Show me purpose. Show me any evidence you have that demonstrates the existence of purpose from a non-theological aspect. Show me how you test 'purpose'. Is it measurable? Does one thing have more 'purpose' than another thing? Who decides what purpose is? What is the point of purpose? What does purpose contribute to the natural world? If purpose exists, what came before purpose?
Like I said, purpose is a human construct based on a purely human perspective. Lions don't feel 'purpose' in what they do, they get hungry because their stomach tells their brain that they'd better go out and eat something because they need to replenish their energy supplies in order to maintain their bodies in order to better make and protect their baby lions. That's it. They're not sitting there singing "The Circle of Life" like some Disney movie. They're not out there hunting because that is their 'purpose' in their ecosystem, it's strictly selfish biology and self-preservation, honed over millions of years of natural selection. Some plants turn towards the sun because millions of years ago plants that didn't starved and died before they could make more little baby plants that didn't turn towards the sun.
The question itself, "What is the purpose of the universe?" is philosophy, because it assumes there even has to be one. Purpose in itself is a purely philosophical construct, no different than 'fate' or 'justice'. It will never be provable, there is no scientific method for testing it, it requires faith and acceptance without evidence, ruled by emotion.
Any scientist will tell you that a theory with no evidence to support it is a bad theory. When 99.9999% of the evidence points to solution A, and.0001% of the evidence points to solution B, science goes with solution A. Faith, on the other hand, dismisses that 99.9999% of evidence as some sort of grand cosmological 'trickery and deceit' and insists that because that 99.9999% is not 100%, that means that solution B is equally valid.
Unless someone comes up with a way to ignore the laws of physics as we understand them and create a time machine and actually take people back to our past and show them our ancestors, 99.9999% is all we're gonna get on things like this. If you want to throw your name in the.0001% hat, that is your right, but don't try to claim that your beliefs are as well supported as the ones with 99.9999% of the evidence.
There's tons of evidence of evolution; Creationism, not so much.
I really don't know what type of proof critics of evolution need. Short of building a time machine and taking them back a couple million years to run around with our cavemen ancestors, there just isn't going to be any beyond studying the fossil record like we have been for hundreds of years. At some point people are going to have to accept that 99.9999999999% certainty is enough evidence to make up for that.00000000000001% of doubt...
Does science answer the question, "what is the purpose of the universe?"
Why does it even need one? Why does there have to be purpose at all? What is the purpose of a volcano? Not it's function, we all know what a volcano does and what it is a reaction to, but what is it's purpose? Purpose assumes some weird sort of sentience, an ambition or drive that exists beyond the physical: "A volcano's purpose is to prevent buildup of pressure in the Earth's crust." That's ridiculous, obviously, a volcano is caused by these things, it has no purpose, there is no 'meaning' in a volcano, it is what it is. We can study volcanoes, and we can predict how they will behave, but it is purely scientific...
What is the 'purpose' of anything? What is the purpose of a rock? What is the purpose of oxygen? What is the purpose of the planet Mars? What is the purpose of heat rising? What is the purpose of snow? There's no purpose in any of these things, they are natural reactions based on the physical laws of the universe, laws which we are just barely beginning to understand, but laws nonetheless. The fact that ice floats doesn't have some grand cosmological 'purpose', but it sure is handy, and convenient to the development of life. However, that doesn't imbibe it with some sense of purpose, it's just a natural reaction to the fact that water ice is less dense than liquid water.
There's nothing wrong with drawing a big question mark on the things we don't yet understand. I have no idea why so many people are so afraid of that question mark that they need to fill in the blanks with some magical, intangible cosmic being...
Yeah, sorry, gonna have to go with "a big pile of nonsense" myself...
My faith in the truth in the bible was lost in grade school when I played my first game of telephone. If twenty five kids can't even keep a message straight being passed between one another in a minute's time, how the hell can anyone believe with a straight face that the bible has any truth, whether historical or religious, in any way, shape or form? A lot of the stories were centuries old hearsay even by Jesus' time...
I don't doubt that people like Jesus Christ and his apostles actually existed, but I think they had much more in common with David Koresh than the son of God.
They should be educating them. Giving them the tools they need to not re-offend. I know there is already programs, but it should be mandatory, not optional. Letting them sit there and play video games is not helping them, it's not teaching them anything.
There was a life before video games existed, you know. For thousands of years people got their recreation through physical activity, friendly competition between themselves, and the ancient equivalent of board games like Chess, Go, Backgammon...they need mental stimulation, not CoD: Black Ops or Arkham City. There's no reason why they can't continue to do so in prison.
