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Moontanman

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Everything posted by Moontanman

  1. To be honest I'm not sure I can answer that question, I know my own beliefs took many years to gel and quite a bit of skeptical inquiry, I know in my younger days I waffled back and forth to some degree but ultimately I just couldn't drink the kool-aid. I know many theists who will not even look at the evidence preferring a cocoon of ignorance rather than the hardness of reality. The vast majority of people who think that way rarely stray far from their roots... although I do know of many who have spiraled down the hole of fundamentalism from a more moderate background and some like me that started out being taught fundamentalism but by a young age had begin to see the emperor had no clothes...
  2. So if a majority of people have a personal relationship with Cthulhu they are not delusional but simply mistaken? Even though a total lack of empirical evidence exists for Cthulhu?
  3. I am sorry Iggy, I have so many threads going I may have lost track... Yes it was Tar that posted those things not you Iggy, again sorry...
  4. ...it seemed reasonable that he only believed in things because he was taught that way. Unless of course he thinks he is capable of deciding things for himself as an adult, whereas the theists cannot. Actually I am quite sure he is correct, I see no evidence to support theism as anything but what we are taught unless of course "you" just happen to be born in the time and place of believing in god, the correct god, and in the correct way and I see no connection between what an adult does or does not decide is connected with babies being born theists... If you had been taught your whole life that Cthulhu was real you would no doubt believe it, believe it was the correct belief and tend to reject any other religion and it would be just as difficult to divest your self of the belief that Cthulhu was real as it is that Krishna is real or Jesus...
  5. Ok Tar, now I understand where you are coming from and I largely agree but some of this bears thinking about. But your use of the word perfection puzzles me, I'm not sure I understand what perfection of the universe you are speaking of. The universe is far from perfect from many points of view, how is yours relevant?
  6. To be fair, on Titan you would have to use a fluid that didn't freeze, just because water wouldn't work doesn't leave you with no options. At the temps of Titan there are other working fluids I am sure...
  7. Maybe not a strawman but probably not relevant either, more likely if you can't see stealing as wrong then you lack empathy not knowledge... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822085804.htm
  8. Iggy, correct me if I'm wrong but could some of your resistance to this idea stem from your own less than substantiated "experiences" and the fear of being labeled broken? If it is I do indeed understand, having had more than a bit of experience with "experiences" I know how puzzling it is to have something extraordinary happen, something that is as real to you as.. well.. reality... but with no external means of verification. It is puzzling, I do admit that, I grew up dealing with these experiences but I found that after repetition after repetition it became apparent these "things" existed only in my mind and had no external reality, no information not already available to me was ever revealed (well except once) and over time they slowly lost their power over me and the few that continue are easily to put up with once you understand they are not real, doesn't make me crazy (my mother had me tested ) but it does show that the human mind is capable of deluding it's self into many things and if you are not prepared to genuinely deal with these things in an objective rational way they can make you crazy but having them doesn't...
  9. T think you are adding just a bit of "other" into the equation than perceptible reality can logically support, I think such infinite regress logically leads to a logical singularity just as surely as the expanding universe fits the data leads to a physical singularity...... I'm not sure i understand how you are using the word "fitting" and "fit"
  10. I think the idea of consciousness being some sort of substance independent of a brain is kinda arrogant unless of course you willing to postulate that all living things from microbes to sperm whales have it... Gees seems to think it is part of reality independent of a human but part of obviously non living things, like the universe as a whole, my neopagan friends would like that I am sure, but as i keep saying I see no evidence of anything but what affects physical reality. It's why lighting bolts are no longer part of the supernatural and the superstition that lightning bolts or volcanoes or oceans are conscious beings is an infinite regression we cannot recover from logically or emotionally...
  11. Even in the philosophy forum if you are going to assert something as fact you need evidence... Then you should have not said the thread is about the supernatural and superstition... So either I'm crazy or lying? Who embraces the supernatural or not has no bearing on the facts of the matter... You made a positive assertion, I asked for conformation, you could not give it... you were talking about something you knew nothing about and trying to bully your way past me... The numbers of people who believe something has no bearing on it's veracity... I suggest you fix that, not my problem... More hand waving? I tried that, you refused to cooperate... you're welcome, if only you had been so forth coming... I'm not perfect but it wasn't what I asked about... Then start a thread about it, I have a lot to say along those lines... I respect Tar, we have debated many times and I never let him have his way with out a a fight... I am sure he wouldn't respect me if i did...
  12. You should stick with people who think god might be real are not broken...
  13. If you raised a large group of people from childhood to believe in Cthulhu a few would believe so well they would see Cthulhu and have a personal experience (as you say) with the tentacles of Cthulhu in their lives... Yes, belief is thinking you are invincible, evidence is the bus that takes you out when you step in front of it...
  14. Evidently what we have here is a failure to communicate... (spoken with a heavy southern drawl) We evidently have a different definition of evidence... To me a personal experience is something that has a quantifiable effect on observable reality...
  15. I am open to evidence but anything that can be asserted with no evidence can be dismissed with no evidence, my children like most grew out of their imaginary friends, if they still said they saw their imaginary friends I'd be concerned and assume they were indeed delusional...
  16. I would say that about any extraordinary claim that has no evidence to back it up. Both my children had imaginary friends, it's a common delusion with children...
  17. I've read every link you've given so far, if you cannot show a citation for something as simple as a claim from the Holy Bible how can I trust you to provide anything else? You acted like I HAD INSULTED YOU JUST FOR ASKING FOR CLARIFICATION OF SOMETHING THAT I WAS NOT FAMILIAR WITH DESPITE MY FAMILIARITY OF THE SUBJECT AND IN FACT SUGGESTED I LOOK IT UP... You have made many assertions of stuff that either is demonstrably not true or has no evidence what so ever to support it but pseudo science when asked for clarification all we get is hand waving and more horse feathers, I see no reason to continue to ask for citations on something as silly as this: If you had them you would have given them because the claims you make are not consistent with mainstream science, in fact have been debunked over and over and over again, they are nothing but PRATT... Points Refuted A Thousand Times I see no reason to continuously ask you for evidence when you have made it quite clear evidence means nothing to you and your arguments are based on belief and feelings... You act like this site is your personal blog where you can say anything you want and expect us to either suck it up or dig to refute you, that is not how it works, if I made the assertion that people could gain information from an object about a person just by holding it I would have been assaulted by laughter, you are not being taken seriously because you do make such silly assertions with no back up what so ever... http://www.skepdic.com/stevenson.html That is how you do it Gees, you don't make assertions and then expect us to investigate them. Tar is extraordinarily tolerant of being waved away, I am not, if you want me to take you seriously you have to do the same and stop hand waving anyone who disagrees with you. If not for Tar this would be a monologue you are having with yourself... In fact you tried to demean me by talking about something I had said in another thread, you said it had mad you extremely mad and yet when i tried to clarify it you accused me of trying to derail your thread... who would want to discuss anything under those circumstances?
  18. I would say that about any extraordinary claim that has no empirical evidence to back it up...
  19. Appeal to authority is absurd, it doesn't matter who has the invisible friend unless you can show evidence of it you are either lying or delusional by definition... can you give me a third option? If you say the rabbit is real to me you are side stepping the point...
  20. I am not going to debate with you over what a dead man may or may not have meant, I ask you again, if i say i have an invisible rabbit that follows me around am I lying or delusional? Is there a third option?
  21. I'd hunt him down...
  22. I think you missed Hitchen's point, believing something no matter how strongly does not equal knowledge. If you can't show it then you don't know it... Those anal probes are quite real to some people, some live their lives in fear and loathing of sleep when the aliens come... At least we know aliens are a possibility, Jesus appearing to you and you alone is not evidence of anything but a delusion and just like the aliens unless you can show others this Jesus then you are just as broken as those people who dread the aliens and their probes... In the movie Harvey the six foot tall rabbit is as real as as real can be to the guy who sees him, does that make the rabbit real or the man delusional?
  23. I don't know dude, to me horrendous pain is medically significant...
  24. I grew up like the OP suggests in the mountains of West Virginia, it was idyllic in many ways if you could get past the pollution, coal smoke, getting shot at by your neighbors if you stumbled across their still. I go back and it's better now, far less pollution, little or no coal smoke, the rivers are coming back as something besides open sewers and the idyllic life is still around, meth has replaced moonshine but the long country dirt roads winding through the mountains are still there away from the cities...
  25. Here is a paper i ran across while surfing the net and it peaked my interest even though my understanding of it is somewhat less than zero. It suggests that the quantum vacuum can be manipulated in a way to provide thrust without reaction mass. They mention travel times to Saturn in days or weeks instead of the current years, what does every one think? http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110023492_2011024705.pdf
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