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That's bsh1 performing as the candlestick. The teapot is Virt, he has a lovely falsetto.
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@bsh1
It's funny how that one word was the most powerful line she ever wrote.
Without question. Though nothing could make up for his "I see no difference" moment with Hermione.
And yet in the end he still left a better impression than James.
FYI, Ramshutu's Patronus is a jar of marmite. Wtf happens when he casts it at a jar of marmite to defend himself? Do they explode in his face like matter meeting antimatter?
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Ding ding.What does it mean when you have a large amount of surface with very few craters?Erosion from weather or tectonic activity. Well I suppose it is easy to figure which of those two is more likely in the case of Pluto.
Now find me a religion that worships platypuses.
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I guess for me this depends on how much of their holy text they're really holding on to. What they think still applies and what they think is just backstory. The worst offender is of course the Old Testament, which Christians have a complicated relationship with, in my experience. They've left it behind and yet not left it behind.
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@zedvictor4
How can we know what Jesus was really like as a person?If Jesus did ever actually exist, it would be really interesting to know who his real dad was, as he has a lot to answer for.As the story goes:His mum was known as Mary and she slept around with a smooth talker and got pregnant.His dimwit step dad Joseph fell for the most ridiculous of stories.A story which amazingly endures until this day and is still believed to be true by gullible people.Though sadly it has to be said, that current day belief in what has come to be known as Christianity is to a large extent due to infant brainwashing.
How do we know he had parents named Mary and Joseph or that he was conceived by an extramarital affair. You need to believe at least some of the components of the story are true in order to hold him answerable for those things.
And if you're only interested in holding him answerable for telling lies, how could we know that Jesus's father was mainly responsible for the creation, dissemination, or popularization of the story.
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@3RU7AL
I don't know that we have no free will, either.Freewill is logically incoherent.(IFF) actions are intentional and have a goal or aim (willed) (THEN) they are caused by previous events and desires (part of the cause and effect chain) (THEREFORE) such actions are not "free".(IFF) actions are free (of the cause and effect chain) (THEN) they are indistinguishable from random (THEREFORE) such actions are not "willed".Actions cannot be simultaneously both "free" and "willed".Even if you believe in ghosts gods and hobgoblins, the actions of these ghosts gods and hobgoblins are (EITHER) part of a cause and effect chain (willed) (OR) indistinguishable from random (free and uncaused).This is tautological and does not require further data collection or investigation.Freewill is merely an emotion. It's a feeling you get when faced with a choice. It is purely experiential and has no basis in sound logic.
You know I'm a free will skeptic right.
Or was this just a sort of generally addressed post.
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@RoderickSpode
Actually, I might be able to prove you have a soul.On your karaoke ventures, have you ever sang songs by any African-American pop stars?
Well ofc, you know I have. Am I not human. Where are you taking me.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Mountains can be mistaken for craters and craters for mountains. It has to do with being unable to tell if the shape you're looking at is concave or convex.
One of these cryovolcanoes is 90 miles long and 2+ miles high. Yet in all that space, they could only identify one impact crater.
What does it mean when you have a large amount of surface with very few craters?
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@Dr.Franklin
Damn it don't do his work for him, Frank, we came here to see the master perform.Oh your right, it's gonna be likewell Pluto is a planet and plantes are named after Gods, but gods are fake
The real talent will be getting from platypuses to religion. I defy him to find a connection.
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Though it would be more accurate to say Pluto merely has strong candidates for ice volcanoes. But what else can it be when you see an ice mountain with a concave hole at the top.
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Lololol
And platypuses are weird.
I'm ready to be impressed, gus.
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@bsh1
Lol.
Though iirc the origin of that quote was no joke.
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How can we know what Jesus was really like as a person?
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@bsh1
Wow. Heavy. Do you need to use an expecto patronum spell to defend yourself from a jar of it?
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Ideally you want to establish an agreeable foundation so you can proceed to your argument and make your case, and then receive counterargument. When people reject your foundation they won't even engage your argument. They'll dismiss it and it won't get off the ground.
