No, they don't. Cocaine is a drug that you injest, and in return it causes physiological changes that make your body dependent on it.
WoW is a game that is fun to play, and the game style is such that time spent playing produces in-game rewards.
Nothing alike. It's a spurious argument. Maybe you played WoW and didn't like it. That's fine.
It's not cocaine, though, just because other people had a good time when you didn't. The comparison is idiotic.
Excessive WoW playing can lead to loss of relationships, friends, jobs, and so on, and we've all heard stories detailing such things, sometimes right here on/.
Excessive anything does that, and that situation isn't evidence of "WoW addiction", that's evidence that that person simply didn't value those relationships, friends, and jobs in the first place.
WoW has never ended a marriage or kicked someone out of school. It simply provided an excuse to blame for those things which were going to happen anyway. If WoW ended a marriage it's because the marriage was already over. If WoW got you kicked out of school it's because you clearly didn't like school, and were going to leave one way or another.
Don't act like people never got divorced or left a job or classes before WoW was invented. There's no evidence, despite 8 million people who play, that WoW has any effect on the rates of either.
Ironically, the thing that Blizzard and drugs have taught me though is that I easily get addicted to things that are bad for me, and they're both experiences that I have learned from.
Then clearly you're the one with the problem - you have an addictive personality. And if it weren't crack, or WoW, it'd be daytime TV, or maybe volunteering, or maybe working out, or maybe one of a million other things that people sometimes do to excess.
Drugs are addictive, clinically, because they cause changes in your body that require you to crave more of them. WoW doesn't do that. It's impossible for it to do that. Thus, it can't be "addictive" in any objective sense. It is something that people of a certain personality type get obsessed with, but they can do that about nearly anything.
Oh, you people crack me the fuck up. "WoW is addictive!" No. Cocaine is addictive; it causes physiological changes to your brain that cause you to want it more at the same time that it gives you less effect.
WoW is a computer game. It's entertainment, and the secret of its success is that it is entertaining to play. I've been playing it since the beta stress test, and paying the subscription fee throughout. I bought the expansion. In fact I've done all this twice, once for me and once for my wife, who I play it with.
Why? Because it's fun. It's worth the money. I like MMO games, and WoW is hands-down superior to the other games I've tried in every way. Better art (instead of generic Bryce landscapes and Poser NPC's), better class balance (instead of "controller" characters who have no power beyond their ability to help a party), a seamless, dynamic, shared world (instead of walled outdoor "rooms" and doors that unexpectedly trigger loading screens.)
There's meat on those bones, that's why I keep coming back. I know it's popular to hate on WoW, here, but 8 million people play the game not because Blizzard invented a way to send crack cocaine over broadband, but because they created a compelling, entertaining, immersive game experience that's rewarding at all levels and to all kinds of people - not, as it's popular to state, just the people who play it 12 hours a day, grinding for the slightest bump in rep or gear.
Blizzard didn't cheat, people. They haven't managed to enthrall 8 million people by some magic spell or trick of brain chemistry. They did it the hard way - by spending the time and effort to create a compelling, entertaining product that is rewarding to play in a way very, very few video games ever are. I guess the idea that they've earned the success and acclaim they enjoy is too much for some people. If you played WoW and you didn't like it, I don't think you're a bad person or something, but you're not "above the influence" either; you're just someone whose interests lie elsewhere. I wish you the best with whatever those interests might be. (If you didn't play it and you still trash it, you're an idiot who does not know whereof they speak.) Understand that, for me and my wife, and 8 million other people, one of our interests is enjoying World of Warcraft. Not because we're addicted; not because Blizzard has us in the throes of some kind of "addiction"; but because they did the hard work of creating something we don't mind paying to play.
Gross generalization and bigoted nonsense, consequently you are doing exactly what you accuse me of doing -- painting all people of a faith with the same brush.
Not at all. I'm hardly saying that all Christians are terrorists, merely that it's a ludicrous and bigoted claim to assert that none of them are.
There is a phenomenon of Christian terror. The bombings in Belfast and London during the 80's and 90's testify to that. (Oh, you must have thought all that was the fault of Irish Muslims.)
Gross generalization
Not at all. They venerate the spirit of the Earth. That's pantheism, not atheism.
Incidentally, your original post did just what you are accusing me of doing. In case you've forgotten, you posted an article about an abortion clinic bombing, supposedly carried out by an evangelical.
That's not what I've accused you of doing, though. These responses of yours become increasingly incoherent.
Let's define reputable as those that lead Muslim nations or large groups of Muslim believers.
How large? Does CAIR count? Does the Muslim American Society? The truth is that, worldwide, Muslims denounced the attacks. American political enemies, of course, rejoiced, but why wouldn't they?
I personally saw a panel of four U.S. Muslim leaders on CNN a few days after the 9/11 attacks and they all justified the attacks
Yeah, I remember that, too. I remember when one of them said:
I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the A.C.L.U., People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'
Oh, wait. That was no Muslim leader; that was Jerry Falwell, one of America's foremost Christian leaders. Oh, but I guess he doesn't count as "reputable", for some reason, despite his close ties to American politicians including the President, for whom he's served as a religious adviser.
By this argument, if you venerate anything (including your grandmother, sports heroes, movie stars, the Internet), you are no longer an atheist.
If you venerate something to the extent that you ascribe supernatural powers to even the image of that thing - that is, you deify something - then yes, you've ceased to be an atheist. Atheism is the lack of belief in any gods. Not just the Christian god, not just the popular gods, but any gods at all.
If you insist on defining "atheism" so narrowly, let's drop the use of the term and just acknowledge the people in question have "atheist tendencies".
The people in question don't have "atheist tendencies", whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. The people in question clearly have religious tendencies, and that's my whole point. The abhorrent atrocities you refer to are the result of religious-based thinking, and that's true whether the religion is Christianity, Islam, or religious adherence to communist statism. Contrary to your assertion, there's no religion in the world you can be a part of where its members are completely non-violent, where at least some of them won't be willing to kill for those beliefs. It's in Islam, as you recognize; it's in Christianity, which you refuse to see. And some atheists are murderers too, of course, but atheism lacks the power to convince others to murder. For that you need religion.
I know one -- Joseph Stalin.
And you think he turned his back on those lessons? To the contrary - his amazing power to control an entire nation on the basis of a faulty political ideology is clearly evidence that the people of the Soviet Uni
Sure, whatever you say, as they go to their Mosque for inspiration and bomb making materials.
