Phi for All

I think there is a further distinction there. Wishful thinking, imo, rarely requires any kind of sacrifice. I can hope that my consciousness lives on somewhere after my body dies, and I don't need to change my life to maintain that wishful thought. Faith, OTOH, requires one to believe strongly for no reason, and often people are required to make big changes to accommodate their faith, like tithing and attending rituals and pledging oneself and worshiping and avoiding people outside the faith and midnight interventions and indoctrinating others and behavioral adjustments and prayer and avoiding certain foods. Trust allows you to make changes based on reason and rationality.

And that's why we try to attack ideas instead. When did anyone make jokes about this person? Online discussions can't address the kinds of nuances you're talking about. We're here to discuss science, and it's assumed that people who want to participate are interested in the subject, not in airing their personal problems while talking about the subject. We can help depression by engaging with the learning process, and showing people that they have viable knowledge, but we can't clinically approach any type of medical problem with our limited experience and lack of personal physical interaction. That's what professionals are for. Imo, letting people know there is a big distinction between themselves and their ideas is critical when analyzing science topics. Dumb ideas exist, but not dumb people, and drawing that line should help a person who is depressed about themselves. Most ideas are wrong, and your mental state should have little to do with that. Amazingly, we can have ideas that don't change us at the physical level, they can just be ideas, right or wrong. seriously disabled has chosen to label himself, but do we have to talk about that label in every topic he's involved in? It doesn't matter that he started this thread. If it was anyone else, I'd still tell them it's a strawman debate question. I've never even heard of anyone making the statement, "Science is EVERYTHING!". It's actually pretty ludicrous, and mildly insulting. Frustrating, certainly, and maybe that's where he senses hostility.

They had tons of objective evidence. Read up on the Wright Brothers. They tested their designs gliding before they put engines in for powered flight. Faith had little to do with aviation pioneering. It doesn't require faith when you can model physical behaviors. The key word is trust, not faith.

Life is a box with a bowl full of chocolate coated cherries in it. You can leave them hidden in the box, or you can bring the bowl out and share them. Or you can count them and weigh them and sort them by size and test whether the bigger ones taste better, and share the results with your peers.

Hostile? swansont stated the obvious, emphasizing it with an "of course". If you see that as "hostile", then I think you were looking purposely for hostility and forced it into the discussion all on your own. Almost as if you wanted to be ganged up on. It's a really DUMB debate topic, disproven with a single instance of non-science. Is "Duh" a hostile response? "Is life really a box of chocolates?" Debate.

I had them done a few years ago to replace Formica. Stone counters look good, and they'll wear better and continue to look better than Formica, but I'm still getting used to the stone's inability to absorb shocks. It's cold all the time, which is great in summer, not so much in winter. The natural stone coloring is the real reason to use it for countertops, imo. If you like having the beauty of the outdoors in your home, it's a great addition. It won't add to the value of your home if it's done in a way that will become outdated soon though (my sister did her kitchen in faux Country French with scalloped and fluted edges on her stone countertop, and it just screams "The 90s" now).

Any stone for countertops is going to be pretty heat resistant, but most have some type of sealer on top that may discolor or crack if you put too hot a pot down on it. Buy some trivets or hot pads and you'll be fine no matter what you choose. As long as your stone top has a good thickness (I'd go 3 cm), it should resist actual breakage from dropping heavy objects on it, but they're all still subject to chipping. Your tiles broke under stress not only because they're a thinner material, but also because they're on a flexible plywood base. Be careful if you do go with a thicker granite, marble, or quartz when you set glass objects down. Because there isn't a flexible base, stone countertops are notoriously unforgiving if you set glassware down too hard. I would also recommend avoiding any fancy or complicated edge treatments. Hard to clean, and it usually dates the remodel pretty clearly. Soft, classic edges and bevels are best, and won't go out of style quickly. If your new countertop extends over the edges of the base it rests on (like an island counter would), don't have more than a foot of extension without supporting it somehow (shelving brackets work). In my area in the US, you shop for the piece of stone big enough for all the surfaces you're replacing. A good installer will help you choose the best piece with the smallest footprint to give you the best coverage with as few seams as possible.

To me, a reusable water bottle is different than a sports bottle. I would look for double-walled stainless steel, with a wide-mouthed top for adding ice/fruit/veg and a smaller screw-top for drinking. The screw-top should be attached so you can't lose it. Size should be a compromise between filled weight and having to refill it often (too big and it's heavy, too small and you're constantly going back to the tap). It has to be easy to carry around the office or home as a reminder to stay hydrated, and it has to be accessible to keep you from grabbing a packaged water or using a glass you'll have to wash.

I don't understand why you wrote this. It seems to say, "Lots of things just happen naturally but I think it's because of faith in God". Are you describing any situation where people seem to have their prayers answered as a "God coincidence"? It just seems more like something I, as a Humanist, would say. "If you prayed for this outcome, it's just a coincidence that it turned out this way." This is a setup for confirmation bias, imo, because you ignore all the times your prayers go unanswered, and only count when your prayers seem to come true. I also make a distinction between trust and faith, like the dictionary does. Faith has none of the criteria for belief that I require in order to trust an explanation. Faith is, by definition, not a reasonable form of belief. It eschews reason and purposely tries to draw strength from the fact that there's no objective evidence to support it. By equating faith and trust, it seems even more clear that you "trust" your god to keep you safe in situations where there is danger, that it's protecting you from harm because of your faith in it.

! Moderator Note If you need to take a voluntary break and rediscover your civility, now would be an excellent time.

! Moderator Note Two similar topics merged.

! Moderator Note Please back up assertions with evidence. Show how your claim stands up to observation, persuade us using more than your waving hands, otherwise you're just guessing and asking the members to play along. Nobody has time for that. Give us more than the assertion.

So narcissistic as well as lazy? We're trying to set an example for whatami, you know. Minimum effort should include more frequent attempts at clarity.

That's an interesting interpretation.

This is an example of Strange's observation #2. I have no idea what you mean by "hit further" than you should have. I would use "hit further" if I was talking about swinging a baseball bat harder so the ball would travel a longer distance. Perhaps you meant "I overreached", or "I went into too much detail", or "I assumed too much"? This is an example of #1. "They" obviously refers to your "disabilities", but what does "that" refer to? And when we don't know what "that" refers to, we don't know what "it" refers to when you claim "it's self evident". Also, I think you're making an invalid assumption here. I didn't know about your disabilities until you mentioned them, so it may not be true that they're "self evident". I prefer discussions on forums because I can write what I want to say, re-read it, re-write it to flow better as sentences, and make sure I'm being well understood through the words I use. It takes practice, and you have the right attitude about improvement, so I don't think this will always be a problem for you. You're definitely a smart individual. He claims his god has protected him and kept him safe whenever he places himself in danger by confronting drunks. You only quoted the "there are no guarantees for the future" part, but together with "I believe God has kept us safe" it seems pretty clear that it's his faith and his god's variable nature that preclude any "guarantees". If his faith hadn't been strong enough, or if it was God's will that a drunk shoot him with a gun, then keeping him safe wouldn't be guaranteed. I don't think this is off-topic at all. Faith is strong beliefs not based on reason, and this seems like a pretty clear example of it. Eric H uses it to convince himself that if he believes strongly enough, and trusts that his god's will is always going to work out for the best, that these situations won't end badly. He believes God has kept him and his fellows safe, how am I being inaccurate? Why hasn't Eric H objected to my interpretation?

And apparently, it was the correct interpretation of what Eric H meant.

As I've said before, I'm not questioning your motives. I think you're taking a positive stand and hoping to help your community by doing something nobody else is doing. Don't feel the need to defend your actions, because they aren't being attacked. Do you think your god has been keeping you from harm in these instances, as a result of your faith and prayers?

! Moderator Note Your pants are on fire, and that's against the rules you agreed to when you joined. Goodbye.

A German acquaintance showed me his paycheck stub several years ago, to show that everyone had to pay their share for the upkeep on ancient churches and castles. I remember thinking that would be an interesting thing to see conservatives fight over in the US. Half would decry any new taxes, the other half would jump at the chance to mix church and state.

