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The Ferv's Flamebate Posts
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Post for a chance at 45 BPsPoast. (view post) |
03/11/2009 | |
Get well CoreyJess!****, man. Just saw this – here’s hoping for a speedy recovery.
Good to hear you’re (mostly) in one piece, though – get well soon! (view post) |
03/08/2009 | |
Clbum idea: NeckbeardUpvoted. (view post) |
03/08/2009 | |
HAPPY BIRTHDAY male reproductive organ HYMEN...So now that Scully’s a mod, do you get birthday spankings?Okay seriously though, happy birthday, man. Log in to see images! (view post) |
03/08/2009 | |
I owned the macho men topic.Log in to see images! (view post) |
03/05/2009 | |
God, how could COLLEGE kids be so STUPID-The Rama series, Arthur C. Clarke -Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke -A Day Without Rain, Ray Bradbury -Beggars in Spain, Nancy Kress (the short story, not the novel) -pretty much anything by Gregory Benford, but especially his Galactic Center series -The Inquisition War, Ian Watson (out of print, though – goes for $40-80 average for the paperback) -The Forever War, Joe Haldeman -Forever Peace, Joe Haldeman -Starquake, Robert R. Forward -Spin, Robert Charles Wilson -Axis, Robert Charles Wilson -Incandescence, Greg Egan -The Past Through Tomorrow, Robert Heinlein -Pattern Recognition, William Gibson -Neuromancer, William Gibson -Altered Carbon, Richard K. Morgan -Broken Angels, Richard K. Morgan -Woken Furies, Richard K. Morgan -Armor, John Steakley -Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card (skip the sequels) -the Dune series, Frank Herbert -The White Plague, Frank Herbert -The Parafaith War, L.E. Modesitt, Jr. -The Ethos Effect, L.E. Modesitt, Jr. (view post) |
03/05/2009 | |
CLOSED: Emoticon Research Contest for 1 BPBump. Still think it’s Harvey Ball. Log in to see images! (view post) |
03/04/2009 | |
Contest for 45BP: Friend me!Friended and posted. (view post) |
03/03/2009 | |
CLOSED: Emoticon Research Contest for 1 BP...Harvey Ball? The man who invented the smiley, 1963. (view post) |
03/03/2009 | |
CLOSED: Emoticon Research Contest for 1 BPIt’s not Kevin MacKenzie or Scott Fahlman, so… (view post) |
03/03/2009 | |
Macho Menscullyangel Posted:
Hell yeah!
I’m white.
King’s knight to f3.
That said, I like chess. And also have yet to meet anyone who was interested in playing chess with me at first sight. And must admit that I sincerely believe that fact sucks.
Also: Creeppipe Posted:
QFT. (view post) |
03/03/2009 | |
Religious playerscrAFTY_turTLE Posted:
No offense meant, but isn’t that ever so slightly intellectually lazy?
From a Christian perspective, there is quite a bit of value in apologetics – know your faith, so that when it is attacked, you may blunt your attackers’ momentum and then turn it back upon them. After all, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” (Rev3:15-16)
As for my above post, I believe I’ve arrived at a conclusion.
First off, it would be of no small worth to be familiar with the works of David Hume, and most especially his philosophical theories.
According to a skeptical view of philosophy, reality simply cannot be proven. First, let’s examine the senses. When we sense something, there are several separate biological and cognitive processes at work – and for the purpose of the discussion, given lack of evidence to the contrary and plentiful evidence supporting, let’s bumume that the mind is actually a biological process centered in the brain.
When we sense, first, we have the object (which for the purposes of this discussion, we are bumuming exists). This is the primary perception, and that which we cannot know. tl;dr: the object is the primary perception. Next, we have the infinite primary perceptions in between the object we are perceiving and our sense organs. Countless molecules, air currents, infinitesimal chemical processes and reactions, all occurring in between the object and our perception of such, and each altering it in its own infinitesimal way – but altering it nonetheless. Already we see a problem with reliability of the senses beginning to take form. Next, we have the sense organs themselves. Due to biological variability, anatomical, genetic, and other such differences, we can safely bumume that no two people will ever share an identical perception of anything – for in order for one person to share a truly identical perception with another, the two would have to be one and the same (and we’re still only accounting for strictly environmental and biological differences – we haven’t touched mental ones yet). Next, we have the biological channels from the sense organs to the brain itself, which are, of course, due to biological necessity, widely varied from person to person in terms of exact anatomical makeup. Next, we have the brain/mind itself, understanding the perception which the sense organs are relaying to it. This would be the secondary perception, and the only one we humans are currently capable of knowing, due to the brain/mind’s complete lack of independent (of the body and crude biological sphere, that is) sense organs. tl;dr: the brain/mind cannot perceive anything directly. Thus, all perceptions are suspect.
