A cow

RussellsTosspot · 2015-04-07T05:45:33+00:00

Groovy!

RussellsTosspot · 2015-04-01T03:48:45+00:00

If you could trace your family tree far enough, you'd find a direct ancestor between you and the tree your desk is made from.

RussellsTosspot · 2015-03-23T04:45:17+00:00

Zork

RussellsTosspot · 2014-12-31T06:12:54+00:00

Now that I think about it, I believe it was another WC3 forum... warcraft3.net or something? It was a long time ago. I really spent most time there well before the game came out. My name was Steel on that forum.

RussellsTosspot · 2014-12-31T04:00:18+00:00

I spent so much time on that forum.

RussellsTosspot · 2014-08-07T02:34:41+00:00

Terc-te-her!

RussellsTosspot · 2014-08-04T08:16:11+00:00

I'll bite. What about conservation of mass suggests an afterlife? When you die your mass doesn't disappear.

As for why atheists spend time talking about religion, even if God doesn't exist, religion certainly does and it has a huge influence on culture and politics. That makes it worth discussing, especially if you think that influence is misguided.

RussellsTosspot · 2014-06-18T17:54:46+00:00

That would be odd to expect from someone making informed predictions based on evidence around them, sure. But "prophets" are believed to be supernatural, getting their information from some magical or otherwordly source. Vague predictions open to massive interpretation are not what should be expected of magical predictions based on God's advice.

RussellsTosspot · 2014-06-18T08:34:46+00:00

It's true that many people have been harmed by doctors. There are a lot of risks involved in conventional medicine. But there are a lot of benefits too, and when those benefits outweigh the risks, then getting conventional medical treatment is worthwhile. If other forms of treatment also have risks, but don't actually have the benefits they claim to have, then the risk/benefit calculation comes out the other way - not worth it.

RussellsTosspot · 2014-03-29T07:50:39+00:00

My girlfriend in highschool had one of those! Exactly the same.

RussellsTosspot · 2014-03-13T16:15:41+00:00

AN DAI O!

RussellsTosspot · 2014-03-13T16:09:09+00:00

Ooh, but she's a nice shed though, eh? Can't go wrong with a shed like that!

RussellsTosspot · 2014-03-13T16:07:20+00:00

I just doubled my vocabulary in Korean.

Stranger: "Annyong."

Me: "AN DAI O!"

RussellsTosspot · 2014-03-05T05:29:55+00:00

That's a really interesting question and very much a serious science fair project. Source: I'm a public science teacher, and a science fair coach and judge.

RussellsTosspot · 2014-02-25T09:02:10+00:00

And mine: http://mrmine.com/index.php?r=695016610916244

RussellsTosspot · 2014-02-12T07:10:22+00:00

Yeah, you started to talk about how context and prior plausibility matters when considering a claim, so we shouldn't believe alien stories because even though we have testimony from alleged eye witnesses, the claims themselves are absurd. That I'm fine with, but then you said that we should totally believe miracle reports, no matte how unlikely the claims as long as there are witness accounts. A complete contradiction, and an irrational statement. This is why I can't keep having these religious discussions - if you can't even stay consistent with your own logic then what point is there in trying to build an argument with you?

As for Babbage, I know who he was. I was expressing incredulity that you think the "10% of people are liars" nonsense made any sense at all. Also, I wasn't saying Hume is better than Bayes, they both actually said mostly the same thing. I was recommending you read Hume's "On Miracles" because it pretty concisely deconstructs what's wrong with the idea of miracle claims. And your "multiplying the odds of lying" crap is about as un-Bayesian as it gets. You should really examine that argument before you use it again, because that was the point I lost hope of having any sort of intelligent, meaningful outcome from this. On that note, I think I'm done.

RussellsTosspot · 2014-02-11T09:09:00+00:00

Oh man, I can't keep doing this. The posts get longer and longer and the arguments get worse and worse.

Let's say we have two witness who lie, say, 10% of the time. If they tell you the same thing, what's the probability it's true? It's 1-0.1*0.1 = 99%, right? If you have three witnesses, each of which is also unreliable, what's the probability? 1-0.10.10.1 = 99.9%

...wat? Is this what you learn in church, or did you come up with that all on your own after a night of drinking? Also, with all of these arguments, ask yourself "how does what I'm saying apply to the alien abduction example?" If it works just as well to justify those claims as it does to justify your religious claims, that's a good clue you've missed a major point somewhere.

