WTF

I've really not had time to catch up with comics since November. Anyone here read Brightest Day or JLA:Generation Lost? Just wanted to know what people thought (I mean I know the synopsis of the stories, I was a cbr regular, now I just visit from time to time).

While we're on the subject of body-parts. Just curious how many can roll their tongue? (It's a dominant genetic trait so you either have it or you don't).

@R___ lol I agree with some of your points though not with Buddhism. Buddhism is primarily about breaking the cycle of rebirth and attaining Nirvana. So where you come does matter as does where you go to. Of course it depends on if you're going by Hinayana or Mahayana tendencies. I mean the Jataka tales are all pretty much about the different lives of the Enlightened one before he achieved bodhisattva after renouncing himself as Prince Siddartha. Personally Buddhism and Jainism have more similarities than people would like to believe and believe me meeting a skyclad is well different. Hinduism is another where people aren't aware that the true one is actually Sanatana Dharma. Dharma or Duty is what's important in it. However it got diluted over the years and there's multiple sects. The one thing they do agree on is the trinity and the roles of creation, protection and destruction. Also at one point science and religion weren't that far apart because it was all a quest for truth. I mean early scientists believed that through science they could get closer to God. God and Truth were highly interchangeable in early society. I'll disagree that the prophets were totally tripping, it was more like they wanted to bring their people together and give them hope and some answers. The answers weren't the best, but no religion was formed to hurt mankind. I do agree that we do not know, several things. But you can't find answers by saying that we won't find them or by accepting established answers so people do need to dig like you said. As for the big bang, it's a theory that's half there. I mean it's like opening your oven and finding that you have a cake that just needs 10 more minutes. All we need to do is find out how the cake existed there. I mean we can't use the Portal - the cake is a lie thing here. We do know about the cake cause right now we're eating it. It's just where did it come from. We know the basics of how the cake can be made as well, we have the recipes for it. But not the exact one. That's the analogy I've got for you. There are definitely fallacies and inaccuracies but there's sufficient proof that something happened. We might not know the early Epochs but we are able to view what happened a little later thanks to our observatories. I mean there's still some light from a few years after Planck Epoch that reaches us even today. p.s. I don't think anyone here ever really wanted to change another's opinions but rather wanted people to accept one another for who they are. You know the whole agree to disagree thing .

Oh so that's why it happens. I did wonder. Also had a question about images. I mean I can see the images today on chrome but couldn't the other day on safari (on the mac) and it's only certain hotlinked images.

Ethan is right though there are several rules of inference and you can start from the conclusion, examine the evidence and get to the answer. It's how it works in Maths. Physics is just an extension of Maths. What is key in non-mathematical equations though is observation. Observation is key but under the correct conditions. Otherwise we'll end up like the Greeks who believed that mice came from cheese. As for the scientist-atheist aspect it really depends on what science is their focus. While it is semantics, people theorizing any science can be a scientist and it's not limited to these laws. So it's difficult to say within reason that all scientists are atheists. However one could say that most physicists and mathematicians are atheists. The important things for proving any theorem generally are you need a set of given conditions, a statement and an environment as specified by the question put forth. How you go about proving it requires you to know the theorems and axioms preceding it. Otherwise it's like those people saying how they can prove 1 or any number for that matter can equal zero. There's a stupid childish way of doing it, but that's not the truth and that's what those looking for falsification of any theorem whether they be interested in the science or not go for. Your basic point is right though.

