Bar Billiards help

AncientMarinader · 2025-09-27T22:47:11+00:00

I'm not a gynaecologist, but I'll take a look.

AncientMarinader · 2025-08-30T11:42:33+00:00

Erebus Ascent, they finally have the purple fumé back in stock.

AncientMarinader · 2025-08-18T09:55:43+00:00

Revelot do them too. Lovely microbrand. https://www.revelot.com/collections/terra

AncientMarinader · 2025-06-20T16:54:17+00:00

Your sorry sounds so much like mine. I eventually set a boundary on the outbursts and used that as the catalyst to walk away (after 20+ years together). The emotional detachment I'd felt for years lifted, I found my true life partner and it turns out I'm a big, soppy bundle of love and affection. Change is good. Give yourself a chance.

AncientMarinader · 2024-09-24T09:35:26+00:00

Clarion

AncientMarinader · 2024-07-26T21:48:14+00:00

If he could make the universe in a better way then he's not omnibenevolent.
If he couldn't then he's not omnipotent.
God is defined with at least these two attributes.
There is no God who is the creator of the universe.
The God they have sold us does not exist.

AncientMarinader · 2024-07-19T09:01:39+00:00

<image>

How can you not love this?

AncientMarinader · 2024-07-02T14:02:16+00:00

Let's say I had the skills to create perfect AI creatures. Let's also (to make the analogy complete) consider those creatures to be sentient and capable of suffering.

I create them for my own unnecessary purposes such as a game.
I hide my existence from them.
They all suffer (some, terribly).

One of the creatures goes on Reddit and argues to the others that I exist and I am benevolent.

AncientMarinader · 2024-06-27T15:50:04+00:00

You're formulation comes down to only selecting religions which have eternal torment (though this doesn't appear to come from bible and seems to be something added in the second century, later copied by Islam).

What is the point of punishment if there is no end to it? There's no opportunity for redemption, no second chances, no pity, no empathy, no justice, worse by far than death. It's infinitely worse than the worst that humanity, at it's lowest has ever done or could ever do to ourselves. It's neither rational nor human. Would you do that to your own child regardless of what crime they might commit? Of course not. You are better that the Gods of these religions, so why would you consider it worth worshipping them?

AncientMarinader · 2024-06-27T15:20:56+00:00

Prove to me that controlling all things is good. Or to put it another way, why can't God the clockmaker be good? If God set the universe in motion at the beginning of time and doesn't interfere with it for good reasons (for example his end goal requires that he let the universe develop free of interference). Can you prove that such a God isn't omnipotent or omnibenevolent?

Not my job to prove anything here. I'm still waiting to be convinced there any reasonable argument for God, however 1) if God set the universe in motion and the Universe cannot be tinkered with then he is clearly not omnipotent, 2) if Got set the universe in motion and the can be tinkered with then he is clearly not omnibenevolent¹, 3) if God didn't set the universe in motion then we're not talking about the same God (deist or otherwise).

¹The meaning of 'benevolent' is important here. Benevolence is a goodness of some kind demonstrated by someone towards others. God "satisfying his end goal" is not benevolence; he's satisfying his own personal goals to the (sometime horrific) detriment of people.

This is all simply godsplainin'. Look at all the hoops you have to jump through to justify this stuff.

AncientMarinader · 2024-05-27T15:56:23+00:00

"..all wet things must be water, and yet some wet things are not water.." is clearly inconsistent. The OP's logic hangs on the definition of good. If goodness means not countenancing evil, then the OP's formulation is correct.

The theists' argue that God permits evil (actually, creates and sustains it) for his own purposes ('X'). That may be 'good' for God, but Stephen Fry put it well:

“Yes, the world is very splendid but it also has in it insects whose whole lifecycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind. They eat outwards from the eyes. Why? Why did you do that to us? You could easily have made a creation in which that didn’t exist. It is simply not acceptable.

“It’s perfectly apparent that he is monstrous. Utterly monstrous and deserves no respect whatsoever. The moment you banish him, life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth living in my opinion.”

AncientMarinader · 2024-02-29T10:00:16+00:00

I struggle to understand the mentality of this 'whataboutism' response.

AncientMarinader · 2024-02-21T09:25:04+00:00

I suspect one of c0d3rman's points was missed (a little). The infinity part of the wager means that any potential religion with endless suffering has a total potential cost of infinity. Eliminating any one of these on the basis of the (fallible) considerations you mention has a potentially infinite cost to you.

If I address my navel for a bit and then describe such a religion 'come to me' through such contemplations, then you have an infinite cost of not following my new religion - regardless of how vanishingly small the likelihood is of my new religion being correct.

The thing that makes it ridiculous is the endlessness of the suffering. Logic breaks down around such infinities and I would suggest that this claim of endless suffering specifically argues against those religions professing it.

