Eedo Baba

Then I think you misunderstand religious people greatly. I'm not trying to find a meaning, since through religion I have already found a meaning. Besides, I only spoke for myself. Personally I don't understand the reason to NOT search for a purpose. For me, a life without purpose is unacceptable. Unacceptable? Meaning it can't happen? Who are you to say that? Just because you want life to have a purpose, it has one? I try to understand my own dispositions and move past the self. Humans, including myself, are predisposed to try to find meaning in everything. As a philosopher, I try to move past this false disposition.

If the nature of reality is incomprehensible (which I'll agree that it is), then how are you so certain it's subjective. I wasn't saying that reality is objective, I was saying that claiming it is subjective goes against it's incomprehensibility. Also, who says there needs to be a "Why"? Religious minded people seem to think that life must have some purpose, when we have no tangible reason to think that it does. I'm not some sort of Nihlist, but it annoys me when people try so hard to find meaning when there very possibly could be nothing there.

That's an excuse for not understanding reality.

Exactly. Why wouldn't they. Science advances as we learn more about the universe. Unlike religion which stubbornly contradicts everything we know about science. Uh, no. WW2 was caused by Hitler. Fascism is a system of politics. Neo-Nazis, once again, caused by Hitler. "Caucasian dominance theory" is a case of racists using a twisted version of scientific principles for their own agenda. Here are some things that were caused by religion: The Crusades The Spanish Inquisition The Holocaust The Attacks on 9/11 Not that there was any doubt that scientists accept evolution, but to humor you, here's an accepted statement from a court ruling from 2005. "Evolution is more than a theory of origin in the context of science. To the contrary, evolution is the dominant scientific theory of origin accepted by the majority of scientists." http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District/4:Whether_ID_Is_Science#Page_83_of_139 Those first two are theories yes. The other two are political agendas, with no relevance to the subject of science. And at this point I'd like to stress that a theory is not accepted by scientists to be right. Those first two theories were poorly thought out and were of course found many times to be false. Unlike evolution, which has been proven time and again and deserves to be treated and labeled as a law of nature, not a theory. Not in philosophy. Philosophers can turn down any theories. Sure. But the philosophy you speak of is based on personal opinion and conjecture, which is all well and good, but when talking about theories which are based on absolute fact, personal opinion and philosophical conjecture should not come into play. They are biases, which any good scientist would disregard. I'm saying that the entirety of evolution is complicated and no one is an expert on it's entirety. This is where you have to give the hundreds of years of scientific method the benefit of the doubt. As for how life formed, there are several theories for abiogenesis. Any one of them could be true for all I know. I'm not an expert. Here are a few: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#Current_models We can't agree on that, because as I've made very clear and backed up heavily, evolution is not a theory, it is an accepted scientific law. Religion is based on myths with no logical basis. A concrete view of the world cannot depend on opinion. Opinion is bias. Philosophy should not form facts. It should form around them.

I remembered this part from Carl Sagan's Cosmos, and I thought I'd link to it here. Carl Sagan had a great attitude about the universe, and formed an optimistic philosophy around science, cherishing the work to study every part of it.

Science is a part of the way the world works. I'm a very philosophically minded person, and my personal philosophy incorporates science into my world view. Anyway, science isn't something where you can skim a textbook and say "no". Hundreds of fields of science have been intensely studied for hundreds of years. You think modern scientists just take evolution for granted because one experiment proved it right? No, it was tested and updated in hundreds of ways throughout the 20th century. All I'm saying is, don't just turn it down when you obviously don't and can't understand it. There is no one in the world who is an expert on every field of science, and that's because it's an additive field. Theories are proposed and tested many many times before they are accepted, then new generations of scientists use these new scientific laws in new fields. You can't just turn down hundreds of years and thousands of scientific findings with your "opinion". I might sound angry, but I'm just trying to explain why it is I vehemently disagree. Science is in no way "young". Fields of science go back thousands of years, and some laws introduced then still stand today. A theory by definition cannot be turned down by opinion. It can only be proven wrong with sufficient repeatable evidence.