Brain!!!!!!!!!!! Damn you. I don't want to get into a debate on perception of existence on a thread about beliefs but I do believe we need a different thread to discuss some of the other topics being discussed here. While the discussion of several topics is good, we're moving too far away from the core of the discussion here with life on outer space and the perception of existence and well one of my favourite questions which involves what constitutes the thought process. Ultimately I'll end up talking about how mitochondria could essentially be bacteria swallowed by the early proto-eukaryotes and ended up living symbiotically in virtually every existing living eukaryote. While I do agree with some of what you said ZTF, there's the thing that everyone is essentially different and for some people a certain amount of belief makes sense just like how irreligion in its various forms makes sense to many people here. It's not about truth, but more what sort of belief system makes you comfortable. Also I really don't think the Drake equation and Fermi Paradox fit in terms of a belief system because in the case of the former the possibilities could be anything from 0 to maybe a googol of possibilities that life could exist on another planet. Fermi Paradox on the other hand is pretty much defined as follows . The Fermi Paradox is the apparent contradiction between the high probability of extraterrestrial civilizations' existence and the lack of contact with such civilizations (or observation of such civilizations). I believe that's probably what you were trying to get at withoutphallus? There are a great many hypothesis explaining why this could be. However in order to better understand this we need to stop looking at life, intelligence and sentience in human terms. Right now we pretty much assume that a microbe possess no sentience. But suppose we can say that a microbial bacteria possesses sentience, then by extension we can say a virus possesses some sentience. This in turn leads us to say that a prion (they're even lower than a virus think mad cow or kuru.) possesses sentience. But a prion is essentially amino acids and no genetic material, just amino acids (which do play a role in the synthesis of RNA and DNA but aren't genetic directly). Amino acids are also the building blocks of proteins. So we're essentially saying that a simple protein possesses sentience. Now how can we examine such life when it shows none of the 'traditional' signs of life. Similarly we are now aware through years of research that plants posses intelligence. They do 'feel', sense and to some rudimentary extent have emotions like animals do. This does change a lot of things from what we pretty much assume is life. Now life on earth is organic (carbon compounds), but it doesn't mean that life on another planet is going to be organic. It might as well be inorganic by our current standards. Also do you define the Earth as living or non-living. If you define it as living do you say it's living because of the life on it, just like how a mould culture on a dead vegetable can make us consider the whole item 'dead veg+culture' as living? Or can we say that the Earth is living because we are on a different timeline to the Earth. We see elephants as slow animals because they're much larger than us but to the fruitfly/drosophila, the most common genetic experiment subject, or a housefly we are slow moving beings since their entire lifespan is in a day. As Brain argued it is perception, though not in the sense he argued that pretty much conforms us to these beliefs. I mean really we are confined by our thoughts, right now a lot of us in this thread even those who don't accept God pretty much are denying certain thoughts from the other. I'm not saying it's wrong to say someone is wrong or prove them wrong but my point is that we are very strongly confined by the way we think and it's due to the way humanity has evolved. The fault is there in everything we do from the very simple task of doing mundane things like walking a dog to how we deal with our beliefs. Of course perception, awareness, sentience are all topics but for a far different discussion. I dunno but I do think this thread is getting derailed (it's inevitable with threads on philosophy and religion), though it is obvious that we'd like to talk about this. Perhaps we should move part of this discussion to another thread. Rename the randomness thread to I dunno Science, philosophy and superfriends? So we can get all these discussions in one roof. Edit: I forgot to add this link. It's something written by Arthur C Clarke towards the later years of his life. It's amusing really. http://www.setileague.org/editor/clarke2.htm Fits with the whole life on other planets thing.

Dragon Age 2: Signature edition on its way. Probably be Tuesday by the time I get it though.

