danielsangeo

Atheism is just the lack of belief in deities (lack of theism). Anything more than that, even for self-admitted atheists, is something beyond atheism. If you "believe there's no god", that's not atheism. If you "believe in science", that's not atheism. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in deities. End of story. Atheists, on the other hand, have a wide and varied belief structure about many different topics and have many different philosophies. A Ouija board is simply an ideomotor response from those touching the planchette. They may believe that they're not moving the planchette and will insist that they're not moving it, but they are. Me or the other Dan?

The other function of Ouija boards is props for horror movies bringing about special effects makeup on human beings that play demons and sometimes buckets of red-colored Karo syrup to simulate blood done to make a bunch of cash.

Pepsi is best, no matter what you saying.

^that Atheism isn't philosophically redundant because it's not a philosophy.

I apologize for going backwards a bit (I got busy with other stuff!) because I want to touch on this. So far, so good. Whoa...hold up. What? This is "Argument from Ignorance"....combined with a little misrepresentation. EDIT: Expanding on this part a lot more: It's not quite as random as you are led to believe by "creationalists". Sure, the mutations and such are random, but the survival and propagation of "good" or "neutral" mutations and elimination of deleterious mutations are reliant on most-assuredly NON-RANDOM sources....ie: Natural selection. Think about it this way, for a completely NON-organic example: A bar magnet has a "north" and "south" side. The "north" side is attracted to the "south" side of another magnet and repulsed by the "north" side. Natural attractors and repulsors. So, take a bunch of bar magnets and put them in a bag. Shake the bag up and down, then pour out the contents. Completely "random", right? But then, why are so many magnets sticking to each other, every single one that sticks to the other is connected north-south. Because of the natural attractors and repulsors inherent in a bar magnet. Life is similar. Complexity can come from simple removal of "bad code" and duplication/mutation of "good/neutral code". Eventually, complexity from simplicity. For example, let's take the English alphabet as an analogy. It's a collection of 26 letters. Letters can attach to each other to form "words". However, these 'words' may or may not survive the natural selection process. Before a word can even survive to birth (assuming that words are living things), the following rules must be in place: 1. Words must have a vowel (AEIOU and perhaps sometimes W and Y) in them to survive. 2. The letter Q and the letter U naturally attract one another. 3. More than two letters of a single kind cannot attach together (In other words, you can't have three Ls together). So, let's take a group of letters, throw them on the floor, and let them arrange haphazardly. KJFEF EOQUYE PFOW FIWOPER FKQUOARFJ Nothing, right? But they are 'born', live, and die....without finding a suitable mate and cannot procreate. So, let's keep doing this hundreds of thousands of times. Eventually, you'll get something like: KEJF PRWEJQUOT ROAD PFR A PRETEXT Suddenly, there are three words that procreate. Three other words die without being able to procreate. We now have a surviving group of organisms: ROAD A PRETEXT. These words survive and thrive. Let's keep doing that. Hundreds of thousands of throws later, with ROAD, A, and PRETEXT surviving with each throw. Eventually more words begin popping up because these words are attractive to other words...such as two ROADs and two PRETEXTs getting it on. And new words are popping up. CAT, BLOCK, CAN, SPEAKER, QUEEN. And so forth. Finally, something happens. CAN mutates and its genetic code duplicates. It is now CANCAN. It survives because it's a word, so in each of the subsequent throws, CANCAN continues to survive. Later, CANCAN mutates again, two of the letters changing into other letters, and one letter dropping off. Now CANCAN produces CANDY. But, the word CAN also continues to survive (The CANCAN/CANDY mutation doesn't eliminate the parent organism CAN). See where I'm going with this? Now, let's say that different words become attracted to each other and they produce two word combinations. FIRE TRUCK. GARDEN HOSE. Words of one type (which we'll call "adjectives") are attracted to words of another type (which we'll call "nouns"). BLUE BALL. LOUD NOISE. WHITE HOUSE. And so on. And now these word groups get together with other word groups, such as a type of word we'll call a "verb". Now we have "A BLUE BALL ROLLS DOWN HILL". Suddenly, these groups of words are what we'll call a "sentence". And sentences like to get together and form multi-sentence groups that we'll call a "paragraph". And so on. And so on. Until English language books are being created. From single group of 26 letters with natural attractors/repulsors. (Now, this is oversimplified and life is a bit different, but you get the general idea.) Yup. Why not? No, it's not. As for that Satan webpage, red on black is hard on the eyes but I red (hehe) some of it.... I'm not sure how this is different from a fiction book, to be honest. Except fiction books are generally better written...

