danielsangeo

Of course we do, but more on that next: Survival instinct != caring about others besides ourselves. We have the ability to reason, and thus are able to percieve morality. Going beyond our base instincts of simply doing what feels good at the time we do it, thinking about consequences of our actions and actually caring about them, that is part of morality. It is an inescapable part of reasoning, and making decisions beyond our base instincts. To say that morality itself is contrary to our best interests in any capacity is a complete logical fallacy. Pardon for a moment, but why do you assume that "our base instincts" are "doing what feels good at the time"? Why can't "caring for others" and "thinking about consequences" also be "base instincts"? I'm not saying that morality itself is contrary to our best interests. In fact, I think morality is what we use to explain our instincts. We're told, time and again, though, that "instincts" are somehow bad; that "instincts" are simply "doing what feels good at the time". I don't buy this. At all. As for those that feel no guilt for stealing, et al, I believe that this is a mutation of sorts (look out! I'm delving into evolution!) and these people do not have that basic instinct of empathy.

I'm sorry, but the "act of not believing" is not an act. It's "not acting". Once again, you don't have a hobby of not collecting stamps. Yes, you can have other "hobbies" or "jobs" ("believing in extraterrestrials" for example) but not believing in God/deities is the same as not collecting stamps. It's not believing. It's not a hobby. I don't believe with a certainty. I don't believe at all. This isn't the same thing as not knowing the subject matter. A pedestrian isn't driving but knows what driving is.

FUCK YOU, FISH! I'm working on the English subtitles for this episode now.

Well, Personally I'm straight, and I have no problem with straights as long as they don't act out in public and make it feel awkward to other people in public.

The very concept that sex is immoral or bad and should be kept hidden lest we warp our children's fragile little minds is what leads, indirectly, to abortion (sex is a bad thing and if you partake in it, you should hide it from your friends and your family...and definitely, your family should never broach the subject of sex because our precious snowflakes need to be kept pure). No one here is saying that but that's the mantra, at least in the United States. And, no, I'm not suggesting that education will "numb" us from the facts of abortion. In fact, education will teach us about what happens in abortion....and also cut down on the number of unplanned/unwanted pregnancies. Less unwanted pregnancies = less abortions. Is this a bad thing? And, no, we don't care about not killing others because of morality. We do it because it's a survival instinct and we create morals around this instinct. But instincts are supposed to be suppressed, am I right? It's what separates us from the beasts, right? Or am I way off base?

It's smarter to not kill each other because, doing so, will eventually doom our species. However, the death of potential members of the species (sperm, embryos, fetuses) will not doom our species because the vast majority of such A) Already die naturally, B) Even with abortion, the birth rate is going up and C) Even if the birth rate goes down, we'll eventually stabilize. If you don't like abortion, there is a great tool available to squelch a lot of it: Education. Also, stop with this "sex is immoral" crap. Sex is a healthy part of the human race. On TV, you can show horrific death and destruction but show a boobie and you'll pay! How stupid is this? I can turn on a TV any weeknight and see dead bodies galore but not a single schlong. What is this? Why is sex worse than murder?

So, for adults, what do you think should be the maximum age gap? 5 years? 10 years? 20 years?

I wasn't going to post this, ThatSmartGuy, but you've forced me into it:

For one thing, in the United States, it's illegal for tax money to be used for abortions. For the other thing, "second human life" is a bit vague at that point and arbitrarily assigned.

Bjossi: ^that Black Mesa is still being worked on and if you research the forums, you'll find the news you seek. And the Wiki is updated pretty regularly with new news or media. For all the doubters, check the developers' Steam Community accounts and see how long they've worked in the Source SDK this week.

I don't agree with the assertion that the only way not to have belief is to not know. There are many things that I know that I don't believe in.....such as magic. I don't believe in magic but I know what it is. I see belief as an activity, an action that one can either do or not. Either you believe in God or you don't. Either you believe in ghosts or you don't. Either you believe in flying saucers or you don't. You know what all these things are but I disagree with the assertion that you "either you believe in flying saucers or you believe that flying sauces don't exist". I just find it as odd as saying that I have a hobby of not collecting stamps.

So, there's a point-and-click game that came out back when CD-ROM games were first coming out. It's called Total Distortion. In it, you star as an up-and-coming rock entrepreneur in a pseudo-futuristic....place. You have a central base where you sleep (sleeping activates the dreaming "mini-game" where if you have a "nightmare", it drains your mental energy) and you work on producing music videos for the music industry based on adventures outside your base. Your base has stock music and video clips which you can put together into a music video in order to sell to the industry, but the big bucks come from your adventures outside the base. Outside your base is this....realm....filled with enemies known as "Guitar Warriors". These are robots that challenge you to a "rock battle". That is, they strum their electric guitar, sending out a wave of colored energy and you have to send out a blocking wave of colored energy from your electric guitar. You have to battle this way against the guitar warriors until you kill them. While out in this "realm", you can recruit singers and other musicians to produce a "bonzai" music video. In order to beat the game, you have to produce a music video worth $1 million and sell it so that you have enough money to take your base (which is actually a rocket ship) and blast off back to Earth. A strange game. I never beat it. But I got intimately aware with the game over music, You Are Dead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6iT-lMgfAI

I don't think "freethinker" and "agnostic" are exclusive nor do I believe that "atheist" is exclusive from freethinker an agnostic. I'm also a male. I'm also what most would consider "white" or "caucasian" (note the small "c"). I'm also a liberal, ideologically. I'm also a fan of pepperoni pizza. None of these things are mutually exclusive from each other and I can have them all without a bit of cognitive dissonance. As for the "ladder ending" at crushed stone, why? Why not ask what it's made of? If you don't know, say "I don't know". I don't understand the need to come up with some sort of fanciful story behind it except for entertainment purposes or as a means to come up with a test for its existence. But maybe I just have too much common sense.

Life is what you make of it. If I die an agnostic, I'm fine with not knowing certain things. In fact, I think agnosticism is stronger because it's not arrogant. We can't know everything in our short lifespans. Also, yes, bricks on a house does automatically suggest smallest indivisible particle. What are bricks made of? Crushed stone. What is crushed stone made of? What is that made of? What is THAT made of? And so on.

If I may intrude here, the word "Chubut Province" activates the immature giggling section of my brain. Okay, sorry to interrupt. Carry on.

Wait a second. The people in Aristotle's time didn't know that buildings were made from bricks?! As for philosophy, what's wrong with the concept of "I don't know"?

Ted Haggard is a priest from the United States that was extremely homophobic, like fire and brimstone homophobic, but then was later caught having a sexual affair on his wife with another man, who was his masseuse/escort, and from whom he was buying crystal meth.

Listened to it several times and that is, indeed, what Mr. Scott was saying. The context here is that "Dr. Freeman" was assuming that he'd see a drummer (player of the drums) practicing (banging on said drums) and that this drummer wasn't too good at it ("shitty"). "I was expecting some shitty drummer practicing" then he adds "or" and continues on with Line 152.

I believe that this conjectural "smallest possible particle" being "indivisible" is just plain common sense and probably was such in Aristotle's time. They, like us, however, don't know what this conjectural "particle" is. For example, go way back to Aristotle. You have a building. The building is made of bricks (smaller "particles"). The bricks are made of crushed rocks (smaller particles). If this is all the information that they had at the time, then they have evidence that things (buildings) are made of smaller things (bricks) which are, in turn, made from even smaller things (crushed rocks). It's not rocket surgery.

News flash: Just because something hasn't been proven yet doesn't mean it will never be. You said so yourself. As for deities, I see no evidence whatsoever for them. As for smallest particles, we have evidence that atoms are made up of smaller particles, which are made up of smaller particles, which are, evidently, made up of smaller particles. None of this is getting us anywhere closer to evidence for deities, though. As for the beginning of the Earth, here's a math equation: (gravity + dust) * time = planet.

I read it and I read Doom Shepard's response to your response on speciation. I don't have anything else to add on that unless you do because what Doom stated was accurate.

ThatSmartGuy: You've gone from complaining about "evolution" to speciation. We have evidence of speciation. I've posted evidence of speciation in this thread. Oh, and man didn't evolve from apes as you're thinking. Apes and man evolved from a common (non-ape) ancestor.

Axle: Sorry! ThatSmartGuy: I don't really know how to respond to that. Sounds like a bunch of hooey to me. As for disproving evolution as fact, I'm sorry, but that's impossible. Unless every single child is identical to their parents and their parents are identical to their parents, that would be the only way to disprove evolution. Since we know, for a fact, that children are not identical (clones) of their parents, then evolution is fact. The only other way to disprove evolution is to change the definition of evolution.

So, if God was "always there", why can't the universe be "always there"?

Love is an affection or attraction to a specific thing. As for "formula" about God/Creator, what "formula"? What "calculating"? I asked a question about where God/Creator came from if "something" can't come from "nothing". I don't have to do a thing but read the answer to that question and perhaps ask for clarification afterwards.