Bill Maher Gets a Little Edgy..

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
321

[quote]gorillavanilla wrote:
For the incredible wise people who rely on this forum to educate us what science is and cannot do I suggest you hook up a modem to your typewriter and telegraph us your next message or maybe use smoke signals.
I used to be a bible thumper, can read hebrew, was bar-mitzvah, explored Buddhism, done in-depth debates and dialogue with islamist, and studied some earth religions. I used to quote bible verses and read tons of Calvin, Luther, and many other religious greats.
Is any one saying that gravity cannot be proven? Are we a heliocentric universe? Hmm… seems that science can and has proven some things. Oh yeah, lightening is no longer the finger of god but science has proven it is an electrical discharge in the atmosphere. Oh gosh, golly science can’t prove anything.

Maybe we should all go back to candles instead of lights in our homes and everywhere else. Science undergirds every single contrivance and mechanical device we use as well as all engineering.
Religion however is the greatest home of guided imagination…but maybe now it’s Iron Man 3…oh no! that has a lot of science…[/quote]

Gravity can, indeed, not be proven.

I challenge you do to so.

It can be described, in the most exact language there is, mathematics, it can be demonstrated, but not proven.

You have some work to do, especially on Karl Popper and falsifiablity and maybe some Kuhn on how science really progresses.

Right now, you are not doing your point of view any favors here because you are proving their point for them.

322

And I was of the belief that Thor created thunder and lightning, don’t come here with your silly science and try to disprove it.

323

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]espenl wrote:
Stupid science with all that electricity, medicine and computers and shit.[/quote]

Stupid scientism-ists thinking all that electricity, medicine, computers and shit came just from science and without God creating both the science and the mortal, fallible minds of men to feebly, at best, understand that science.[/quote]

Well, we dont need a God for that, weak vs strong anthropic principle and whatnot, but I would agree that we only see the shadows never the light.

Maybe God is the candle?

324

[quote]espenl wrote:
And I was of the belief that Thor created thunder and lightning, don’t come here with your silly science and try to disprove it.[/quote]

And I was of the belief that the Bible and Qu´ran and the Thora held universal truths regarding human nature and when we departed from those teachings because in our eschatological etatism we thought we knew better we reaped the collosal clusterfuck we are living in now.

“Social sciences” and they belong into parentheses because they soil anything they touch, gets its respect from the success of natural philosophy, or if you will, the hard sciences.

While I will give credit where credit is due, because planes indeed do fly, electricity indeed does power my Turing machine with a von Neumann architecture, I could not possibly care less what some “scientist” in a large variety of fields, in fact, the majority of fields has to say.

I think I am better off with the Bible.

And I am not even religious.

325

God, I hate cheap anti- religiousity.

Lets discard the wisdom of hundreds of generations because some parts of the story look a bit far fetched, shall we?

326

Quibbling about semantics is really just another way to cloud the real issue. The wisdom you speak of in the bible is definitely there however the fantastic stories of miracles and such is added without any proof or mathematics thus making these fantasies rubbish. One chooses to believe in this rubbish for many reasons not unlike the psychological phenomena exhibited at rock concerts or the deification celebrities garner.

327

[quote]gorillavanilla wrote:
Quibbling about semantics is really just another way to cloud the real issue. The wisdom you speak of in the bible is definitely there however the fantastic stories of miracles and such is added without any proof or mathematics thus making these fantasies rubbish. One chooses to believe in this rubbish for many reasons not unlike the psychological phenomena exhibited at rock concerts or the deification celebrities garner. [/quote]

Yet i don’t see many people ranting all over the internet about how rock concerts are monstruous crimes against Reason and should never happened in a truly enlightened society.

328

[quote]kamui wrote:

[quote]gorillavanilla wrote:
Quibbling about semantics is really just another way to cloud the real issue. The wisdom you speak of in the bible is definitely there however the fantastic stories of miracles and such is added without any proof or mathematics thus making these fantasies rubbish. One chooses to believe in this rubbish for many reasons not unlike the psychological phenomena exhibited at rock concerts or the deification celebrities garner. [/quote]

Yet i don’t see many people ranting all over the internet about how rock concerts are monstruous crimes against Reason and should never happened in a truly enlightened society.

[/quote]

“Crimes against Reason”.

I do not even have to look it up to know that some people went to their deaths because of exactly those charges.

329

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]kamui wrote:

[quote]gorillavanilla wrote:
Quibbling about semantics is really just another way to cloud the real issue. The wisdom you speak of in the bible is definitely there however the fantastic stories of miracles and such is added without any proof or mathematics thus making these fantasies rubbish. One chooses to believe in this rubbish for many reasons not unlike the psychological phenomena exhibited at rock concerts or the deification celebrities garner. [/quote]

Yet i don’t see many people ranting all over the internet about how rock concerts are monstruous crimes against Reason and should never happened in a truly enlightened society.

[/quote]

“Crimes against Reason”.

I do not even have to look it up to know that some people went to their deaths because of exactly those charges.

[/quote]

A bunch of them in my country, yes.
Actually, we probably invented this concept. Who said our exports suck ?

330

[quote]kamui wrote:

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]kamui wrote:

[quote]gorillavanilla wrote:
Quibbling about semantics is really just another way to cloud the real issue. The wisdom you speak of in the bible is definitely there however the fantastic stories of miracles and such is added without any proof or mathematics thus making these fantasies rubbish. One chooses to believe in this rubbish for many reasons not unlike the psychological phenomena exhibited at rock concerts or the deification celebrities garner. [/quote]

Yet i don’t see many people ranting all over the internet about how rock concerts are monstruous crimes against Reason and should never happened in a truly enlightened society.

[/quote]

“Crimes against Reason”.

I do not even have to look it up to know that some people went to their deaths because of exactly those charges.

[/quote]

A bunch of them in my country, yes.
Actually, we probably invented this concept. Who said our exports suck ?[/quote]

Well, I think Socrates preceeds you when it comes to that, so your main export remains french kissing and oral sex.

All in all, you could have done worse.

331

Amusingly enough, newtonian physics is a theoretical model explaining the behavior of free-falling bodies.
And, strictly speaking, free-falling bodies doesn’t even exist.

[quote]
Are we a heliocentric universe?[/quote]

Absolutely not.
Helios, our Sun, is certainly not the center of the Universe.

Actually, we don’t even know what is the geometrical shape of the Universe (if it even has a geometrical shape), or how many dimensions it has. We therefore have no mean to determine where its center could be located.

332

[quote]kamui wrote:

Amusingly enough, newtonian physics is a theoretical model explaining the behavior of free-falling bodies.
And, strictly speaking, free-falling bodies doesn’t even exist.

Y U have to be that way?

He wants to BELIEVE so very badly?

Why make fun of him…

The arrogance…

333

[quote]kamui wrote:

*the only thing i have to say about chicken and eggs is : eat both.
[/quote]

Probably the most salient comment in this thread.

334

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]kamui wrote:

Amusingly enough, newtonian physics is a theoretical model explaining the behavior of free-falling bodies.
And, strictly speaking, free-falling bodies doesn’t even exist.

Y U have to be that way?

He wants to BELIEVE so very badly?

Why make fun of him…

The arrogance…[/quote]

Cheap anti-religiousity is exactly that : cheap.
it merely screams “insecurity”.
Doesn’t worth our effort to oppose it.

On the other hand, dogmatic scientism is an hideous hydra. We need to behead it again and again, each time another head grows.

That’s why.
Well, that, and arrogance, obviously.

335

[quote]kamui wrote:

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]kamui wrote:

Amusingly enough, newtonian physics is a theoretical model explaining the behavior of free-falling bodies.
And, strictly speaking, free-falling bodies doesn’t even exist.

Y U have to be that way?

He wants to BELIEVE so very badly?

Why make fun of him…

The arrogance…[/quote]

Cheap anti-religiousity is exactly that : cheap.
it merely screams “insecurity”.
Doesn’t worth our effort to oppose it.

On the other hand, dogmatic scientism is an hideous hydra. We need to behead it again and again, each time another head grows.

That’s why.
Well, that, and arrogance, obviously. [/quote]

Yeah, we need to chop the head off an approach which uses logic to make rational decisions about the world we observe around us. Much better that we promote iron age holy books, that can’t even present a self-consistent story, that play on the credulity and intellectual inferiority of the general populace to control them with absolutes and certainty. BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

There is no dogma in science, no matter how hard religious idiots try to insinuate that there is. Science is always open to falsification, and is always open to new ideas if there is evidence to support the hypothesis. If it is not like this, then it isn’t science. That’s the bottom line.

On the other hand, every single religion claims to be the one true religion, to know their sky-fairy is the cause, to know the mind of this entity, and that that entity is so concerned about them that it intervenes on their behalf. Religion claims to have the truth, absolute truth and absolute explanations for the world around us.

It is so painfully obvious that all religions are human creations, and that they have nothing to do with reality, but the dumb and the weak of our species cling to it like a life raft in the ocean. NO matter how obvious the contradiction, or how plainly incorrect the statements and assumptions are in these mythologies are proved to be by our own scientific endeavours, we are dragged back into the mire of angry deities and petulant martyrs.

It is well beyond time that our species left these inadequate myths behind, and that we condemn them to the pit of “stupid shit we used to believe”. We should let these beliefs vanish into the ether along with other nonsense like Atlantis, chosen races or peoples, the earth being flat, or the existence of fairies and trolls.

336

[quote]drunkpig wrote:

[quote]pittbulll wrote:
I think more important than what Religion has become look at what religion has done , it has been a thorn in the side of civilization since it’s inception
[/quote]

More ultra-myopia from the militant, hypocritical atheist camp. Just in the 20th century, atheism, under the guise of communism, murdered upwards of 20 million people. Some estimates have it as high as 100 million. That’s just in communist Russia alone. How many people the Chi-Coms murdered would push the number twice as high.

Atheists killing in the name of government. Such a peaceful, loving bunch.

To quote Bob Dylan: “You gotta serve somebody”.

[/quote]

Atheism and communism are not the same thing. You shot your own argument in the foot. whoops.

337

[quote]drunkpig wrote:

[quote]gorillavanilla wrote:
To make science a religion one must have faith in science. I believe that having faith would involve believing in something not seen or proved but rather felt or interpreted(imagined). I do not serve or worship any faith in science however I will take the proof science puts forth as being the truth until/unless it is proved incorrect. The masses choose to believe in an omnipotent being but from day one there is not one shred of proof that this being exists(except in the conjured up soul).[/quote]

Science is incapable of putting forth proof. Such proof is the responsibility of men. Look no further than East Anglia University if you want proof that scientists can be as full of lies and deceit as any religion you so boisterously rail against.

Science is a religion to the extent that it’s where people look for answers. The people using it are terminally flawed, yet the followers of science will follow the findings of a scientist as blindly as they followers of your most hated religion.

[/quote]

This is completely dishonest. Science is a method, not a religion. The thing about science is that it works. We know it works, because even morons can use devices which apply the patterns which have been identified and characterised through the use of this method.
You simply can’t argue with that.

The problem you’re having is that you believe in things which are utter bullshit. Your problem is that the things we have evidence for completely contradict your creation myths that you have faith in.

Rather than argue the facts of the matter, an argument in which you would lose devastatingly, you’re happy to trot out logical fallacy after fallacy to make yourself feel better that you’re the one who knows the truth, and that those other clowns wouldn’t know if your sky-daddy was fucking them in the arse.

Sure, there are plenty of stupid people in the world, look at the number who accept that the religion that they were born into is the right one, and look at the number of people who change their mind at some point, but still can’t give up the notion that there is some sort of personal god. What stupid people believe without question is not the fault of a method for explaining the world around us.

338

[quote]cryogen wrote:

Rather than argue the facts of the matter, an argument in which you would lose devastatingly, you’re happy to trot out logical fallacy after fallacy to make yourself feel better that you’re the one who knows the truth, and that those other clowns wouldn’t know if your sky-daddy was fucking them in the arse.[/quote]

I never claimed to have any inside position on whatever ‘truth’ it is you are holding up as so important. I was pointing out hypocrisy. And then, bam! Like manna from heaven, you show up to make my point for me.

339

[quote]cryogen wrote:

[quote]drunkpig wrote:

[quote]pittbulll wrote:
I think more important than what Religion has become look at what religion has done , it has been a thorn in the side of civilization since it’s inception
[/quote]

More ultra-myopia from the militant, hypocritical atheist camp. Just in the 20th century, atheism, under the guise of communism, murdered upwards of 20 million people. Some estimates have it as high as 100 million. That’s just in communist Russia alone. How many people the Chi-Coms murdered would push the number twice as high.

Atheists killing in the name of government. Such a peaceful, loving bunch.

To quote Bob Dylan: “You gotta serve somebody”.

[/quote]

Atheism and communism are not the same thing. You shot your own argument in the foot. whoops.[/quote]

Neither is a square and a rhombus. But I’d bet money you couldn’t tell one from the other.

340

[quote]drunkpig wrote:

[quote]cryogen wrote:

[quote]drunkpig wrote:

[quote]pittbulll wrote:
I think more important than what Religion has become look at what religion has done , it has been a thorn in the side of civilization since it’s inception
[/quote]

More ultra-myopia from the militant, hypocritical atheist camp. Just in the 20th century, atheism, under the guise of communism, murdered upwards of 20 million people. Some estimates have it as high as 100 million. That’s just in communist Russia alone. How many people the Chi-Coms murdered would push the number twice as high.

Atheists killing in the name of government. Such a peaceful, loving bunch.

To quote Bob Dylan: “You gotta serve somebody”.

[/quote]

Atheism and communism are not the same thing. You shot your own argument in the foot. whoops.[/quote]

Neither is a square and a rhombus. But I’d bet money you couldn’t tell one from the other.
[/quote]

You too are an atheist. Think about it, you just don’t have the stones to take the logic and apply it to all gods.