And some Christians coordinate their attacks in church and in Bible study. Again, it's the double standard that's hanging you, here. Why do Muslims murderers become the face of Islam for you, but Christian murderers are just rogue bad guys who have nothing to do with the religion?
Simple - because you're a Christian, and you hate and fear Muslims. Obviously.
Please, provide a link to the other sites
Again, no. I absolutely won't be a party to driving traffic, even if its just one person, to websites that advocate murder. That the US courts were satisfied that such sites exist is more than enough evidence for any reasonable person.
Consider as well that the Earth Liberation Front is probably responsible for more terrorism than anti-abortion Christians.
Sure, but I don't see the relevance. Sounds like you're arguing a strawman. (The ELF, incidentally, are pantheists.)
If you want to put yourself in the ridiculous position of asserting that Christians aren't responsible for all that much terrorism - like there's an acceptable amount of terror bombings that it's ok to do - then you're proving my point for me.
When exactly did I say violence is OK if you are Christian?
I never said that you did, but now that you bring it up - right here in this very post, where you attempted to excuse Christian terrorists because they're not as bad as ELF. It's abundantly obvious that you've found yourself completely rebutted by the facts, so now you're trying to play the "relative violence" game, where there's a level of violence that is acceptable and can't be criticized, and that level, coincidentally, is the level of violence Christians are responsible for.
My initial point was that no Christian leader supports the type of violence in the article you cited.
Except, of course, for the leaders of these fundamentalist organizations that sponsor and promote this kind of terror. But, of course, they don't count, for reasons you haven't explained.
Please provide a single quote from a reputable Christian leader
Oh, so now "reputable" is the basis on which you'll move the goalposts? Who, precisely, determines which leaders are "reputable" and which are not? And how is "reputability" determined for Muslims?
We can play word games all day, but you cannot avoid the simple fact that Communist Soviet Union practiced and Communist China currently practices State Atheism.
I can and do assert, quite reasonably, that a state that venerates the icons of leaders as though they were the real thing, to the extent that the military parades in front of a painting rather than in front of the leader; a state where people believe the leaders have the supernatural power to monitor all individuals through impossible "reverse transmissions" through radios and televisions; a state summed up in the motto "God is the state; the state is God" - is most definitely not atheist. Sure, they do not practice your religion. But to assert that they are without religion altogether is lunacy belied by the historical record.
Whether Stalin was an atheist (there is no evidence to the contrary)
Except, of course, for his attendance at a seminary. How many atheists do you know in seminary?
It was murder in the name of atheism.
By any reasonable definition, it was murder in the name of religion - the religion of communist statism. To deify the power of the state, as those governments did, is wholly inconsistent with the definition of atheism.
Nonetheless, this is a red herring you're pursuing because you've fundamentally lost the debate on the facts.
Who is it that has popularized "suicide bombings"?
Based on your logic? "Individuals acting as individuals."
Please provide links to these websites and evidence or proof of this "community support".
Does the Federal Government count? Since it was the Federal courts who determined that the rights of Christians to set up online-based murder lists, and "mark off" individuals as they were assassinated, was inviolable.
Sorry, but I absolutely won't provide links to any murder-list website.
In fact, I contend it was a Muslim or atheist that committed the abortion clinic bombing
Naturally, since you're reflexive ideologue and bigot who continues to insist that your own religion is fundamentally different than all the others; that, indeed, it is the only religion that it is legitimate to define on the basis of the conduct of persons, thus ensuring by tautology that a Christian can never do anything bad, since to do something bad is to be un-Christian. (Never mind that this is not only a logical fallacy, but reasoning directly contradicted by the Bible.)
You, on the contrary, appear to harbor some serious hate and resentment toward Christians
Not in the least. I'm simply pointing out how absurd it is to claim that to be a Christian is to immunize oneself against the use of violence to one's ends, or that the rest of us have absolutely nothing to fear from organized, fundamentalist Christianity. If the whole of European history weren't sufficient to belie that claim, recent history more than proves it hollow.
atheism, in the form of communism
Communism is not, and has never been, a form of atheism. Additionally, the worst excesses and violence of China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union stemmed from a religious veneration of ideology and power, not from a commitment not to believe in something for no good evidentiary reason (the commitment of the atheist.)
Sorry, but it doesn't matter whether you believe in Jesus or in the State become God; to really fuck things up takes religion, religious belief, and faith. Atheism is blameless for the murders you refer to.
Besides, let's focus on the fact that Christian bombings are the exception, not the rule.
Oh, I'm very much aware that they're the exception, not the rule; just as, as a rule, Muslims do not commit bombings of any kind.
I'm simply pointing out the racist double-standard where a Christian extremist - with help from his community, make no mistake, they coordinate these murders on websites, share bomb-making knowledge, etc. - is concluded to be "acting as an individual" with no relationship to his Christianity, despite the fact that he would not have murdered aside from his religious belief, whereas essentially the same act by a Muslim - for political and not religious reasons - tars all Muslims by extension.
You're a racist. It's just that simple. No religion has the monopoly on violence, nor completely abstains from it; if any religion is to be considered to promote violence, they all must be. No exceptions.
In addition to being a racist, you're delusional. You should worry less. The same legal strictures that protect me from your fundamentalist, anti-American religion will protect me from the (ooo! scary!) Muslims of that bent as well.
However, your article states that evangelical leaders condemned the bombing
Not clear on the relevance, there. "Evangelical leaders" don't speak for, or define, all Christianity. (And, similarly, Muslim leaders regularly condemn suicide bombings by Muslims. That didn't seem to make much of a difference when the actions of a few Muslims was being used to tar that whole religion.)
Assuming he is a Christian solely on the basis of his target choice is weak at best.
Solely on his target of choice? Hardly. (Of course, that seemed to be completely appropriate reasoning when the religion of a suicide bomber was assumed to be Muslim simply because he was dressed like one and was a citizen of a predominantly Muslim country.)
Finally, 10 year old article?
Oh, is there a statute of limitations on religiously-motivated murder? I wasn't aware. (If you're contending that Christian-led violence is a thing of the past, many, many more recent examples could be provided. Presumably you won't volunteer to put yourself in such a stupid position, though.)
Well, although it's really odd for me to be arguing in favor of any religion, I think the New Testament sort of has that issue covered.
I think you're going to have a hard time making your argument in the face of Jesus, who makes it abundantly clear that the OT laws are still in full effect, and remain so until the second coming:
"For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." - Matthew 5:18.
