Messages

16

Off-Topic / Re: {don't} Pray For Isreal {due to magical intercession being specious}

« on: November 15, 2012, 12:57:12 pm »Message ID: 642134

im tired repeating..it doesnt do any good... 

It's your choice to repetitiously post specious religious beliefs which have no bearing or evidentiary support beyond the circularity of believing such because it's believed.

17

Off-Topic / Re: Scam alert: Publishers Clearing House

« on: November 15, 2012, 12:49:44 pm »Message ID: 642130

We as a curious person's can not contact PCH directly persay.

One would try however, doubtless PCH is inudated with "did I win, did I win?" inquiries.

18

Offers / Re: Fast Food Survey $1.50

« on: November 15, 2012, 12:43:15 pm »Message ID: 642125

They didn't like that I was probably not going to go to Popeyes in the next 4 weeks.    So I was disqualified.

Same here, (though we don't have any nearby locations in my area, it seems this survey's qualification parameter was very narrow).

19

Off-Topic / Re: Scam alert: Publishers Clearing House

« on: November 15, 2012, 12:41:14 pm »Message ID: 642121

This morning I recieved a phone call from someone claiming to be David Sawyer. He said he was from Publishers clearing house. He also told me that I won 5,000.00 a week for life as well as a mercedes. He asked me what i thought about that and i told him I was in shock. He gave me an 800# as well as an address for pch so that I could call him back at to verify who he was. I called it back. It took a few minutes and then he came on the phone. He said he will be at my house at 2pm today. He said the reason he called me so that I would not have a heart attack. Noone knows that but my family and friends. I called the scam line for pch. They told me that they would not call first. I alerted my local police and they will be patrolling my area to make sure that they dont try anything. They told me that they probably wont show.   See today stil isnt my lucky day.

"On Sunday night we left a phone message at the winner’s home, that a courier service had an important parcel to deliver Monday morning – if it was possible for someone to receive it. Sure enough: it turned out to be possible."
-- http://blog.pch.com/blog/2010/06/01/what-does-the-pch-prize-patrol-do-if-the-winner-isn%e2%80%99t-home/

 

Thanks for that cause some seem to think of false things.

Well, I'm not sure if PCH can be contacted concerning this however, they do publish a winner's list on their site.

20

Off-Topic / Re: Scam alert: Publishers Clearing House

« on: November 15, 2012, 12:28:00 pm »Message ID: 642114

This morning I recieved a phone call from someone claiming to be David Sawyer. He said he was from Publishers clearing house. He also told me that I won 5,000.00 a week for life as well as a mercedes. He asked me what i thought about that and i told him I was in shock. He gave me an 800# as well as an address for pch so that I could call him back at to verify who he was. I called it back. It took a few minutes and then he came on the phone. He said he will be at my house at 2pm today. He said the reason he called me so that I would not have a heart attack. Noone knows that but my family and friends. I called the scam line for pch. They told me that they would not call first. I alerted my local police and they will be patrolling my area to make sure that they dont try anything. They told me that they probably wont show.   See today stil isnt my lucky day.

"On Sunday night we left a phone message at the winner’s home, that a courier service had an important parcel to deliver Monday morning – if it was possible for someone to receive it. Sure enough: it turned out to be possible."
-- http://blog.pch.com/blog/2010/06/01/what-does-the-pch-prize-patrol-do-if-the-winner-isn%e2%80%99t-home/

21

Suggestions / Re: Voluntary FC Raffle

« on: November 15, 2012, 12:21:03 pm »Message ID: 642112

sounds like we could do that raffle thingy.

Actually, according to FC, it does not:

If you have any kind of game where you have a random chance of winning a cash prize, then it's pretty much considered a sweepstakes.  That requires licensing/certification in each of the 50 states, individually.  When you add up that expense, it dwarfs the revenue we could create through such a promotion.  Most people just want to get their entire cashout amount, as demonstrated by the low uptake of the 'donation' option.  So while we'd love to offer this kind of opportunity, the regulatory landscape makes it financially impossible to undertake.  [Note that many companies flaunt the law and offer national or local raffles/sweepstakes without getting the proper certification; that is their choice but it does not change the facts at hand.]