Just because the coccyx still does something doesn't mean that it's not evidence of a tail. Remember, things just don't "turn on" or "turn off" simply because something is "being created" or "is vanishing". Everything still has a use for that particular creature as it's vanishing or coming into being. Vestigial =/= Useless But, I am biased and I admit it. I am biased to facts and evidence. It's going to take a lot to make me believe otherwise. About as much as what made me believe in this in the first place.

Maybe they shouldn't start over with a shorter sentence, it takes a lot more dakka to derka things.

Actually, mine is an opinion supported not only by most scientists, but also evidence. We can watch the morphology of certain species change throughout the fossil record (from older fossils to newer fossils) and can deduce that one leads to another. And before anyone complains about morphological observations (that is, looking at how things are shaped), let me remind you that YOU can deduce certain things from morphological observations. For example, what animal is this? http://www.xmission.com/~emailbox/images/208.jpg I'm sure that everyone knows what that is. And, there you go. Understanding an animal via its morphology. Just as those evil "evilutionists" do. This is how they get evidence of evolution.

A creationist believes that God (or some other intelligent force) created all the animals on Earth as they are today and, therefore, no evolution. I would love for one of these folks to explain the coccyx.

I'd love to hear the answers to these questions.

Maybe you shouldn't start over with a shorter sentence, it takes a lot more steroids to shrink things.

I'm straight. If you're gay, that's fine with me. If you're bi, that's fine with me. If you're asexual, that's fine with me. If you try to hit on me, I'll say "thanks, but no thanks" because I'm only interested in genetic girls. If you try to force yourself on me, then you have a problem; I don't care if you're male or female, gay, bi, or straight. Don't do it.

We use so-called 'weak breeding analogies' because the actual answer might not be as easily understandable. If you get traits from your mother and father, but you're different from either of them singularly, then that's evidence for evolution. We have provided evidence for speciation, as well. Altered by man or not, that's STILL EVIDENCE. Man is just another driving force beyond other natural elements such as geographical shifts or environmental necessities. Why does the blind cave tetra have eyes when it's an embryo but it dies out when it grows up, leaving the fish blind? It doesn't need eyes to see because they are born, grow, live, and die in a pitch black cave. Why do humans still have vestigial tails? Why is the human eye INSIDE OUT? Why can't a creationist ever answer these questions?

I can't vote in the poll because it doesn't have "both". Religion has been a major driver in the formation of our current modern society but is that a good thing or a bad thing? I believe that we could've been further along if it weren't for the anti-progress themes coming out of major portions of religious dogma. I mean, we're still fighting over who can have sex with who for cripes' sake! Religion has a tendency to try to worm its way into government when they should be separate; religion should stay out of government and government should stay out of religion. Now, I'm not saying that religion is wholly bad. There are still people that claim that they'd be no more than a vicious brute without religion. I'm glad that religion is there to keep these people from harming others, though I find it very sad. HOWEVER, religion also is used to justify horrific atrocities, whether it's a mother drowning her child in a bathtub because "God told her to" to flying planes into buildings of innocent people to starting wars because "God told me to". Now, these people would probably find other reasons to do such, but I've been in conversations with people that state, and I quote: "I have nothing against gay people, but God said no." Are they lying? Do they actually have a problem with gay people and they're blaming God for it? Or, is it because God supposedly said so that they don't want their wishes to become law, as it were? I don't know. On the good hand, though, religion has made a lot of beautiful structures and has provided a lot of charitable help, which is a good thing, though I don't really see a need for it to have a religious element, but I do recognize their work. I believe religion is both good and bad, which is why I can't vote in the poll as it currently stands. I believe that there will be a time, however, that religion will become a quaint notion and that secularism will be the name of the game. But I could be wrong.

