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Spite

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Posts posted by Spite

  1. offended.jpg

    Hate to post this stupid picture but sometimes it's damned relevant. If you get mad because someone "insults the military" or "insults your religious beliefs" or "insults your politics" then debate with them, don't just whine that you're offended and demand they're banned.

     

    If they insulted you personally based on your race, sexuality or gender that's different. But basically they said something that disagrees with your politics.

     

    Maybe someone on this forum lost their whole family when American bombs hit their house in Vietnam or Iraq and they hate the entire US military and think they're a bunch of murdering scum. You going to ban them too for disagreeing with you? Grow up.

    • Upvote 3
  2. Yeah, there have been many Christian scientists. That doesn't change the story of Genesis. Well, maybe if your converting from Jew to Christian. But other than that, the story doesn't change because a few people learned something.

    Yeh and the Jewish creation myth, like all creation myths, was based on the very limited understanding of people who were basically at the banging rocks together level of technology. It was then passed down orally for a hundred generations before it was finally written down. It's not a factual story. Genesis is actually probably an amalgamation of old Jewish stories with a moral lesson, kind of like Aesop's fables. I don't "believe" these stories to be "true" - in other words factual. But that doesn't mean they don't have value. The stories of the tree of knowledge and Cain&Abel are as much part of the moral and philosophical backdrop to Western civilisation as Pandoras Box or the Illiad.

     

    In other words, creationism is stupid. Catholic Priest-Scientists have done more to advance scientific knowledge than most people are even vaguely aware of. Creation stories are important moral stories and are even quasi historical in some cases but they aren't meant to be taken as fact as they are the result of a much more primitive society attempting to interpret creation through a weak understanding of reality. No doubt our descendents will laugh at our own understanding of physics in the same way.

  3. The fact that good and evil are social constructs (they're not, they're moral imperatives which is different but whatever) is irrelevant. Good and evil exist as tangibly as anything else and effect not only our whole society but the physical world we live in. Dismissing them on the basis that their definition is intellectual not empirical is silly.

     

    @BB belief or non belief in anything which is non-tangible is fundamentally an issue of experience. A fair comparison which far more people can relate to perhaps is love. Most people believe it exists sure, and many don't believe in a deity. But the point is that until you've experienced love, your belief in it is second hand.

     

    And for clarity I mean romantic love.

     

    With all these non-tangible, non-measurable things there's an argument from proof (which is borderline impossible) and then an argument from logic. In other words to say things like "there's no evidence for the flood or noah so the bible is therefore bullshit". This Ofc has problems of its own.

     

    Anyway just because a lot of religious people are idiots, it doesn't undermine religion. Plenty of atheists are uninformed idiots too.

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  4. If you're talking sex and not gender, which obviously is something different and to a certain extent a social construct, the ability to be impregnated and give birth is what defines the "female". What defines the "male" is the ability to provide the sperm to fertilise the female. If one or both of these functions is contained within one being, they're a Hermaphrodite.

     

    Bearing in mind that gender isn't related to sexual organs except in the broadest sense that social constructs originate in biological necessity, what you're proposing is that in future we'll become a nation of hermaphrodites, in which case terms such as "male" and "female" will purely be gender related, and sexual organs will be shared by all.

     

    This would involve some pretty heavy genetic engineering, since the majority of what makes women's reproductive systems work is not just organs, or the primary organ anyway, but all the various hormone producing organs and the general balance of the body. Since men have 8 times the testosterone levels that women do, and women require oestrogens for their reproductive system to function properly, the only way I could see it working is if it were possible to cycle between a predominantly male and predominantly female functionality at will, perhaps over a period of a year or two. Obviously this would have physical external changes too- oestrogens for example can cause breast growth, and testosterone causes body hair growth and increases muscle and bone density.

     

    Imagine then a world of hermaphrodites who father and mother children, swinging between the two at will. 

     

    I don't take any credit for this, it's a scifi theory as old as science and understanding of sexuality. But still a fun concept.

     

    Pregnant men... pfff

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  5. If I did it was not deliberate, but surely the problem of evil is something to consider, at least when discussing the notion of an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent Abrahamic god.

     

    Not really, it's sophistry and the ancient greeks demolished the argument long before Jesus appeared on the scene. An omnipotent being and sentient life can co-exist, but only with the existence of evil. That's pretty much the end of the argument. By taking away our ability to choose evil, an omnipotent God would also cut away the part of us which makes us human, sentient, however you want to call it. Similarly if God appeared in the sky to poke his finger into every erupting volcano or put down ever disease, our world would be nothing more than a giant doll house full of toys, and we wouldn't be people we'd be possessions. If we were sentient that would be an even crueller fate.

     

    Pointing at children dying of AIDS and saying "God must be evil" is just an appeal to emotion, argumentum ad passiones and is a logical fallacy.

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  6. Big Brother, I understand you get worked up about this stuff but I hope you didn't just try to use the problem of evil as a valid argument about God :P

     

    More importantly... DIO VULT!

  7. Spite, do you actually speak for anyone other than yourself? Because you sound like a very bad looser right now, and to be honest I don't think you have anything to boast about on a personal level. It just sounds petty/childish and kind of damages the image of Mensa HQ when you talk like that.

     

    I use valid arguments and logic covered in rough language. You use ad hominem arguments and unsubstantiated statements covered in sugar coated language. Check this pyramid out: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.svg

    No, you just make personal, belligerent, boastful comments which don't impress anyone, including your own government. It makes you look petty as I said. So does "no you" which is basically what this post is.

  8. Ben, do you actually speak for anyone other than yourself? Because you sound like a very bad winner right now, and to be honest I don't think you have anything to boast about on a personal level. It just sounds petty/childish and kind of damages the image of VE when you talk like that.

  9. lol at the lot of you who think 50m are "unjust reps" for an "i'm bored, so war" cb. Don't get me wrong, I actually admire the cb, but don't act all shocked and chagrined when you end up losing said war and the opposing party would like a small pittance of money and resources.

    Where is anyone in mensa complaining about a paltry fifty million?

  10. Re: the sanctimonious attitude towards CB

     

    I think that although there was bad feeling towards the guardian sphere, there was definitely an element of "kick em whilst they're down". A lot of alliances that wouldn't normally dare get involved did once it was apparent they'd have huge numerical superiority :P

     

    By the way guys today is whale day!

     

    Incoming mensa dollars!

    • Upvote 2
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