For example, the first point, "Compared to religious people, non-believers are in general LESS prejudiced, anti-semitic, racist, dogmatic, ethnocentric, close-minded and authoritarian." This easily translates into that non-believers have no regard for traditions and values, so it cannot mean that non-believers are more moral.
So you are saying we should hang on to prejudices, racism, etc. for their traditional values? And of what value are they? War, genocide and destruction in the Middle East (in particular, but not 'only'), has been raging for many centuries because those people won't let go of what their parents and grandparents teach them generation after generation--now look where the world is with the handing down of that historical convention. Millions are fleeing into Europe (primarily), from the horror of "traditional values".
The second point, "...non-religious people are MORE altruistic and supportive of women's rights, gender equality, and gay rights," begs the question whether there are such rights in the first place and in what sense are genders equal. If genders are really equal, maybe men get pregnant and give birth to children as naturally as women? Or, if they don't give birth, maybe they have a natural inalienable human right to give birth? What is the meaning or purpose of such right? Doesn't it make a mockery of the concept of rights? So, this second point does not seem to elucidate anything about morality either.
Either you are spoofing us sir or you have the early onset of dementia. How can you bring up the inherent biological differences between men and women into a discussion about equal rights under the law for everyone? Are you daft?
The thing is that atheists and non-believers seem to be, in general, more inconsistent about morality than theists and believers. With less scruples about what they do and think, and with no concern of whether their thoughts and actions are consistent or not, atheists and non-believers are less conscious about their own state of morality, they care less about what morality is and they care less whether morality is. These studies tend to disregard this issue.
Non-believers are not particularly inconsistent with their moral beliefs, they are simply more flexible in an ever-changing world (and it is not only for the better, but may be our true salvation). Although most people have a basic understanding of what is right and what is wrong, not even the greatest of believers can be consistently right in how they obey God’s laws as well as those that have been established by man. A book called "Under the Banner of Heaven" demonstrates what happens when the strict interpretation of god's laws supercede man's laws. In short, religion has been as inconsistent about morality as anything else and more often than not, that causes even worse problems.
I'm always trying to understand somebody else's point of view. I can't see many here doing the same. But it has been good to me. I've learned a lot.
(BTW, when I ask questions and I "don't got" answers, I stay in the void.)
I am the opposite about staying in the void and I consider it a character flaw, maybe even a personality disorder (I think they have pills for that). You are cool while I get hot--different personalities we have (I sound like Yoda), for god knows how many reasons. I am not the intellectual that I see others here as--and I may be wrong about that because I am not even intellectually capable of making that judgement.
I get somewhat of a feel for people here, but I (James), need personal contact to read a person well and for them to read me in return and thus have a meaningful exchange of ideas. Intellectual debate on DnD is much like talking heads. Too, too....something--maybe too disconnected or dispassionate. I am a people in-person-person and I need to look at you to understand you. That's just me and maybe not you.
Always the same thing, f*ck up the world. Then they ask how's the world by 2030... better, much better indeed... how could we ever lived without a Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor...
We would be living in a world where a Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor would be needed (there is serious doubt it would be built by that time) and not one where the Indian subcontinent is a poverty-stricken playground for British colonialists.
If we look at his project list, it can be divided into categories:
New Cities
Songdo International Business District (South Korea)
Masdar City (United Arab Emirates)
Khazar Islands (Azerbaijan)
King Abdullah Economic City (Saudi Arabia)
As a consequence of higher population and urbanisation in the world there will be many more cities and megacities, almost all in Asia (most of the world's population) and Africa (highest population growth). As they grow in size and economy, their impact on the world will increase, but the ones to be of influence in 2030 exist now.
Infrastructure
Dubai World Central Airport (United Arab Emirates)
Tokyo-Osaka Maglev Train (Japan)
The Grand Canal (Nicaragua)
National Trunk Highway System (China)
Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (India)
Most of these projects would be finished by 2030 or nearby, and while there would be immediate local effects the biggest effects will take longer to materialise.
The exception would be the Chinese highway (and highspeed rail, metro, and airport) network, which is changing China as we speak.
A new Panama canal could also matter, but the change would be less dramatic as there already is a Panama canal.
Technology
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (France)
Whatever the outcome, it won't affect the world of 2030, but it might be of importance by 2040.
Today is today and not yesteryear--punto y aparte. To the many old fogies here who started and have remained old fogies from age 30 on (look at Oakdale and ersi and Bel and Rj, etc--not Frenzie, tt92, string, smiley faze (too much), mj (too much), drake, jax and several others (who know who they are)--and jimbro is old but pretty much cool). If one can't keep an optimistic eye to the future without wishing to return to their original little comfy "nest" they came from, then they are useless to progress--kinda like Republicans. Not too many people here are optimistic about the future of humankind and it it is reflected in the choice of topics. I'm done--for now.