If the sperm and egg separately/zygote that hasn't implanted is irrelevant, then the embryo and fetus are irrelevant to the birthed baby. I don't avoid acknowledging it, but you are avoiding acknowledging that, WITHOUT THE SPERM AND OVUM, YOU WON'T HAVE EMBRYO/FETUS. The embryo and fetus aren't babies if the sperm/ova aren't embryos. They are all stages of human development but you want to separate the sperm/ova for some reason and you're using the "they're combined" as an excuse. "It's already made" is irrelevant because it's not been born yet. I know that the embryo/fetus is growing and developing. Why do you suggest that I don't?

What I'm saying is that, if a sperm and egg were allowed to conjoin, then a zygote (human/baby) would result. The arguments against abortion state that, if allowed, a baby would result. I'm saying that arguments against abortion are the same as arguments against contraception....or arguments against "wasting sperm" (see: ). I think all the arguments against abortion are equally silly. And then equating abortion to murder is just disgusting.

Atheism is the lack of belief in deities. Atheists are those those that don't believe in deities. If you "don't believe in beliefs", that's something different from atheism because atheism deals strictly with the belief in deities (and not having said belief). You're right that it might seem a bit excessive to have a word for people who don't believe (as people who aren't lawyers) but you have to understand that theism is a deeply ingrained thing far beyond someone's chosen profession. This is about worldview itself. And even that wouldn't be sufficient if there weren't a campaign of proselytization inherent in many religions. I have been told, flat out, that I really DO believe in God and that I'm just lying when I say that I don't. I have been told, flat out, that I am going to suffer greatly if I don't believe. I have been told, flat out, that I am an immoral sonofabitch because I don't believe. I have been told, flat out, that I hate the God that I don't even believe exists. I have been told, flat out, that Christianity is the way to go and that America and her laws should be Christian-based, so no gay marriage, no naughty words on TV, nothing that would upset the delicate sensibilities of the poor, persecuted Christians that oppress anyone that they don't agree with. It is this really aggressive smear campaign against atheists (or other non-Christians) (at least in the United States) that have created the atheist movement and what is, in my opinion, harming many religions from Christianity to Islam. You don't hear many attacks on Judaism or Buddhism from atheists and there's a gigantic, elephant-in-the-room reason for this: They don't generally proselytize. If this proselytizing didn't happen, you probably would not even know the term "atheist" or would only be vaguely aware of the existence of the word.

Contraception stops the natural progression of sperm and egg to zygote. If killing a zygote is the same as killing a baby, then surely, contraception is murder.

If it isn't akin to, say, organs in the body, then so is sperm/ova and it isn't right to kill them. How dependent they are on joining is irrelevant in determining whether it is morally right to kill them. Because, y'know, without both working in concert, a "growing, developing entity" wouldn't exist.

It's possible that, by the end of Freeman's Mind (o noes!), Gordon will be so fed up with things that he decides to accept G-Man's offer to bring a sense of stability back to his chaotic life (after being on Xen for so long and fighting Nihilanth, y'know). Finally, a human being again! Then he wakes up on a train to City 17.

Just to do a bit of shameful self-promotion, I have transcribed and uploaded the subtitles for this part to the Subtitles forum.

For those that don't believe in God because they've never heard of Him, or don't believe in any gods because they've never heard of the concept are still atheists because they don't believe in gods. They are also agnostic because they don't know.

He could mention the scope when he actually decides to use the weapon. I snickered at his aggravation that it was Xylazine and not something he could use. Especially after the cage fell into the water. And that damned barnacle.

No I believe properly in greek it would be apolytheism. A doesn't mean lack of it means without in ancient greek. So atheism is actually "Belief without God" Actually, if "a" means 'without', then it's "without belief in god". A-theism. A, without. theism, belief in god. Actually, it would be "without belief in many gods". The suffiix "ism" is applied to "theos", not 'a'. Aismthe? That sounds weird in my mouth.

It might be a "growing, developing entity" but it isn't "its own". It's still is a part of the mother. If life only begins at conception, then sperm and ova aren't alive.