207 replies to this topic

[william]

hankconn, the type of religious literature I've been studying for the past 17 years stresses that Jesus is returning to save mankind from destroying itself very soon. See Matthew 24:21,22, and http://www.gnmagazine.org/booklets/ET/. That's why I warn you scientific types to make sure you're not creating anymore new Frankenstein monsters the Lord needs to destroy when He returns. Some basic Bible knowledge and practice wouldn't hurt either.

[RighteousReason]

Another consideration is the level of oil consumption (think territorial hegemony, human and ecological exploitation, warfare, and terrorism here) and pollution (think global warming here) involved in manufacturing (think factory and mine accidents and oppressive conditions here) motor vehicles and operating them. Revelation 11:18 says "[t]he time has come for ... destroying those who destroy the earth." May be you should rethink driving don't you think?

Congratulations, that consitutes a record level of insanity that I have ever quoted in such a small space.

Basically, you are wrong. Deep and thoroughly.

I drive a small car that would score virtually as good as a motorcycle in a crash test.
I'm a smoker.

Is it insanely wreckless merely to drive the car?

No. I know how to drive well enough to put the probability of dying in my car so infinitessimally low that it is essentially perfected.

Is it pure ignorance and weakness that I am attached to ciggeretts? No, I'm just not scared of cancer. I'm very confident we won't have to be worried about cancer in 30 years.


If global warming were a serious threat, we would find a way to handle it.

I don't have the Actual Statistics, but I will bet you anything there are way, way less factory and mine accidents today than there were in past, despite having way more factories and mines. This craziness about accidents and oppressive conditions is qualified as Liberal Bullshit That Can Suck My Nuts Because It Is Totally Irrelevant.

Liberals also tend to have this crazy attachment to oil, and everything about it. I'm confident oil won't be a problem in 30 years either.

[Live Forever]

Live Forever]o not do anything that endangers your neighbor's life"]ove your neighbor as yourself."
The principles given here are designed to guide you in your decision on whether or not to drive a car. Since the level of death and destruction by motor vehicle accidents is very high - and is really nothing more than another disease that needs conquering - you are prohibited from endangering the life of others as well as your own life by driving them. See http://en.wikipedia...._vehicle_deaths  for information on "some" death statistics due to motor vehicle accidents. They're actually much worse than listed here.

Another consideration is the level of oil consumption (think territorial hegemony, human and ecological exploitation, warfare, and terrorism here) and pollution (think global warming here) involved in manufacturing (think factory and mine accidents and oppressive conditions here) motor vehicles and operating them. Revelation 11:18 says "[t]he time has come for ... destroying those who destroy the earth." May be you should rethink driving don't you think?

And, you got to ask yourself, what business does any future society practicing life extension have driving motor vehicles under these circumstances? This sure doesn't show the necessary "reverence for life" needed to make life extension work. It's a major flaw and contradiction.

William, surely you didn't misunderstand what I was saying that badly, I hope. Perhaps I was not making clear my intentions. You said that there is nothing about the Singularity in the Bible. I replied that there is nothing about driving in the Bible. I was of course just trying to prove a point that the Bible was written long ago, and of course there is nothing about either specifically in it. I realize that you can find verses that can be applied to cars/driving, which is what I was trying to get you to do about the Singularity. I was seriously not enquiring about Biblical references about driving. Lots of bad stuff (wars, killing, etc.) has happened in the last 2000 years because people interpret the thing in different ways.

Also, William, you seem to be quite preachy, and not willing to look at your views critically. If you can't see by now, none of the people you are arguing with here put faith in your religion. I would much rather you argue for the existence of God in general. Start there, and after you have convinced people of that, then proceed to arguing for or against your particular religion (Jesus), and only then after people have been convinced of that start trying to convince people that this Bible is something they should take a look at.

There has been no rebuttal so far to the points I have made against the Bible. It contradicts itself, it has been filtered throughout history (if you don't know about Constantine, then you should), it has been shown to be factually incorrect, and it is interpreted by different people as saying different things, so it is unclear. Continuing to quot the Bible really has no affect on me (and I would assume others), because there are clearly many many errors.

You asked what would happen at the end of time, well what if the end of time comes, and you have chosen the wrong religion or the wrong God? Out of the thousands of choices, what makes you think that you just happened to be lucky enough to be in the small minority of people that get it right? You are not that far away from being an atheist, out of the thousands of religions and gods, you discount all but one, and out of the thousands of religions and gods, I (as well as some others around here) discount all of them, so the percentage difference is like 0.001% or something?