"A documentary on the ten most ambitious mega-projects currently under development around the world, featuring: Dubai World Central Airport (United Arab Emirates); Songdo International Business District (South Korea); Tokyo-Osaka Maglev Train (Japan); Masdar City (United Arab Emirates); The Grand Canal (Nicaragua); National Trunk Highway System (China); International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor [ITER] - Fusion (France); World's Tallest Building (Azerbaijan); Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (India); King Abdullah Economic City (Saudi Arabia)."
Here is something a bit more down to earth, progressive and very green. Coming to a canal near you soon!!
All calculations involving probabilities in order to calculate the possibility of life's existence in the universe are flawed right from the beginning. Life it's not a matter of probability, in fact it's the least probable thing to happen. It needs much more than just chance, the size of the universe, the number of planets being totally indifferent.
Outside of your religious beliefs, how do you, Belfrager, personally know that life is 'the least probable thing to happen'? I've never read this anywhere. The 'right conditions' don't necessarily lead to intelligent life--I will grant you that--but with perhaps around 50,000,000,000,000,000,000 (50 quintillion) potentially habitable planets in the universe (in the goldilocks zone as estimated by the Kepler mission), there are huge odds for intelligent life being out there. You ever been to a casino? With these kinds of odds one could expect a very near perfect twin of Earth so many times over as to make it absurd to think intelligent life such as ours doesn't exist elsewhere.
If you are using a philosophical reasoning to say that just because abiogenesis occurred here on Earth doesn’t mean that the same occurrence would necessarily happen elsewhere, then you are simply overlooking the inconvenient fact that just "ONE" other incidence of "any" kind of microbial life arising independently of our lineage (solar system), would provide sufficient evidence to show that abiogenesis is not extremely rare in this universe (the odds again ya see?). Do you wish to take the bet that we won't ever discover a single speck of life anywhere else in this universe for the duration of human existence in this universe? Bad bet my friend.
Did Drake get it right? Not very likely, but it is a start, we will get better numbers for the parameters, we may eliminate some, add others, maybe come up with totally different ways of thinking about this. But just how pessimistic would one have to be to believe that life hasn't developed on any of those other 50 quintillion planets in the habitable zone? It is of course a slam sunk just using logic--intuitively, it is even more of a certainty. You are a fundamentalist creationist and so you will ignore statistics/mathematics in any and every way you can--not surprising at all, or as Ersi would say "very predictable of you".
Oakdale doesn't know how to express the feeling he has inside right now without stooping to my level--he is very limited in this respect (i.e. no cajones, no man, nothing worth talking to in the vicinity whatsoever). The greatest men in history have had huge 'cajones'--Oak has none. JFK (for one), had balls the size of Jupiter).
James, you seem to have lost your ability to speak/write English…
I do get a bit befuddled after 6 or 20 Margaritas--ever happen to you sport? Naaahh...you get infinitely smarted the more inebriated you get (we have all witnessed that). What makes you think you are better than me as a person? You seem to think that the ability to parse certain difficult equations puts you a step above the crowd (this is only one of the sillier stupid things you have said to me). Come down off your tinker toy pedestal pal, before you break your fool neck--and have the balls to answer this Oak--don't act the geeky panty waste that you are.
What are your thoughts? Any chance of alien civilization on that solar system?
Life (and I mean intelligent life), is out there. It's just that the odds of your examples are in the 10s of billions to ones. We are just beginning to scratch the surface Syav, so don't get excited friend--we have a long, long way to go.
- a) We are alone. - b) We aren't. - b) it's not more probable than a) - of course it is. - why? - erh... because there are many planets. - and so what? - erh...
I like monologues.
I would guess that's all you are----Heeeeeere's Frager!!
This lady attacked her boyfriend for refusing to have sex with her. Any questions?
Is it sure that he was her boyfriend?
Looks to me as if she could only be her own boyfriend--which is possible these days. Does anybody really have teeth like that--other than maybe zombies or a bad meth habit?
Ah, I see. You take industry to be a natural phenomenon
I take humans to be a "natural" phenomenon — and their activities. You disagree? You're right in thinking that we have insurmountable problems of a definitional nature. An example to ponder: Is a major volcanic eruption "pollution"?
If one considers CO2 and sulfur dioxide as pollutants then volcanic eruptions (major and minor), contribute the same pollutants as our factories and motor vehicles. It's just that all of the volcanic activity around the globe accounts for less then 1% of the total amount of CO2 emissions caused by human activity (29 gigatons annually now). The volcanic mega-eruption about 201 million years ago (brought on by tectonic forces ripping Pangaea apart), doubled the atmospheric CO2, raised global temperatures and acidified the oceans very quickly and caused 50% of living species to go extinct, but these are indeed rare (more rare than asteroid impacts).