We know exactly how the Pyramids were built. The only people who still dispute that are the ones who desperately want to believe that aliens or wizards did it. (Kind of exactly the same way the remaining people who dispute evolution believe that aliens or a wizard did it.) When your only alternative "theories" are aliens and wizards, you're not talking about science anymore. That's a good post, now I want to say if you believe that monkeys magically turned into humans while there is no human-monkeys today (middle step between humans and monkey) because he died some billion years ago (precisely) than I call that not science anymore. Let me ask you a question. Do you believe in Auras? Soul? Prophets? Or do you reject "magic" overall. I was going to step out of this thread, but I can't stand by and watch someone say "monkeys magically turned into humans". Do your research before turning down science. The words your looking for are "extinct prehistoric apes naturally turned into humans". There wasn't a day a million years ago where a spider monkey birthed a healthy baby boy. It's called evolution. It's not magic, it's just the nature of genetics and extremely long periods of time. Don't call something magic just because you don't know how it works.

I don't think they really are. They're just people who're frustrated and bored and want to shock people. Don't let people get away with something horrible no matter what. Oh, don't get me wrong, they are assholes, but I don't think they actually have so much hate that they try to put on that they do.

That doesn't stop your identity from being stolen, or your account from being overdrawn... And if they steal your identity you could end up with bills for credit cards you never got, usually in the $10k-$30k range. (the CC companies won't care that your identity was stolen, they'll do anything within their power to get you to pay them that money, including garnishing your wages) Hey, if that happens, Sony will compensate me, I'm sure. If they didn't, well, I know a lawyer.

I don't think they really are. They're just people who're frustrated and bored and want to shock people.

Oh I'm sure. Darwin never liked publishing his work because it went against his religion. The contradictions from his findings to his religion probably troubled him his whole life.

Ah well, I currently have 8 dollars in my checking account. For once my brokeness comes in handy.

"And then there was (PROBABLY) an intergalactic battle from which the result was that Pluto got pushed away from the sun and ducks started quacking. The snakes slowly turned into bears over a million years since they started liking honey all of a sudden and the neanderthals died from cancer in their homes.... I could go on." Sorry to be rude here but what I wrote was strictly to explain to you how you write to us since I don't know english enough to explain i provided an example. As soon as you wrote probably, your version of the world started flowing and flowing, whilst it may be interesting, you have not backed up your story with any background or facts or even why you assume that.. I was just theorizing based on what I know about natural selection, and how mutations effect populations differently based on the habitat. The detailed story is pretty complicated and involves a lot of branching and different species which died out on the way to modern humans. As for backing it up, here's the wikipedia article on natural selection, if that helps any. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

lol, I'm not sure about BTG, but I know you're just messing with me. That's actually a decent question... obviously you haven't thought about the question enough. Even if he is messing, the point of the question for me is why some monkeys didn't evolve and why others did. Or in other words why we evolved into humans while they just stayed monkeys. Ah, I think I see your point. The answer probably is that certain groups of apes migrated to different areas over the years. This new habitat prompted different mutations to take hold, which eventually led to things like a rise in intelligence with the great apes, eventually homo walking on two legs, and the further increase in brain size as man started using his intelligence as his main weapon when hunting, and eventually farming. The apes that stayed in the original areas remained in the safety of their niche and therefor mutations had little effect, because they didn't effect the probability of reproduction as much as a population that has not yet gained a foothold in a habitat. The similarity of the species despite their isolation points to them having diverged from one species. It wasn't technically provable for Darwin though, since he didn't have the fossil record backing it up at the time. The idea of divergence was just the most logical conclusion given the location of the birds, and similarities between them.

lol, I'm not sure about BTG, but I know you're just messing with me.

Wow, the same as the evolutionists... Interesting ain't it? But that's completely false. "Evolutionists" as you call them, follow the law of the scientific method. If a fact presents itself that strongly contradicts what's currently accepted, then the evidence is reevaluated and an updated system is created that fits all of the evidence. Consider dark matter. It was found that there wasn't enough mass in galaxies to hold them together, so the theory of dark matter originated to explain the invisible mass. Scientists don't stubbornly cling to an idea they insist is true (at least not good scientists). They accept new evidence, and reevaluate. Btw, if evolutionists refuse facts, then give me some! You have yet to present any evidence that goes against the accepted laws of evolution by natural selection. You just give flimsy comebacks whenever I explain something that's downright simple, like Darwin's finches, which a fourth grader could understand is obviously valid.

Trying to do a run of Portal 2 with as few portals as possible. Would have been nice if Valve had made a tool to manage this like in Portal 1.

The reaction you guys have given to obvious facts is just appalling. You can't just look at time tested science and say, "Well, that's your opinion. I think the moon is made of cheese." Anyway, I'll say one thing about Darwin's method. He didn't go out on his voyages with evolution in mind, then find facts to justify a theory. He went out with the simple goal to study nature and make logical hypotheses. What he found he didn't even want to publish, because it went against his culture's religion. That's the difference between the methods employed by a logical mind and the mind of a stubborn creationist. The logical mind takes in facts and makes logical theories based on these facts. The religious mind takes in religion as irreputable fact, then looks endlessly for the rare fact that supports their beliefs, with the only goal in mind to prove what they already believe, never considering for a moment that they might be wrong.

Show me the proof. (theoretical logic is not proof) Okay, let's use the classic example of the finches studied by Charles Darwin. Finches were surveyed on many different islands of the Galapagos, and each species' beak was adapted to the food source that was readily available. This logically points to a divergence of species as seperate populations formed on the different islands. Beneficial mutations eventually occurred that made it more likely for mutated finches to reproduce, thus leading to evolution via natural selection. Oh, and if you can't rely on theoretical logic, then you must not believe that 500 + 19 = 519 without counting out stones in separate piles, then counting the sum. You can't just rely on the theoretical logic of math after all. Six toes, etc. doesn't carry over through generations. I have yet to see any genetic mutation (that doesn't make the person infertile/dead) carry over. Please show me an example of it, or any "beneficial" mutation traversing the generations. See above^ I can equate your beliefs in the same way, doesn't make any difference to the factuality of either of the belief systems. You can't equate my "beliefs" in the same way, because mine are based on proven facts and solid logic. To believe otherwise is to ignore proven facts, and is therefore simply incorrect. Not subjectively, but literally. There is no way to rightly justify falsehoods.

I always thought it was silly that evolution is called a "theory". It's a proven law of nature that genes mutate and these mutations manifest as eventual species change through natural selection. It doesn't even require to look at past examples. Just look at how mutations work in humans today. A baby might be born with six toes, or heightened hearing. It's a obvious extension of logic that beneficial mutations would cause an organism to be more likely to reproduce, thus spreading it's new trait, and furthering evolution. Anyone that actually believes that evolution is false is just intentionally ignoring the pertinent facts, only acknowledging them if they can in some twisted way, support their inane beliefs. Society's attitude of overbearing equality and acceptance of one another's beliefs is just backwards. Creationists are just straight up wrong, on par with believing that the earth is flat, or that the sun revolves around the earth, and their idiot beliefs shouldn't even be mentioned in a public school.

Dead Space 1 scared me a few times, but that was before I was desensitized by Amnesia. Dead Space 2 didn't phase me once.

You've got to hide your lunch away. I guess so no one steals it from the fridge.

The playstation network has been down for the last four days. Sony has said it's because of an "external intrusion", meaning they were attacked from the outside. What I don't get is why everyone is angry at Sony. What did they do exactly? They got attacked and I'm sure are doing everything they can to get it back up (they are losing money every day it's down after all). We should be angry at the guy responsible for the outage, the "external intruder". The way players are lashing out at sony seems akin to getting angry at a person who's been mugged. "I got mugged!" "Aw come on, how can you let that happen!" "He had a knife! He took all my money!" "Did you at least beat him up and get your money back?" "Well, no. He had a knife." "So you STILL don't have your money? You owed me 20 bucks!"

My favorite cheese is REAL CHEESE. They use it to make Cheez-its and Cheetos.

At the rate they're taking developing the next installment, whatever it be, I'd guess they're replacing the Source engine, or at least most of the code. It is 8 years old.