With this, we can safely conclude that the physical world around us, though we may understand it to exist, cannot be proven to exist – for we cannot even agree that it is the same. If we are not all living in the same physical reality, than none of us have independent observers to verify our observations regarding the physical world – and thus, all we have to prove the physical are our own (weak and tenuous, at best) physical perceptions. I believe that I am typing on a computer right now – that I am listening to music, that I can smell the remnants of breakfast wafting in from the kitchen, that I can feel the clack of the keys underneath my fingers. These perceptions, however, are all suspect, for the sole reason that I cannot sense a single one of them directly with my advanced mental faculties as opposed to crude biological faculties. Each of these perceptions has to follow a long and convoluted path fraught with possibility for error before even reaching my brain, and from there, my brain has to form these secondary perceptions into something my mind, as a non-physical entity, can understand.
Reality is suspect.
From here, we can go on to examine the mind itself – ”Ergo, cogito sum”, right? “I think, therefore I am”? There is a problem with Voltaire’s famous treatise: what, exactly, is “I”? Is it the mind? The body? The two together? Is the mind independent of the body still “I”? Can “I” be conclusively proven by independent observation to be a single, distinct entity independent of all others?
...Well, no, not really. You see, following with the above theory regarding reality, we discover that “I” am the only person who can observe and/or verify the existence of “I”, and we enter a the realm of circular logic: I exist because I exist, and I know this because I know it.
A cannot prove A, and B cannot prove B.
With that, we have no way to verify that anything outside of our own minds exists, and if nothing outside of our minds exists, than all we have is inside the realm of our mental perception (imagination, if you will). We imagine our worlds.
With all of this, we begin to see the universe lose any semblance of a logical existence. Everything begins to lose all meaning, and thoughts and perceptions become caught up in Möbius loops of circular logic where the end is the beginning is the end.
From here, why not believe in a God? Nothing matters anyway, since all is illusion, so if the belief in a God gives pleasure, obviously, this God can no more exist than anything else, but hell, we imagine our own realities anyway, so why not imagine a God simply because we can?
Final tl;dr: If nothing is real and our existence is nothing but smoke and mirrors, why not believe in a God? In a meaningless existence, objective values of “reality” and “nonreality” lose all meaning, and if it gives one pleasure to create a God for one’s own individual reality, nobody else can say that that God doesn’t exist for that person, since in that person’s reality, nobody else exists except as fragments of that person’s imagination.
So in conclusion, yes, it could very well be possible for a sane, rational, educated person to believe in a deity of some sort. It would just take some fairly intense mental contortions to get there. (view post) |
02/27/2009 | |
Celebrating my Forumwarz birthday, selling a lot of Tumourous Kidneys for NO PROFITHappy |
02/25/2009 | |
Click this for free BP klan generously giving everyone brownie points for freeI tried to friend you but I think I already have because FW told me I was trying to hack it. Also, p good klan imo.
ALSO HOLY **** DRAGINZ.
...Oh, and free BP? Sign me up (with world-crushingly immense gratitude, of course)! Log in to see images!
AKA Buy my loyalty because I am too poor/tightfisted to buy ep.2 at the moment (or at least for the near future). (view post) |
02/25/2009 | |
Religious playersDOPE-HARDCORE-0 Posted:
Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying – and agreed. As far as I’m concerned, faith is the personal, individual system of beliefs that one single individual, for whatever reason, subscribes to. I’ve got no problems with faith.
Religion, on the other hand, seems to be what happens when that individual becomes convinced that it is their God-given right to force other people to agree with them and enforce/promise dire consequences if they don’t.