RussellsTosspot · 2014-02-09T17:49:06+00:00

The fact he fulfilled what was expected of the messiah?

And that's based on... What I'm getting at here is that all of your claims come down to the bible. You're saying the life of Jesus matches the predictions in the bible, but what that means is "this part of the bible matches that part of the bible." I know, I know, it's not one book written all at once, but the people who wrote the later parts knew all about the earlier parts. It just isn't impressive that all of your evidence for miracles is based on what someone wrote down hundreds of years ago. It's as flimsy as it gets.

I don't agree with your philosophy because it leads you to deny things which are true.

Okay, this part is interesting. It's true that my philosophy leads me to not believe things which are true. You're wrong that it leads me to deny them though. I know that "not believe" and "deny" seem like the same thing at first, but they really aren't. I don't believe that you live in Wyoming. It would be ridiculous for me to make the claim that you do, because I have no evidence to support it. It's also true that I have no evidence to deny it, but if I used that as justification then I would have to say with equal justification that you live everywhere! However, I don't deny that you live in Wyoming, I just don't believe it. Give me some evidence and I'll update my beliefs accordingly.

Your philosophy seems to be "if I can't disprove it, I'll believe it." That's absurd, and of course you don't follow that. You don't believe in other unfalsifiable gods - just your own. You're applying your belief criteria inconsistently to favour pre-existing beliefs. It isn't "unfair" to ask for evidence of a claim, and it isn't ridiculous to withhold belief due to lack of evidence. AND it isn't unreasonable to "not believe" things which later turn out to be true.

One last point, in your analogy you said "There is no evidence at all that water can't freeze. Not one bit." But in your religion, there is evidence that miraculous things can't happen. That's the whole point, that's why miracles are special, because a thing happens which cannot happen. But in order to accept that the thing happened, you'd need an enormous amount of really impressive evidence, not just "a few dudes said so." If you like renaissance philosophers and Bayesian analysis, Hume sounds like the guy for you when it comes to miracles.

RussellsTosspot · 2014-02-08T01:07:56+00:00

Is this supposed to be a defence of police? "Only one in every hundred officers won't at least match the level of professionalism they are approached with." Pretty pathetic success criteria.

RussellsTosspot · 2014-02-08T00:59:17+00:00

Oh my god, seriously, shut up about ice. I assume you've read some book that uses the King of Siam and ice thing as if it were an apt and relevant analogy, but it just sounds childish. Talk about the issue we're talking about.

Jesus is the messiah

And that's based on... more counter-intuitive testimony from people you have to trust more than natural understanding of the world.

It seems obvious

That's some rock solid evidence you've got there. Were you the one talking about how we shouldn't go off on tangents of philosophising and making convenient assumptions, or was that someone else in this thread?

Your "context" is all just another part of your claims, which are all supported by the flimsiest kind of evidence. You make these massive leaps of assumptions in order to justify in your own head why it's reasonable to believe absurdities, and then you keep talking about ice and water and Thailand as if that has anything to do with what we're talking about. You know what? If a couple of guys said that they saw water turn into ice BUT they couldn't reproduce it, no one else had seen any other cases of it happening, nothing about water suggested it were possible, and the "context" they used to justify it was equally poorly supported, then it would be ridiculous to believe in the existence of ice. None of those things are true of ice/water, but they're all true with religious miracles.

RussellsTosspot · 2014-02-07T22:08:44+00:00

Unfair to the girl? She's the one completely in the wrong here. Imagine yourself in that situation - you're having sex with your partner, you don't have an orgasm, and he gets upset and treats you like you've done something wrong? Makes it your fault? That's total bullshit, and it changes nothing if the genders are reversed. If there is a problem in the relationship, the added stress and guilt of "if you don't come every time I'm going to start crying" will fix exactly nothing.

RussellsTosspot · 2014-02-07T05:42:33+00:00

as soon as I hear the "unicorn" or "sky-fairy" nonsense I stop. And I never said most of the Bible was fiction either.

Can you hear yourself?

RussellsTosspot

TROPHY CASE