If it happened to them... it can happen to anyone.

12/06/2012 05:25:51 PM · #551

Good Lord. :/

Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 ED

12/06/2012 05:32:56 PM · #552

Here's a good and interesting interview Louis. It's with the author who wrote American Fascists (about religious fundamentalism) so I hope you can see it as being from someone who isn't all in my corner (not that I'm in the corner with fundamentalism). It gets at what I think fairly well.

I don't believe in atheists

Apple iPhone 5

12/06/2012 05:41:27 PM · #553

Originally posted by Louis:

Good Lord. :/

As an aside - Welcome back stranger, is this your annual visit to DPC? ;-)

12/06/2012 05:42:50 PM · #554

Originally posted by JH:

Originally posted by Louis:
Good Lord. :/

As an aside - Welcome back stranger, is this your annual visit to DPC? ;-)

Something like that.

12/06/2012 05:45:54 PM · #555

Originally posted by DrAchoo:

"I write in the book that not believing in God is not dangerous. Not believing in sin is very dangerous. I think both the Christian right and the New Atheists in essence donâ��t believe in their own sin, because they externalize evil. Evil is always something out there that can be eradicated. For the New Atheists, itâ��s the irrational religious hordes"

? Really? You think that's the problem?

Let me be clear, I believe in sin, and I think that religious organizations and irrational beliefs are but one of many diseases afflicting us as a species.

I don't, however, think worshiping any certain god, or not worshiping any god would ever qualify as sins, nor can picking up sticks on Sunday, nor having wild sex with 10 women, or 10 men. Those aren't sins, but treating the person who does any of those things as a sinner is a real sin.

12/06/2012 05:46:13 PM · #556

Originally posted by Cory:

Originally posted by myqyl:

Source please?

//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

Might I inquire as to yours?

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican
by Galileo Galilei and translated by Stillman Drake

My main source is his book : Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems : Ptolemaic and Copernican, although his daughter's (a Roman Catholic nun, so you may not believe it) book about him is quite reveling too. I can't remember the name of that one and I'm at work. I'll look for it when I get home.

I have the utmost respect for Wikipedia, but we all know the problem with it... That article talks about the Spanish inquisition. To my knowledge Galileo never left Italy in the years we're talking about. I'm a little suspicious of that article.

The truth of course sits somewhere in the middle ground between our two depictions. But Galileo's theories WERE wrong. Copernicus was right.

Don't believe everything you read in Wikipedia, and NOTHING you see on History channel :)

Message edited by author 2012-12-06 18:12:11.

12/06/2012 05:51:35 PM · #557

Originally posted by myqyl:

Originally posted by Cory:

Originally posted by myqyl:

Source please?

//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

Might I inquire as to yours?

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican
by Galileo Galilei and translated by Stillman Drake

My main source is his book : Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems : Ptolemaic and Copernican, although his daughter's (a Roman Catholic nun, so you may not believe it) book about him is quite reveling too. I can't remember the name of that one and I'm at work. I'll look for it when I get home.

I have the utmost respect for Wikipedia, but we all the the problem with it... That article talks about the Spanish inquisition. To my knowledge Galileo never left Italy in the years we're talking about. I'm a little suspicious of that article.

The truth of course sits somewhere in the middle ground between our two depictions. But Galileo's theories WERE wrong. Copernicus was right.

Don't believe everything you read in Wikipedia, and NOTHING you see on History channel :)

Don't watch TV. And Wikipedia has generally been found accurate, or at least as accurate as any compiled source. Strangely though, it seems that experts find the articles in their area of expertise more accurate than articles outside of their expertise.

12/06/2012 05:52:32 PM · #558

Originally posted by DrAchoo:

Already read it. Ho-hum. He falls for the same lie that certain groups are inviolate. Nonsense. Anyone calling Christopher Hitchens amoral needs to remove the beam etc. etc. etc. Robust criticism does not equate with either amorality or fundamentalism.

I went to a reading by Salman Rushdie a few weeks ago. Afterward, someone asked him about his relationship with Hitchens. It was moving watching his eyes shine as he described his love for a friend he'd known for decades, and hearing the gratitude in his voice for Hitchen's help during his darkest hour. He finished by saying that he was the last person who should have died, since the world needs the kind of good he did in it.

Amorality and bigotry are not traits that immediately leap to mind when one thinks of Christopher Hitchens, if one has more than a cursory idea of the kind man he was. Your abrupt dismissal in the previous post ("He's dead now so...") made me think of him, and how the deficit of compassion in the world is largely the fault of the faithful.