I have to hand it to you conservative fundamentalist types, you really are unflapping, in the face of facts, reason, and proof.

Edited by Live Forever, 04 June 2006 - 03:40 AM.

[RighteousReason]

Live Forever, here is your fatal flaw

as much stuff as possible

I'm not advocating we screw up anything. If people were better, things would be different.

However, I think there will be very strong advances in medicine (particularly in cancer) in the next 30 years (this is not even taking into account the Singularity).

Also, I think there will be very extreme advances in molecular nanotechnology (particularly in computers and medicine) in the next 30 years (this is not even taking into account the Singularity).

And I think someone will create a recursively self-improving intelligence within the next 30 years.

These aren't extreme opinions (based on everything I have seen).

[RighteousReason]

(and now you feel a wave of future shock)

[Live Forever]

Oh, gosh. You read it before I got it down. I did not mean to respond so harshly at first, I apologize, hank. I had been drinking and somewhat misunderstood what you were saying I think, which is why I removed it, but then I came back a few minutes later and you had responded. Again, sorry about that.

[RighteousReason]

lol I noticed. It was fun to read though [lol]

and I am still curious about your reaction

[Live Forever]

lol I noticed. It was fun to read though  [lol]

and I am still curious about your reaction

Oh, I definitely think that there will be a cure for cancer in the next 30 years or so. I also agree with the rest of your assessments, except possibly the one about global warming in the response to william's that you wrote.

I think that the evidence for global warming is pretty overwhelming (imo), but how much of an affect man has on it is the point of contention to me. (in other words, it might just be a natural phase of earth that we are going through) I do think that it will eventually be possible to use technology to correct this. I have read articles on solar shields (to block a certain percentage of the sun's light), air scrubbers (that take green house gasses out of the air, and either turn them into solids, or deposit them deep underground), etc, that could provide relief, and I fully expect that they will become available in the future. The only problem I have is that in the mean time there might be droughts, stronger hurricanes, etc. that might put people in harms way. I (unfortunately perhaps) have always been a bit emotional, and perhaps a bit of a "bleeding heart" (although I in no way consider myself liberal), having knee jerk reactions when people (and often animals) are in harms way. I can't help feeling sorry for those that might suffer as a result of something that I (or society) might be doing that might be prevented.

[RighteousReason]

Solving bigger problems happens to solve all of the little ones much more effectively, imo.

[william]

hankconn, no need to get obscene here young man. We're all truth seekers here, trying to find the right path to immortality, not immorality. The best advice I can give you is to quit motor vehicles and smoking. They're both diseases that can reduce your chances of a lengthy lifespan significantly. We're suppose to be trying to increase our chances of a longer life, not decrease them.

I'm also a person with pacifist convictions. I'm against all warfare and other violence. Notice where the United States Supreme Court in Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444, 451 (1990) pointed out that:

No one can seriously dispute the magnitude of the drunken driving problem or the States' interest in eradicating it. Media reports of alcohol-related death and mutilation on the Nation's roads are legion. The anecdotal is confirmed by the statistical. "Drunk drivers cause an annual death toll of over 25,000[] and in the same time span cause nearly one million personal injuries and more than five billion dollars in property damage." 4 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment § 10.8(d), p. 71 (2d ed. 1987). For decades, this Court has "repeatedly lamented the tragedy." South Dakota v. Neville, 459 U.S. 553, 558 (1983); see Breithaupt v. Abram, 352 U.S. 432, 439 (1957) ("The increasing slaughter on our highways . . . now reaches the astounding figures only heard of on the battlefield"). http://www.law.corne...96_0444_ZO.html

My pacifist convictions don't permit me to participate in the "battle on the highways" as some journalists have termed it. I ride a bicycle or walk.

If you need any advice on how to quit smoking, e-mail me. I quit smoking, drinking, and drugs back in the 1970s and early 80s. Addiction to nicotine is very difficult to break for many people. The longer you delay the harder it gets. Don't delay.

[DJS]

hankconn

Is it pure ignorance and weakness that I am attached to ciggeretts? No, I'm just not scared of cancer. I'm very confident we won't have to be worried about cancer in 30 years.

Your mentality is very ignorant (and indicative of weakness), but please continue to puff away, maybe it will mean less competition for me.

[Mind]

please continue to puff away

Good to see you are becoming more libertarian nowadays Don.

[william]

No Live Forever, I didn't misunderstand you. I just thought I would digress alittle and give you some helpful advice on the serious evils of motor vehicles and why you and society should give them up.

I tried to point out the obvious existence of God in earlier posts. The video I provided a link to showed how one atheist scientist saw the light and changed his beliefs. It may take some time for you guys to come to reality on this. It takes deep thought over a period of time sometimes.

That list of contradictions you gave me a link to can easily be explained. In fact, there are numerous books out that explain how those supposed contradictions are not really contradictions at all when looked at in a proper way. The booklet called "Is The Bible True?" at http://www.gnmagazine.org/booklets/BT/ will explain some of this. I suggest you read it when you get a chance.

People may try to label me a "conservative fundamentalist", but all I'm trying to do is provide a more reasonable understanding of the Scriptures that could prove beneficial. When I was shown the truth, I had to go along with it.

[DJS]

Good to see you are becoming more libertarian nowadays Don.

Apolitical rational egoist, actually.

[Live Forever]

I tried to point out the obvious existence of God in earlier posts. The video I provided a link to showed how one atheist scientist saw the light and changed his beliefs. It may take some time for you guys to come to reality on this. It takes deep thought over a period of time sometimes.

I am just the opposite. I used to be on the side always arguing for the existence of God, but the more I learned, the more I started to question things, and eventually after lots and lots of deep thought, research, etc. I eventually came to believe what I do now. Although, now I would consider myself an agnostic, not an atheist. I don't know the statistics, but I know of a lot more people who change from being Christians (or other religions) to being atheists/agnostics than the amount of people changing from being atheists to Christians, so the fact that someone changes their mind really has no convincing power on me. I did watch a little of the video you linked to, but as rahein pointed out (on the second page of this rather long exchange) just about everything I saw was using very weak, or misguided logic.

[DJS]

People may try to label me a "conservative fundamentalist", but all I'm trying to do is provide a more reasonable understanding of the Scriptures that could prove beneficial. When I was shown the truth, I had to go along with it.

Keep talking buddy. You'll make a nice addition to our memetic preserve here in the religion forum.

[DJS]

Here are two quotations that express my sentiments nicely.

So ask yourself what you believe. Is it that every species of animal once survived for a year on a single wooden boat? That the earth is only 10,000 years old? That God divided people by race and language because people were "too united"? That Samson killed thousands of men with a jawbone because he didn't cut his hair? That unicorns once existed? That Jonah lived in a whale for three days? That after 2,000 years of waiting, Jesus is going to return? Why do you believe these things? It's time to grow up and put the God fairy-tale where it belongs, in your past alongside Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and the monster under your bed. ~ Wayne Adkins

What do I dislike about theism?…
Let me count the ways…
I dislike the hypocrisy, the corruption, the greed and the lies.
I dislike the veneration of ignorance, the glorification of idiocy, the wild-eyed hatred of progress and the fear of education, which send the faithful shrieking, vampire-like, from the light of knowledge.
I dislike the way in which prejudice is passed off as piety.
The way superstition is peddled as wisdom.
The way intolerance is raised to the lofty heights of "Truth".
I dislike how hatred is taught as love, how fear is instilled as kindness, how slavery is pressed as freedom, and how contempt for life is dressed up and adored as spirituality.
I dislike the shackles religions place on the mind, corrupting, twisting and crushing the spirit until the believer has been brought down to a suitable state of worthlessness.
So lost and self-loathing, so bereft of hope or pride, that they can look into the hallucinated face of their imaginary oppressor and feel unbounded love and gratitude for the additional suffering it has declined, as yet, to visit upon them.
I dislike people's need for a communal delusion, like drug addicts who unite just to share the same needle.
I dislike the way reason is reviled as a vice and reality is decreed to be a matter of convenience.
The way common sense and ordinary human decency get re-named "holy law" and advertised as the sole province of the faithful.
I dislike religions' wholesale theft of any number of ancient mythologies, only to turn around and proclaim how "unique their doctrine is.
I dislike how intelligence is held as suspect and inquiry is reviled as a high crime.
I dislike the pillaging of the impoverished, the extortion of the gullible, the manipulation of the ignorant and the domination of the weak.
I dislike the invention of sins for the satisfaction of those who desire to punish.
I dislike the demonization of unbelievers,
The ill-concealed hate of proselytisers,
The hysterical rants of holy rollers,
The wigged-out warnings of psychic healers,
The dismantling of public education via religious school vouchers,
The erosion of civil rights by theocratic right-wingers,
The righteous wrath of gun-toting true believers,
The destruction wrought by holy warriors,
The blood-drenched fatwas of ayatollas, and the apocalyptic prophesies of unmedicated messiahs.
Most of all, though, I dislike the certain knowledge that religion, in one grotesque form or other, will be with us so long as there is a single dark, cobwebbed corner of the human imagination that a believer can stuff a god into.
(And, oh yeah, what do I like about theism? Some nice art, some pretty music and some photogenic buildings.) ~ Alikhat

[RighteousReason]

Your mentality is very ignorant (and indicative of weakness), but please continue to puff away, maybe it will mean less competition for me.

Ignorant? Enlighten me oh knowledgeable one.

Indicative of weakness? I've considered that possibility (thoroughly), and the only weakness seems to be a small financial penalty, and a weakly increasing probability of cancer (both of which I am fully aware).

Cancer won't be an issue.

[DJS]

The more of himself man attributes to God, the less he has left in himself. ~ Karl Marx

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. ~ David Hume

I do not know that Christianity holds anything more of importance for the world. It is finished, played out. The only trouble lies in how to get rid of the body before it begins to smell too much. ~ John Beevers.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. ~ Aldous Huxley

Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. ~ Isaac Asimov

I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great innermost corruption, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means is poisonous, stealthy, subterranean, small enough — I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy is like a blind man searching in a dark room for a black cat that isn't there. The difference between philosophy and theology is that theology finds the cat. ~ William James

If revealed religions have revealed anything it is that they are usually wrong. ~ Francis Crick

It is undeniable that astrology provides its adherents with a highly articulated system of patterns that they think they see in the events of the world. The difference, however, is that no one has ever been able to get rich by betting on the patterns, but only by selling the patterns to others. [Brainchildren] ~ Daniel Dennett

The Christian faith is from the beginning sacrifice: sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of the spirit, at the same time enslavement and self-mockery, self-mutilation. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher. ~ Lucretius

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes. ~ James K. Feibleman

[william]

Don, can you give me a definition of this "memetic preserve" thing you're talking about? Is it good or bad? You're scaring me here. I'm just seeking immortality like you.

I've never seen anything about unicorns, santa claus, easter bunnies, or tooth faries in the Bible. The other things did happen I believe. The bad things mentioned in the other quote are a result of the misconstruing of the Scriptures and the abuses by the catholic and protestant churches. The literature I've been providing links to in my previous posts always expose those false churches. Many people throughout the ages have been turned against the Bible because of them.

I personally don't belong to any church. As a child, I was forced to attend the methodist church until I rebelled and got into the drug scene in my adolescence.

[DJS]

hankconn

Ignorant? Enlighten me oh knowledgeable one.

Indicative of weakness? I've considered that possibility (thoroughly), and the only weakness seems to be a small financial penalty, and a weakly increasing probability of cancer (both of which I am fully aware).

Cancer won't be an issue.

Smoking greatly increase your risk of cancer and heart disease and emphysema (something of which you are "fully aware"), yet you continue to smoke...hhhmm.

What is your justification for smoking? How does it advance your goal set?

Look Hank, I'm not going to preach to you -- because I really don't give a s**t if you live or die. With your apparent agenda it might even be a net positive for me if you drop dead (nothing personal). So light em up buddy. [thumb]

[william]

But then you, Mr. Skeptic—you look up into the great vast sky at the master clock of the universe, which never misses a second—the perfect watch by which we must constantly set all our imperfect man-made watches—and you tell me, “That all just happened! There was no great Watchmaker! No master mind thought out and planned that vast universe, brought it into being, set each star and planet in its own exact place, and started the myriad heavenly bodies coursing through space, each in its prescribed orbit, in its orderly precision. No, it just fashioned itself, put itself together, wound itself up, and started itself running. There was no Intelligence—no planning—no creation—no God!”

Do you say that to me?

If you can, I answer that I do not respect your intelligence. And the God I acknowledge replies to you, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God”! (Ps. 14:1; 53:1).

If you can look about you, and observe how intelligently planned and executed is everything in nature and in plant and animal life—everything we see except the bungling, botching, polluting of God’s beautiful handiwork by the clumsy hand of God-ignoring-and-rejecting man—and then say you doubt the existence of an all-wise, all-knowing, all-powerful Creator God, then I do not have much faith either in your rational processes or your sincerity as a seeker of the truth!

--- Herbert W. Armstrong

http://www.thetrumpe...68&section=1202

[DJS]

William

But then you, Mr. Skeptic —you look up into the great vast sky at the master clock of the universe, which never misses a second—the perfect watch by which we must constantly set all our imperfect man-made watches—and you tell me, “That all just happened! There was no great Watchmaker! No master mind thought out and planned that vast universe, brought it into being, set each star and planet in its own exact place, and started the myriad heavenly bodies coursing through space, each in its prescribed orbit, in its orderly precision. No, it just fashioned itself, put itself together, wound itself up, and started itself running. There was no Intelligence—no planning—no creation—no God!”

Do you say that to me?

If you can, I answer that I do not respect your intelligence. And the God I acknowledge replies to you, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God”! (Ps. 14:1; 53:1).

If you can look about you, and observe how intelligently planned and executed is everything in nature and in plant and animal life—everything we see except the bungling, botching, polluting of God’s beautiful handiwork by the clumsy hand of God-ignoring-and-rejecting man—and then say you doubt the existence of an all-wise, all-knowing, all-powerful Creator God, then I do not have much faith either in your rational processes or your sincerity as a seeker of the truth!

You seem like a relatively intelligent person, William. So let us attempt isolate the areas where we disagree.

My current perspective has a moderate level of confidence that this universe was created by an intelligent process. However, this intelligence/creative force would not meet the necessary criteria to be defined as *GOD*. *It* arose from a universe which was also created by an intelligent process, which arose from a universe which was created by an intelligent process, which arose from a universe which was created by an intelligent process, ad infinitum.

You and I are also intelligent processes, albeit small and puny ones, with the capability of developing into powerful creative forces. This is as far as I can see at this point, although I am fairly confident that there is much more to this picture than I presently comprehend.

God, as a concept, is completely nonsensical. But even if it weren't, it would be of very little practical value to me.

Of course, none of this addresses your belief in the Christian religion -- which is completely and utterly irrational on so many levels that it boggles my mind. It is in everyway comparable to a belief in Zeus or the easter bunny for that matter.

But really, what do I care? Go ahead and believe what ever you choose to believe. If you could help out with the SENS initiative that would be of great utility to me, so we are certainly not enemies. I simply view you as an inferior mind.

[william]

Don, sorry to hear you consider me an inferior mind. This must be a product of that "rational egoist" philosophy. Am I correct?

[jaydfox]

Indicative of weakness? I've considered that possibility (thoroughly), and the only weakness seems to be a small financial penalty, and a weakly increasing probability of cancer (both of which I am fully aware).

Cancer won't be an issue.

Sorry, late to this conversation, so perhaps I'm taking this out of context, but...

You've "thoroughly" considered the consequences of smoking, and the best you could come up with is "a small financial penalty, and a weakly increasing probability of cancer"?

Man, they've got you hook, line, and sinker.

[DJS]

Don, sorry to hear you consider me an inferior mind. This must be a product of that "rational egoist" philosophy. Am I correct?

No, there are individuals whom I consider to be more advance than myself in terms of the sophistication of their heuristics.

I consider you to be an inferior mind because you are not rational.

[RighteousReason]

lol...

I know the exact effects and statistical tendencies of effects involved with ciggerette smoking.

I think you guys and the rest of society have really taken the hook line and sinker of anti-tobacco whiners. If you are scared of cancer, then just don't smoke. If you take it as a personal affront to your right to live in the first place that this disease dare have a probability of killing you, then solve the problem that way instead.

[Live Forever]

I am with Don. The evidence, at least in my eyes, is no greater for Greek gods, the Muslim faith, Hindus, the Christian faith, or any of the thousands of other Gods/faiths throughout history.

I do not, however, care if someone believes what they want to believe, as long as they aren't trying to impose on my rights (or kill me or something). If someone cares about life extension (as william seems to) then I might not agree with him, but I still feel we are on the same "team". (the one trying to beat the disease of aging)

I do not mind having intellectual arguments about certain things, but I still think we can be helpful to each other's goals. I know that william talks about certain things because he feels obligated (or "commanded") to do so, because he feels he might be able to "save" some of us. I can completely identify with this because I used to have just about exactly the same worldview.

In any event, hopefully you don't think we are being too tough on you, william, as long as you support life extension I think most people here will see you as being on the right "team" if not being as critically thinking about all things as you might be.

[jaydfox]

Hank, it's not just about an increased statistical chance of death, and otherwise, all is peachy keen. If that's all you think it is, you're the fish, man.

[DJS]

LF

do not, however, care if someone believes what they want to believe, as long as they aren't trying to impose on my rights (or kill me or something). If someone cares about life extension (as william seems to) then I might not agree with him, but I still feel we are on the same "team". (the one trying to beat the disease of aging)

How is this any different from what I was saying?

But really, what do I care? Go ahead and believe what ever you choose to believe. If you could help out with the SENS initiative that would be of great utility to me, so we are certainly not enemies. I simply view you as an inferior mind.