But because God's just a nice guy, he's giving everyone a great big do-over with some more relaxed rules.
That's clearly what the Hebrews' author thinks, but the problem is that Matthew (supposedly) relates the direct command of Jesus, and he kind of takes precedence. (Hey, I don't believe a word of it, but the direct quote from a fictional character overrides the inference of a fictional character's beliefs by a fictional narrator any day.)
They would say you're not, and produce the statements in the Bible that they interpret in defense of their position and as a refutation of yours. The problem is, you're both right - the Bible says basically anything you'd like it to say.
"Who's the real Christian" is a mug's game, but I see it's one you're not smart enough to avoid playing.
Assuming it hasn't changed much over time (which I admit is a significant assumption)
Indeed, a false assumption. The Earth's magnetic field is highly variable, has changed significantly throughout geologic and evolutionary history, and indeed has even completely reversed polarity - during which it more or less abated completely for a period - at times.
The Earth's magnetic field is by definition natural.
By what definition "natural", precisely, in a way that the much weaker field from a high-tension line is not?
That's an extremely ignorant or disingenuous argument.
No, the ignorant and disingenuous argument would be the one where the EM field coming off a high-voltage line is asserted, on the basis of absolutely no evidence or inference from physical laws, to be of a different flavor than EM fields from high-tension power lines. Your argument, in other words.
Secondly, as I personally find unbelievable that you would not already realize given your statement above, it is absolutely a "confounding factor", unless you did your control group candidate selection knowing all prayer categorizations which could be relevant, which you could not possibly, even theoretically, know.
You really don't know anything about how studies are conducted, do you? I suppose you're the guy who rejects the scientific consensus on global warming simply because we don't have a way to double-blind the Planet Earth.
Like I said, you're simply setting impossible standards for science, yet you accept prayer on the basis of no evidence at all. It's the classic theist's double standard - everybody needs to meet an impossible burden of proof, but you.
And I've clearly refuted the scientific basis of all such studies, actual and theoretical.
LOL! I'm sure you think you have. Truly, the casual arrogance of the theist is breathtaking and continues to astound.
worldwide instances of prayer for "comfort for the elderly".
If the prayers are generalized, then they affect both the control group and the treatment group equally, and the effect - if any - of these prayers fades into the background. They're not a confounding factor. And the fact that some members of the control group might be being prayed for by others is hardly a confounding factor, either - invariably they're still being prayed for less than the treatment group, so the control is preserved.
You're simply setting an impossible standard. The simple fact is that these studies can and have been tested with the same standards as other medical trials, and prayer always fails utterly.
That's why your objection is "nonsense." Pardon my error but I trusted you were intelligent enough to see the obvious flaws in your own argument.
Because there's a smoking hole in Manhattan that testifies to the human cost of faith. Seriously. If you religionists had given any sort of indication that you were willing to leave people like me the hell alone, the conflict wouldn't exist. But you theistic moral busybodies take it upon yourself to meddle and murder; thus, I don't have the luxury of allowing any of you to persist in your delusion unchallenged.
I don't expect you to be convinced by anything I've written here. But like almost every theist you bear critically mistaken impressions of atheism and atheists, and it's my hope that I can educate you in some small way.
Then why is hard for you to tolerate people that is not atheist?
Historically the problem of toleration comes from your side - the Inquisition, Hitler, Stalin, etc. It's only very recently that theism has experienced any significant challenge, and it's all been rhetorical. Personally, I'd suggest you grow a thicker skin if you find being disagreed with on the Internet to be the height of intolerance.
Who or what hurt you and God fail to protect you from?
Nothing. My conversion to atheism wasn't an emotional act of pique; it was the conscious and reflective decision I came to after judging the evidence for the existence of God. There simply isn't any.
The continual arrogant disingenuity on the part of theists I've observed ever since has really cemented the position for me - people who have actual good reasons for their beliefs simply don't act like that - but the original decision was a conscious, informed act, like it is for the vast majority of atheists.
Nothing "has to happen to you" to be convinced of the likelihood of atheism. You just have to think it through.
Actually, it's quite impossible to devise such a study, because there is no way of controlling all prayers as a free variable.
Nonsense. The fact that these studies are conducted proves you wrong.
Personally, I think prayer behaves nothing like (and should behave nothing like) voting
Look, if you don't construe "prayer" as "supplication for the intervention of God", I have no objection. But in doing so you're refuting the position of the "power of prayer", except as a tool for introspection and self-knowledge. A kind of meditation.
Which I have no problem with, but that's not what "prayer" means to the vast majority of people who pray; for those people, prayer is a way of asking God to grant wishes. Simple as that. And in so far as that's what prayer is understood to mean, prayer has been consistently studied, and found to lack any sort of effectiveness in terms of healing power. It's significant that, in all the annals of supposed "miraculous" recoveries, no person who has ever recovered from the "power of prayer" is known to have recovered from any illness or malady that isn't also known to sometimes go away on its own. Prayer has never regrown a human limb. Not even its adherents make that claim.
More earthy example: Christopher Columbus made observations that defy all logic of that time: Ships that sort of dissapear slowly in the horizon, but they came back instead of falling of the edge. So he goes in a scary and daring conclusion: Earth must rounded then. And he went in a Leap of Faith.
Ignoring for a moment the complete historical inaccuracy of your example - the spherical shape of the Earth was known since the time of the Greeks - what you describe isn't faith in any sense. If Columbus had sailed for the New World with no evidence it was there, that would have been faith.
But that's not what happened. Columbus had evidence. The evidence of ships disappearing mast-last, the evidence of islands appearing mountains-first. The evidence of other sailors who had returned from the West. He had good reasons for his conclusions, and they turned out to be well-founded.
That's not faith. That's reason. And it's wrong of you to try to appropriate the success of reason to defend unreasonable faith.
Now religious faith is more complex, but for that first we need to crack the egg and realize that there is something on the other side to talk to.
You seem to think that I was born an atheist and never changed, but that's not the truth. There was a time when I thought I was talking to God, too. But I wasn't. There's no God to talk to; never has been. I was talking to myself, just as you're talking to yourself. You could fill a book with the reasons we can confidently conclude that this is so. In return, the defenders of the God delusion offer nothing but "faith." Color me not impressed.
We all do this all the time.
I'm aware that you do it all the time. I'm asking you why you don't see the inherent contradiction in asserting the ineffability of God on one hand, and then effing him all over the place on the other.