I mean, most of society actually enjoys learning new things, expanding their skills...maybe more of that and less of the 'sit in your cell and stare at a TV' would do them some good.
So the other drivers that are also driving around in the full sun along with me, my headlights actually make a difference in how well they see me? Come on, now...if they can't see me in full daylight in a fucking car they should not be driving. Does NOT having my headlights on during the day absolve someone from hitting me in the event of an accident? Good fucking luck with that.
And as for my ridiculous efficiency argument, it's still 100,000 less barrels of oil less a day we are burning. Saving just ONE barrel of oil a day is worth it because that is just that much less shit in the atmosphere. And how the hell did they even prove those statistics concerning the running lights? I highly doubt it was done in a research environment where every other variable was eliminated. No, more than likely some tool saw a statistical decrease that happened because a lot of different factors in a specific geographic area and attributed it to daytime running lights, and now here we are...
At the very least they could be tied to a light sensor somewhere on the car, though. I mean, what the hell situation could you possibly be in where you are driving around in full-daylight and those daytime running lights provide you with more visibility than the sun already does?
And yes, I realize that when you are going into tunnels and under bridges and such they may help, fine. But they don't need to be on when you're driving in the open air under midday sun. Negligible energy savings for the individual, but across however many millions of cars on the roads, that could be millions of barrels of oil less a day we use...
Nope, I'm sure they will just register a new LLC with a different name and keep on trucking as before. They just busted a couple guys here in Madison for fraud; him and a friend were locksmiths and it turned out they had registered something like thirty different corporations over the last 10-15 years. They would rip people off and when it finally seemed like they would actually have to pay for their actions, that corporation would fold and disappear and a new one would spring up in it's place not long after; same people, same games, but for all intents and purposes, a completely new entity that is clean as a whistle.
It's ridiculous that it took them this long to finally get these con men off the streets and locked up, but lord knows they will probably do a year or two in jail (if even that) and be right back on the street to do it all over again, and it will probably be another 10-15 years before they get caught. Obviously the laws must be pretty broken, but IANAL obviously, so I really couldn't suggest what they could do to fix it in a way that won't end up negatively effecting honest small-business owners that fall on hard times and lose their business.
I'm assuming he's talking about the people that run their headlights during the day, and the newer cars that just have the headlights on by default. I really doubt that those millions of people driving around during the day under the full sun need their lights on, but again, by default they are on always.
Why the fuck are people giving children that are too young and immature to handle the responsibility smart phones anyway??
I see grade schoolers rolling with iPhones now, and I just don't understand what their parents are thinking. There is no reason whatsoever that a child needs a smart phone. A cell phone I can understand, something simple that they can use to call a parent if need be, that makes perfect sense to me, but a grade schooler does not need apps and itunes and all that other nonsense.
I agree 100%. The radio has been a joke for a decade at least, ever since Clear Channel bought up all the commercial stations in the country, we've been suffering under modern day Payola crap. You hear the same 30 songs in rotation all day long, and at night when a lot of them switch over to computer it seems like they play even less.
MTV hasn't played music since sometime in the early 2000's (last time I even watched the channel was when The Osbournes was on, and they didn't play music then). I suppose Youtube is the only mainstream place to see music videos anymore, but that still depends on someone sitting down and searching for a particular artist, and even then a lot of the time the music or videos are uploaded, not by the labels, but by fans of the artist, which then end up getting yanked down because the music industry is fucking retarded.
> P.S. No, writing to elected officials will not work.
especially if you never try.
Believe me, I've tried over and over and over again. Finding someone in the U.S. government that hasn't been bribed by Big Content is damn near impossible, they dump money on both parties. I'd imagine it's much the same in every country where money is allowed to be given directly to political candidates or representatives....I've certainly seen no evidence to the contrary.
Partisan politics are retarded, as are people that think that there is any real difference between the Republicans and Democrats. You're rooting for much the same team one way or another...
Goddamn right. Clear Channel owns over half of the stations in the United States, and they only play what they're told (paid) to by the same ass clowns behind this bullshit.
It boggles the fucking mind that shit like Payola and Hollywood Accounting is still going on openly. Was our government EVER not totally corrupt? I want to build a time machine and go back to that time period I think...
It's like every fucking corporation has turned into Weyland-Yutani Corp. overnight or something, complete with hordes of Carter Burke's running around leaving slime trails on everything they get close too...