22

Off-Topic / Re: Religion {a manmade fallacy}

« on: November 15, 2012, 12:16:24 pm »Message ID: 642109

Religion is man made, there is only one Creator who made us...if you follow a false religion there is no way to be saved...only through the Son God sent is the way to eternal life. No other way...people made all these religions up, started in OT times, so much proof of the Bible today, especially in the dead sea scrolls they just found, Word for Word in Isaiah.

I think I am starting to see your reasoning. Religion is man-made and there fore false. Expect for your religion of course, because the bible contains proof that other religions don't have.


Wait, scratch that. There is empirical evidence to suggest that the bible plagiarized many religious documents of its time (and of times before.) Sorry, your religion is not special in any way shape or form (except for its number of followers.) By the way, number of followers =/= truth. Sorry, guess youu'll have a better luck convincing me next time.

If all religions/religious beliefs are manmade, (including those which claim to be 'supernaturally-instigated), then they are all "false" in that none of them have any non-self referential evidentiary proof to support those religious beliefs.

23

Debate & Discuss / Re: How To Handle Christian Persecution of non-xtians On FusionCash

« on: November 15, 2012, 12:04:23 pm »Message ID: 642102

The problem is that there is no objective way to measure offensiveness. What may be heated and ugly to you is not what may be heated and ugly to anyone else. There is a clear distinction between addressing someone's person and addressing someone's argument however (the former being bad argumentation). And I see more Christians address someone directly by name, and I rarely see any atheist address anything other than religion,  religious people in its entirety, or the beliefs of religious adherents.

Thank you for reiterating/re-emphasizing that significant distinction in argumentation. Based on the evidence of posted content, it can be posited that such a distinction tends to escape those who conflate their religious beliefs with themselves and a person is not their beliefs, (beliefs would be an aspect of a person's mental state).

The second statement I bolded leads me to believe you think that people on this forum is denying you your rights to decide what religious ideology you want to follow. Let me make it clear that there has no been any single incident in which an atheist attempted to deny the rights of religious followers. On the other hand, I have seen call-out threads and attempts to troll atheist who are simply sharing their own view point. Let me also make it clear that even if we broke the rules, that to suggest breaking said rules can be an attempt to deny you of your faith is really rather ridiculous. Getting ridiculed on a forum is in no way a serious threat to your being, and in no way should be seen as someone trying to deny you of your faith. Such feelings of injustice should be reserved for those who would physically or mentally harm you by means of violence, harassment, and endangerment. Something Christians had practiced on atheist for hundreds of years.

Let me make this clear: Disagreeing with someone (even ridiculing someone) is not paramount to censorship.

In regards to those "calling-out" threads, (eleven of them in recent weeks), which here started by religious adherents; there is no doubt that those were initiated to censor/silence the dissenting viewpoints of non-religious adherents, (since such were posted mainly to me, by 'nym, immediately after I'd responded in dissent to initially-posted religious contentions).

The third statement I bolded is absolutely inconceivably infinitely 100% false in every way shape or form. Your understanding of what makes up reality is 100% wrong. Reality cannot be definitively defined by human beings. Reality is what is regardless of what we believe or how to preseve it. Just because you believe something exist does not make it real. Just because you believe in god, just because gravity is a theory, just because we see things, just because we think we know we exist does not mean that any of these things match what is reality. Reality would exist in its form regardless of whether or not humans existed. Our understanding of reality could be absolutely inconceivably infinitely 100% false in every way shape or form no matter what be believe.

The only thing humans could possibly achieve is an attempt at understanding what is reality. Science is simply a way for us to measure and attempt to objectively view the universe (that is to say reality) in the best way we can. We use as much evidence and logical reasoning as possible to simply explain reality by use of theorizing. The very notion of science assumes that we don't have absolutely understanding of reality. Religion, on the other hand, throws all this out the window and states that it does in fact understand reality and that this reality is god. To suggest that we come up with our own realities undermines the very definition of reality itself.

Reality is completely objective. In order to understand it we has human beings have to be 100% objective. But this goal is pretty much impossible, since we as human beings we have an automatic bias towards our experiences. Our experiences may or may not have anything to do with what is reality. Would you trust the experiences of someone who is on LSD as reality? Would someone on LSD trust the experiences of someone who isn't on LSD? We as human beings naturally have different view points, therefore to state that our experiences make up what is reality is mindbogglingly incorrect.

