President Barack Obama

[Squeezer]

well I pray to joe pesci so watch your ass

[froedrick]

well I pray to joe pesci so watch your ass

Ir works 50% of the time doesn't it?

[MetalHeadz]

this

this

[DankNuggets]

This post is so wide of the mark I don't even know how to respond to it. You're completely misunderstanding me, whether deliberately or not, and I also think your anger is misdirected. Attempting to paint me as some sort of Dawkinsesque agitator is frankly ludicrous. I'm about as sympathetic an atheist to the religious position as you're likely to find.

And the last paragraph is a joke. The old "you BELIEVE in science, just like we BELIEVE in religion" canard? Seriously? You can't do better than that?

hey if it came off as anger towards you, it was only because of the whole "god of gaps" thing. I know you didn't come up with that, but as someone who claims to be "as sympathetic an atheist to the religious position" you're certainly not coming off as sympathetic. That term is a mockery to religion. I guess we are just misreading each other.

I'm not saying you "believe" in science the same way you "believe" in religion. I'm saying that ANY scientific observation is subject to the limitations of those that made it. I might not be able to word this correctly but I'll give it a shot. I don't personally believe science will find an answer to how and why we (or anything) came into existance. I believe that such understanding is beyond the capabilities of the human brain. In a sense, I don't think it's possible, probably, likely, or w/e term you want use. Thus, I don't think science (completely limited by human comprehension) can explain our existance.

I hope you're following, because I don't think i did the best job of explaining that, and what follows may seem even worse. Forgive me, this is probably the first time I've ever decided to debate something like this.

Religion is also limited by human comprehension, which is why we can't explain the exact "hows" and "whys", we just say god did it.

As of now, science says "the big bang did it" but we can't exactly recreate that (the hows and whys) so it gives us the same insight.

I'm just saying, in the end, neither method leads you to an end that will stand up to scrutiny. Sure you can say that in the future we *might* figure it out through science, but like I said earlier, I highly doubt this is even possible.

I'm not angered at all, I just like to argue. I don't consider myself exceptionally religious, nor to do I take offense at those who discredit religion. Don't be offended by anything i've said in here, it's not a personal attack at all.

[Kolar]

Lets see, the term was created by an evangelical to chastise Christians who in the face of scientific explanation choose to find natural causes for events. Not the other way around.

So understanding how lightning worked for example instead of "God was angry at us so he decided to burn our village down with lightning bolts, we're fucked, lets burn some witches or some other crazy shit to please him", is replaced with: "an atmospheric discharge of electricity hit our village and caused it to burn down. Maybe we should find a way to prevent that from happening again."

Now before you go absolutely fucking nuts I am not saying that the former is a rational line of thinking in the 20th or 21st century; Christian, Atheist, non-theist, other ect... But that is how humans rationalized their environment for most of the existence of human civilization. Once people were able to question the status-quo, that all things large and small are created, caused and interacted with by a creator deity we were able to understand natural causes and systems.
This brings about the argument of the God of the Gaps. Now to understand why this argument is a red herring, you have to understand the domain of science and the domain of religion/spiritual as two separate entities. The domain of science is the physical, testable world which we can interact with, make perditions in, test and receive results. Physical/Hard science operates within this domain and deviating from it even in the smallest way and you enter pseudoscience aka bad, bunk, junk, non-: science. The Religion/Spiritual realm operate in the meta-physical domain, to understand this it's best to use a simple example. If I were to say 1+1 = 2, 2 will always be the answer. Assuming I passed grade 1 math and don't fuck up on my keyboarding skills, it will always be 2. I can not change that value, no matter how much I want that value to be 3 or 4 or 5 or 50,000.00 it will remains a 2. Now if I prayed to God to change the number to 5, no metric can gauge how much my prayer helped possibly change that number, accounting for error, to a 5. That doesn't mean simply God doesn't exist or that he is a bastard who doesn't want to help me, it means that I can no more disprove his existence then I could prove it using logic and rational thought.


Science may be able to one day say definitively how life on Earth came into existence and evolved but a major flaw theist make is in assuming the theory of evolution attempts to explain that process. It doesn't. Understanding extremely complex things such what existed before the big bang ect... might be outside of our capabilities, as it goes to the root of our limitations. We can not fathom something from nothing. But biological processes are reducible, physical evidence can be found on this planet and maybe on other planets if we do in fact find life to be abundant within our solar system and beyond.