You have to admit though, that basing more theories on a hypothetical particle which has yet to be found is building sandcastles in air. Not to mention the H-B particles can't really explain where the extra mass comes in radioactive nuclear decay. I've actually had the pleasure of arguing this point with a few scientists. They admit that the decay while releasing energy and two particles of matter also has to create new particles but from where? Ether (kidding of course with the ether bit). The Quarks don't add up quite literally. If the standard model actually predicts that we have quarks and we've actually found quarks where do these particles actually fit. They're currently not willing to abandon the theory because it fits. It's quite similar to why they weren't willing to change the atomic table for a while. There's plenty of challenges to the standard model including the discrepancies with gravity. Not to mention I do take issue with the definition of Anti-Matter as per the standard model. Currently the whole negative nucleus and positive satellite theory is just rubbish. it's just a way of trying to explain the purpose of anti-proton, positron etc. Here's where I've got the issue, true anti-matter isn't based on the charge of the subatomic particle but the true nature of the particle. For anti-matter to truly exist it needs to be a consistent source of stable instability. Or rather if we want to consider the base anti-matter atom, it has to be a stable state where it consistently gives out energy. Matter doesn't give out energy, it absorbs energy. Anti-matter must be reverse of that nature.[ I have spoken to a few people about it. Honestly it was something I'd want to do a paper on at some point in my life. I used to be interested in this a lot during my high school and university years. I never got into the field but I do have some of my written work and theories on it...] Anti-matter needs to be something that consistently gives out energy, yet is stable. It's not negative matter, that's looking at it a bit too simplistically. What they have is negative matter, not anti-matter. Currently anti-matter are like irrational numbers or negative integers but anti-matter should be more like imaginary numbers/vectors. Currently we do have Quantum computers and not everything in q-Physics is wrong, just certain things need more proof outside of the reliance on H-B. While we're on the subject of H-B, it ultimately does lead some scientists back to proving that the universe is more mathematical in nature. Well if they base a physics particle concept on mathematical laws, and create more laws that apply maths than particle physics of course it will be mathematical. I'm of the belief that at some point the unified field theory can still be achieved. It's just that while the universe has a certain mathematical beauty it also has a biological beauty. Dark matter is the other bone of contention. I mean really it's called Dark Matter because it's just obtuse. Speaking of randomness being deterministic or indeterministic, I guess we could have our answer if we were to replicate the Planck Epoch or if we were to reach the end state. Life as projection or rather the universe as a holographic projection would pretty much make most of my above points invalid. In fact it would make a lot of current theories a bit redundant and all because of some noise where it wasn't expected. The whole thing about the concept is that it could open up what the 4th dimension truly is, change our existing concepts of time because if it truly a projection then it will have a definitive end and the extension of the beginning and end would be on wherefrom did this project emanate and if the original source of the projection still exists. Not to mention if this a projection of a projection. All the information of this universe therefore could actually exist in a singular object. It's almost like if you want to use Marvel to exemplify having Galactus' universe and our universe exist at the same time except Galactus exists in ours too and therefore the coded information from that universe exists within ours and we could use it to have better understand. Only thing is - we have no idea what it is. It still won't explain the quark anomaly directly, we'd need more information. It won't explain existence either directly. But it will explain the plane of our existence.

You sound like somewhere between an Ignostic and an Agnostic really.

I think I need to clarify, what I truly meant was. If you are married under another religious body within the UK, it isn't legally accepted unless there's a civil ceremony accompanying it. That's the gist of what I meant really. Like you can either get married in a CoE or you need to get married in a civil ceremony and then you can have it in whatever religious or customary way you have it. That's in this country of course. If you have a certificate where you got married in another country and is valid there, then it's valid here as well. Actually the first part was the main and primary segment of what I was saying. The second part was exemplifying how religious interpretation can get skewed. Also the language and literature of a lot of these religions are technically largely not interpretable. A good portion of it is. But what has been originally interpreted later as you've yourself explained become deconstructed and reconstructed several times over and used to push an agenda. However, the language used in most religious texts is not language used or spoken today. A good portion of the Quran and the original Old Testament and parts of the New Testament were written down as per languages spoken during that time. I've spoken to Muslim scholars who admit that there are parts of it that can't be easily translated today as the meanings don't make perfect sense so they consider it as the word of God. Mind you these are the same people who like your friend condemn stoning and various aspects of Sharia law (which according to many isn't accurate as they are legal interpretations of interpretations). I blame the establishment of Caliphates and the Shia-Sunni split as part of the reason for the discrepancies. Technically Shias are more extreme as that was the faction that arose as per the Badr war and they believe in martyrs of that war. The thing is there are Muslims who believe the Quran is the final word, the same who believe that there's aspects of truth in all the books preceding it (but believe in the Quran the most as it came last). I mean technically the Jews and Muslims have more in common than not. Right from similarities between Kosher and Halal, to scripture language, angels (the angel thing is mostly because some of the Angels were adoptions of previous benevolent deities into Angels of God by the cultures), practices, etc. But that's getting into religious topics. Getting into the point. Yes all these words of God were written down by Man and transferred to his followers, who then spread it amongst their followers and so on. Obviously those who sought to gain utilised it to their benefit. There is no current absolute authoritative text because of these translations and not to mention the original sources are either long gone, dead or just not in language spoken currently. I think this is where I was touching at by saying Moral ethicists. Those who first found a religion did it for something beneficial, those who followed it obviously did seek to gain something for themselves and their ethics diluted what originally existed. I think the problem is when something is placed on a very high pedestal it is beyond criticism. That's perfectly understandable. I mean how many times do we write things on a board and it gets misconstrued. Our minds are a sum of our experiences and these translations are a sum of all experiences till first print. They have shaped them for better or for worse. The original words are currently lost or hidden through time. But like you said you can take the good from it. However extending that, it does mean you can take good from every religion. However it's a bit impossible to actually get it working in practice. The Mughul emperor Akbar studied Islam, Hinduism and a third religion (can't remember which one) and tried to form a peaceful new religion for all his subjects. It didn't really work. Andalusia also has similar tales, however the old Andalus was a good place of religious tolerance and people were treated fairly despite whatever belief they had. I think that's what we should really strive for. For people to all just be treated fairly regardless of their belief and to understand that belief system is a key to a collective cultural experience but its interpretation is personal and not to expect someone to share your viewpoint. Understanding the basis of each belief though does help us and that's something that could educate us about why certain systems and practices exist. It is a study into sociology and anthropology I guess more than pure literature. p.s. I'm replying to your whole post btw. I just cut a bit so that it wouldn't turn out huge @Master-Dex You give me too much credit.