This isn't the debate section though. We don't have to follow rules like that or do the ideal thing. It's much looser and let-fly. Whatever amuses us. Yeahhhhh.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Put debatable value judgments in your premise and you're just gonna get people who reject your premise from square one. If you don't care about that, sure, go crazy. Language away.
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@disgusted
You are literally disagreeing with me over nothing because of your all-consuming need to redirect absolutely everything into an attack or belittlement of religion.
I think I'm gonna start a thread full of completely irrelevant statements like "Pluto has ice volcanoes" and "platypuses are weird" just to watch you somehow get from Pluto and platypuses to how religion is stupid fiction.
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@bsh1
@Ramshutu
I have to wait all the way until next June? What is this bullshit? #BringBackSexyMan
Covering your hand in marmite, and glueing on googly eyes doesn’t count.
Had to google marmite.
Funny though.
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@keithprosser
It's hard to tell what their expressions are behind their masks and sterile layers.but sometimes the sheer coldheartedness of these experiments just really gets to me.It's clearly impossible to study the effects of oxytocin on behaviour other than by using live animals.I'd say lab animals are better off than many animals raised for meat and much better off than battery hens. Cold-hearted is a bit harsh. Certainly animal researchers have to very objective in their experimental designs to achieve good results, but I think few are 'cold-hearted' in the sense of being indifferent to any suffering they cause.
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@disgusted
Which does not change the fact that religion exists outside of fiction.
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@disgusted
Religion exists outside of fiction.
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They would never recuse themselves just because they're tired of dealing with someone or "gave up" on them. That's never a factor. They've always done their duty even if it's onerous.
They're recused from many more cases than Wylted, in the event of trouble -- anyone they're in a debate with, anyone who reports their posts, other names/cases/etc. It's just that in practice he's the one I ongoingly deal with.
bish wtf happened to your sexy man picture.
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@Mharman
Just what I said up there. They recused themselves. Recused =/= gave up on.
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@janesix
It's not enough to just hear about the subjective experiences of others. I need to subjectively experience it for myself.
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@janesix
Well then my answer is I don't know that's not what the brain is. I don't know that we have no free will, either. I can never be certain when there's so much I'm ignorant of.
I just know that nothing I've ever seen or learned has indicated that my consciousness is more than my brain or that I have a nonphysical soul that comes from somewhere else.
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@janesix
Definitely. I'm wondering if it's ever happened outside of fiction.
It would suggest a culture that has a willingness to think of God as inhuman, which is unusual. We never place robots above us, we place them beneath us.
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@janesix
So, something that is not the source of my consciousness/soul but filters my consciousness/soul?
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Now I want to know if there have been any religions that really worship robot gods. That would be interesting.
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@janesix
How do you mean?How do you know the brain isn't just a filter?
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Does anyone else ever feel guilty about the shit we put mice and test animals through? I mean, I get it, science and medicine, but sometimes the sheer coldheartedness of these experiments just really gets to me.
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@janesix
I have a bit of a fascination with neuroscience. Experiments and experts all suggest that your personality is a system of neural connections, and if I could change those neural connections I could change who you are. The idea that shutting off my oxytocin or something could make me stop loving my family is quite horrifying.
We've already experimented with shutting off the oxytocin in mice, I believe. It had the effect of completely turning off the maternal instinct of a mother mouse. She became totally indifferent to the noises of her baby. They reintroduced the oxytocin to her and her maternal instinct turned back on.
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@janesix
The evidence does point that way unfortunately. I don't love it, but it is what it is.
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@janesix
What day do you celebrate it on, and how is that date determined?
My rural community celebrates the harvest at the end of summer, often with a quite awesome harvest fair in the first week of August. But there are tons of different harvest festivals throughout the world. I'm not sure there's any specific connection.
I guess it wouldn't be the first time Christians celebrated a rebranded festival of pagan origin. They definitely celebrate Halloween, though they probably wouldn't recognize the word Samhain anymore than Lughnasadh.
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This is something I always thought would be a problem in any debate environment. People voting based on what they personally agree with, and friends forming debate cliques.
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@keithprosser
Hey, I said first thing.
Then I would want to just pop in and out of that whole three hundred year blank space after the crucifixion, when Planet Christianity was still an uncooled molten rock going through its Late Heavy Bombardment period. Though I probably shouldn't use that analogy, I think the LHB has come under critical scrutiny recently.