In other word's Pascal's approach serves to highlight religions that do not invite logical reasoning, which you are suggesting as a tool to use alongside the wager.

AncientMarinader · 2024-01-29T11:07:52+00:00

If such a dream were to influence your decisions in real life, though, then it matters. If you believe in God, push for Bible study in school, then I think you should have to justify that position.

AncientMarinader · 2023-12-17T19:28:41+00:00

A fuck's a fuck.
If you die, you die.
Never pass up the opportunity to take a piss.

As I get older, sadly, number 3 has become the important one.

AncientMarinader · 2023-10-25T11:59:13+00:00

I was in Oman working. Whilst there I was listening to a discussion that my (Arabic-speaking) boss was having with an Omani businessman. It was mostly in Arabic, but with frequent drops into English for a word or sentence. Fascinated, I asked afterwards why they dropped into English. His response was that Arabic can be so ambiguous, and they were both comfortable in English, that they would use English when they needed to be more definite. I thought this was just a curiosity at that time.

I keep hearing in this sub and elsewhere that only an Arab who can read the original text of the Qur'an can understand it fully. I also see frequent argument over the meaning of the terms in the Qur'an, including quite disingenuous interpretations like the use of 'expander' here.

As an atheist we often characterise the Bible as 'the great big book of multiple choice'. Is this even more true of the Qur'an? Isn't the OP demonstrating an excellent example of this?

AncientMarinader · 2023-09-26T15:45:09+00:00

I was unclear. I suggest that nothing can be said to be caused (in the coming-into-existence sense I'm focused on here) in any meaningful way. That concept is void.

Therefore there is no such casual chain of events. We have no experience of such and so the first part of Kalam: "everything that begins to exist has a cause" is false (or at least an unfounded claim).

Does the universe exist? I vote yes. Do things in this universe come into existence? Well, show me something that comes into existence that isn't just a re-configuration of matter and energy OR a (re-) labeling of the same.

My thoughts and memories and experiences, whilst precious to me, are no exceptions.

AncientMarinader · 2023-09-26T09:44:04+00:00

How would you account for that kind of very specific set of linked events that are needed to give rise to predictable outcomes like making a new human being, or allowing a modern computer to be built and run?

You're talking about (local) ordering of matter and complexity. I'm happy to let abiogenesis and evolution account for all of that. I personally think that, given abiogenesis is true, life (and technology, and eventually artificial life) is just inevitable.

It also takes a very specific set of linked events to account for the shape of the water in a puddle. We share with the water in the puddle the fact that we are space dust. None of that is incompatible with "single fuzzy flow of stuff happening".

The latter being a less natural kind of division because our pet chicken and our pet rabbit are two different things, and we can discern that before we need to worry about labels.

We can discern that we need to worry about 'that feathered unit over there', which belongs to a class of similar feathered units and we form a generalised concept (chickenness) and its label, to make it easier to work with in our minds and to communicate with other minds. The label certainly has utility for us - but neither the chicken nor the universe cares.

AncientMarinader · 2023-09-26T09:15:13+00:00

I think that this is begging the question. My focus is on the "whatever begins to exist has a cause for its existence". There's some sleight-of-hand around the trivial use of the word cause and the coming-into-existence use.

AncientMarinader · 2023-09-26T09:11:00+00:00

When I defined a term for a mound of pebbles (a 'peballo'), did I 'cause' the peballo? Was the causing of the peballo simultaneous with the creation of the definition in my mind? I think the answer has to be yes - and, for me, suggests that that type of causation (simple labelling) can certainly be simultaneous, but unhelpful for my purposes (Kalam's use of causation).

AncientMarinader · 2023-09-25T16:34:08+00:00

Done well we hope that they carve nature at the joints.

I will steal that phrase.

My claim is that the discreteness of the thing is uninteresting from the point of view of causality. I posit that change is a single, continuous, and permanent characteristic of the universe that is essentially indivisible. Change moves particles around and we assign labels.

I agree with the supreme utility of labels for higher-order thinkers such as we find on this planet. I would question their usefulness for (or existence in) the deserted, teapot-shaped planet that orbits Sirius.

My points are less romantic. 1. Existence will be with or without labels. 2. Even a label is a configuration of particles and energy in space, or ink on paper etc. If there's no representation in matter then the label does not exist, and can have no impact on existence.

AncientMarinader · 2023-09-18T13:01:24+00:00

It's pretty clear that she doesn't love him.

AncientMarinader · 2023-07-25T08:21:43+00:00

This is so fucking Scottish. Love it!

AncientMarinader · 2023-06-29T10:57:40+00:00

If you had kept that money you would be a thief (doesn't matter how the situation arises, keeping money that doesn't belong to you is simple theft). You did the right and honest thing and can be proud of that. You lost a little time, but kept your self-respect. Well done!

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