Phi for All

Faith seems to require me to use my strongest form of belief on something I can't possibly know about. How is that smart? That's not meant to be rhetorical. I've asked this question here many times. Since I can't do anything to verify whether or not god(s) are real, faith is simply strong belief in things nobody really knows anything about for sure. Why is that smart, why is that logical, why is it reasonable?

So right there are two admitted possibilities that have absolute mountains of evidence and documentation as to their manifestations of images that weren't there, over a large time frame and involving hundreds of thousands of individuals. It's much more rational to suspect one of these two phenomena are at play than it is to suspect a deity manifested itself to your grandfather. That's not saying it's impossible, it's just saying it's much more likely to be something natural.

Instead of those lighted scrolling signs that have stock prices constantly being updated, we need the same thing with political fact-checking. Put them wherever people have to wait on line, like grocery stores and banks.

Pareidolia.

Perhaps it's not higher intelligence, but rather our primate sense of justice and cooperation that needs to label some things evil, for acts or behavior that are irredeemable. In fact, I would say you need to be highly intelligent to be truly evil. It seems all about intent. A lion can naturally hunt down a gazelle and start eating it while it's still alive. But it's not doing that to enjoy the suffering, or anything else we'd call evil. However, if we were to do the same thing, it would be unnatural, and because there's no good reason for causing such avoidable stress and suffering, we would most definitely label that act evil.

That makes sense, especially for reading. It might make reading aloud a bit more difficult, since the comma often gives the speaker a little advance notice about a pause, or a chance to breathe.

Too wishy-washy, imo. There are stronger proposals left. But I really wish Parliament would squish this because of the lies. This case shows there's a need for a more nuanced approach to the conflict between truth from politicians and the protection of free speech. Politics isn't held to the same regulations as advertising your goods or services to the public. There are good reasons why not, but surely there must be better ways to let EVERYONE know when a campaign's promises aren't true. Unfortunately, the way our news is aggregated for us, many people aren't exposed to the information every voter should have. Why should our leaders be allowed to lie, and why is it important to allow them to? For a system like this to work, doesn't there need to be a better way to reach more people about fact-checking?

C'est magnifique! Congratulations!

I think sentience, and more importantly the heightened intelligence we gave up so much to get, are definitely responsible for what we call evil. I always come back to early man, guarding his tribe/group from the terrors of the dark, and imagining tigers in the shadows, evil you can't see until it pounces. It's that imagining of something you can't sense with your normal senses that would be highly prized. Predicting which shadow has the evil predator would have seemed like magic, and would have led to imagining many more unseen, unheard entities, including deities that protect as well as those who hunt humans.

Abraham's god always sounded this way to me. The perfect god, imo, would have set things up exactly like this, counting on human intelligence to see through the BS to figure out that learning to deal effectively with our own evil is the only thing that matters. Then the god shows up, restores all the lost limbs from every amputee, rings the moon like a gong and says, "You got it right! Now forget about me and go explore!" Well yes, but he also did that passive/aggressive BS where he made us imperfect, and then berates us for it, to the point of making us spend eternity in Hell if we don't go out of our way to please him. Seriously, that's a very messed up move. "I'm all powerful, could have made you any way I wanted, decided to make you sinful, which is the one thing I can't tolerate. Oh well." Which one of the 9000+ sects do you belong to?

Clearly a template is needed. Mistaking corporate manipulation of fear for actual conservatism seems to be a common factor. Ditto bigotry leading to intolerance and racism. And a lot of the worst ones in the US revolve around the fact that the People can just go fuck themselves if a decent opportunity to make the Dems look bad crops up. Of course, most of this is due to the decision to underfund public education in order to promote privatizing it.

I nominate those Americans who were too poorly educated to understand exactly what Donald Trump meant when he said, "I love the poorly educated!" and are voting for him because of it.

I watched a small pod of killer whales play with an exhausted seal. They could have killed it at any time, but spent most of the hunt tossing it with their tails playing keep-away, until it wasn't fun anymore. I've also seen a pod spend hours separating a baby whale from it's mother before tiring it out and then drowning it, and then they only ate its tongue (there were 14 killer whales in the pod). If any other creature besides man could be called evil....

What if a body, ending between the second and third cervical vertebrae, were cloned in a tank from your own cells, then attached to your old head if your factory body goes bad? You aren't creating life, you're using your own cells.

What a gift! Hey neighbor!

I'm completely against the cabbage patch procedure, for ethical reasons. Same with using stork methodology. These may sound natural, but as life creation processes they fall short in several key areas.

As in, "We use commas but never next to but because we're French"?

I've referred to my evil wife as "linearly independent". I think Google nailed it.

The best medical miracle, the one that would be VERY difficult to attribute to natural causes, would be the regeneration of a missing limb. That should be a piece of cake for a god, since we even have an embryonic stage where regeneration is preferred over scar tissue. The mechanisms are there. No amputee has ever had a limb regrown though, never once in recorded history. Either god refuses prayers from ALL amputees but grants miracle prayers for other illnesses, or god isn't miraculously healing anybody.

A single piece of evidence wouldn't be any kind of guarantee. It would be supportive evidence, yes, if you can trust the methods used to examine the sample. But there is an awful lot we don't know about the circumstances. All we have is people's word that there was no contamination or tampering. I remember being told in church that the Bible had changed very little after so many centuries of translations, which was a sign that it was divinely inspired. I just accepted that as fact. Then I began to be skeptical about it, so I studied for myself and found out how MUCH has been changed in the Bible, things that really do change meaning and are designed to make beliefs "fit" in all the 9000+ Christian sects. Thinking critically, you should never just accept that something like this was treated in a rigorous manner.

Being skeptical is about initial disbelief, assuming something is false, and then following up to verify it. I also take with a grain of salt "examination" of evidence for Bigfoot from Bigfoot hunters. They always seem to be the only "experts" who verify evidence in support. Critical thinking helps us see how important the methods we use to study reality are, and that we can't leap to unfounded conclusions and expect to find anything we can trust there. Major stumbling block alert!

So the medical examiner who did the testing was also involved in examining the Shroud of Turin, and other religious artifacts, which he found were all just what the Church said they were? It sounds like he's not an independent source for testing, he does exactly this for a living, and writes popular (not scientific) books about it. His methodology is questionable and biased at best, and influenced by sensationalism and profit at worst. His credentials as a county medical examiner don't give anyone the right to take what he says as valid without examining his evidence and methods, which are lacking in your link. Can you link to any peer-reviewed papers the doctor has published on this subject?

I appreciate the appreciation! This one is so clever. http://ung.edu/writing-center/_uploads/files/gainesville/resources/comma-use-power-point.pdf Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy. Will you let me be yours? Gloria Same letter, different punctuation: Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours, Gloria

! Moderator Note Thread closed for lack of making sense, and because the opening poster's account was dependent on his ability to follow our rules.

Now now, the "a" in a-theist doesn't stand for "anti". Your points did agree with Ultimate Infinity, and they were also valid. Ultimately, I think the best stance is that gods and science are tools for completely different projects. One shouldn't be used to refute or support the other, they really aren't compatible. It's like measuring the volume of an aquarium with a poem.