Are you kidding? I plan on leaving all sorts of random crap around for my family to find when I'm gone, I already leave notes in books and such all the time. Hell, my sister-in-law just found a note I left admonishing her for not being in the kitchen making me a sammich, a note I put into a book she lent me five years ago. I'm still working on the scavenger hunt portion of my will...
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
- Thomas Jefferson
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
- John F. Kennedy
You are absolutely right, Occupy Wall Street is only the beginning. Things are going to get much worse before they get any better.
If they document that everyone hates the scanners, will they actually be removed?
With the insane amount of money the contractors (mostly ex-DHS and TSA officials that initiated these programs and then switched sides to cash in) are making building, installing, and training people on the use of these machines, I doubt it very highly.
It's the same problem as with the financial regulatory bodies in the United States. The Banks and the FEC regularly trade people back and forth; for all intents and purposes, they're on the same team. They go to $1000 a plate fundraisers together, they all owe each other favors. This would be the equivalent of police officers openly palling around with prostitutes and drug dealers, but the vast majority of Americans don't even know.
It's the same with the DoD and defense contractors, and the TSA and security contractors. They are all in collusion, they get their friends to make the laws or spearhead mandates necessitating new equipment, the friends bide their time for a year or so, and then resign, get a job with the "private" contractors, and make a fortune. I mean, how much money has Dick Cheney's friends made as a result of the War on Terror? How much has Dick made himself??
More people are starting to wake up to this nonsense, finally. What they do with this information remains to be seen...but short of open revolution and a fundamental threat to their existence, we're not going to see any changes from within. The only people that have the power to make these changes all directly benefit from the current way things are done. It's the same as expecting congress to vote to cut their own pay or benefits. WILL NOT HAPPEN.
The one time I had the opportunity to drive through Montana I had to do so stuck in a goddamned Budget rental truck. Stupid thing had an auto brake and was governed to 55. I could get it up to 60 on some long downhill stretches but at the base of the hill the governor would immediately kick in and slow me down. Talk about frustrating...
I'd love to do it again, though. Particularly on a motorcycle. Definitely on my bucket list...
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Show me purpose. Show me any evidence you have that demonstrates the existence of purpose from a non-theological aspect. Show me how you test 'purpose'. Is it measurable? Does one thing have more 'purpose' than another thing? Who decides what purpose is? What is the point of purpose? What does purpose contribute to the natural world? If purpose exists, what came before purpose?
Like I said, purpose is a human construct based on a purely human perspective. Lions don't feel 'purpose' in what they do, they get hungry because their stomach tells their brain that they'd better go out and eat something because they need to replenish their energy supplies in order to maintain their bodies in order to better make and protect their baby lions. That's it. They're not sitting there singing "The Circle of Life" like some Disney movie. They're not out there hunting because that is their 'purpose' in their ecosystem, it's strictly selfish biology and self-preservation, honed over millions of years of natural selection. Some plants turn towards the sun because millions of years ago plants that didn't starved and died before they could make more little baby plants that didn't turn towards the sun.
The question itself, "What is the purpose of the universe?" is philosophy, because it assumes there even has to be one. Purpose in itself is a purely philosophical construct, no different than 'fate' or 'justice'. It will never be provable, there is no scientific method for testing it, it requires faith and acceptance without evidence, ruled by emotion.
Any scientist will tell you that a theory with no evidence to support it is a bad theory. When 99.9999% of the evidence points to solution A, and .0001% of the evidence points to solution B, science goes with solution A. Faith, on the other hand, dismisses that 99.9999% of evidence as some sort of grand cosmological 'trickery and deceit' and insists that because that 99.9999% is not 100%, that means that solution B is equally valid.
Unless someone comes up with a way to ignore the laws of physics as we understand them and create a time machine and actually take people back to our past and show them our ancestors, 99.9999% is all we're gonna get on things like this. If you want to throw your name in the .0001% hat, that is your right, but don't try to claim that your beliefs are as well supported as the ones with 99.9999% of the evidence.
There's tons of evidence of evolution; Creationism, not so much.
I really don't know what type of proof critics of evolution need. Short of building a time machine and taking them back a couple million years to run around with our cavemen ancestors, there just isn't going to be any beyond studying the fossil record like we have been for hundreds of years. At some point people are going to have to accept that 99.9999999999% certainty is enough evidence to make up for that .00000000000001% of doubt...
Does science answer the question, "what is the purpose of the universe?"