That human bias you've mentioned is subjective perception.  Some would say that the "reality" we experience is an admixture of objective reality and subjective experience however, this means that the same "reality" outside of one's skull isn't perceived in exactly the same way by everyone, (objectively).  Having said that, one person's subjective perception of objective reality isn't the 'gold standard' of what "reality" is for all.  That means subjective religious beliefs do not reflect objective reality, even if others choose to hold such "beliefs" despite the lack of objective evidence to support them.

If we are to understand anything we have to realize that arbitrarily attributing reality to a god is in no way going to help us move forward in our understanding of what is reality.

Exactly so. As "nhendrickson" goes on to point out, "The average person in the Middle Ages had no idea what caused disease.  The same things caused disease then that cause them now.  The lack of knowledge doesn't change that."  This implicitly accounts for even earlier superstitious beliefs attributing such things as disease and other natural phenonmenon to various supernatural causes because they had no other explanation for such at the time.  Continued attribution of phenonmenon, (or events), which are not yet fully-understood to supernatural causes remains superstitious.

Flackle makes several good points.  This is in the Debate and Discuss forum.  There is a clear disclaimer by the moderators to enter at your own risk.  It is hard to tell what may be offensive to a particular individual.  If you are that sensitive to dissenting points of views, why are you here? 

I would also agree that disagreeing with you does NOT constitute religious persecution.  It does NOT prevent anyone from going to church or from holding your religious beliefs.  No one is threatening, physically harming or killing anybody or his or her loved ones due to the mere fact that he or she holds these beliefs or in an attempt to force them to repudiate those beliefs.  Simply finding those that disagree with you annoying or even offensive is not religious persecution.

Thank you for also reiterating that point.  There have been insidiously-specious laments concerning that point have consisted of attempting to characterize dissenting viewpoints as "rude"/"disrespectful"/"hate speech", etc., to try establishing a false basis to invoke the "golden rule" against dissention, (and thus enjoin moderated censorship by speciously reporting dissent/refutations as 'violations' of the general "golden rule").  It's been speculated that such ongoing attempts to censor dissenting viewpoints in such a manner stem from a certain degree of frustration on the part of those unable to counter logical challenges/refutations to religious contentions initially posted by religious adherents.  Further, that such posited frustrations have lead to those "calling-out" threads, attempts to censor dissent, false claims of 'religious persecution' and avoiding the burden of proof obligations for making initial claims.

I respectfully disagree that reality is completely objective.  The observer effect refers to the changes that the act of observation has on the phenomenon being observed.  To my mind, this means that "reality" is not necessarily unchanging and that we at least can influence, if not actually change, "reality".  This is a good explanation for the placebo effect in which an individual has a measurable improvement in health that isn't attributable to treatment.  This occurs all the time in drug trials where subjects improve despite receiving essentially a "sugar pill" that logically should have no effect at all on their condition.  Possibly some of them may have improved on their own.  It is also possible that they improved because they hoped or believed that they would because they thought that were getting the trial drug rather than the placebo.

There's a subtle difference between affecting objective reality subjectively or, objectively however.  An objective effect can be observed by anyone whereas a subjective 'effect' may only be experienced subjectively and not detectable by anyone else.  The results of a placebo effect may be detectable as an objective result of a subjective influence or, not.  An individual's "beliefs" cannot be unambiguously correlated with a placebo effect, (c.f., numerous medical studies which those interested can cherry-pick from).

Our understanding of reality has changed along with scientific understanding and the ability of scientific instrumentation to observe and measure phenomena.  In particular, I think quantum physics and mechanics can hold the key to many things that are regarded as supernatural now.  As Arthur Clarke pointed out, magic is simply science we don't understand. 

I tend to agree with those contentions with the exception that Mr. Clarke actually stated that "Any sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  This quote is sometime misinterpreted by religious adherents as implicitly referring to superstitious beliefs in supernatural causes as "magic" being a "sufficiently-advanced technology" for a 'g-d'.  This is not the case because it remains an unfounded attribution of phenomenon/events not yet fully-understood to supernatural/magical causes without objective evidence to support such contentions.

I am not advocating throwing logic and rationality at the window.  I'm questioning whether we actually can advance the quest to understanding reality simply by saying that there is no evidence at present to support such beliefs. 