But dinosaurs would be, like, the third or fourth thing. I'm not gonna miss out on seeing a goddamn sauropod. They could shake the earth beneath me with one footstep.
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"Alcohol is good" is a value judgment of yours. I mean, I agree it's good, but it's still an opinion being inserted as a premise. Just saying.
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@keithprosser
Honestly, if Doctor Who was real there is only one time and place I'd want to go. I'd love to see what was really going on, because while it's great fun to speculate wildly, it's damn frustrating!
Ikr. I've often watched the show and thought, "Man, first thing I'd say to the Doctor--first century Mediterranean, Judaea Province. Are we there yet?"
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I have no idea why some other atheists enjoy pointing out we're soulless machines so much. "Ha ha! You got no free will, sucka! Your brain is just a machine, God boy! We're all powerless fatherless accidents in a meaningless universe and we're all gonna die and that's it, lights out! Ha ha... ha... heh... eh... oh. Wait."
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Wylted do you know I can actually feel the vibrations through the fucking Force now when it's been too quiet and you start to hunger for a new controversy to incite. "Did you feel that? Like a hundred worlds crying out? Wylted stirs."
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1. Should anti-doxxing protections be extended to nonusers whose identity is not already publicly known?2. Should "for spam" threads be prohibited?3. Should accepted spam debates be prohibited?4. Should there be a public ban log primarily for permanently-banned users and with some information on temporarily-banned users?
1. Does this mean I can't tell a story about my mother assaulting a claw machine at the arcade in 1997, spitting invectives like "give me my daughter's fucking toy" and "tear you apart you goddamn cheatie piece of shit."
4. I really don't think any information on a ban log should be on permanent display, even permabanned users. The log should be for people to whom this is recent and relevant information. Nothing needs to be up there longer than a matter of months.
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One person. On this whole damn site, the mods only recused themselves from one person I'd have to deal with. One. Was it blamonkey or PGA? Was it Mharman or janesix? No. No of course not, it had to be Mr. Negroids-Are-Dumb-I-Fuck-Them-Though.
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@TheRealNihilist
If Sup sent you the friend request a long time ago, it could be buried in your activity notices. And if your friends list is two or more pages, did you make sure to check all pages? They're listed chronologically, so it could be buried there, too.
So what exactly happens when you go to Sup's profile and hit "accept friend request"?
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@Imabench
It might be cool to start up just for fun value, while we wait for the site to properly develop.
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@TheRealNihilist
Hmm. You should get an activities notification whenever someone sends you a friend request. And your Friends section should also show all friend requests accepted and pending.
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@Mopac
Please don't insult my faith by calling this walking sack of Poe's Law a Christian.Please don't make this an arbitrary bout of self righteousness either.
Oh, all right. I take it back and we'll be all serious about it. I suppose calling him anything would be something of an insult to that thing.
Though I thought I already made my real opinion clear on that in post #19.
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@keithprosser
Oh, undoubtedly interesting.
I can't help surmising that Paul was concerned that the Jews had personal experience of Jesus and Jesus' teaching and so would know that Paul was peddling a distorted version. It was imperative for Paul to discredit Jewish criticism of his new religion so he cast them as actual enemies of Jesus.
Yeah, I think that's nailing it, plausibility-wise. He was certainly a strategic propagandist.
Always seems like every spinoff religion's first concern is putting as much distance as possible -- figuratively or literally -- between it and its parent religion. Can't be taken seriously while they're still living under their parents' roof, eh?
If so, in order to promote his 'Pauline religion', Paul single handedly invented anti-semitism.
I'm not armed with enough information to be comfortable going quite that far. Since the Jews were an impoverished minority group even before the time of Paul, I can't discount the possibility that they were subjected to prejudice even before that time. Whether Paul can be credited with popularizing antisemitism is another matter.
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Looks like we got us a real genuwine Christian faith-off going on in here.
All things considered I'll be rooting for Mopac. The winner will be presented with a Holier Than Thou award. It will be a medal, you can wear it around your neck to church.
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@Dr.Franklin
Gotta give him that.
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