There is a distinction made between the natural land & sea CO2 emissions and human CO2 emissions--this is certainly more for clarification reasons than it is to be saying that human activity is not part of earth's natural phenomena. In fact there has long been a distinction between what is caused by nature and that which recently has been brought on by humans. The land & sea CO2 cycle of emission and absorption has been going on since life began and it has been very much in balance for a couple billion years. Humans started adding excess CO2 to the atmosphere (only 40% is reabsorbed), a mere 120 years ago and so it is considered by many to not be a part of the long-standing "natural" cycle. It is natural in my opinion, just very recent is all--not to mention the fact that humans have no free will to be anything but natural.
I'm from a Christian family and was a practicing Catholic for about 38 years. Baptized and confirmed. I had a rosary and a scapular! And went to Catholic schools for 11.5 years.
What happened then? a case of severe brain injury? I've heard that it can be treated with a lot of rest and, very specially, not posting at all. I hope you can recover soon.
I know several recovering catholics (there are thousands of them). They treat it like one would an addiction--seems to work quite well--maybe they should start a 12 step program for these people.
The secrets of the Universe can only be found at the endlessly small scale not at the endlessly big dimension. Discovers are made at European CERN not sending junk American trash for space.
What about European space trash like the Rosetta probe of a comet, or the Huygens probe sent to Titan in 1997, landed of Titan in 2005 and transmitted data for a whopping 90 minutes? Always gotta get a dig in against the US regardless of how irrelevant it is. Your digs have become meaningless however--it is now plain for all to see that you are merely a pigheaded bigot with nothing of substance to say.
Your statement in itself is woefully shortsighted. Curiosity and exploration are vital to the human spirit and the advancement of humankind. The situation is like that in Europe before 1492--people might well have argued that it was a waste of money to send Columbus on a wild goose chase. Yet the discovery of the New World made a profound difference to the old. Spreading out into space will have an even greater effect--it will completely change the future of the human race and maybe determine whether we have any future at all. Meanwhile space exploration pays for itself--and then some. And in a very short period of time it has brought about a multitude new innovations, industries, jobs and wealth to planet Earth. Hopefully space exploration will be what unites us to face a common challenge--so you send up your junk and we'll send up ours and we'll eventually compare notes to see whose junk did a better job of getting us off this rock.
The work a CERN is simply astounding, however for them to go further in their exploration, tremendous amounts of energy will be needed-- much more than this planet has to offer. The energy of stars (and eventually the entire galaxy), will need to be harnessed to study exotic or non-baryonic matter (matter not made of protons, electrons, etc.). It seems that the macro- and the micro-world will need each other in order for either to get to the bottom of things.
Speaking of Hawking, have you noticed that although he's a Brit, he has an American accent.
All around smart cookie Stephen Hawking lost the ability to speak 30 years ago after a severe illness. His speech synthesizer has an accent that has been described diversely as Scandinavian, American or Scottish. It has been offered to him to change the computer voice to a less robotic sounding one, but he wishes to stay with the voice that people have grown to know him by. Hawking has experimented with Brain Controlled Interfaces to communicate with his computer, however as yet these don't work as consistently as his cheek operated switch. Personally, I don't want my computer to know what I'm thinking (about it), or it might retaliate some day.
MORE AWESOMESAUCE: "New Horizons Probe Finds Out Pluto's Bigger (and Icier) Than We Thought"
This probe will pass by Pluto at 7:49 AM ET and the data should be available to the media by Tuesday evening (it takes 4.5 hours at the speed of light for the date to reach Earth). Read here.
Are the candidates promising anything interesting? Nudism mandatory for everybody? Legal marriage with animals and plants? That you'll take your space rockets and leave Earth forever towards Orion?
So now you are picking on innocent animals and plants--they have rights too ya know...and lefts. I think that Donald Trump plans to do the space rocket thing with Mexicans--illegal and legal.
Perhaps a little global warming will be useful very soon.
"Life on Earth has always been dependent on the conditions of the Sun, so scientists spend a lot of time studying its activity. A recent announcement from solar scientists suggests that the Sun may soon enter a period of significant reduced activity, possibly causing a mini ice age by 2030 – just 15 years from now.
These predictions were announced at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, Wales, so it hasn't been possible to evaluate the research yet. However, Professor Valentina Zharkova from the University of Northumbria who made this announcement claims that the findings come from a computer model of sunspots that has made "unprecedentedly accurate predictions," as reported in The Guardian." Go here for more.
I listened to Hannity (of Fox News — but, of course, he's a pundit!) interview Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, tonight for an hour, and it seems that the GOP does have a superstar in the race…
Jindal will not make it to the oval office in the next election. Previous stances on pro-life and anti-gun control are too recently changing just for his presidential run to fool many of the voting population. And while a US presidential must say that he believes in god to have any chance of getting elected, he can't say that he prays to god about it. God-belief in this country only goes so far in politics (and most other endeavors), and then you cross a line into becoming too much of a lunatic to be trustworthy--strange but true. Jindal is an intellectual of sorts, but not on par with Obama. His economic stance on a balanced budget has a nice democratic flair to it, but that is just one reasons why the good ole boys who 'are drinking whiskey and rye' will not let him get the nomination.