Conversely, such superstitious beliefs, (sans evidence), have been not advanced that quest and in fact, have significantly inhibited it throughout history, (c.f., the dark ages and other suppressions of rational inquiry which challenged the religious contentions).  It remains that those who initial make a claim have the burden of proof obligation to support it with substantive evidence, (and "belief"/"faith" do not constitute substantive evidence; such are subjective opinions lacking in evidence).

I think as we evolve so will our knowledge.  In the meantime, I think we have to accept that we may never understand reality despite our best attempts to do so.  I'd like to think that people could discuss their differences in a calm way and accept the fact that we can debate to our heart's content and we may change the other party's mind.  If they aren't hurting or persecuting us, why worry?     

For the most part, I concur.

24

Off-Topic / Re: daily Bible verse

« on: November 15, 2012, 01:33:00 am »Message ID: 641887

You don't see me making 30 threads of Baptist related things because I choose to not force my religion upon others who may not believe in it. I said that it goes to far with people putting all kinds of threads of Christian beliefs like spamming the forum.  One thing though I don't see him making up threads to just spread all over the forum.

True, dissenting responses to multiple evangelical religious posts spamming the forums with multiple threads isn't the same as starting multiple dissenting threads so, thanks for making that valid distinction. Though I vehemently disagree with such religious evangelizing/proselytizing,
I haven't noticed you starting such threads, (although I have disagreed strongly with faith-based religious posts).

25

Off-Topic / Re: daily non-biblical reverse

« on: November 15, 2012, 12:29:35 am »Message ID: 641879

Ah,fixed it I see.

Ah, alternatively pretending to have my posts on and off "ignore", depending on how obvious your ignorance of the actual function of the 'Ignore button' becomes I see.

26

Off-Topic / Re: daily superstition inverse

« on: November 15, 2012, 12:27:25 am »Message ID: 641878

Christians have a right to post their beliefs here.

On FC, it's not a "right"; it's a priviledge granted by a privately-owned forum.

It's only Falcon and people of his ilk that have caused tempers to flare from not being able to live and let live.

That's a false characterization of a situation in which some xtians are whining about not being able to evangelize unopposed.

I hear a lot about "the  Christian religion stuffed down our throats" ...

Undoubtedly that's due to the plethora of xtian evangelical/proselytizing threads & posts here.

... but if we didn't have atheists shoving their beliefs ...

Logical reasoning isn't a religious "belief", (nor can logic be redefined as a "belief" under the parameters of the definition of that word).
  

... in Biblical & Prayer threads,I think most of us would be content to share our faith peacefully in these threads

In other words, you've reaffirmed an unreasonable 'belief' that such religious evangelizing/proselytizing threads ought to go unopposed.  That's not going to happen, irrational fundie.  

27

Off-Topic / Re: daily non-biblical un-verse

« on: November 15, 2012, 12:14:31 am »Message ID: 641873

"Re: daily non-blical non-verse "  

 That's a new one on me!

It's a typo for "babbling bible  "

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Off-Topic / Re: Do you eat at Hooters?

« on: November 15, 2012, 12:05:05 am »Message ID: 641869

I use to eat at hooters when I was younger with a lot of my male friends, they seem to enjoy the scenery and I do not mean the flowers and plants lol. I liked the wings.

Hang on ... Hooter's has food???
 

29

Off-Topic / Re: For the Guys: Blondes or Brunettes?

« on: November 15, 2012, 12:03:28 am »Message ID: 641868

Do you guys prefer Blondes or Brunettes?

Yes but, why neglect redheads?

Which one is the sexier?

That depends.  Which one is currently naked?

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Off-Topic / Re: daily non-biblical non-verse

« on: November 14, 2012, 11:23:29 pm »Message ID: 641859

I believe introducing a problem or inconsistency within their own turf may make them more open to their beliefs not being so perfect and untouchable in their minds. I hope this method may lead to learning how to apply healthy skepticism to such things. Arguing on the inside rather than the outside. Either way, it's fairly easy to make a logical case.

Again, the strategy is logically sound however, the opponents' arguments aren't.  That means that they are just as unlikely to suddenly become more logical within an illogical paradigm, (especially when their noses are rubbed in thier own inconsistancies).  My theory regarding this is that many religious adherents are so deeply 'invested' in having 'painted themselves into an irrational corner' that their pride/ego will not permit them to ever let the illogical 'paint' of their religious beliefs 'dry' so that they can escape the blind alley of religious faith.