QFT: Basically, it’s the cult/brainwashing stuff that springs forth from literal readings of books, if you want my opinion. I don’t care about what god or how many you have, whether you have a spirit or not…these are irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The question is how a sane, rational person can buy into the normative ideals fostered by a given religious organization. Welcome to the thread.
Thanks!
To answer the question, I’m not entirely sure. I would say that there could be any number of reasons – comfort, an easing of the myriad difficulties which arise from thinking for oneself, fear of the unknown (although I’m not sure how that would be diminished – it seems to me that many religions focus largely on a fear that verges upon paranoia of Something Bad that they never quite explicitly define), and maybe even something as simple as a desire to ‘fit in’ to the community currently surrounding them. On the other hand, though, you specified that we’re talking about people who are both fully sane and fully rational…and honestly, I don’t think I have any answers to that question.
There’s one taking form in my mind, though, I believe. Just need some time to mull it over and flesh it out. I have to find a way around the problem of a person who recognizes the inherent difficulties of belief in an empirical reality solving those difficulties by method of declaring, with no readily apparent rational justification whatsoever, divine purpose for it all. (view post) |
02/24/2009 | |
Religious players^Oh hell yeah. Log in to see images!
There’s a reason I self-identify as a skeptic. Nothing more fun than tying your own brain in knots trying to figure out if you’re real or not (let alone anything else). (view post) |
02/24/2009 | |
Announcing our latest moderator: scullyangelGrats, Scully – and good luck. (view post) |
02/24/2009 | |
Religious playersBefore we go into “religion” as a whole, being that “religion” is an awfully broad term, would you (DHC, that is) mind clarifying a few things for us?
-What, exactly, are you referring to by the term “religion”? -Are there any significant differences (in your mind) between “religion”, “organized religion”, “self delusion/mbum hypnosis”, “faith”, “belief”, “idealism”, “philosophy”, and/or “spirituality”? -If so, what are they, and how do you arrive at the conclusion that they are there? -If not, how do you arrive at the conclusion that all these terms refer to a single phenomenon? -Does “religion” require belief in a deity? -If so, why? -If not, why not? -From an observer’s point of view, your initial post (and subsequent posts as well) have all come off as quite hostile towards the idea of dualistic & monotheistic faith-based belief systems, but almost entirely ignored monistic, polytheistic, nontheistic, rational, and/or skeptical belief systems. Was this deliberate, or are you including all non-empirical belief systems in your generalizations? -How do you personally self-identify in the realm of religion, and why? -Do you feel that this self-identification fits comfortably within the scope of this thread? -If so, why? -If not, why not?
...And just for the record, in order to clear up any possible biases, I self-identify as a non-religious agnostic skeptic. In addition, based on my beliefs and their external manifestations, an objective observer could reasonably make any of the following bumumptions: -that I am an extremely liberal Christian with universalist leanings. -that I subscribe to a westernized form of Buddhism with strong Taoist influences. -that I am agnostic and/or apathetic. -that I am a deist.
Strictly speaking, they’d be incorrect in making any of the above bumumptions, but they all hit close to the mark.
I would like to raise the point, however, that given a monistic & materialistic understanding of existence, one cannot actually empirically disprove the existence of an intelligence sufficiently advanced beyond humanity to qualify as “divine” by current standards at this point in time (and that likewise, one cannot actually empirically prove the existence of such a being, either). (view post) |
02/24/2009 | |
35 Hacker, failing at lifeDrop luck, raise ego. 1200 isn’t nearly enough to pwn lvl 35 forums without consumables.
For the sake of comparison, I’ve got 4090 ego, 120 offense, 124 defense, 13 luck, 23 frugality, 37 charisma, and 10 upkeep. I was having trouble pwning lvl 33+ forums up until I re-specced above 2000 ego at the expense of frugality, charisma, luck, and upkeep. At this point, I can do level 35 forums with no consumables and a good 500-1000 ego left over, depending on how often they hit.
Also, is there any particular reason you’re trying to pwn without consumables? Just curious – it’s not as if it’s a mortal sin to use them, after all, and at level 30+, you really shouldn’t be having problems coming up with enough flezz to afford a steady flow of them and still be making some profit. (view post) |
02/23/2009 | |
Help ~Spoiler~Details in thread,if this is the wrong place please PM me where to goCheck the wiki. Log in to see images! (view post) |
02/21/2009 |