Yes, He is inherently unknowable, but there are things that can be told about him.
By definition, a contradiction in terms. And the phenomenon of human religion, the vast panoply of human positions on the nature of God, prove that, in fact, there's nothing that can be told about him.
Except, of course, that in all likelihood there's no such thing as God.
Perhaps, but I notice you give no evidence of your observation, so I don't see any reason to believe you.
the particular religion at hand likely would see a certain injustice in granting equivalent results for someone dedicating actual effort to it, and someone willing to make the effort to say "gimme proof".
Only if they were blind to the far, far greater injustice resulting from denying healing miracles to test subjects simply because the people incidental to them had the wrong mindset. It's quite trivial to devise a study where genuine adherents to the religion are given one group of patients to pray for, and another group receives no prayer, and compare the incidence of healing/recovery, etc. It's not much of a God who will answer some prayers and not others simply because a person completely unconnected to the poor suffering bastard is a doubting Thomas.
Instead, he said "Neither prayer nor any other supernatural or religious belief has ever been observed to be effecacious". Note that word "ever" in there.
Yes. That was intentional.
The proof that the "ever" is justified is that neither you, nor power-of-prayer adherents, nor anybody else can supply a genuine, verified observation of effective prayer. None exist. There are no such observations.
Alas, he used "ever", which covers at least the last six thousand years
I think you've misunderstood the scope of the claim. The scope of the claim is "all verified observations that exist." None of those observations are of effective prayer.
My claim is justified; you're just reading it wrong. And you're focusing on a quibble of semantics instead of dealing with the argument - that there's no evidence, none at all, of effective prayer.
Since "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is a religious belief
Your example, by definition, is of an ethical position, not a religious belief. (If you don't see the difference, it's because you're a bigot who denies that atheists can have ethics.)
The point of faith is to be able to believe in something that has yet to be proven.
Then you've given away the game - you've admitted that prayer, communion with God, etc. has never been observed to work. All I was describing was faith - belief in things that have never been shown to work. The manifest negative of faith should be obvious, at least to people who want to have accurate knowledge about the universe they inhabit. (If what you want is reassurance, regardless of truth, then faith is right up your alley.)
but that day nothing about God himself.
And I don't understand the people who can say "God is inherently unknowable; now, let me tell you all about Him." How can you do that with a straight face?
I find this assertion humorous in that it is self-referencing with regards to both the assertion and the user that posted it.
It's funny - no matter how many different ways I encounter the puerile "atheists have just as much faith as believers" argument, it never ceases to be at once arrogant, condescending, ignorant, and fallacious.
I'm kind of a scientist and I kind of believe that astrology might have some truth to it. Is spiritualism of any kind NOT for scientists?
I don't understand how you could be a "kind of scientist", see the power and the results of adherence to the scientific method every day in your work, and then go home and think it's a good idea to completely turn your back on that power in your own life. Can you explain it to me? What do you think you gain by being overly credulous to unverified claims? If that's such a path to truth, why doesn't science operate that way, in your view?
It's really amazing to realize that science isn't just work, it's not just something other people do in labs; it's a mode of thought that you can apply to your own learning and life. Why would you turn your back on that? What do you gain?
The problem is that the believers DO have some evidence: they have observed that whatever they believe in works
No, they haven't. Neither prayer nor any other supernatural or religious belief has ever been observed to be effecacious.
If I have a dream about something, that's not at all the same as having an observation about something. If I am mistaken about something, or imagine it, that's not observation, either. The believers have convinced themselves that they have evidence, but like their belief they have convinced themselves falsely.
Again, you arbitrarily decided that such a combination of items is sufficient (since you are naturally an ultimate authority on what is an what is not "reasonable") as opposed to the combination of evidence as available now.
There's nothing arbitrary about it; I simply employed reason and logic, as well as American standards of evidence as I understand them, to arrive at the conclusion that the evidence as presented doesn't support a guilty verdict beyond a reasonable doubt, because multiple reasonable explanations exist to explain each part of the prosecutions case. Until the prosecution can eliminate all reasonable possibilities aside from Hans' guilt, the burden of proof is not met. Each of those reasonable alternatives constitutes "doubt."
Do you understand, now, what "beyond a reasonable doubt" means? It's not enough for you to establish that the Hans-is-guilty scenario is most likely, because "preponderance of evidence" isn't the standard for criminal trials. And as much as you've tried to make that out to be the same as "beyond reasonable doubt", it's not. Those are two different standards.
But never will you have absolute certainty
I've never asked for it. Simply evidence of guilt that rises to the standard of "proof beyond reasonable doubt", not just "preponderance of the evidence." And not to put too fine a point on it but that's the standard that the prosecution's case simply doesn't rise to.
It is you who assumed that I was talking about that specific legalese term
"Legalese term"? It is a court trial we're talking about. Is it now your contention that the legal rules of evidence and procedure be dispensed with, if they're an obstacle to convicting Hans Reiser?
Christ, now you really have to tell me what he did to you. Did you invest in Namesys or something?
There is that thing called Google around. Use it.
To prove your case for you? Sorry, but that's your job.
All I ever did was to keep pointing it out to you that the odds of him being guilty of killing Nina are much higher then those of Nina absconding abroad in mysterious ways involving the mob or 50-mile solo hikes through the desert and side-trips to Nicaragua.
And I keep asking you to show your math on that. You refuse to.
There is no way to prove such negatives!
Gosh, you seem confused. First you were adamant, certain, that Nina Reiser had never embezzled from Namesys despite the assertions of its chief employee to the contrary. Now, you're saying that her innocence on that accusation can't ever be proven.
No wonder you think Hans is guilty - you think everyone is guilty, apparently, since innocence can't ever be proven, according to you.
That is the odds of Hans ripping his seat out and tossing it are say 1:10000
Show your work.
the actual number is not relevant here
Oh, I see. These are coming out of your asshole. Understood.
I begin to perceive that you're a sociopath with a delusional hatred of the United States:
"you will always decide what constitutes "beyond reasonable doubt" completely arbitrarily, which is precisely what the jury is doing now with the existing evidence, inducing these histerical fits of panicked paranoia in you, to my great amusement....both "preponderance of evidence" and "beyond reasonable doubt" are vague, politics-motivated descriptions which do not have any precise definitions whatsoever...The decision is always arbitrarily made by the jurors and judges by their gut feelings and their private ideas as to what constitutes "preponderance of evidence" or "beyond reasonable doubt" and that's pretty much it, flowery language and lofty political orations notwithstanding...Then if additional evidence is found and no other, more viable suspects are found then he is by default "it" as far as probabilities are concerned....with the aid of organized crime specifically existing for this purpose
Slashdot Mirror
WoW and cocaine share many of the same qualities.
