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A Simple Question...or 3!
RE: A Simple Question...or 3!
(November 20, 2012 at 1:07 pm)Stimbo Wrote: Wow, a missed point red herring - and I always thought they were just a myth. The Universe doesn't care how we perceive it or what we do with that perception. There exists a wavelength of the visible spectrum which we humans have agreed to refer to as "blue"; more accurately, it's a range of wavelengths, since there is no single colour blue. What you have to do to get those wavelengths is totally irrelevant. For instance, we only see an object as being blue - or any other colour you care to name - because it absorbs every colour in the spectrum apart from blue, which it reflects.
If you think it's irrelevant why don't you go and ask the next 10 people you see what the primary colours are. If they tell you "cyan magenta yellow" or "red green blue" or worse still "red blue yellow" doesn't that reflect their "world view"? Ask them how to produce fluorescent orange using their primary colours.
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RE: A Simple Question...or 3!
You are again dodging the point Daniel...and no you are not in the lions den, you are up against reality that doesn't care one whit about YOUR feelings. So answer the questions put to you

Otherwise you are just appearing as a shallow slave, thoughtless bum fuck, hominid.
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RE: A Simple Question...or 3!
Aw thanks for the kind words mate, same to you buddy.
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RE: A Simple Question...or 3!
(November 21, 2012 at 3:31 am)Daniel Wrote: If you think it's irrelevant why don't you go and ask the next 10 people you see what the primary colours are. If they tell you "cyan magenta yellow" or "red green blue" or worse still "red blue yellow" doesn't that reflect their "world view"? Ask them how to produce fluorescent orange using their primary colours.

If those next ten people consist of painters and photographers, they will tell you that it depends on whether you're talking about the primary colours of pigments, or of light. The two operate in different ways and are not interchangeable, however much you seem determined to confuse them. Our eyes depend on pigments reflecting relevant wavelengths of light, whereas all light itself needs to do, reflected or not, is hit our retinas.

None of this alters the wavelengths of whatever colours are under discussion, nor do whatever words we use to describe them. I've had this discussion before, in the context of Romeo & Juliet: "What’s in a name? that which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet". In other words, the plant known in English since the latter half of the first millennium as a "rose" would still be the same plant, with the same properties, even if the word "horseshit" had been used instead. The essential roseness of the plant would be unchanged, "would smell as sweet", whatever our perception of it.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist.  This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair.  Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second.  That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: A Simple Question...or 3!
(November 19, 2012 at 1:13 am)ronedee Wrote: We had an old pastor at my church that had a saying that always bothered me, and intrigued me at the same time! "God won't put us in Hell....we will march there ourselves, willingly." I'm realizing that message hanging around here!

And...what do we have to offer each other is the reocurring question in my mind? IMO...just confirmation of our own convictions! But in separate directions... You slide deeper into your hatred and darkness, as I move more to love and the light. Alas...my old pastor was right.

Good weapons are instruments of fear; all creatures hate them.
Therefore followers of Tao never use them.
The wise man prefers the left.
The man of war prefers the right.

Weapons are instruments of fear; they are not a wise man’s tools.
He uses them only when he has no choice.
Peace and quiet are dear to his heart,
And victory no cause for rejoicing.
If you rejoice in victory, then you delight in killing;
If you delight in killing, you cannot fulfill yourself.

On happy occasions precedence is given to the left,
On sad occasions to the right.
In the army the general stands on the left,
The commander in chief on the right.
That means that war is conducted like a funeral.
When many people are being killed,
They should be mourned in heartfelt sorrow.
That is why a victory must be observed like a funeral.