Dates... Dammit. 11/11/11 is a little too early for me. December please . Regardless sounds like an expensive month.

@dean greek gods and their myths are ancient versions of modern soap opera . I did some research as part of a thesis for one of my degrees. We see that to a lesser extent in idol worship. Or to a similar extent amongst some rural folk in TamilNadu in India. Living actors who played gods on tv become politicians and some even gods. Amusingly their neighbouring state of Kerala are more hardcore communists and marxists since independence.

I'm sorry if I didn't mention. But yeah it's Entropy. Not universal but informational or rather statistical. But glad you recognised it. The thing is though, we are juggling a lot of uncertainty in qscience today. Mostly with the Higgs-boson particle though since it is a hypothesis and I'm willing to bet that that hypothesis will be broken just like Dalton's indivisable atom theory in the past. There's also the issue with dark matter and current theory on anti-matter is bs(sometimes I wish I took up research) most of that should be in an another thread. I think we have to face that currently the most predictable thing is unpredictability and randomness. Thing with science and particularly particles is that to study one thing leaves us in the dark about the other despite them being related. Mostly because of how we measure things. Most q scientists have been going on in circles about their proofs because currently the heart of quantum science rests on the higgs boson particle and when the question is asked what if it doesn't exist. All they say is that it has to even though it may very well not. We've heard that false logic before. Entropy is now in common domain but the theory of life as a projection still isn't. I'd actually like to discuss this further and outside the context of religion. I'm currently on an iphone on a train Is it possible to create a thread to discuss this shifting these posts there? Cause I feel it's derailing it.

My French is rusty but cities are considered feminine and Noire is feminine iirc. Well most cities (there are exceptions). However LA is an abbreviation and I think to use Noire with LA it probably needs to be part of a sentence. I'm guessing if Noire were part of the city's name it's acceptable like Montagne Noire but otherwise it probably should be Noir like Discworld Noir.

They definitely weren't. The main overarching case is their take on the Black Dahlia case which means they definitely were trying for some Film Noir reference. I wonder if they even realised that Film Noir meant 'Film Black' .

I disagree on the randomness aspect. Non-thermodynamically speaking H(X) = E[i(X)] In fact your coin toss example is perfectly applicable here too , provided it's a fair coin that can be used in a Bernoulli Trial. As a side note all measures are human-made because our mind is incapable of thinking without measuring sticks. Think of anything that's based on human studies and you'll find there are scales and levels on which they are measured because that's how our minds work. Take away those systems and it's still random. It's not measuring systems, those are made by us mostly to measure uncertainty and they themselves are uncertain when we get to much smaller or larger levels. It's why Quantum Science today is in a state of flux. Note: I'm not discussing religion here, but you just brought up all my years of studying Engineering and Maths from nearly 10 years ago. Bah I remember wasting so much time on Theory of Computation and Algorithm Analyses.

You know what looks odd about Grunberg in that image is that his head seems disproportionate with the rest of his body. I mean the guy is pretty tubby (and with good reason if you've ever come across his recipe for cookies). I hope that's just the screenshot though. I do recognise well actually most of the actors on it though. Team Bondi or rather the Creative Director of the game last worked on Sony's The Getaway. This game had a terrible dev schedule but I'm sure the game will be fine from the way it previews. There's a lot of former Sony Goodwill and investment in this game before Rockstar bought this game in exchange to providing Sony a few exclusives. My main gripe with the crappy production is that Noire was actually a typo because someone couldn't spell Noir, but they could've changed that earlier. Now it's fine because that's its identity but usually when you discover errors like that so early in production you do change it. It's just and this part is a rumour, I hear someone high up pretty much was convinced that Noire was the right spelling for Noir which is pretty stupid if true.

The problem for me with Ayaan Hirsi Ali is that she's pretty much a victim who's eventually gone nuts with her own propaganda. What she's experienced is wrong on several counts and is due to the interpretation of Eurasian religions in the African continent. Their interpretation of most religions is something extremely controversial and difficult to understand. This is generally what I mean when I say the problem lies with interpretation of beliefs. There's nothing in Islamic scriptures that would even validate what happened to her. Most of the GCC and Asian countries where Islam is practised do not understand why this exists within the African subculture. It probably has to do with the cultural interpretation of Islam just like how Haiti has a pretty much different interpretation for Christianity. I mean it is weird when the same set of beliefs can be interpreted in so much contrasting ways. For instance contrast the African interpretation of Islam with Sufism and you'll find that it varies in so many departments that you'll see how each deviated from the source and how much it's down to culture. It's the same with every system of belief. It's all down to cultural and personal interpretation.

I wondered about posting about it . A few games like Mount and Blade and Just Cause 2 are steam activated as well.

I'm sorry EA is not really friendly to PC gamers recently (post 2008) outside of Battlefield games. Take a look at Dead Space 2 and Hot Pursuit DLC exclusion (not to mention the other issues with HP). How about them screwing over steam with releases. The DA2 release etc. It's no lie that Nvidia cards have issues, you'd need to install Beta drivers to get it running looking somewhat good and there's odd framerate dips. He's saying this for two reasons. 1)September release of The Old Republic which is a heavy budget game and an MMO and only available on the PC. 2)They've acquired some more casual studios to make more casual games and not just playfish facebook games. What they or rather Frank Gibeau really means is, hey PC gamers we do love you for constant MMO support and casual games support. I promise BF3 will be good on the PC but please do buy our MMO and casual games and particularly Maxis games and EA Bright Light. When EA are truly friendly towards PC development it'll be a different story, but right now it really isn't.

P.S. I also want to clarify about marriage in the UK. Technically in the UK all Church of England marriages are 100% recognised by the law and you get a marriage certificate if you get married in a CoE regardless of your beliefs. However every other kind of wedding/marriage requires a civil ceremony and getting married under a house of religion does not make you married. You do need to have a separate civil ceremony apart from whatever traditional way you do get married. So with that regards this constitution is highly tied to the CoE. Basically any sort of marriage outside of the CoE is civil partnership in the UK and you're not completely 'married' in the eyes of the law unless you either have a CoE marriage or a civil partnership. There are laws however if you are a couple and have been living together for over 2 years or maybe it's 5. I'm not entirely certain what period of time they consider. I know it's 2 for immigration laws but I think for dispute in property it might be 5.

