Esdb3:
have they not seen voodoo?

They have but they know it by a different name; trick, misunderstanding, hallucination, etc.

There is a morbid fascination with vaginas on here.

The true symbol for if he died by firing squad.

Dreadful joke. It's only slightly funnier than AIDS.

Atheists don't like anything supernatural/spiritual, usually because you can't really explain such things. Such things do not conform to logic, they say, nor can they be accounted for by science.

Satan is said to be omnipresent. If you cannot explain logically or scientifically how any one thing can be everywhere at the same time, then atheists cannot accept an omnipresent satan. Similarly, satan is said to have taken the form of a snake which then proceeded to communicate in human language with humans. If you cannot explain how one animal can change to another animal, or how for example, a dog, can communicate in english, then atheists deny that there is a being known as satan who can change form and can speak like a human being despite the form he has assumed.

Interestingly, if things which defy logic or science actually exist, you could not possibly use logic or science to understand them. So either you or the atheist is running in circles.

You'll get used to it with time.

People usually get comfortable with each other by talking. If you're an introvert it means you speak less and people are less able to be comfortable around you. Even an introvert isn't comfortable around another person who speaks or wants to interact very little. When people complain about your introversion it means they want to be more comfortable around you.

Introversion is natural, and the effect of it is that you'll have fewer friends that your extroverted fellows. Incidentally, introverts are comfortable with fewer friends, so that's not your problem. It's the problem of those who want to be your friend.

When next someone complains that you're too quiet, keep in mind that what they really want is for you to make them more comfortable. You decide if you want to put them at ease.

The reason they can't let you be is that you're an atheist, genius.

timmy2409:

Somehow, I'm thinking of this
http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image,29553/

Dreadful picture.

What are they supposed to be satirizing there? Even I find it outrageous. Its as if The Onion just went for the most provocative and unwarranted caricature they could think up, to taunt and insult people into action. And yet nobody was killed.

Redlyn:
How come Muslims get their own forum? Always asking for special treatment those delicate little flowers. Where is the atheist forum then?

Muslims can't take a punch.

Will the atheist forum be under the religion section?

wiegraf:

a purist have we? remind me again; which club has scored the most goals in a premiership season? also, Spain. which club holds that record there and who was managing it at the time?

I'm coming.

and defensive rigor can be just as beautiful as offensive flair. eg, I really enjoyed Greece circa 2004 and told anyone who would listen they would win the tournament. early mourinho Chelsea was just as good; excellent, solid at the back, brimming with menace when going forward. eg Robben used to leave defenders flying into billboards. eventually mourinho devolved into just launch the ball forward, which I agree is ugly. but solid, counter attacking football? no, never.

Greece was atrocious in those Euros. Can't believe they won. And Chelsea has always tended to be very defensive, especially against serious opponents. They almost always have two vicious defensive midfielders on the pitch.

in fact, it's even more risky than what barca minus Messiah and Spain do. pass, pass, pass. sideways always. safe always. then when the opponents, stadium and millions watching at home are half asleep, attempt a forward pass and hope for the best.[quote]

If this were true, most or all of our goals would come late in the game.

[quote]on a serious note, Messiah actually leaves? y'all in trouble.

Not really. All of the other clubs Messi is not in are doing fine. I heard he has denied the transfer rumours though.

You spent more time looking at that girl's butt, didn't you?

ooman:




I thought they said its the Chadians that do boko haram, how come they are also the atheists?

There is a conspiracy between APC and Chad Republic. I won't go into the details here.

EfemenaXY:


That's a horrible way to bond.

Would you still have this opinion if the pic was of father and daughter?

Anyway, humans are better than this. Only dogs, cats, and cows need their tongues to bond with their offspring.

It's horrible for you.

I would still say the same thing, no matter which gender of parent or child is involved.

The child obviously cannot have sexual intentions. If the parents doesn't either, nothing is wrong with this.

sucess001:



He nids to suckle to feed...but dis? To what end?

They are bonding. Look at the joy on the kids face. I think that is the purpose of the tongue kiss.

brito:




Chaiii! you bad

How now?

Irrelevant.

When he suckles her nobody looks at it in a sexual light. This is no different.

I think he needs a change of environment. That should help with the feelings of shame. Given time, this incident will appear less painful and he'll laugh at the thought that he ever considered suicide over it. Tell him to just hang in there. If this seems like the pits, then there's nowhere to go but up.

timonski:
Lol, there is definitely no reason for a nigerian to be an atheist

Most the atheists here are nomads who came in from Chad.

wiegraf:


Ah, but sometimes his sheer obnoxiousness is part of his charm. Sometimes...

That said, as a barca fan



His wife is BFF with Cesc's wife, their kids have play dates and all that. Also, better (somewhat benign) Russian oligarch money than Sheikh slave money IMO. Just state your price and free the poor guy.

Impeccable taste, huh? Chelsea have only been playing classy football since August last year.

Money is money. The ban will pass soon and it'll be back to business as usual. Messi can leave if he wants. It'll be refreshing to see him in the EPL. I don't see him playing at Chelsea for long tho.

sinequanon:


Science is moving towards just this definition of "complex machinery". In order to do so it redefines the problem by focusing on "consciousness" instead of "awareness". Consciousness becomes the ability to resolve a flood of sensory signals into a coherent picture. The idea is that a camera is not conscious because it doesn't resolve the hundreds of thousands of pixels it processes, into a narrative, the way a human would. This cheat of redefining the problem allows scientists to pretend that they are getting closer to understanding consciousness by finding a central processing system in the brain. through which all sensory signals must pass.

True. Even if they find such a processing system we still wouldn't have the explanation for why the system has to be aware of what its doing. It certainly can't explain introspection. They just make like the awareness doesn't exist or is trivial and so it doesn't really figure in their explanations.