Why does it even need one? Why does there have to be purpose at all? What is the purpose of a volcano? Not it's function, we all know what a volcano does and what it is a reaction to, but what is it's purpose? Purpose assumes some weird sort of sentience, an ambition or drive that exists beyond the physical: "A volcano's purpose is to prevent buildup of pressure in the Earth's crust." That's ridiculous, obviously, a volcano is caused by these things, it has no purpose, there is no 'meaning' in a volcano, it is what it is. We can study volcanoes, and we can predict how they will behave, but it is purely scientific...
What is the 'purpose' of anything? What is the purpose of a rock? What is the purpose of oxygen? What is the purpose of the planet Mars? What is the purpose of heat rising? What is the purpose of snow? There's no purpose in any of these things, they are natural reactions based on the physical laws of the universe, laws which we are just barely beginning to understand, but laws nonetheless. The fact that ice floats doesn't have some grand cosmological 'purpose', but it sure is handy, and convenient to the development of life. However, that doesn't imbibe it with some sense of purpose, it's just a natural reaction to the fact that water ice is less dense than liquid water.
There's nothing wrong with drawing a big question mark on the things we don't yet understand. I have no idea why so many people are so afraid of that question mark that they need to fill in the blanks with some magical, intangible cosmic being...
Yeah, sorry, gonna have to go with "a big pile of nonsense" myself...
My faith in the truth in the bible was lost in grade school when I played my first game of telephone. If twenty five kids can't even keep a message straight being passed between one another in a minute's time, how the hell can anyone believe with a straight face that the bible has any truth, whether historical or religious, in any way, shape or form? A lot of the stories were centuries old hearsay even by Jesus' time...
I don't doubt that people like Jesus Christ and his apostles actually existed, but I think they had much more in common with David Koresh than the son of God.
What a bunch of biased bullshit...
They should be educating them. Giving them the tools they need to not re-offend. I know there is already programs, but it should be mandatory, not optional. Letting them sit there and play video games is not helping them, it's not teaching them anything.
There was a life before video games existed, you know. For thousands of years people got their recreation through physical activity, friendly competition between themselves, and the ancient equivalent of board games like Chess, Go, Backgammon...they need mental stimulation, not CoD: Black Ops or Arkham City. There's no reason why they can't continue to do so in prison.
I mean, most of society actually enjoys learning new things, expanding their skills...maybe more of that and less of the 'sit in your cell and stare at a TV' would do them some good.
So the other drivers that are also driving around in the full sun along with me, my headlights actually make a difference in how well they see me? Come on, now...if they can't see me in full daylight in a fucking car they should not be driving. Does NOT having my headlights on during the day absolve someone from hitting me in the event of an accident? Good fucking luck with that.
And as for my ridiculous efficiency argument, it's still 100,000 less barrels of oil less a day we are burning. Saving just ONE barrel of oil a day is worth it because that is just that much less shit in the atmosphere. And how the hell did they even prove those statistics concerning the running lights? I highly doubt it was done in a research environment where every other variable was eliminated. No, more than likely some tool saw a statistical decrease that happened because a lot of different factors in a specific geographic area and attributed it to daytime running lights, and now here we are...
At the very least they could be tied to a light sensor somewhere on the car, though. I mean, what the hell situation could you possibly be in where you are driving around in full-daylight and those daytime running lights provide you with more visibility than the sun already does?
And yes, I realize that when you are going into tunnels and under bridges and such they may help, fine. But they don't need to be on when you're driving in the open air under midday sun. Negligible energy savings for the individual, but across however many millions of cars on the roads, that could be millions of barrels of oil less a day we use...
Nope, I'm sure they will just register a new LLC with a different name and keep on trucking as before. They just busted a couple guys here in Madison for fraud; him and a friend were locksmiths and it turned out they had registered something like thirty different corporations over the last 10-15 years. They would rip people off and when it finally seemed like they would actually have to pay for their actions, that corporation would fold and disappear and a new one would spring up in it's place not long after; same people, same games, but for all intents and purposes, a completely new entity that is clean as a whistle.
It's ridiculous that it took them this long to finally get these con men off the streets and locked up, but lord knows they will probably do a year or two in jail (if even that) and be right back on the street to do it all over again, and it will probably be another 10-15 years before they get caught. Obviously the laws must be pretty broken, but IANAL obviously, so I really couldn't suggest what they could do to fix it in a way that won't end up negatively effecting honest small-business owners that fall on hard times and lose their business.
I'm assuming he's talking about the people that run their headlights during the day, and the newer cars that just have the headlights on by default. I really doubt that those millions of people driving around during the day under the full sun need their lights on, but again, by default they are on always.