Edit: Also we can recreate the conditions close to the big bang to understand more about our early universe. That's what the LHC is about. It wouldn't tell us "why" life exists but how the universe took shape and possibly why some elements are more abundant, why most matter is not baryon in nature ect... Science isn't about revelation, it's about picking apart the small pieces of information we do have to attempt to understand complex structures.

[Summa]

I might not be able to word this correctly but I'll give it a shot. I don't personally believe science will find an answer to how and why we (or anything) came into existance. I believe that such understanding is beyond the capabilities of the human brain. In a sense, I don't think it's possible, probably, likely, or w/e term you want use. Thus, I don't think science (completely limited by human comprehension) can explain our existance.

Is this what you were trying to say?

Scientific knowledge is a subset of human knowledge in general, and is thus limited by what we can perceive and logically deduce; so you believe, we are incapable of every ascertaining the Truth through science due to such limitations. Religious knowledge is also a subset of knowledge, but the reason it claims to know Truth is because they believe that their knowledge is revealed from a higher source (the last part is my input not what you were trying to say).

[raizin]

I was willing to give Obama a chance. Then he goes and does some stupid shit like name Hillary Clinton his Secretary of state. WHY???

Liberals please for fucks sake, dont just pay attention that someone has a (D) next to there name so they must be super awesome. This woman is a cunt and you all should be outraged.

[Squeezer]

I was willing to give Obama a chance. Then he goes and does some stupid shit like name Hillary Clinton his Secretary of state. WHY???

Liberals please for fucks sake, dont just pay attention that someone has a (D) next to there name so they must be super awesome. This woman is a cunt and you all should be outraged.

why? What the fuck power will she have. He has more popularity in this country than any of his fellow Democrat boobs and he knows it. Her job in the Obama administration will be to look pretty and drag Bill abroad. He still has a lot of credibility in the Middle East and Europe. Hell, he's still pretty popular in America.

Appointing her Secretary of State also prevents her from keeping the momentum of her campaign going forward to 2012 should Obama fail. This way her political future is directly tied to how well Obama does as president.

Clearly a man that lives by the principals of Sun Tzu. bwahng :fear:

[Money]

I was willing to give Obama a chance. Then he goes and does some stupid shit like name Hillary Clinton his Secretary of state. WHY???

Liberals please for fucks sake, dont just pay attention that someone has a (D) next to there name so they must be super awesome. This woman is a cunt and you all should be outraged.

at least shes not secretary of defense?

[Money]

why? What the fuck power will she have. He has more popularity in this country than any of his fellow Democrat boobs and he knows it. Her job in the Obama administration will be to look pretty and drag Bill abroad. He still has a lot of credibility in the Middle East and Europe. Hell, he's still pretty popular in America.

exactly, why worry...could be worse, could be sec of defense, attorney general... WHY DO YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR VEHICLES REGISTRATION AND LISCENSE PLATES? other than that i have no clue what secretary of state does? polish knobs in the oval office?

oh i was thinking it was something else LOL but yea wtf

[froedrick]

They announced that they're making Bill O'reilly sec of def

[gran guerrero]

I wanted Obama's theme song to be

They calls him Boss, Boss Nigga

would have been deadly

so is it ok to say the n word if your saying it ending in A rather than ER and in sing-song keystyling-esque way?

[Liquid Blue]

exactly, why worry...could be worse, could be sec of defense, attorney general... WHY DO YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR VEHICLES REGISTRATION AND LISCENSE PLATES? other than that i have no clue what secretary of state does? polish knobs in the oval office?

oh i was thinking it was something else LOL but yea wtf

they deal with foreign affairs

[Troll King]

And don't worry if you don't know what the Secretary of State does, you'll still be qualified to be the running mate on the Republican presidential ticket.

[Stompa]

I was willing to give Obama a chance. Then he goes and does some stupid shit like name Hillary Clinton his Secretary of state. WHY???

Liberals please for fucks sake, dont just pay attention that someone has a (D) next to there name so they must be super awesome. This woman is a cunt and you all should be outraged.

why are you so racist