But "awareness" remains the "hard problem". Scientists can fool people about many things by impressing them with what they claim to be "results" of their theories, but convincing sufficiently smart people that their awareness is just complex mental processing isn't going to fly. We are not talking about the findings of some remote experiment, but an intimate aspect of our day to day lives. Only the dumbest folk will be convinced that they are mere machines, and people like Sam Harris are already working on such dumb folk to wipe clean the slate of their being.

I'm just waiting for them to start predicting thoughts. I guess if they dabbled into "awareness" they'd suddenly find themselves in psychology's position where people wonder if you are doing science. The mind is where reproducibility and predictability go to die. So they keep working around it, and some people take them seriously when it comes to consciousness.

I don't want to be loved in this way fa.

I agree that you should stay way from the opposite sex, if you must avoid sex.

If not, be prepared for heavy petting at the very least.

ooman2:


@bold - Until we are able to, I refuse to contend the matter.

Your loss.

@bold - I agree. But if you are an empiricist like I think myself, perhaps, you'd understand.

Its just a matter of directing efforts wisely. You would have to think of how to observe that awareness or subjective experience, in a scientific way. You have to wonder why your current tools don't suffice. Its not simply a matter of getting up and going to the lab to do science.

Exactly my point again. You'd only make assumptions that do nothing but lead to contention. However, as you said, these philosophies are no barrier to discovery. So if you wish, you may philosophize. But as I said in my previous post, philosophy at this point leads to conclusion before knowledge.

Until there is knowledge, philosophy should be at minimum.

Science does not understand consciousness. It needs philosophy, as it always does in times of doubt. It is even more pertinent in this case where we can see consciousness so clearly and science can't.

Yes, but not a heavy smoker who'll reek of tobacco all the bleeding time. Of course there can be no smoking in a house with kids. Drinking is an ordinary thing.

ooman2:


You say "only the philosophers have direct access to consciousness" as if they really do. If they did, they would have provided answers.

@bold - science has been able to observe consciousness, for we are conscious, and we know that; but not its cause. Science has not observed its cause, so all philosophy about its cause is only a waste of time, because we simply do not know. We can only hypothesize at this point. And this is nothing but assumption. So, all your philosophies at this point are based on nothing but assumptions.

It seems you like to philosophize, its ok, you can do that, I do that too. But on cases such as these, I have learned to hold my peace, until there is knowledge of the matter.

You can't study consciousness in a lab is what I mean. At least for now. Any person's consciousness is accessible to him alone, and there aren't even words to express much of it to another person.

A lot of philosophy is based on assumptions. If there were no such leeway what you'd end up with are proofs, which we don't see in abundance in philosophy. Working with assumptions is no barrier to discovery.

Some philosophers suggest that science is going about the problem of consciousness the wrong way. For example Nagel thinks no form of reduction can ever lead us to understand consciousness. You should read his book "The View From Nowhere" or the much shorter paper "What Is It Like To Be A Bat". I tend to agree with the points he made. I think they are useful to science.

Etetejake:


Lol. no mind me.

You got it.

truthman2012:


The fact that science uses it makes it a part of science.

Here is a summary of the first cause argument, so you can understand its nature:

The cosmological argument is a closely related set of arguments for the existence of a First Cause (or instead, an Uncaused cause) to the universe, and by extension often used as arguments for the existence of an "unconditioned" or "supreme" being, usually then identified as God. It is traditionally known as an argument from universal causation, an argument from first cause, the causal argument or the argument from existence. Whichever term is employed, there are three basic variants of the argument, each with subtle yet important distinctions: the arguments from in causa (causality), in esse (essentially) and in fieri (becoming).

The basic premise of all of these is the concept of causality and of a First Cause. The history of this argument goes back to Aristotle, was developed in Neoplatonism and early Christianity and later in medieval Islamic theology during the 9th to 12th centuries, and re-introduced to medieval Christian theology in the 13th century. The cosmological argument is closely related to the principle of sufficient reason as discussed by Gottfried Leibniz and Samuel Clarke, itself a modern exposition of the claim that "Nothing comes from nothing" attributed to Parmenides.

In modern philosophy, the argument was defended by William Lane Craig in his 1979 book The Kalām Cosmological Argument. Since that time, the term Kalām cosmological argument has come to be used for the debate between Craig and his critics, which involves the interpretation of Big Bang cosmology and contemporary notions of causality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument

Etetejake:


And u ain't getting non. I think u r one of those who escaped Sodoms destruction and want to start a new and worse Sodom and Gomorrah.

You have an active imagination.

truthman2012:


To you 'cause and effect' is not science? What is it then? Search google: is cause and effect a science?

This is the wiki definition of cause and effect, or causality:

Causality (also referred to as causation[1]) is the relation between an event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event is understood as a physical consequence of the first.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality

Causality is simply something we observe. Science uses it but that does not make it science. For your own part you should google the first cause argument and see how old it is, or whether it is not considered philosophy/theology

Unless you want to live in a world where things just happen like that, no mechanism, no explanation, then you can't avoid science. In such a world you can't count on anything because there are no laws; you could just become an elephant in an instant and there's nothing anybody can do about it because there is no mechanism to reverse or manipulate. For all we know science was ordained by god, why do you dislike it?

This is not science. OP what you have is merely the first cause argument. When did it become scientific proof?

wiegraf:


Why? It requires little faith; every other season you can expect a trophy or two.

Now, supporting the likes of arsenal, that's blind faith

Lol. Gooners waiting for the second coming of anybody.

Jose is just dreadful.

musKeeto:

From nothing to something.

The eternity of Barcelona is better.