sol Invictus issue. Today we know that the sun is a star, but back in Roman times there were an awful lot of people who thought the Sun was an omnipotent god capable of responding to prayer and sacrifice. Because the god was falsifiable, eventually we were able to prove that it was not a god--but that in no way negates the history that for most of recorded history, many cultures thought it was, and could not prove otherwise.
Please read "Extraordinary Knowing" by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer. Amazon link is:http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Knowing-Science-Skepticism-Inexplicable/dp/0553382233/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363131413&sr=1-1&keywords=Extraordinary+Knowing. Before she died, Elizabeth Mayer was a Doctor of Psychology at Berkeley whose unexpected encounter with the supernatural in locating her daughter's harp led her to do some very rigorous testing and studies on paranormal phenomena contained within human beings. But then again, I don't expect someone of your rigid insistence on being a pedantic ass to read it in the first place.
Or "Ghost Hunters" by Deborah Blum. Amazon link is: http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Hunters-William-Search-Scientific/dp/0143038958. She happens to be a Science Journalist, who wrote a book intending to debunk William James and the SPR, but came away convinced that there is something more. Oh, and there's a very large bibliography full of eyewitness accounts and experiments that meet scientific rigor.
and why am I insulting you, you know-nothing? Because I'm tired of your rigorous clinging to logic and reason as a way to assert your moral superiority. You, and those like you, don't know the first thing about having faith or embracing ambiguity, or what it really means. You've never once known what it's like to realize that everything you've ever believed in is a lie, find a new philosophical foundation, and then discover that too is a lie, and then realize that there are no ultimate truths, just another unfolding of the onion layer. You've never had to endure utter failure of the spirit, and you have no humility, or empathy for those who have. What's worse is that if you have, you're not courageous enough to admit that kind of vulnerability--which makes you a coward in a way. You just come on here and pontificate about using your philosophy and the scientific method as being core truths, when you and those like you never acknowledge that you could be wrong (or if you do, it's always with a caveat so that you're never really wrong). And if I'm wrong? Whoop-de-shit! I'll take the karmic beating for the chance to hit you and those like you with a big metaphorical stick because your attitude is just that damn infuriating. And you come across as being incredibly pompous, arrogant, and a know-it-all, so I'm going to enjoy shoving this to you.
Very well, Wild Norseman! I shall continue in my attempts to infuriate you!
First, we DO know of at least one real god: The god of Sol Invictus, also known as our sun. That right there is a God, sir, with historically-documented dedicated worshippers, doctrine, dogma and all. If I want to get pedantic, that's how I'll first refute your statement, "The god of the bible has been trivially disproven as has all the others that have some coherent, rational definition" (and if I get REALLY pedantic, not only will I explain the particulars of the cult of Sol Invictus to you at length, I'll also go look up the current primitive tribes around the world who still worship the sun and name them off to you). So, pedantically speaking, you're already wrong. There is historical evidence of an all-powerful god that is testable and falsifiable. I'm going to assume that your athestic philosophy has become pseudo-religious dogma that you blindly adhere to, and that you use as a justification for your bigotry against people of a theistic bent, and thus you were willfully unaware of this.
Now, the evidence as you suggest (and we'll assume that in this instance you're referring to the entire scientific body of knowledge revolving around testing the assumption that there is an all-knowing omnipotent entity out there somewhere who's personally interested in our world) does indeed trivially disprove the existence of afore-mentioned deities. However (and boy is this a bugger), that supposition only stands on the extent of our ability to identify--without bias--the nature of reality around us. It also assumes that our evidence is 100% right--and ALWAYS WILL BE. But if you've done any research into the nature of error and how intrinsic error is to the scientific method (as you profess to in your post above, but then go on to completely refute your comments about doubt and ambiguity with your subsequent statements) then you will realize that any absolute assertions, by their own nature, will always be wrong. It is therefore entirely possible that deities do exist, but they either either exist outside of our current scope of awareness, are smart enough to avoid detection, or have been there all along but blind nitwits like yourself who adamantly deny the existence of anything you cannot personally put your hands on cover up the evidence because you must defend your worldview at all costs, lest you become that what you hate.