/.
No, they don't. Cocaine is a drug that you injest, and in return it causes physiological changes that make your body dependent on it.
WoW is a game that is fun to play, and the game style is such that time spent playing produces in-game rewards.
Nothing alike. It's a spurious argument. Maybe you played WoW and didn't like it. That's fine.
It's not cocaine, though, just because other people had a good time when you didn't. The comparison is idiotic.
Excessive WoW playing can lead to loss of relationships, friends, jobs, and so on, and we've all heard stories detailing such things, sometimes right here on
Excessive anything does that, and that situation isn't evidence of "WoW addiction", that's evidence that that person simply didn't value those relationships, friends, and jobs in the first place.
WoW has never ended a marriage or kicked someone out of school. It simply provided an excuse to blame for those things which were going to happen anyway. If WoW ended a marriage it's because the marriage was already over. If WoW got you kicked out of school it's because you clearly didn't like school, and were going to leave one way or another.
Don't act like people never got divorced or left a job or classes before WoW was invented. There's no evidence, despite 8 million people who play, that WoW has any effect on the rates of either.
Ironically, the thing that Blizzard and drugs have taught me though is that I easily get addicted to things that are bad for me, and they're both experiences that I have learned from.
Then clearly you're the one with the problem - you have an addictive personality. And if it weren't crack, or WoW, it'd be daytime TV, or maybe volunteering, or maybe working out, or maybe one of a million other things that people sometimes do to excess.
Drugs are addictive, clinically, because they cause changes in your body that require you to crave more of them. WoW doesn't do that. It's impossible for it to do that. Thus, it can't be "addictive" in any objective sense. It is something that people of a certain personality type get obsessed with, but they can do that about nearly anything.
I think my point stands.
if they get addicted, they'll pay more.
Oh, you people crack me the fuck up. "WoW is addictive!" No. Cocaine is addictive; it causes physiological changes to your brain that cause you to want it more at the same time that it gives you less effect.
WoW is a computer game. It's entertainment, and the secret of its success is that it is entertaining to play. I've been playing it since the beta stress test, and paying the subscription fee throughout. I bought the expansion. In fact I've done all this twice, once for me and once for my wife, who I play it with.
Why? Because it's fun. It's worth the money. I like MMO games, and WoW is hands-down superior to the other games I've tried in every way. Better art (instead of generic Bryce landscapes and Poser NPC's), better class balance (instead of "controller" characters who have no power beyond their ability to help a party), a seamless, dynamic, shared world (instead of walled outdoor "rooms" and doors that unexpectedly trigger loading screens.)
There's meat on those bones, that's why I keep coming back. I know it's popular to hate on WoW, here, but 8 million people play the game not because Blizzard invented a way to send crack cocaine over broadband, but because they created a compelling, entertaining, immersive game experience that's rewarding at all levels and to all kinds of people - not, as it's popular to state, just the people who play it 12 hours a day, grinding for the slightest bump in rep or gear.
Blizzard didn't cheat, people. They haven't managed to enthrall 8 million people by some magic spell or trick of brain chemistry. They did it the hard way - by spending the time and effort to create a compelling, entertaining product that is rewarding to play in a way very, very few video games ever are. I guess the idea that they've earned the success and acclaim they enjoy is too much for some people. If you played WoW and you didn't like it, I don't think you're a bad person or something, but you're not "above the influence" either; you're just someone whose interests lie elsewhere. I wish you the best with whatever those interests might be. (If you didn't play it and you still trash it, you're an idiot who does not know whereof they speak.) Understand that, for me and my wife, and 8 million other people, one of our interests is enjoying World of Warcraft. Not because we're addicted; not because Blizzard has us in the throes of some kind of "addiction"; but because they did the hard work of creating something we don't mind paying to play.
Not at all. I'm hardly saying that all Christians are terrorists, merely that it's a ludicrous and bigoted claim to assert that none of them are.
There is a phenomenon of Christian terror. The bombings in Belfast and London during the 80's and 90's testify to that. (Oh, you must have thought all that was the fault of Irish Muslims.)
Gross generalization
Not at all. They venerate the spirit of the Earth. That's pantheism, not atheism.
Incidentally, your original post did just what you are accusing me of doing. In case you've forgotten, you posted an article about an abortion clinic bombing, supposedly carried out by an evangelical.
That's not what I've accused you of doing, though. These responses of yours become increasingly incoherent.
Let's define reputable as those that lead Muslim nations or large groups of Muslim believers.
How large? Does CAIR count? Does the Muslim American Society? The truth is that, worldwide, Muslims denounced the attacks. American political enemies, of course, rejoiced, but why wouldn't they?
I personally saw a panel of four U.S. Muslim leaders on CNN a few days after the 9/11 attacks and they all justified the attacks
Yeah, I remember that, too. I remember when one of them said:
Oh, wait. That was no Muslim leader; that was Jerry Falwell, one of America's foremost Christian leaders. Oh, but I guess he doesn't count as "reputable", for some reason, despite his close ties to American politicians including the President, for whom he's served as a religious adviser.
By this argument, if you venerate anything (including your grandmother, sports heroes, movie stars, the Internet), you are no longer an atheist.
If you venerate something to the extent that you ascribe supernatural powers to even the image of that thing - that is, you deify something - then yes, you've ceased to be an atheist. Atheism is the lack of belief in any gods. Not just the Christian god, not just the popular gods, but any gods at all.
If you insist on defining "atheism" so narrowly, let's drop the use of the term and just acknowledge the people in question have "atheist tendencies".
The people in question don't have "atheist tendencies", whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. The people in question clearly have religious tendencies, and that's my whole point. The abhorrent atrocities you refer to are the result of religious-based thinking, and that's true whether the religion is Christianity, Islam, or religious adherence to communist statism. Contrary to your assertion, there's no religion in the world you can be a part of where its members are completely non-violent, where at least some of them won't be willing to kill for those beliefs. It's in Islam, as you recognize; it's in Christianity, which you refuse to see. And some atheists are murderers too, of course, but atheism lacks the power to convince others to murder. For that you need religion.
I know one -- Joseph Stalin.
And you think he turned his back on those lessons? To the contrary - his amazing power to control an entire nation on the basis of a faulty political ideology is clearly evidence that the people of the Soviet Uni
Sure, whatever you say, as they go to their Mosque for inspiration and bomb making materials.
And some Christians coordinate their attacks in church and in Bible study. Again, it's the double standard that's hanging you, here. Why do Muslims murderers become the face of Islam for you, but Christian murderers are just rogue bad guys who have nothing to do with the religion?
Simple - because you're a Christian, and you hate and fear Muslims. Obviously.
Please, provide a link to the other sites
Again, no. I absolutely won't be a party to driving traffic, even if its just one person, to websites that advocate murder. That the US courts were satisfied that such sites exist is more than enough evidence for any reasonable person.
Consider as well that the Earth Liberation Front is probably responsible for more terrorism than anti-abortion Christians.
Sure, but I don't see the relevance. Sounds like you're arguing a strawman. (The ELF, incidentally, are pantheists.)
If you want to put yourself in the ridiculous position of asserting that Christians aren't responsible for all that much terrorism - like there's an acceptable amount of terror bombings that it's ok to do - then you're proving my point for me.
When exactly did I say violence is OK if you are Christian?
I never said that you did, but now that you bring it up - right here in this very post, where you attempted to excuse Christian terrorists because they're not as bad as ELF. It's abundantly obvious that you've found yourself completely rebutted by the facts, so now you're trying to play the "relative violence" game, where there's a level of violence that is acceptable and can't be criticized, and that level, coincidentally, is the level of violence Christians are responsible for.
My initial point was that no Christian leader supports the type of violence in the article you cited.
Except, of course, for the leaders of these fundamentalist organizations that sponsor and promote this kind of terror. But, of course, they don't count, for reasons you haven't explained.
Please provide a single quote from a reputable Christian leader
Oh, so now "reputable" is the basis on which you'll move the goalposts? Who, precisely, determines which leaders are "reputable" and which are not? And how is "reputability" determined for Muslims?
We can play word games all day, but you cannot avoid the simple fact that Communist Soviet Union practiced and Communist China currently practices State Atheism.
I can and do assert, quite reasonably, that a state that venerates the icons of leaders as though they were the real thing, to the extent that the military parades in front of a painting rather than in front of the leader; a state where people believe the leaders have the supernatural power to monitor all individuals through impossible "reverse transmissions" through radios and televisions; a state summed up in the motto "God is the state; the state is God" - is most definitely not atheist. Sure, they do not practice your religion. But to assert that they are without religion altogether is lunacy belied by the historical record.
Whether Stalin was an atheist (there is no evidence to the contrary)
Except, of course, for his attendance at a seminary. How many atheists do you know in seminary?
It was murder in the name of atheism.
By any reasonable definition, it was murder in the name of religion - the religion of communist statism. To deify the power of the state, as those governments did, is wholly inconsistent with the definition of atheism.
Nonetheless, this is a red herring you're pursuing because you've fundamentally lost the debate on the facts.
Here is a nice line from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism,
Which, no doubt, you added yourself.
Who is it that has popularized "suicide bombings"?
Based on your logic? "Individuals acting as individuals."
Please provide links to these websites and evidence or proof of this "community support".
Does the Federal Government count? Since it was the Federal courts who determined that the rights of Christians to set up online-based murder lists, and "mark off" individuals as they were assassinated, was inviolable.
Sorry, but I absolutely won't provide links to any murder-list website.
In fact, I contend it was a Muslim or atheist that committed the abortion clinic bombing
Naturally, since you're reflexive ideologue and bigot who continues to insist that your own religion is fundamentally different than all the others; that, indeed, it is the only religion that it is legitimate to define on the basis of the conduct of persons, thus ensuring by tautology that a Christian can never do anything bad, since to do something bad is to be un-Christian. (Never mind that this is not only a logical fallacy, but reasoning directly contradicted by the Bible.)
You, on the contrary, appear to harbor some serious hate and resentment toward Christians
Not in the least. I'm simply pointing out how absurd it is to claim that to be a Christian is to immunize oneself against the use of violence to one's ends, or that the rest of us have absolutely nothing to fear from organized, fundamentalist Christianity. If the whole of European history weren't sufficient to belie that claim, recent history more than proves it hollow.
atheism, in the form of communism
Communism is not, and has never been, a form of atheism. Additionally, the worst excesses and violence of China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union stemmed from a religious veneration of ideology and power, not from a commitment not to believe in something for no good evidentiary reason (the commitment of the atheist.)
Sorry, but it doesn't matter whether you believe in Jesus or in the State become God; to really fuck things up takes religion, religious belief, and faith. Atheism is blameless for the murders you refer to.
Besides, let's focus on the fact that Christian bombings are the exception, not the rule.
Oh, I'm very much aware that they're the exception, not the rule; just as, as a rule, Muslims do not commit bombings of any kind.
I'm simply pointing out the racist double-standard where a Christian extremist - with help from his community, make no mistake, they coordinate these murders on websites, share bomb-making knowledge, etc. - is concluded to be "acting as an individual" with no relationship to his Christianity, despite the fact that he would not have murdered aside from his religious belief, whereas essentially the same act by a Muslim - for political and not religious reasons - tars all Muslims by extension.
You're a racist. It's just that simple. No religion has the monopoly on violence, nor completely abstains from it; if any religion is to be considered to promote violence, they all must be. No exceptions.
When the Muslims control the US
In addition to being a racist, you're delusional. You should worry less. The same legal strictures that protect me from your fundamentalist, anti-American religion will protect me from the (ooo! scary!) Muslims of that bent as well.
However, your article states that evangelical leaders condemned the bombing
Not clear on the relevance, there. "Evangelical leaders" don't speak for, or define, all Christianity. (And, similarly, Muslim leaders regularly condemn suicide bombings by Muslims. That didn't seem to make much of a difference when the actions of a few Muslims was being used to tar that whole religion.)
Assuming he is a Christian solely on the basis of his target choice is weak at best.
Solely on his target of choice? Hardly. (Of course, that seemed to be completely appropriate reasoning when the religion of a suicide bomber was assumed to be Muslim simply because he was dressed like one and was a citizen of a predominantly Muslim country.)
Finally, 10 year old article?
Oh, is there a statute of limitations on religiously-motivated murder? I wasn't aware. (If you're contending that Christian-led violence is a thing of the past, many, many more recent examples could be provided. Presumably you won't volunteer to put yourself in such a stupid position, though.)
Well, although it's really odd for me to be arguing in favor of any religion, I think the New Testament sort of has that issue covered.
I think you're going to have a hard time making your argument in the face of Jesus, who makes it abundantly clear that the OT laws are still in full effect, and remain so until the second coming:
"For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." - Matthew 5:18.
But because God's just a nice guy, he's giving everyone a great big do-over with some more relaxed rules.
That's clearly what the Hebrews' author thinks, but the problem is that Matthew (supposedly) relates the direct command of Jesus, and he kind of takes precedence. (Hey, I don't believe a word of it, but the direct quote from a fictional character overrides the inference of a fictional character's beliefs by a fictional narrator any day.)
And I would say...they aren't Christians.
They would say you're not, and produce the statements in the Bible that they interpret in defense of their position and as a refutation of yours. The problem is, you're both right - the Bible says basically anything you'd like it to say.
"Who's the real Christian" is a mug's game, but I see it's one you're not smart enough to avoid playing.
Assuming it hasn't changed much over time (which I admit is a significant assumption)
Indeed, a false assumption. The Earth's magnetic field is highly variable, has changed significantly throughout geologic and evolutionary history, and indeed has even completely reversed polarity - during which it more or less abated completely for a period - at times.
The Earth's magnetic field is by definition natural.
By what definition "natural", precisely, in a way that the much weaker field from a high-tension line is not?
That's an extremely ignorant or disingenuous argument.
No, the ignorant and disingenuous argument would be the one where the EM field coming off a high-voltage line is asserted, on the basis of absolutely no evidence or inference from physical laws, to be of a different flavor than EM fields from high-tension power lines. Your argument, in other words.
American Evangelicals don't go suicide bombing anyone that disagrees with their point of view.
No, I guess they just go regular bombing.
You are, simply, lying.
LOL! Boy, you get better and better.
Secondly, as I personally find unbelievable that you would not already realize given your statement above, it is absolutely a "confounding factor", unless you did your control group candidate selection knowing all prayer categorizations which could be relevant, which you could not possibly, even theoretically, know.
You really don't know anything about how studies are conducted, do you? I suppose you're the guy who rejects the scientific consensus on global warming simply because we don't have a way to double-blind the Planet Earth.
Like I said, you're simply setting impossible standards for science, yet you accept prayer on the basis of no evidence at all. It's the classic theist's double standard - everybody needs to meet an impossible burden of proof, but you.
And I've clearly refuted the scientific basis of all such studies, actual and theoretical.
LOL! I'm sure you think you have. Truly, the casual arrogance of the theist is breathtaking and continues to astound.
worldwide instances of prayer for "comfort for the elderly".
If the prayers are generalized, then they affect both the control group and the treatment group equally, and the effect - if any - of these prayers fades into the background. They're not a confounding factor. And the fact that some members of the control group might be being prayed for by others is hardly a confounding factor, either - invariably they're still being prayed for less than the treatment group, so the control is preserved.
You're simply setting an impossible standard. The simple fact is that these studies can and have been tested with the same standards as other medical trials, and prayer always fails utterly.
That's why your objection is "nonsense." Pardon my error but I trusted you were intelligent enough to see the obvious flaws in your own argument.
I won't make that mistake again.
Then why you have the need to convince me?
Because there's a smoking hole in Manhattan that testifies to the human cost of faith. Seriously. If you religionists had given any sort of indication that you were willing to leave people like me the hell alone, the conflict wouldn't exist. But you theistic moral busybodies take it upon yourself to meddle and murder; thus, I don't have the luxury of allowing any of you to persist in your delusion unchallenged.
I don't expect you to be convinced by anything I've written here. But like almost every theist you bear critically mistaken impressions of atheism and atheists, and it's my hope that I can educate you in some small way.
Then why is hard for you to tolerate people that is not atheist?
Historically the problem of toleration comes from your side - the Inquisition, Hitler, Stalin, etc. It's only very recently that theism has experienced any significant challenge, and it's all been rhetorical. Personally, I'd suggest you grow a thicker skin if you find being disagreed with on the Internet to be the height of intolerance.
Who or what hurt you and God fail to protect you from?
Nothing. My conversion to atheism wasn't an emotional act of pique; it was the conscious and reflective decision I came to after judging the evidence for the existence of God. There simply isn't any.
The continual arrogant disingenuity on the part of theists I've observed ever since has really cemented the position for me - people who have actual good reasons for their beliefs simply don't act like that - but the original decision was a conscious, informed act, like it is for the vast majority of atheists.
Nothing "has to happen to you" to be convinced of the likelihood of atheism. You just have to think it through.
Actually, it's quite impossible to devise such a study, because there is no way of controlling all prayers as a free variable.
Nonsense. The fact that these studies are conducted proves you wrong.
Personally, I think prayer behaves nothing like (and should behave nothing like) voting
Look, if you don't construe "prayer" as "supplication for the intervention of God", I have no objection. But in doing so you're refuting the position of the "power of prayer", except as a tool for introspection and self-knowledge. A kind of meditation.
Which I have no problem with, but that's not what "prayer" means to the vast majority of people who pray; for those people, prayer is a way of asking God to grant wishes. Simple as that. And in so far as that's what prayer is understood to mean, prayer has been consistently studied, and found to lack any sort of effectiveness in terms of healing power. It's significant that, in all the annals of supposed "miraculous" recoveries, no person who has ever recovered from the "power of prayer" is known to have recovered from any illness or malady that isn't also known to sometimes go away on its own. Prayer has never regrown a human limb. Not even its adherents make that claim.
Significant, no?
More earthy example: Christopher Columbus made observations that defy all logic of that time: Ships that sort of dissapear slowly in the horizon, but they came back instead of falling of the edge. So he goes in a scary and daring conclusion: Earth must rounded then. And he went in a Leap of Faith.
Ignoring for a moment the complete historical inaccuracy of your example - the spherical shape of the Earth was known since the time of the Greeks - what you describe isn't faith in any sense. If Columbus had sailed for the New World with no evidence it was there, that would have been faith.
But that's not what happened. Columbus had evidence. The evidence of ships disappearing mast-last, the evidence of islands appearing mountains-first. The evidence of other sailors who had returned from the West. He had good reasons for his conclusions, and they turned out to be well-founded.
That's not faith. That's reason. And it's wrong of you to try to appropriate the success of reason to defend unreasonable faith.
Now religious faith is more complex, but for that first we need to crack the egg and realize that there is something on the other side to talk to.
You seem to think that I was born an atheist and never changed, but that's not the truth. There was a time when I thought I was talking to God, too. But I wasn't. There's no God to talk to; never has been. I was talking to myself, just as you're talking to yourself. You could fill a book with the reasons we can confidently conclude that this is so. In return, the defenders of the God delusion offer nothing but "faith." Color me not impressed.
We all do this all the time.
I'm aware that you do it all the time. I'm asking you why you don't see the inherent contradiction in asserting the ineffability of God on one hand, and then effing him all over the place on the other.
Yes, He is inherently unknowable, but there are things that can be told about him.
By definition, a contradiction in terms. And the phenomenon of human religion, the vast panoply of human positions on the nature of God, prove that, in fact, there's nothing that can be told about him.
Except, of course, that in all likelihood there's no such thing as God.
Sorry, I've observed it.
Perhaps, but I notice you give no evidence of your observation, so I don't see any reason to believe you.
the particular religion at hand likely would see a certain injustice in granting equivalent results for someone dedicating actual effort to it, and someone willing to make the effort to say "gimme proof".
Only if they were blind to the far, far greater injustice resulting from denying healing miracles to test subjects simply because the people incidental to them had the wrong mindset. It's quite trivial to devise a study where genuine adherents to the religion are given one group of patients to pray for, and another group receives no prayer, and compare the incidence of healing/recovery, etc. It's not much of a God who will answer some prayers and not others simply because a person completely unconnected to the poor suffering bastard is a doubting Thomas.
Instead, he said "Neither prayer nor any other supernatural or religious belief has ever been observed to be effecacious". Note that word "ever" in there.
Yes. That was intentional.
The proof that the "ever" is justified is that neither you, nor power-of-prayer adherents, nor anybody else can supply a genuine, verified observation of effective prayer. None exist. There are no such observations.
Alas, he used "ever", which covers at least the last six thousand years
I think you've misunderstood the scope of the claim. The scope of the claim is "all verified observations that exist." None of those observations are of effective prayer.
My claim is justified; you're just reading it wrong. And you're focusing on a quibble of semantics instead of dealing with the argument - that there's no evidence, none at all, of effective prayer.
Since "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is a religious belief
Your example, by definition, is of an ethical position, not a religious belief. (If you don't see the difference, it's because you're a bigot who denies that atheists can have ethics.)
The point of faith is to be able to believe in something that has yet to be proven.
Then you've given away the game - you've admitted that prayer, communion with God, etc. has never been observed to work. All I was describing was faith - belief in things that have never been shown to work. The manifest negative of faith should be obvious, at least to people who want to have accurate knowledge about the universe they inhabit. (If what you want is reassurance, regardless of truth, then faith is right up your alley.)
but that day nothing about God himself.
And I don't understand the people who can say "God is inherently unknowable; now, let me tell you all about Him." How can you do that with a straight face?
I find this assertion humorous in that it is self-referencing with regards to both the assertion and the user that posted it.
It's funny - no matter how many different ways I encounter the puerile "atheists have just as much faith as believers" argument, it never ceases to be at once arrogant, condescending, ignorant, and fallacious.
I'm kind of a scientist and I kind of believe that astrology might have some truth to it. Is spiritualism of any kind NOT for scientists?
I don't understand how you could be a "kind of scientist", see the power and the results of adherence to the scientific method every day in your work, and then go home and think it's a good idea to completely turn your back on that power in your own life. Can you explain it to me? What do you think you gain by being overly credulous to unverified claims? If that's such a path to truth, why doesn't science operate that way, in your view?
It's really amazing to realize that science isn't just work, it's not just something other people do in labs; it's a mode of thought that you can apply to your own learning and life. Why would you turn your back on that? What do you gain?
The problem is that the believers DO have some evidence: they have observed that whatever they believe in works
No, they haven't. Neither prayer nor any other supernatural or religious belief has ever been observed to be effecacious.
If I have a dream about something, that's not at all the same as having an observation about something. If I am mistaken about something, or imagine it, that's not observation, either. The believers have convinced themselves that they have evidence, but like their belief they have convinced themselves falsely.
There's nothing arbitrary about it; I simply employed reason and logic, as well as American standards of evidence as I understand them, to arrive at the conclusion that the evidence as presented doesn't support a guilty verdict beyond a reasonable doubt, because multiple reasonable explanations exist to explain each part of the prosecutions case. Until the prosecution can eliminate all reasonable possibilities aside from Hans' guilt, the burden of proof is not met. Each of those reasonable alternatives constitutes "doubt."
Do you understand, now, what "beyond a reasonable doubt" means? It's not enough for you to establish that the Hans-is-guilty scenario is most likely, because "preponderance of evidence" isn't the standard for criminal trials. And as much as you've tried to make that out to be the same as "beyond reasonable doubt", it's not. Those are two different standards.
But never will you have absolute certainty
I've never asked for it. Simply evidence of guilt that rises to the standard of "proof beyond reasonable doubt", not just "preponderance of the evidence." And not to put too fine a point on it but that's the standard that the prosecution's case simply doesn't rise to.
It is you who assumed that I was talking about that specific legalese term
"Legalese term"? It is a court trial we're talking about. Is it now your contention that the legal rules of evidence and procedure be dispensed with, if they're an obstacle to convicting Hans Reiser?
Christ, now you really have to tell me what he did to you. Did you invest in Namesys or something?
There is that thing called Google around. Use it.
To prove your case for you? Sorry, but that's your job.
All I ever did was to keep pointing it out to you that the odds of him being guilty of killing Nina are much higher then those of Nina absconding abroad in mysterious ways involving the mob or 50-mile solo hikes through the desert and side-trips to Nicaragua.
And I keep asking you to show your math on that. You refuse to.
There is no way to prove such negatives!
Gosh, you seem confused. First you were adamant, certain, that Nina Reiser had never embezzled from Namesys despite the assertions of its chief employee to the contrary. Now, you're saying that her innocence on that accusation can't ever be proven.
No wonder you think Hans is guilty - you think everyone is guilty, apparently, since innocence can't ever be proven, according to you.
That is the odds of Hans ripping his seat out and tossing it are say 1:10000
Show your work.
the actual number is not relevant here
Oh, I see. These are coming out of your asshole. Understood.
I begin to perceive that you're a sociopath with a delusional hatred of the United States: