Bay 12 Games Forum

Dude! We could fulfill rule 34 for magma with DF!

Just a question:
Don't those surgical mouth masks people wear, like the Chinese did during the SARS thing, do nothing? I could have sworn they were to keep the germs on the doctor's breath from getting on the patient, not the other way around. They're becoming fashionable where I am.

If one have prior experience of similar matters, then there are any number of method that may be used to assume the nature of something, be it the virtue of an artwork, its subject, or the contents of a box. If all that there was in my world, was myself, two boxes, the inability to determine the contents of one box, and the need to provide an assessment of that content. Then, reluctantly, due to my hatred of assumptions, I would inspect the one box, and then assume that the other, as it is also a container, is identical in all aspects that cannot be verified. So god is a human who has no detectable contact with other humans, so is probably insane by now, if not from the loneliness then from the frustration of nobody hearing them properly...

But dropping the weak metaphors for a moment. In order for it to have any significance a religion must have aspects. Be these demands, observations, histories, descriptions, or whatever, there will be aspects. Aspects which can be compared to similar aspects and assessed for viability. So you have a book that says something happened several thousand years ago. There are methodical investigations of the past, religious evidence can be compared to other forms of evidence to determine if it is an effective source of information.
Laws about how to live, well that is easy enough, it can be compared to the myriad of laws that exist, or simply compared to life, does it have any glaring flaws?

I wasn't really meaning that for any religious texts. The boxes: One is everything we know and are capable of. The other box is inaccessible due to our technical limitations and is quite beyond us. Anything that even applies in the first box may not in the next box, whatever higher planes of existence or heavens it may be in. You can't assume anything from the first box to be in the second.

In some legal systems, there is a concept that the accused is not considered to have committed a crime until they have been legally proven to have done so. Of course the public at large are free to come to such a conclusion after a 30 second television news broadcast...
If you want credibility, then you should only assume that something is true after demonstrating that it is, at least, the most probable explanation, or decided that there are insufficient resources(mostly time) to reach a satisfactory conclusion. But obviously, there is nothing stopping you from believing your favourite scenario...

I'm not quite sure if that's commentary, agreement, disagreement, or a mix. Your first sentence could have been done in "innocent until proven guilty". Shorter and more direct please?

If you want someone to present their definitions, and maintain them, then I suggest you ask them to do so, with as little critique as you are able.

No, I wanted him muddled so I can propose to him what I did.

The whole reason I'm posting this is because there is a distinct lack of the psychological and sociological side of the discussion in this thread.

Fine. I'll cut to the fun part. I just wanted to make him a bit more pissy.

Sordid, you agree with the claim that belief without evidence and rejection without evidence are both wrong, yes? You already agreed to the several times for both halves of that. You say this is 'atheist' for 'disbelieving' because that does not reject it (while when refusing to believe something you are inherently rejecting it anyway), yes (ignoring my parenthetical sarcastic comments)? Lets ignore semantic argument, and look at the heart of what you are saying instead (forget the word "disbelieve"). You are using your "disbelief" as neither belief nor disbelief (or "refusal" as you like it) because you cannot believe or reject without evidence as you already called that childish or agreed to it as such. You merely set belief and refusal aside (though your use of "disbelief" sounds like it leans strongly towards refuse) but lets have it as you claim "disbelief" is. In which, you nod some approval that there is uncertainty for both accept and reject and so you've forged a sort of middle ground (which you call this by the name of the same grounds people outright refuse God under and use a word strongly associated with reject, both ideas of which you called childish). You accept that, yes (while still ignoring all my sarcasm in parenthesis)?

If that really is the case and you did not lie before, then you do believe you cannot prove or disprove God, yes?

I propose to you that you are in fact not an atheist, but simply associate yourself as such. I propose that you are in fact, an agnostic, not an atheist. Pick any definition you like off that page. More than one suits you.

Why do people always think that following one religion over another would get you into hell if it turned out that one religion was right and you were wrong?  If you look at most religions, they do, by and large, say most of the same things, when they are not doing crazy things like banning broccoli or shrimp.  "Don't steal."  "Do not kill other humans."  "Help those who are in need."  Just those three alone can be found in many religions world over.

That. I never understood what all the worry was about.

Where do you get that idea?

Planes of movement, yes. Something with movement on an extra dimension compared to us could never reveal itself by never existing at the same 4th dimensional frame as us. It is inevitable because I believe that we are not the only life to have occurred, and while even if you think the 3 levels of reality we can perceive are a lot, there's a ton more for life to occur on. Intelligence will come about with inherently much greater abilities than ours. Possibly even ones that can chose to move through time unlike us stuck on a rail. They would find us easily. They would be gods to us.

Quote from: ¿ on May 01, 2009, 04:01:11 pm

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The ole claim that something doesn't exist without evidence is childish bullshit as well.

Oh absolutely, I couldn't agree more. So it's a good thing nobody here is saying that, isn't it?

Then quit impressing it on people like there's a gun pointed at your head. Seriously. You're worse than I am on a bad day.

Quote from: ¿ on May 01, 2009, 04:01:11 pm

He believes there is no absolute knowledge on the particular subject of religion, so everyone should stop trying to be asses. The tools at hand for the subject are completely irrelevant. It's like trying to prove or disprove art by using a calculator.

No it isn't, because there's nothing to disprove about art, it doesn't make any claims about the world. Religions, on the other hand, do.

It is because the calculator is unrelated to art. If I handed you two boxes and told you to prove the contents of the other box by merely observing what was in the first, could you? Everything we have is irrelevant outside of our box.

Quote from: ¿ on May 01, 2009, 04:01:11 pm

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Idiom is saying anyone to claim anything about fourth fucking continent of the seventh planet from the star nearest us a few galaxies over is childish. Like trying to claim anything about santa. Can you disprove it was santa, Mr Wiggles, if you can't even come up with solid evidence to begin with?

Which is exactly why any such claims should be disbelieved by default and evidence demanded. Replace "continent of the blah blah blah" with "god" and you get atheism.

No. You do not disbelieve either. Right there at the bolded, your are contradicting what you claim atheism to be. So it's a good thing nobody here is saying that, isn't it?

Isn't it?

Now I have to say it. There is nothing to believe OR disbelieve.

You have a definition of "atheist" worthy of a politician's doing. You are making the definition of atheism to be something it's not. You are making what is EXCLUSIVELY for people who do NOT have a solid belief AND a disbelief and claiming that includes people who have NEITHER a solid belief NOR a solid disbelief.

See this poll:
Is there a God?
A) Yes. Theist.
B) No. A-(as in not)-thesit.
C) I don't know. Neither.

Quote from: ¿ on May 01, 2009, 04:01:11 pm

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Oh, and guess what, everyone's an atheist.

Damn it, people doing that again. You do not represent all atheists. There is no religion out there besides my current set of belief that I do not outright believe to be wrong, which isn't even in your definition of 'simple lack of belief' atheism. But I do happen to be an avegetarian according to you.

I am sorry, but you're simply going to have to at least try to be coherent if we are to have an intelligent conversation. Perhaps you would understand my statement better if you bothered to read the rest of it that you ever so conveniently failed to quote. Here, I'll even copypaste it into this post for you so you don't have to go looking for it:
The only difference is which gods we disbelieve in. Believe in Yahweh? Atheist towards Zeus, Thor, and all the others. Unless of course you believe in all the gods humanity has managed to invent, as well as all the conceivable and inconceivable gods that might exist. At which point I'd guess your head would explode.

I am sorry, but you're simply going to have to at least try to be coherent and not self contradictory if we are to have an intelligent conversation. Perhaps you would understand my statement better if you bothered to read the rest of it that you ever so conveniently failed to bother with:

outright believe to be wrong, which isn't even in your definition of 'simple lack of belief' atheism.

edit:
stupid disappearing quote tags.

Using the mouse for viewing tiles and selecting items and people is all I'd ever use it for. The menus should NOT require a mouse. The hotkeys are wicked fast with now. Jiri's mockup is beautiful, but the menus look slow to use.

I can't use my favorite letter?

Damn. Fuck. Crap. *hit.

You've cut away a quarter of my vocabulary now.