I don't see you questioning your own unbending belief in the lack of any and all deities, because you've taken it as a personal truth that there are none, no doubt because you bear ill will towards anyone with a belief in theism for all the real and imagined slights they've personally done you and that which you hold important over your life time and the centuries. But, big hairy Scandinavian fella, that's your own personal problem. I think you're of a stubborn mindset, you don't like to change your mind unless you're presented with extraordinary evidence to the contrary (and even then I suggest that you'd still refuse to believe it because you're probably a materialist at heart who feels far calmer knowing that there's nothing in the dark looking back at you). So I'm going to wind up by cheerfully insulting you more, you rigid atheistic asshole, you. And, here's the other kicker: everything you believe in has to have been right since the dawn of time... HAS TO. Because if there's even one degree of deviance or even one instance of the supernatural occuring, or something even close to a deity poking their head into our particular spacetime coordinate, then you're wrong. And you're going to have to deal with it. Now, go off and masturbate while thinking of a witty response to me to put me in my place.
It's because OP's own paradigm is threatened by information and a perspective which puts his own at risk of being wrong. And he doesn't have the strength of self and capability to admit doubt and ambiguity, and allow such a threat to his personal fundamentalist philosophy of atheism to exist without rebuttal.
Given the premise of "Nobody talks, everyone walks", and the anarchist view of justice, how would an anarchist community conceptualize, agree upon, and enforce "justice" within their own community? Say you have an anarchist community, and someone acts against the consensus, then says "I'm innocent". What happens at that point? I'm genuinely curious about this, and would like to know the answer.
Re:Fascinating talk, with open ended questions
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A School in the Cloud
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Most likely, he made the (in your case) incorrect assumption that you were a highly-devout fundamentalist with an anti-government/evolution platform who home-schooled. Sadly for the home-school movement, those exist by the tens of thousands.
As a proud member pervert in good standing of the Congregation for Appreciation of Internet Pr0n, I must heartily decry, deride, protest, and shake every conceivable appendage I can muster at the idea of a laptop having a touchscreen. I care not for access to dev mode and ease of conversion to Linux, nor do I care about comparisons to MBR, MBP, or any other model in its market class, nay; what I care most about is that when I am using internet on my laptop for the purpose that the Good Lord Snookums intended--the transmission of digitalized lewd images at 0.999999 percent of c to my eyes for transitional enlightenment of my load--that any incidental contact of whatever airborne fluids I may be generating will not hit my screen and be registered as input. I have a hard enough time keeping my screen nice and clear as it is, I really do not need the fruit of my loins sending me to yet another morally dubious website when I'm not yet done with the one I'm on! So NAY! I say! Nay to touchscreens on laptops! I will NOT be a consumer of this product!
As a side note, I do not use my iPad for this very reason... well, that and my wrists tend to get crimps in them.
Allow me to illustrate for you who your REAL enemy is in terms of gun control. It's not the politicians. Contrary to popular/. opinion, our politicians are not stupid. It has, I guarantee you, occurred to at least some of our elected representatives that a ban on assault rifles is stupid and doesn't solve the problem. It has also occurred to many of them that the problem really is mentally ill people. However, there are two constituencies that are driving them to gun control measures. The first constituency happens to be socially & fiscally conservative pro-gun owners who insist on better policing of existing firearm regulations (good), and also reduce taxation for everyone in general, thus cutting down government waste and programs. This is admirable, except that mental health programs, asylums, and facilities in general that would benefit society by taking the mentally ill out of mainstream society and rehabilitating them are among the first local/county/state/federal funding expenditures to get cut because there's not enough of a constituency to represent them.
The second constituency, and the one with FAR more electoral power than the NRA, are suburban women voters. If you want to know WHO exactly is driving the push for gun control and pushing Rahm Emmanuel and all the other politicians in the country to do something about guns, it is this group. These are the voters who are working mothers, who have never grown up in a house with guns. Their children go to suburban schools very similar to Columbine and Sandy Hook. They've never been victims of violent crime. They've never had cause to fear a tyrannical government. But they DO know gun nuts. They all know at least one person who talks about government conspiracies, who brings up Obama at holiday dinners and how he's taking the county to damnation and socialism, who whispers darkly of the coming apocalypse over beers with their husbands on the back porch, and who owns a goddamn arsenal of scary-looking assault weapons. To these women, and their families, the Enemy is not urban black thugs. Nor is it black-clad government agents. The Enemy is the crazy gun nut down the street who doesn't seem to have his head screwed on straight, is paranoid and suspicious of everyone, has a whole lot of guns, and is constantly ranting about the government.
If you want to know the real reason why your gun rights are being taken away, go look in the mirror. You, and others like you, scare the hell out of these people who have no reason to fear the entities you fear. They fear YOU, and they are asking our government to do something about YOU. And they outnumber the NRA, they outnumber the responsible gun owners, and their voices will be heard. It is not a question of if gun control and an assault weapon ban is going to be enacted, but when. And bear this in mind: the day that women take to the streets and march in favor of gun control, is the day the Second Amendment will fall. Why? Because your Enemy won't be the black-clad federal troops coming to take away your guns, it's going to be the scared mothers, grandmothers, daughters, and sisters who are marching in the streets demanding political action because they don't feel safe around YOU. And let me ask you this: when it comes to that, are you willing to kill those women to keep your guns? Because THEY are the ones who the federal troops will obey. And THEY outnumber YOU.
So may I ask: was the trade-off of finances versus "bone-headed determination" and purpose worth it? I am not intending any snark; to the contrary, I'm 35, single, and childless, and I'm kind of drifting without purpose either. I've done just about everything I've ever wanted to do with my life and now am wondering what to do next. There's been ample research that shows parents are on the whole less happy in general, but I wonder if it's less to do with "happiness" and more to do with a fulfillment of purpose which is far more satisfying in the long run.
Slashdot Mirror
Respectfully asking, what's wrong with saying, "What if?" You are correct, we haven't discovered any of what you described. But what I fail to understand is why you are so quick and so adamant to cite what we don't know and imply that speculation is pointless. The impression I get from your post is that we're better off limiting ourself to what we do know--which eventually just leads us to an endless loop because we never move beyond what we don't know.
Because draw and quartering, not to mention hanging served as such an effective deterrent back in the good ol' days. Didn't they used to throw big parties at those events? Draw and quartering only serves to sate the bloodlust of those who have been wronged (and those who imagine themselves to be). It doesn't actually deter crime.
Siiiigh... Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
I'd like to argue this... but the whole walnut stock thing just defies sanity... Seriously???? Oh dear...that does weaken the logic of the assault weapon ban by quite a bit.
Allow me to illustrate for you who your REAL enemy is in terms of gun control. It's not the politicians. Contrary to popular /. opinion, our politicians are not stupid. It has, I guarantee you, occurred to at least some of our elected representatives that a ban on assault rifles is stupid and doesn't solve the problem. It has also occurred to many of them that the problem really is mentally ill people. However, there are two constituencies that are driving them to gun control measures. The first constituency happens to be socially & fiscally conservative pro-gun owners who insist on better policing of existing firearm regulations (good), and also reduce taxation for everyone in general, thus cutting down government waste and programs. This is admirable, except that mental health programs, asylums, and facilities in general that would benefit society by taking the mentally ill out of mainstream society and rehabilitating them are among the first local/county/state/federal funding expenditures to get cut because there's not enough of a constituency to represent them.
The second constituency, and the one with FAR more electoral power than the NRA, are suburban women voters. If you want to know WHO exactly is driving the push for gun control and pushing all the politicians in the country to do something about guns, it is this group. These are the voters who are working mothers, who have never grown up in a house with guns. Their children go to suburban schools very similar to Columbine and Sandy Hook. They've never been victims of violent crime. They've never had cause to fear a tyrannical government. But they DO know gun nuts. They all know at least one person who talks about government conspiracies, who brings up Obama at holiday dinners and how he's taking the county to damnation and socialism, who whispers darkly of the coming apocalypse over beers with their husbands on the back porch, and who owns a goddamn arsenal of scary-looking assault weapons. To these women, and their families, the Enemy is not urban black thugs. Nor is it black-clad government agents. The Enemy is the crazy gun nut down the street who doesn't seem to have his head screwed on straight, is paranoid and suspicious of everyone, has a whole lot of guns, and is constantly ranting about the government and conspiracies, and how stupid his or her fellow citizens are.
If you want to know the real reason why your gun rights are being taken away, go look in the mirror. You, and others like you, scare the hell out of these people who have no reason to fear the entities you fear. They fear YOU, and they are asking our government to do something about YOU. And they outnumber the NRA, they outnumber the responsible gun owners, and their voices will be heard. It is not a question of if gun control and an assault weapon ban is going to be enacted, but when. And bear this in mind: the day that women take to the streets and march in favor of gun control, is the day the Second Amendment will fall. Why? Because your Enemy won't be the black-clad federal troops coming to take away your guns, it's going to be the scared mothers, grandmothers, daughters, and sisters who are marching in the streets demanding political action because they don't feel safe around YOU. And let me ask you this: when it comes to that, are you willing to kill those women to keep your guns? Because THEY are the ones who the federal troops will obey. And THEY outnumber YOU.
So let me ask you this: as a contractor, do you sleep/live/eat/live your job then? Because what you're describing to me sounds like you enjoy being your own boss, and taking on all the responsibility that comes with it. The way you describe having to track all of your expenses, hold aside revenue made due to taxes, and then having to sit down and either do your own taxes or hire a CPA to do it, plus itemize all your expenses, plus make sure you've got gigs lined up once the current one ends, plus money set aside for dry spells (which will come), appears to me to be almost all-consuming and similar to the necessary habits of a lot of SMB owners I've known (who for the most part are cantankerous bastards who think everyone's robbing them blind, work 90 hours a week, and force their private/family life to conform to the demands of their work life). Do you honestly enjoy what you do then?
Knock knock...
And another thing: my father was the head of the Farm Service Agency in Nevada, and he worked with the Sierra Club, the ranchers, and the BLM to repair damage to the environment using cattle. Free-range grass-fed cattle are very good for the environment, and they're one of the reasons that wild horses have managed to thrive to the point now where they are the culprit for destroying the environment by over-eating on the range land and thus starving themselves. We'd be doing wild horses a huge favor by shooting the ones we currently have penned up now and sending them north for meat. The wild horses are now the ones responsible for driving other wild species close to extinction on the desert.
Dude, I've grown up in Nevada in the heart of cattle country. I've seen first-hand how cattle herds have converted old mining tracts that were almost completely stripped of vegetation back into riparian habitat. That's how the BLM is reconverting damaged environments--by allowing cattle rights to ranchers to go free range and graze. Where the cattle go and graze, the wildlife soon follow. Savory's right, and you're wrong.
I wonder if the blowback is coming because people expect Science (as opposed to science) to always work upon demand without variation, just like all the wondrous inventions and improvements that It has brought us... and when Science starts behaving like science, people lose faith because it's no longer working on demand.
They (the scientists) may be mortal. Their materialistic belief is not.
And both of you miss the big picture: Any system is perfect until human beings enter the equation. Then it's all down the hole sooner or later.
A god is a god, whether invisible bearded sky fairy or faceless prick in a lab coat telling you what Science has determined is good for you.
Actually, this last post of yours was pretty human and not that obnoxious--I appreciate you acknowledging that you can come across that way, thank you. Anyway, I'm done flinging psychic poo at you. I had some aggression stored up yesterday and had to vent it--and since you're a somewhat anonymous real person on the internet whose posts were embodying some of the self-righteous behavior that really pisses me off, I decided to let you have it. From what I can tell, it pretty much bounced off your buffers, which is good in the long run.
As you can tell, my arguing capabilities aren't that great, since I didn't take debate classes (and I didn't want to spend the time to really get into the detailed line-by-line rebuttals you require). The real issue is, you and I will always live in separate realities. I can walk in your world and have, but the thing is, you and those like you will never walk in mine because you're not capable of it and you never will be. When confronted by the possibility of the paranormal, you're always going to push for clinical results based on rigorous empirical process. Those two books I mentioned indeed list such results and if I'd had the time I would have cited those research projects along with links for you to investigate, but it'll never be good enough for you, or for the people who posted below in response. You'll always find--or invent--some flaw in the research or the data to justify your own beliefs that the reality we inhabit is ultimately materialistic and that anything that cannot be reliably reproduced under controlled conditions in a laboratory cannot logically be said to exist. You can't help it, it's who and what you are--and if I were to really pry at your beliefs and crack them, the results wouldn't be good. I've seen what happens to people like you when they come face to face with phenomena that they flat-out believe doesn't exist; you break down and either don't recover, or spend the rest of your life wildly attempting to cling to your definition of sanity and refuse any contact with anything that could repeat that experience.
So I concede. I'm the douchebag delusional asshat who sucks at trolling. You can have the moral victory and walk away knowing you've vanquished me. Good day.
Happily, douchebag supreme. Prepare to suck on your wrongness, provided you're willing to do a little reading, which I highly doubt, oh skeptical one. By the way, nice rhetorical dodge on the Sol Invictus issue. Today we know that the sun is a star, but back in Roman times there were an awful lot of people who thought the Sun was an omnipotent god capable of responding to prayer and sacrifice. Because the god was falsifiable, eventually we were able to prove that it was not a god--but that in no way negates the history that for most of recorded history, many cultures thought it was, and could not prove otherwise.
Please read "Extraordinary Knowing" by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer. Amazon link is:http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Knowing-Science-Skepticism-Inexplicable/dp/0553382233/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363131413&sr=1-1&keywords=Extraordinary+Knowing. Before she died, Elizabeth Mayer was a Doctor of Psychology at Berkeley whose unexpected encounter with the supernatural in locating her daughter's harp led her to do some very rigorous testing and studies on paranormal phenomena contained within human beings. But then again, I don't expect someone of your rigid insistence on being a pedantic ass to read it in the first place.
Or "Ghost Hunters" by Deborah Blum. Amazon link is: http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Hunters-William-Search-Scientific/dp/0143038958. She happens to be a Science Journalist, who wrote a book intending to debunk William James and the SPR, but came away convinced that there is something more. Oh, and there's a very large bibliography full of eyewitness accounts and experiments that meet scientific rigor.
and why am I insulting you, you know-nothing? Because I'm tired of your rigorous clinging to logic and reason as a way to assert your moral superiority. You, and those like you, don't know the first thing about having faith or embracing ambiguity, or what it really means. You've never once known what it's like to realize that everything you've ever believed in is a lie, find a new philosophical foundation, and then discover that too is a lie, and then realize that there are no ultimate truths, just another unfolding of the onion layer. You've never had to endure utter failure of the spirit, and you have no humility, or empathy for those who have. What's worse is that if you have, you're not courageous enough to admit that kind of vulnerability--which makes you a coward in a way. You just come on here and pontificate about using your philosophy and the scientific method as being core truths, when you and those like you never acknowledge that you could be wrong (or if you do, it's always with a caveat so that you're never really wrong). And if I'm wrong? Whoop-de-shit! I'll take the karmic beating for the chance to hit you and those like you with a big metaphorical stick because your attitude is just that damn infuriating. And you come across as being incredibly pompous, arrogant, and a know-it-all, so I'm going to enjoy shoving this to you.
Very well, Wild Norseman! I shall continue in my attempts to infuriate you!
First, we DO know of at least one real god: The god of Sol Invictus, also known as our sun. That right there is a God, sir, with historically-documented dedicated worshippers, doctrine, dogma and all. If I want to get pedantic, that's how I'll first refute your statement, "The god of the bible has been trivially disproven as has all the others that have some coherent, rational definition" (and if I get REALLY pedantic, not only will I explain the particulars of the cult of Sol Invictus to you at length, I'll also go look up the current primitive tribes around the world who still worship the sun and name them off to you). So, pedantically speaking, you're already wrong. There is historical evidence of an all-powerful god that is testable and falsifiable. I'm going to assume that your athestic philosophy has become pseudo-religious dogma that you blindly adhere to, and that you use as a justification for your bigotry against people of a theistic bent, and thus you were willfully unaware of this.
Now, the evidence as you suggest (and we'll assume that in this instance you're referring to the entire scientific body of knowledge revolving around testing the assumption that there is an all-knowing omnipotent entity out there somewhere who's personally interested in our world) does indeed trivially disprove the existence of afore-mentioned deities. However (and boy is this a bugger), that supposition only stands on the extent of our ability to identify--without bias--the nature of reality around us. It also assumes that our evidence is 100% right--and ALWAYS WILL BE. But if you've done any research into the nature of error and how intrinsic error is to the scientific method (as you profess to in your post above, but then go on to completely refute your comments about doubt and ambiguity with your subsequent statements) then you will realize that any absolute assertions, by their own nature, will always be wrong. It is therefore entirely possible that deities do exist, but they either either exist outside of our current scope of awareness, are smart enough to avoid detection, or have been there all along but blind nitwits like yourself who adamantly deny the existence of anything you cannot personally put your hands on cover up the evidence because you must defend your worldview at all costs, lest you become that what you hate.
I don't see you questioning your own unbending belief in the lack of any and all deities, because you've taken it as a personal truth that there are none, no doubt because you bear ill will towards anyone with a belief in theism for all the real and imagined slights they've personally done you and that which you hold important over your life time and the centuries. But, big hairy Scandinavian fella, that's your own personal problem. I think you're of a stubborn mindset, you don't like to change your mind unless you're presented with extraordinary evidence to the contrary (and even then I suggest that you'd still refuse to believe it because you're probably a materialist at heart who feels far calmer knowing that there's nothing in the dark looking back at you). So I'm going to wind up by cheerfully insulting you more, you rigid atheistic asshole, you. And, here's the other kicker: everything you believe in has to have been right since the dawn of time... HAS TO. Because if there's even one degree of deviance or even one instance of the supernatural occuring, or something even close to a deity poking their head into our particular spacetime coordinate, then you're wrong. And you're going to have to deal with it. Now, go off and masturbate while thinking of a witty response to me to put me in my place.
It's because OP's own paradigm is threatened by information and a perspective which puts his own at risk of being wrong. And he doesn't have the strength of self and capability to admit doubt and ambiguity, and allow such a threat to his personal fundamentalist philosophy of atheism to exist without rebuttal.
Hello Godwin, you good chap! Haven't spotted your toff in quite a tip, sir! Care for a spot of tea and a crumpet?
Given the premise of "Nobody talks, everyone walks", and the anarchist view of justice, how would an anarchist community conceptualize, agree upon, and enforce "justice" within their own community? Say you have an anarchist community, and someone acts against the consensus, then says "I'm innocent". What happens at that point? I'm genuinely curious about this, and would like to know the answer.
Most likely, he made the (in your case) incorrect assumption that you were a highly-devout fundamentalist with an anti-government/evolution platform who home-schooled. Sadly for the home-school movement, those exist by the tens of thousands.
As a proud member pervert in good standing of the Congregation for Appreciation of Internet Pr0n, I must heartily decry, deride, protest, and shake every conceivable appendage I can muster at the idea of a laptop having a touchscreen. I care not for access to dev mode and ease of conversion to Linux, nor do I care about comparisons to MBR, MBP, or any other model in its market class, nay; what I care most about is that when I am using internet on my laptop for the purpose that the Good Lord Snookums intended--the transmission of digitalized lewd images at 0.999999 percent of c to my eyes for transitional enlightenment of my load--that any incidental contact of whatever airborne fluids I may be generating will not hit my screen and be registered as input. I have a hard enough time keeping my screen nice and clear as it is, I really do not need the fruit of my loins sending me to yet another morally dubious website when I'm not yet done with the one I'm on! So NAY! I say! Nay to touchscreens on laptops! I will NOT be a consumer of this product!
As a side note, I do not use my iPad for this very reason... well, that and my wrists tend to get crimps in them.
Allow me to illustrate for you who your REAL enemy is in terms of gun control. It's not the politicians. Contrary to popular /. opinion, our politicians are not stupid. It has, I guarantee you, occurred to at least some of our elected representatives that a ban on assault rifles is stupid and doesn't solve the problem. It has also occurred to many of them that the problem really is mentally ill people. However, there are two constituencies that are driving them to gun control measures. The first constituency happens to be socially & fiscally conservative pro-gun owners who insist on better policing of existing firearm regulations (good), and also reduce taxation for everyone in general, thus cutting down government waste and programs. This is admirable, except that mental health programs, asylums, and facilities in general that would benefit society by taking the mentally ill out of mainstream society and rehabilitating them are among the first local/county/state/federal funding expenditures to get cut because there's not enough of a constituency to represent them.
The second constituency, and the one with FAR more electoral power than the NRA, are suburban women voters. If you want to know WHO exactly is driving the push for gun control and pushing Rahm Emmanuel and all the other politicians in the country to do something about guns, it is this group. These are the voters who are working mothers, who have never grown up in a house with guns. Their children go to suburban schools very similar to Columbine and Sandy Hook. They've never been victims of violent crime. They've never had cause to fear a tyrannical government. But they DO know gun nuts. They all know at least one person who talks about government conspiracies, who brings up Obama at holiday dinners and how he's taking the county to damnation and socialism, who whispers darkly of the coming apocalypse over beers with their husbands on the back porch, and who owns a goddamn arsenal of scary-looking assault weapons. To these women, and their families, the Enemy is not urban black thugs. Nor is it black-clad government agents. The Enemy is the crazy gun nut down the street who doesn't seem to have his head screwed on straight, is paranoid and suspicious of everyone, has a whole lot of guns, and is constantly ranting about the government.
If you want to know the real reason why your gun rights are being taken away, go look in the mirror. You, and others like you, scare the hell out of these people who have no reason to fear the entities you fear. They fear YOU, and they are asking our government to do something about YOU. And they outnumber the NRA, they outnumber the responsible gun owners, and their voices will be heard. It is not a question of if gun control and an assault weapon ban is going to be enacted, but when. And bear this in mind: the day that women take to the streets and march in favor of gun control, is the day the Second Amendment will fall. Why? Because your Enemy won't be the black-clad federal troops coming to take away your guns, it's going to be the scared mothers, grandmothers, daughters, and sisters who are marching in the streets demanding political action because they don't feel safe around YOU. And let me ask you this: when it comes to that, are you willing to kill those women to keep your guns? Because THEY are the ones who the federal troops will obey. And THEY outnumber YOU.
Thank you for posting this.
Just sayin'... Reflective armor vulnerable to varying wavelengths combined with a rail gun.
So may I ask: was the trade-off of finances versus "bone-headed determination" and purpose worth it? I am not intending any snark; to the contrary, I'm 35, single, and childless, and I'm kind of drifting without purpose either. I've done just about everything I've ever wanted to do with my life and now am wondering what to do next. There's been ample research that shows parents are on the whole less happy in general, but I wonder if it's less to do with "happiness" and more to do with a fulfillment of purpose which is far more satisfying in the long run.