Why the fuck are people giving children that are too young and immature to handle the responsibility smart phones anyway??
I see grade schoolers rolling with iPhones now, and I just don't understand what their parents are thinking. There is no reason whatsoever that a child needs a smart phone. A cell phone I can understand, something simple that they can use to call a parent if need be, that makes perfect sense to me, but a grade schooler does not need apps and itunes and all that other nonsense.
I agree 100%. The radio has been a joke for a decade at least, ever since Clear Channel bought up all the commercial stations in the country, we've been suffering under modern day Payola crap. You hear the same 30 songs in rotation all day long, and at night when a lot of them switch over to computer it seems like they play even less.
MTV hasn't played music since sometime in the early 2000's (last time I even watched the channel was when The Osbournes was on, and they didn't play music then). I suppose Youtube is the only mainstream place to see music videos anymore, but that still depends on someone sitting down and searching for a particular artist, and even then a lot of the time the music or videos are uploaded, not by the labels, but by fans of the artist, which then end up getting yanked down because the music industry is fucking retarded.
> P.S. No, writing to elected officials will not work.
especially if you never try.
Believe me, I've tried over and over and over again. Finding someone in the U.S. government that hasn't been bribed by Big Content is damn near impossible, they dump money on both parties. I'd imagine it's much the same in every country where money is allowed to be given directly to political candidates or representatives....I've certainly seen no evidence to the contrary.
Partisan politics are retarded, as are people that think that there is any real difference between the Republicans and Democrats. You're rooting for much the same team one way or another...
Goddamn right. Clear Channel owns over half of the stations in the United States, and they only play what they're told (paid) to by the same ass clowns behind this bullshit.
It boggles the fucking mind that shit like Payola and Hollywood Accounting is still going on openly. Was our government EVER not totally corrupt? I want to build a time machine and go back to that time period I think...
It's like every fucking corporation has turned into Weyland-Yutani Corp. overnight or something, complete with hordes of Carter Burke's running around leaving slime trails on everything they get close too...
Are you kidding? I plan on leaving all sorts of random crap around for my family to find when I'm gone, I already leave notes in books and such all the time. Hell, my sister-in-law just found a note I left admonishing her for not being in the kitchen making me a sammich, a note I put into a book she lent me five years ago. I'm still working on the scavenger hunt portion of my will...
I guess I kinda see your point, though...
Who the hell has a "porn-buddy"? Do you actually share pornography? LOL
1/\/3vERre@LLyl0VedUANYw@Y!?:-P
Oh, I thought it was 1/\/\5L33P1NGw1thURs1st3r!
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
- Thomas Jefferson
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
- John F. Kennedy
You are absolutely right, Occupy Wall Street is only the beginning. Things are going to get much worse before they get any better.
Hell, a few months back Michele Bachman promised $2 a gallon gas if she gets elected.
By spring, I fully expect to hear promises of ice cream for all, no more taxes ever again, and world peace.
If they document that everyone hates the scanners, will they actually be removed?
With the insane amount of money the contractors (mostly ex-DHS and TSA officials that initiated these programs and then switched sides to cash in) are making building, installing, and training people on the use of these machines, I doubt it very highly.
It's the same problem as with the financial regulatory bodies in the United States. The Banks and the FEC regularly trade people back and forth; for all intents and purposes, they're on the same team. They go to $1000 a plate fundraisers together, they all owe each other favors. This would be the equivalent of police officers openly palling around with prostitutes and drug dealers, but the vast majority of Americans don't even know.
It's the same with the DoD and defense contractors, and the TSA and security contractors. They are all in collusion, they get their friends to make the laws or spearhead mandates necessitating new equipment, the friends bide their time for a year or so, and then resign, get a job with the "private" contractors, and make a fortune. I mean, how much money has Dick Cheney's friends made as a result of the War on Terror? How much has Dick made himself??
More people are starting to wake up to this nonsense, finally. What they do with this information remains to be seen...but short of open revolution and a fundamental threat to their existence, we're not going to see any changes from within. The only people that have the power to make these changes all directly benefit from the current way things are done. It's the same as expecting congress to vote to cut their own pay or benefits. WILL NOT HAPPEN.
But then he might not have been frist!
The one time I had the opportunity to drive through Montana I had to do so stuck in a goddamned Budget rental truck. Stupid thing had an auto brake and was governed to 55. I could get it up to 60 on some long downhill stretches but at the base of the hill the governor would immediately kick in and slow me down. Talk about frustrating...
I'd love to do it again, though. Particularly on a motorcycle. Definitely on my bucket list...