12/06/2012 06:06:39 PM · #559

Originally posted by Cory:

I don't, however, think worshiping any certain god, or not worshiping any god would ever qualify as sins

I would agree 100% with you here. My religion teaches me that many Christians will be heading to hell and that many Athiests will be welcomed in Heaven...

I might save time if we have this debate once we're in heaven :-)

12/06/2012 06:11:43 PM · #560

Originally posted by myqyl:

Originally posted by Cory:
I don't, however, think worshiping any certain god, or not worshiping any god would ever qualify as sins

I would agree 100% with you here. My religion teaches me that many Christians will be heading to hell and that many Athiests will be welcomed in Heaven...

I might save time if we have this debate once we're in heaven :-)

It would certainly play well into your point. ;) lol.

12/06/2012 06:13:50 PM · #561

Originally posted by Cory:

Originally posted by myqyl:

Originally posted by Cory:
I don't, however, think worshiping any certain god, or not worshiping any god would ever qualify as sins

I would agree 100% with you here. My religion teaches me that many Christians will be heading to hell and that many Athiests will be welcomed in Heaven...

I might save time if we have this debate once we're in heaven :-)

It would certainly play well into your point. ;) lol.

See you there... Bring your camera :)

12/06/2012 06:19:27 PM · #562

Originally posted by myqyl:

Originally posted by Cory:

Originally posted by myqyl:

Originally posted by Cory:
I don't, however, think worshiping any certain god, or not worshiping any god would ever qualify as sins

I would agree 100% with you here. My religion teaches me that many Christians will be heading to hell and that many Athiests will be welcomed in Heaven...

I might save time if we have this debate once we're in heaven :-)

It would certainly play well into your point. ;) lol.

See you there... Bring your camera :)

Doubt it. ;) I've invariably found that anything which sounds too good to be true, is.

Besides, I've always pictured it more like a brush and easel sort of place. ;) Somehow electronics and heaven don't jive in my mind. hehe.

12/06/2012 06:21:14 PM · #563

Originally posted by Cory:

Wikipedia, like everything else has the bias of the author of the article. And "Grad Students" != experts in my book. Most of them have probably spent the last few years copy/pasting their essays from it.

12/06/2012 06:31:40 PM · #564

Originally posted by myqyl:

Originally posted by Cory:
Don't watch TV. And Wikipedia has generally been found accurate, or at least as accurate as any compiled source. Strangely though, it seems that experts find the articles in their area of expertise more accurate than articles outside of their expertise.

Wikipedia, like everything else has the bias of the author of the article. And "Grad Students" != experts in my book. Most of them have probably spent the last few years copy/pasting their essays from it.

While that is effectively true, that bias has been minimized because each article is subject to public scrutiny and revision. It's pretty hard to be very biased once 50 people have weighed in on the article.

Note that the Article I posed RE: Galalio was edited by hundreds of people, over 100 of which have at least 2 edits in on the article, so I'm betting that there's not much left for bias there.

At least, if you will admit that every author has a tendency for bias, then you'll agree that anything with 50 or more authors of no affiliation, other than the article itself, is substantially likely to be of both much greater value in general, and of a far lesser general bias than anything written by a single author, or even two or three authors which are often affiliated by a common assumed or implied bias.

In short, I trust Wikipedia a HELL of a lot more than most sources I can find on all but the most specialized subjects, where the only proper choice is a specialists manual that is likely to be hidden away in a library in some dusty cabinet in the locked off section of the disused portion that has been converted to storage.

12/06/2012 06:38:13 PM · #565

Originally posted by Louis:

Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Here's a good and interesting interview Louis. It's with the author who wrote American Fascists (about religious fundamentalism) so I hope you can see it as being from someone who isn't all in my corner (not that I'm in the corner with fundamentalism). It gets at what I think fairly well.

I don't believe in atheists

Already read it. Ho-hum. He falls for the same lie that certain groups are inviolate. Nonsense. Anyone calling Christopher Hitchens amoral needs to remove the beam etc. etc. etc. Robust criticism does not equate with either amorality or fundamentalism.

I went to a reading by Salman Rushdie a few weeks ago. Afterward, someone asked him about his relationship with Hitchens. It was moving watching his eyes shine as he described his love for a friend he'd known for decades, and hearing the gratitude in his voice for Hitchen's help during his darkest hour. He finished by saying that he was the last person who should have died, since the world needs the kind of good he did in it.

Amorality and bigotry are not traits that immediately leap to mind when one thinks of Christopher Hitchens, if one has more than a cursory idea of the kind man he was. Your abrupt dismissal in the previous post ("He's dead now so...") made me think of him, and how the deficit of compassion in the world is largely the fault of the faithful.