This reads like, "Linguists believe that being able to speak in a foreign language makes them better able to be understood and express themselves in that language, but fact is what they are doing isn't speaking." It makes no sense, but it sounds like something someone who didn't understand a language would say about it. "Boy, those French have a different word for EVERYTHING!" -- Steve Martin

Out of nowhere? Perhaps not, unless this is how you perceive genetics. Infections, inflammation, and toxins can damage the structures that provide color to hair. I've heard a "shock" of white hair can be caused by a spider bite, but I don't recall if my source was fictional or not.

He said faith helps him take risks that might end in him getting hurt. I don't think it's a big leap to interpret that as faith that his god will protect him, or make things work out well, however mysterious it may seem. He said he prays for help to do things outside his comfort zone he wouldn't normally be capable of. People do this without prayer, without the religious perspective, all the time. I was asking him if he thought it was his god urging him to do these things. It could be that he wanted to do this on his own and uses prayer to give him courage. It could also be that he felt "moved" to take these out-of-character risks by whatever means his god uses to encourage him. It could be something else. I felt it was important to ask.

I didn't call it a religious intervention. You claimed your faith would overcome the dangers of the situations, and that your god would protect you during these interventions if you had enough faith. What I did say was that there are many non-religious reasons why your tactic was successful. You even point out that you didn't bring your religion into the actual intervention, other than to use it to blind yourselves to the negative consequences of your actions. Basically you're a bunch of sober folks trying to soothe the belligerence of fellow humans in an altered state. I commend you for doing good works, but I give the credit solely to you and your comrades, and none at all to any deity. I understand that faith in the idea that your god is watching over you to shield you from consequences gives you the strength to do things like this, but I think the concept of being an imperfect sinner also blinds you to your own strengths and abilities. I suspect this is also why some think faith is the strongest form of belief when it has no rational or trustworthy basis. So faith allows you to take risks, and even if you do get hurt, the same faith tells you it's for the best. And if you get killed, you'll be in a better place. Everything is god's will, so having faith means every outcome is the best outcome. It's easy to see the attraction. God tells you to do things outside your comfort zone?

There is a range when it comes to those proposing alternative ideas. Many are just filling in the gaps in their understanding with things that make more sense than the mainstream science they fell behind on. Science knowledge is so layered, but humans will try to fill in patterns based only on what they know, so it often seems to them that they've discovered something basic nobody else knows about. These folks just need better knowledge, but it's like any other kind of renovation; you have to remove the old junk before you can put the new stuff in. Some of those folks get so adamant about being right that they lose perspective and refuse to listen to any corrections in their stances. They ridicule and insult because everyone seems to not understand the simplicity of their arguments, and instead offer up useless evidence to refute what they should be trying to understand. Q-reeus was one of those, and it takes us a while to make sure our assessment is correct before banning these folks. It wouldn't have been fair to ban him after just a few posts revealed his disdain for mainstream knowledge, not without giving the other members a chance to chisel through a thick skull. We sure do appreciate when the membership reports posts from these folks. We obviously don't want to interrupt a discussion to point out every fallacious statement made, and we hope that most of them get pointed out by the participants in order to improve the arguments. But we also know how frustrating it is when you offer evidence and it's ignored in favor of incredulity or gut feelings or eternal skepticism. In the face of almost overwhelming confirmation bias, I think our members do a good job of isolating misunderstanding and misinformation so it can be hunted down and eradicated.

This stance isn't really discussable. You can preach it, but ultimately we can't reach a reasoned perspective for this effect of your faith. We can point to many non-religious reasons why interventions can be effective. We can point out how these situations could easily go wrong, and that your faith would be of little value against determined malice. Then you would point out that they haven't killed you yet, your faith would deflect any reasonableness we might introduce, and we'd be back to square one. I can certainly understand the profound feelings you have walking around late at night looking for dangerous situations to defuse, but I don't think you need faith in a god(s) to achieve them. ER nurses and ambulance drivers (among many others) often have these profound feelings when helping their fellow humans. It's part of our biology to be cooperative and nurturing with each other. No religion necessary. In fact, I think it makes the helpful nature more sincere when you're doing it for the person and not the god(s).