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Absolutely. (Not an obscure film at all, I would have thought.) Your go!

It's a new one to me -- I hadn't even heard of it, I don't think. I'm trying to track down a copy to watch now. My favorite thing about this thread is finding new movies, though!

Well, I know Walken, Wallach, Burgess Meredith and I think that's Jerry Orbach. But I don't think I've ever seen this movie. You've stumped me.

That's Eli Wallach standing beside him. I don't know this one off the top of my head.

Dieselpunk is the best of all punks! I look forward to this one!   

The rest is kind of down to semantics. Is non-belief actually a type of belief? If it isn't, I retract that statement you quoted, but that still doesn't change that much.

This point of view gives validity to any belief that has been historically held, though, which is part of the problem with modern discussions of difficult issues. Fair and balanced doesn't mean that everyone who has a viewpoint gets equal airtime. For instance, if you (well, not you you, but you know what I mean) hold that black people are an inferior race, and I disagree with you, you shouldn't get to automatically say, "Well, that's just your belief, isn't it?" The burden of proof is on the one making the claim.

Can you actually claim you know for sure there is no such thing as god? If so, isn't then atheism just another belief, i.e. a belief in the absence of any supreme force at all?

The problem with this line of thought is: Can you actually claim you know for sure that the universe wasn't created by a giant death metal-loving unicorn who believes that all people named Cuiki should be executed by guillotine? If so, isn't then your non-belief in my death-metal unicorn just another belief, i.e. you should acknowledge the validity of my belief that you should probably be executed by guillotine (so sayeth the Unicorn)?

EDITED to note that Miguel and I posted these messages simultaneously. My response doesn't consider his.

Maybe what Baron is addressing is that it's a difficult proposition to examine science as an objective concept, because it will always, as it is (generally within our realm of consideration -- we could perhaps make some arguments about intelligent animals) a human endeavor, come packaged/polluted with human nature, good and bad -- idealism, greed, compassion, mistrust, stewardship, nationalism, etc. etc.

So of course, there are instances where, in the application of science, our humanity and rationality come in opposition to each other. The nuclear bomb, for instance (and I think that the argument Khris puts forth is still problematic -- you can't just invent the nuclear bomb objectively and blame politicians for dropping it, otherwise you don't go on television and say 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds' when you do), or calculating surgical risk, or deciding whether or not we should suspend federal laws for a little girl to get a lung transplant. Discussion of the ethics of science is important, essential to the application of science.

Where this differs from religion is that this is an ongoing, progressive conversation. The laws of most religions have been codified, and even if we set aside some of them, like the much-cited-in-this-thread example of eating pork, there's no chance for a (since we've brought him up) Kuhnian paradigm shift in which we reject wholesale the beliefs that came before and still call ourselves Christian, or Muslim, or Scientologist, or what-have-you. All new information and human development has to be shoehorned into ancient and antiquated rules for living.

And again, the strength of Jesus was his ability to distill all of this down into simple aphorisms and didactic parables, and, historically, to do it in ways that resonated with the Jewish culture he was addressing.

I'm not sure what we're arguing here. That Jesus as he's represented in the Bible was a bad person? That his thoughts were unoriginal and therefore not worthy of consideration?

Jesus also introduced the concept of eternal punishment in the lake of fire. And he tells people to not care about tomorrow, leave their family, and to love their enemy.
Is somebody who gives as much bad advice as good a good advisor...?

Well, that's the benefit of seeing Jesus as a philosopher and not a religious figure whom I have to follow to the letter. I don't have to agree with everything that Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Kant, Nietzsche, or others say, but can treat their good ideas as the ideas of fallible men who sometimes also had bad ones. Some of the examples you've cited here aren't things I'd necessarily disagree with either -- our interpretations of the mandate to love enemies, for example, I think, would come down to our individual interpretation of that set of verses.

In addition, my skepticism regarding the supernatural extends to whether Jesus believed in a fiery hell, or whether, as he often did in the parables, he drew on metaphor and storytelling to make his point. I'm being super lazy right now, and don't actually want to belabor this because I think we're on the same side for the most part in the wider view of this debate, but if I'm not mistaken, Jesus was drawing on a description of an actual place where garbage was burned...or something. We also get all of this filtered across centuries, secondhand accounts, and multiple translations.

it again boils down to "don't be a dick"

Which is, unfortunately, the part that everyone seems to gloss over, in fact they bend over backwards to ignore it. Again, I wonder if Jesus was attempting to lead a shift from a culture of persecution, mistrust and vengeance, to one of self-examination, openness, and forgiveness. This involved making people shift their view of God and the laws that God hand-wrote for them to follow. Easier this approach than simply announcing there was no God, though it still got him killed. I don't advocate this as the definitive reading of the New Testament, only the one that's most interesting to me.

Ugh. That's more than I ever intended to write in this thread. Carry on!

It didn't sound like a joke to me, more like: "those silly atheists just don't get how profound and great Jesus's teachings are".

As an atheist, I still find value in the teachings of Jesus. The power of the Bible is in its storytelling, and the Old Testament especially benefits from being the end result of oral tales transmitted over generations before the act of writing was invented. The stories of Moses, Noah, David, Solomon, etc., are undeniably great narratives. Jesus, as he's represented in the gospels, was also a great storyteller.

The biggest problem with the teachings of Jesus is the same as their biggest strength. Their profundity comes from their simplicity. "Blessed are the meek," equally so. "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye," "Most certainly I tell you, inasmuch as you didn't do it to one of the least of these, you didn't do it to me." Not exactly mind-blowing material, but how many follow them? They're so simple that they seem like common sense, and yet they're not commonly put into practice.

I'm obviously not as enamored with the bits regarding the supernatural, but even in those, Jesus is attempting to change the nature of the relationship between the people and their God. The Old Testament God wipes out entire civilizations on seeming whims, favors nations in battle with others, kills innocents to prove points to the devil. The God for whom Jesus advocates is one of love, forgiveness (see the parables on the prodigal son, and the story of the two debtors), charity (the parable of the widow's two coins), and benevolence. Thus, the new Covenant: "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."

Jesus spent his time with the working class and with sinners. Part of me always wonders, and I hope the religious among us will excuse this bit of what they might consider blasphemy, if Jesus was just a really benevolent teacher who realized that if he wanted to reach people, he had to put his teachings in terms of what they knew already, i.e. in terms of their religion. I wonder if he really believed he was the son of God, or if that was just a solid hook on which he knew he could hang his teachings.

Since this is becoming more and more popular: Should there maybe be a template with left-right-click GUI?

Does this mean Broken Sword- or BaSS-style system? If so, yes please.

I'll bite. Here are some screenshots, an animation, some concept images, and a video draft of a taxi ride from a project that's been put on the backburner while a collaborator does research abroad.








[embed=420,315]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGC4Sgtqayw[/embed]

If I'm reading all of this correctly, I want to also point out the mistake I made when making a rainy room and setting the rain as part of the background animation. Your characters will be drawn over the rain, it will look silly, and you'll feel foolish. Let my foolishness inspire you to not do the same thing!

And I am going to coin the term "thermosexual." Has a nice cadence.

Mine actually hung only with your avatar, the one with the flames.

Hey, is that the Korean remake of Blade Runner? Any good?

As some of you may know I proposed to my girlfriend recently.

I didn't know. Congratulations (assuming she said yes)! I hope your marriage is gay in the other definition of the word.

Have you tried updating your graphics card drivers? That worked for me when I had this issue.

How many of us really educate ourselves about both sides of every issue we have an opinion on? It's not something that smacks you in the face, either. If you don't go out looking for it, or hang out with people who'll tell you, you're not likely to read about it on the news or just figure it out on your own.

To some extent, I'll say 'Fair enough.' However, if I care about something deeply enough to argue with strangers on the internet, I want to know most sides of it, and I'm willing to listen when new information is brought to the table. I understand that I might be in the minority when it comes to engaging in internet battle, though.

However, fair enough because...

These aren't just unromantic details, they cut to the very core of the intimacy and partnership of a marriage, to the notion of providing for your family, of being "one unit."

Many of these situations you've listed are affordances of marriage with which I'm passingly familiar, but would likely take for granted until I encountered the need for them. And I've never really thought about these legal situations in the context you've accurately described above. Thanks for the perspective.

Why would atheists get married? Lol, tax breaks. At least religion validates the otherwise meaningless ceremony. (I'm sure this will be sufficiently inflamatory.)

Sufficiently inflammatory for what? Are you trying to pick a fight, or debate your points? I don't understand the need-to-be-inflammatory tone of your response (or your aggressive use of LMGTFY elsewhere -- the responsibility to provide sources is on the debater who uses them). You don't have to live up to the title of the thread just because it's there.

I'm an atheist. I got married because I love my wife and wanted to formally and publicly commit to her in a way that resonates with cultural norms for my part of the world. My use of a wedding ring is an appropriation of a pagan symbol. Guess what? It's not pagan anymore. Culture is malleable. And again, when I got down on one knee and proposed, I didn't say, "Sweetheart, let's get together so that I can use your income to fund my IRA."

Perhaps actually reading what I said is in order here. I specifically indicated that I was referencing two parent homes, not strictly hetero parent homes.

I did actually read what you said, which is why I was confused. So why bother citing this research? Unless you were implying that somehow homes where two parents are gay is inferior, this research doesn't support your argument. Thus my request for a clarification.

No, I'm not married, but aside from the civil rights offered, the only secular benefit offered by marriage is the tax break. No one is stopping anyone from being in a committed relationship or having a formal commitment ceremony with family and friends.

Gay marriage isn't about love, commitment, civil rights, or equality, and anyone who disagrees isn't viewing the issue with any rationality or objectivity.

Again, you're myopically denying an entire cultural context to marriage here, even if we limit it to just the western world, and even if we limit it to contemporary times.