Well, glad you have read it. Now you know how I feel about it. I can't mourn Hitchens as he has done much harm in this world in my view. To his credit he kept the anti-faith to the end, so kudos to him in that regard. I think his brother was the more sensible of the two.

12/06/2012 07:27:51 PM · #566

If you read Galileo's Dialog, you'll note two things... Many of the theories he stated as absolute fact were dead wrong, and he was intentionally sticking his finger in the eye of the Pope (The name of one of his characters was a play on words for the name of Pope Urban before he became Pope).

What I'm trying to say is that what people think happened to Galileo was in fact far from the reality. He was sentenced to retirement in a Villa. He was not burned at the stake, nor was he ever tortured. He lost his job because he wasn't doing it well. If I wrote a story making fun of my boss and stating as fact things that weren't true about our products, I'd lose my job too and I likely wouldn't get the Villa. Certainly the Indigo Girls wouldn't sing about me...

There was a movie about from around 1960 that had all kinds of fight scenes and chase scenes and this became what many believe happened. Read Galileo's own book...

Has the Church done some pretty bad stuff? Yep. has it done good stuff? Yep. Is any of that relevant? I don't see it. Tell me, who funded the research that Galileo was doing? Who funded Copernicus? Michal Angelo? De Vinci? Who was keeping the writings of Aristotle, Plato and Socrates from disappearing along with the papyrus scrolls they were written on?

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 USM

12/06/2012 07:35:31 PM · #567

Originally posted by Cory:

Doubt it. ;) I've invariably found that anything which sounds too good to be true, is.

I use to think that... But now I'm living a life that is too good to be true :-)

Originally posted by Cory:

Besides, I've always pictured it more like a brush and easel sort of place. ;) Somehow electronics and heaven don't jive in my mind. hehe.

My first dozen cameras had no electronics :-)

RayEthier

Canon EOS-5D Mark II

12/06/2012 09:08:35 PM · #568

Originally posted by DrAchoo:

Originally posted by Venser:

Originally posted by DrAchoo:
I sense an upcoming big long post follow by a short post that says, "so what?"...

If he's just doing irreducible complexity or any of the other bunk math proof's, I'll have a field day with him.

Irreducible complexity as a concept is quite valid. The question is whether it exists or not.

Is that kind of like saying I can't prove that what I am saying is actually factual because the method I would like to use as a proof mechanism can't be be demonstrated to actually exist? :O)

Ray

Message edited by author 2012-12-06 21:12:45.

Tamron SP 24-70mm f/2.8 Di VC USD Canon Mount

12/06/2012 09:16:07 PM · #569

Originally posted by RayEthier:

Originally posted by DrAchoo:

Originally posted by Venser:

Originally posted by DrAchoo:
I sense an upcoming big long post follow by a short post that says, "so what?"...

If he's just doing irreducible complexity or any of the other bunk math proof's, I'll have a field day with him.

Irreducible complexity as a concept is quite valid. The question is whether it exists or not.

Is that kind of like saying I can't prove that what I am saying is actually factual because the method I would like to use as a proof mechanism can't be be demonstrated to actually exist? :O)

Ray

Holy shit I can't believe I missed that. So a non-falsifiable proposition rooted in several fallacious arguments is now "quite valid" (this coming from s self-professed scientist). Yikes. See you next year (maybe). :/

Mike

Canon EOS-5D Mark II

12/06/2012 09:27:20 PM · #570

oooh math wars, this so much better than a crusade.

12/06/2012 11:21:19 PM · #571

Originally posted by Louis:

Come now, Louis. Let's play like adults here. There is nothing non-falsifiable about irreducible complexity. If someone claims that X is IC then one can easily disprove this by showing it to be wrong. I'm not here even to support the idea, but I bristle a bit at the intellectual dishonesty of not doing the work to disprove some hypothesis merely by saying, "that's dumb!"

If you want a non-Behe treatment I recommend "Where the Conflict Really Lies" by Plantinga. He discusses the meta argument of whether IC is a easily dismissed concept in either the first or second chapter.

Message edited by author 2012-12-06 23:22:00.

12/07/2012 02:14:04 AM · #572

Well, my final thought for this thread is that if some gay couple wanted me to shot their wedding I'd simply let them know they were out of their minds... I suck at photography.

So the whole thing is moot for me.

Nikon AF-S Nikkor 28-300mm f3.5-5.6G ED VR

12/07/2012 02:20:31 AM · #573

Originally posted by myqyl:

ROFL.. Best answer yet.

NikonJeb

Nikon D850

12/07/2012 07:47:36 AM · #574

Originally posted by myqyl:

Originally posted by Cory:

ROFL.. Best answer yet.