I think the problem is that a good majority of people outside of the former Soviet Union today are for all reasons and purposes Irreligious. It's all a matter of philosophy really. You see those who are against organised religion aren't technically atheist they're anti-religion and yes that's actually something you can put on your census data if you want. Those who call themselves spiritual but not religious are also in that category as are agnostic, deists, nontheists, atheists, ignostics, freethinkers, skeptics, non-believers, secular humanists, Marxists (yes it's considered to be a system of belief today albeit political in origin), apathetics/apatheism or anti-theists. Some of them are vague though, like anti-theists can also be those who oppose a singular God since it existed as early as Greco-Roman times. Most of us do not really research into what a system of philosophy is and go by honestly what people say which are similar to their beliefs. Some college students, particularly philosophy students do say they're this or that without going into the deep extents of why they choose to believe something. What doesn't help Atheism is the fact that unfortunately there are arrogant douchebags who believe their way is the only way such as Dawkins. It's pretty much as bad as those who impose a religion upon people. You see the thing is there must always be choice in the system of belief because that's the key 'System of Belief'. We've come across all of these various systems in our search for the Universal Truth. In my personal opinion there is some truth to every thing because I don't believe in the 'everything is false or everything is true' ideology. However little truths in every system cannot form a formative belief. Morality is a human invention that seeks to separate us from animals and forms a core part of every belief system. Morality explained by an ethicist does technically form the basis for most beliefs. Who or what the ethicist is varies as does the purpose of the ethicist depending on the system of belief. I'm sorry if it sounds offensive but it's the core of most beliefs and every founder or key figure in a religion and/or belief system is an ethicist (that's not a bad thing really because by and large having some sort of ethics is good for a human). Where every system of belief goes wrong is honestly with personal interpretation. Personal interpretation of a system of beliefs clouds its true intention because what I feel a set of words means and what you feel a set of words means need not be the same 100%. That forms the basis of most arguments really. This is because language and communication are ambiguous. This causes one of the bigger issues faced by several youths today in terms of a belief system - 'cognitive dissonance' since there's more than one side to the equation in everyone's head (before they settle down on something). Atheism unfortunately thanks to some people has gained a 'religious status'. That's because religion is technically a cultural system that enforces beliefs and values. When you convene as an atheist which I've seen in several countries, you're negating what it means. Atheism till recently used to be the rejection of belief (now it's the rejection of belief in deities which while closer in meaning to the word wasn't what it was). Personally I have a few conflicting philosophies. While I can say that for most practical purposes my primary philosophy would be that of Epistemology to some extent I am a non-essentialist and also an anti-existentialist (though I'm not saying one shouldn't enjoy themselves). I also have a consequentialist side when it comes to certain political affairs. As a result of varying philosophies I can sometimes come off as amoral. I don't consider myself religious, agnostic, ignostic or atheistic. I don't believe in right or wrong and feel that the highest power is an existentially non-existent entity that doesn't distinguish good or bad in terms of human morality. As far as I'm concerned we are pretty much like goldfish in a translucent bowl in what appears to be a dim waterless empty room. I do believe that fear of death and existence beyond the mortal plane is what causes a lot of people to believe in one thing or the other. What really drives me is not to find the meaning of life but rather to find out what creates rational though in our minds and how can we define and recreate the chemical existence of knowledge. I don't believe everything can be deconstructed down to Turing machines because deconstruction can only go so far as can TMs. For me personally that's all that matters to me in a quest for truth. (Quest for Truth for many though has been one about enlightenment and to varying degrees associated with Buddhism which is technically again a spiritual irreligious thing which has become a religion over time, which is why I say that Atheism is becoming a religion. Also just to add some info, Hindus don't deny Buddha and in fact believe that he's also an avatar of Vishnu). But at the end of the day, they're all belief systems just holding our rational sentience together. We choose what we want to believe, but it's our interpretation of said belief that makes all the difference because volumes of thought are lost in translation. p.s. My parents are somewhat religious to varying degrees (Mother is rationally religious, belongs to an orthodox background, father started following religion probably around my age). My wife is anti-religion (believes in God but not a religious establishment). I am since there's no clear-cut definition for my philosophies under the general umbrella of irreligious leaning on the atheistic side but don't consider myself an atheist due to it being a restrictive term. I prefer no boundaries to my personal stance against belief systems. I was also taught religion (3 as a matter of fact), but the first teacher also explained to me where the beliefs came from though he believes in the religion. I also gave up on studying religion by the time I was 9 simply because I wasn't interested in being 'taught'. I just read a lot of books on the subject and spoke to several people. I have been exposed personally to 5 religions. I won't get into semantics about Destiny like HC because 20th century has redefined destiny in so many ways that it's a vast philosophical realm with several wastelands. Also people find it slightly surprising that I'm what I am because I'll be honest there's more anti-religious sentiment in the UK than there isn't At least amongst those in my age group and areas that I frequent. edit: I'm going to spell-check since I'm up at 4am typing this and reading through an edit list of stuff I need to do for another client. edit 2: I also usually try not to bring about my viewpoints on religion most of the time but I do on philosophy which ultimately ends up being a discussion of religion or politics.

Since this is essentially an English vs English thread I figured the old David Mitchell Soapbox podcast/webisode. would fit right in. edited to add video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcLiPOtQHAU