Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion.

[b0unce]

I see.

a brief stint in the IDF ? how did that work then, what with you being canadian ?

[shtreimel]

I see.

a brief stint in the IDF ? how did that work then, what with you being canadian ?

A volunteer position. Real crap work...building cement barriers for the troops stationed on the Northern Border.

My fiance's brother immigrated to Israel last summer, he's about to enter the IDF in June. Her cousin, a medic, fought in both the Gaza and Lebanon battles this past Fall.

[b0unce]

Okee Dokee, thats all I wanted to know.

*tunes out*

[Seyser Koze]

a few papers probably covered that experiment, seyzer...but heres the guardian's take on it

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1744493,00.html

piece

(I'm dizzy already)

ah ha, that's the one. Dang now you've got me down as a guardian reader! thus explaining my Polly Toynbeeesque stance on religion etc....

Have I said it's the kids i feel sorry for yet?

Cos i do. I really do. Sincerely.

I believe that children are the future...

[Seyser Koze]

I see.

a brief stint in the IDF ? how did that work then, what with you being canadian ?

A volunteer position. Real crap work...building cement barriers for the troops stationed on the Northern Border.

My fiance's brother immigrated to Israel last summer, he's about to enter the IDF in June. Her cousin, a medic, fought in both the Gaza and Lebanon battles this past Fall.

Why do they need cement barriers? And why was there a battle in Lebanon?

is it anything to do with differing gods perchance?

[Seyser Koze]

Religious war...

It's the kids I feel sorry for.

[forge]

Except that astrology follows obvious rules following only stars we can actually see that conveniently are grouped into 12 "signs" that convinently fit our months of the year.

It doesn't take account of the fact that there are a billion other stars we cannot see or in fact that the ones we can see may have already died but we are still receiving the light from when they were alive due to the distance they were from earth.

I'm defintely not debating this one, it is by far the easiest superstitious nonsense to debunk.

Apart from sceances and reading tealeaves...

well no you missed my point entirely - the presence of a billion more stars is irrelevant - my point was that the grouping and characterisations or character traits have very obvious merit if you look into it and I'm saying all the astrological element (ie using the names of constellations and the animal names etc) are just a quasi-primitive naming system to describe it

so in other words, people discovered a type of psychology before they knew that's what it was, that was related to timing, and the most visible stars where the ones they used to signify the timing

if you feel it is the "easiest" to debunk then go for it - but my take is FAR from "superstitious"

[zordon]

This post subject is still going and I started it more than a month ago. Good to see that people are interested and waking from the delusion. Also incase you havent seen it check out a new film called JESUS camp about religious fanaticism. This is probably the most frightening thing i have ever seen, indoctrinating children into something they can barely grasp. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bB2rt3IKJc


Really disturbing!

[Tone Deft]

Link didn't work Zordon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RNfL6IVWCE


America!!! FUCK YEAH!!!

That's some serious headtrips to be laying on little kids, assholes.

[edge100]

[quote="forgeactually, I've known a bit about astrology for about 15 years and it's staggering how often it gels

Except that astrology follows obvious rules following only stars we can actually see that conveniently are grouped into 12 "signs" that convinently fit our months of the year.

Astrology is the single best piece of evidence to suggest that humans are spectacularly good at seeing patterns, and spectacularly bad at interpreting them.

[knotkranky]

Agreed, and primarily for calendar and navigation reasons.

[Tone Deft]

Agreed, and primarily for calendar and navigation reasons.

And a great way to scam people for money whilst traveling.

[NorthernMonkey]

Why has god never once, EVER, healed an amputee?

I understand the prayer thing via the Rolling Stone's Song: You Can't Always Get What You Want.

The next time I speak to my fiances father, I'd be glad to ask him, as a fan of science, how he understands how prayer works. I'll report back.

And I agree, you can't always get what you want. Perhaps god knows better than the amputee whether the arm is really necessary. Of course, just based on probability alone, you'd expect one arm in 6000 years to have been regrown (i.e. to have been really necessary to have been regrown).

Of course, there is a much simpler explanation for the fact that limbs can't regrow...but you're not going to like it.........

Maybe god gave the scientists the knowledge to grow artificial limbs and organs to keep both sides happy

[knotkranky]

maybe god doesn't have any arms.

[forge]

.......

Couldn't disagree more. Would an 'intelligently designed' cell have so many 'mistakes'; ends of DNA that are constantly being eroded? Production of antibodies against key function components of your own cells? Even at the organismal level, we see many 'mistakes'; rabbits who have to eat their own feces to extract all of the nutrients?

i guess there are unfortunate connotations to using the terms "intelligent"" and "design" together nowadays, but I definitely dont take all of this to mean there is one bearded dude with a lightening bolt in his hand or whatever

but...

even all your replies there still dont come close to giving me the faintest idea how science explains the existence of these amazing cellular machines - as far as I can tell all of the changes of history are down to freak mutations??

you even mentioned "slight" variations - in beaks or feathers, limbs or hair colour or whatever, and there definitely seems to be some kind of belief under the evolution umbrella in organisms reacting to their environments and changing accordingly - I just dont know firstly how it knows what is going on in the environment and then initiates the change

for a micro-organism to react to anit-biotics and then develop an immunity (and this is in evolutionary terms happening in an instant considering we've seen it in our lifetimes) this implies that at somewhere in the process there is thought, or at least awareness of environment

actually as I'm typing I think I'm starting to get part of it - in that these bacteria reproduce at such an incredibly fast rate that the odds are higher that one will "divert" and have an inherent immunity against the anti-biotics and so that will be the one that survives and then reproduces

that much I understand

but what I dont understand is how something so amazingly complicated as life on a microscopic level can just happen like this

the closest I got is at some point reading about amino acids over 2 billion years getting more complicated then developing into a very basic organism which could divide and consume the hydrogen in water and produce oxygen as a result, which in turn over time produced an atmosphere then more gradual changes introduced more complex organisms etc etc

but at what point did this little brainless thing decide it would develop something called DNA to remember all it's traits?

see the thing is with all this is to compound the problem, life is tough. Life can withstand amazing hardships, even evolve to handle them better

we can actually see evolution working in our lifetimes

but I cant fathom the inherent intelligence life seemingly has in making all these changes and decisions

you argued with the words "chance" and "decision" in this context but just the act of a microscopic thing remembering the changes that have been made and were successful along the way seems amazingly improbable

look how much trouble we're having building gigabytes of memory that can fit on keyrings! the notion that all this stuff has just "happened" over time is too much for my feeble brain to cope with i think

who put the DNA there? could a single cell organism really have had the savvy?