— Lao Tzu, The Tao Te Ching, Ch. 31

You celebrate death, destruction and suffering as if it were the highest good. The destruction of so many, no matter how just, nor their fate deserved, no matter that they fell from weakness or lack of honor, their passing is still to be mourned. Indeed, if such suffering indeed marks their passage, the wailing and gnashing of teeth should be reserved for the living as they contemplate the wretched cost and fate of those they once shared life with. That you find delight in any of this, assuming it true, as you do, indicates that there is a great sickness in your heart. And just as a bent arrow cannot fly true, and will hit its mark only if fate should intervene, your heart is incapable of finding a true God on its own. If the god you describe is the one whose design results in so much suffering, he is not worthy of even faint praise, much less worship. The only gods the likes of you find in this life are the kind that delight in evil. This is no "God." As the neuroscience clearly shows, this is simply the callous inside of your own heart, delighting in horrific spite. The brain science is clear: when we think of what we ourselves want, a spot in our brain lights up; when we think of what another wants, a different spot lights up; when we imagine what God wants, that first spot lights up again, corresponding to our own desires. This is not God's will, and nobody is marching anywhere, except in the sick and twisted fantasies of someone despicable. You could likely benefit more from the river of anti-psychotics which my doctors prescribe me than I ever will.

Like the death and destruction of souls, the sickness in your heart is to be mourned.

And whatever steps that can be taken should be taken to prevent others from falling under its sickly siren song.

(ETA: It occurs to me that, just as many contemplate separation from God's love as a hell of sorts, how no less could I consider my separation from those I once loved any less hellish; atheists live with the contemplation of the death of those they hold dear, and know that pain. And the pain doesn't end at the limit of my outstretched arms; when I contemplate the people suffering in Africa from AIDS, exacerbated by the religious who would rather see their flesh and mind mortified if it offers them a chance to enslave the soul, and I have found hell in the here and now, knowing the pain, suffering and death of people I've never known, nor whose faces will ever resolve into particularity for me. As above, so below. God creates needless suffering by sundering the race one from another into eternity, and Christians here on earth reflect his light back upon the world, sundering the bonds and natural affection that one has for another of one's own kind simply by mankind's nature. Christianity doesn't solve the problem of suffering, it creates it.)

[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
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RE: A Simple Question...or 3!
People in our time to think, then do not think about, or think about what makes them do not think
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RE: A Simple Question...or 3!
Way late to the party.

(November 16, 2012 at 10:25 pm)ronedee Wrote: DO YOU WANT TO BELIEVE IN GOD?

Nope. All the gods believed in by humanity (including the one you believe exists), past and present, are depicted as assholes in the various texts. Why would I want to believe in one of those?

Quote:...or is [proof] the main thing holding you back?

My beliefs are based purely on what can be supported by demonstrable evidence, valid logic and reasoned argument. My beliefs are not based on what I WANT to be true. This is what is known as 'intellectual honesty'.

Quote:Do you believe that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe?

I believe there is almost assuredly intelligent life in the universe. 200 billion galaxies, each with 200 billion stars, almost every star seems to have multiple planets. The odds that there is other life is pretty good. But I do not claim absolute certainty.

If you're trying to draw some sort of parallel between the belief that life in the universe is equivalent to belief in a god, you're way off.

Quote:Can anyone here (besides us zealots) answer a question, or challenge to their reasoning seriously? oops thats 4!

It's real hard for Christians to not be arrogant, huh?

I am intellectually honest to the extreme. Try me.

You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
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RE: A Simple Question...or 3!
(November 16, 2012 at 10:25 pm)ronedee Wrote: DO YOU WANT TO BELIEVE IN GOD?

...or is [proof] the main thing holding you back?

Do you believe that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe?

Can anyone here (besides us zealots) answer a question, or challenge to their reasoning seriously? oops thats 4!

1 - WHAT GOD - none has ever been proven to exist - no matter HOW many times we have asked
2 - What proof - no one has ever offered proof of a god - and I see you continue that trend - no answers
3 - While it may be statistically likely that intelligent life exists elswhere in the Universe - that does not mean it does.

And WE have repeatedly asked the very same question - and YOU zealots have never answered it - WHAT is your proof that a god exists and it is your god ?

And if YOU actually had proof - you would have posted it LONG AGO - so it is easy to reason that YOUR claim is UNSUPPORTABLE by you -
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RE: A Simple Question...or 3!
(November 19, 2012 at 1:13 am)ronedee Wrote: We had an old pastor at my church that had a saying that always bothered me, and intrigued me at the same time! "God won't put us in Hell....we will march there ourselves, willingly." I'm realizing that message hanging around here!

I have a much better video than the previous one. This is the one I actually meant to post, but I didn't watch the whole other one to check, so...here it is.


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