[Click to view comic: 'Zordur para harcamak, hatundan gizli...']

Nate - plase note the word "funny" in the title of this thread.

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I found it just as funny as the other ones with strange language we've found.

Um, sorry.

[Click to view comic: 'Satan']

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My love for you is like diarrhea, I just can't hold it in. -Weird Al Yankovic

[Click to view comic: 'A Tribute to a Fictional Embodiment of Andy Kaufman!!']
because 534's my lucky number...

It seems like ever since Nate posted that one, I'm seeing these strange, possibly eastern european languages in comics almost every time two or three times I open up the main page. How strange.

Ok, warning in advance... this is not funny. In fact it's entirely disapointing. I'd like to see it finished if someone could oblige. It has the markings for the start of a good comic but as you can see it kinda dies off.

[Click to view comic: 'The Power of']

Actually, I think that comic is a work of pure class.

It's called "The power of", and it ends with "at least we have".

Assuming that the missing word is "love", from the hit song by Frankie Goes To Hollywood (and to a lesser extent, the one Celine Dion released) it's kind of poetic, and avoids the tedious cliché by emitting the most important word.

The fact that it's Osiris' last comic makes it even better.

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Dad was flammable

This should be entertaining. Especially for Nate.

http://www.philosophers.co.uk/games/god.htm

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...Trot and Cap'n Bill were free from anxiety and care. Button-Bright never worried about anything. The Scarecrow, not being able to sleep, looked out of the window and tried to count the stars.

That little quiz is terribly biased.

I love how they regard belief in God to be illogical, but a strong disbelief in God is just fine, despite the fact that it is essentially impossible to prove or disprove. Also, since I am a Christian who believes in God-guided evolution, the quiz just assumes I don't exist, and starts crowing about how I just took a hit when I say I don't think the scientists are wrong.

Too many devout atheists are smug wankers.

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I think I did pretty well.

quote:

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You've just bitten a bullet!
You say that if there are no compelling arguments or evidence that show that God does not exist, then atheism is a matter of faith, not rationality. Therefore, it seems that you do not think that the mere absence of evidence for the existence of God is enough to justify believing that she does not exist. This view is also suggested by your earlier claim that it is not rational to believe that the Loch Ness monster does not exist even if, despite years of trying, no evidence has been presented to suggest that it does exist.
There is no logical inconsistency in your answers. But by denying that the absence of evidence, even where it has been sought, is enough to justify belief in the non-existence of things, you are required to countenance possibilities that most people would find bizarre. For example, do you really want to claim that it is not rationally justified to believe that intelligent aliens do not live on Mars?
I say once they've been under every rock and I've been to the face and seen no life on Mars, then what they say is true. This is the idea of faith.
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You've just taken a direct hit!
Earlier you said that it is justifiable to base one's beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction, regardless of the external evidence, or lack of it, for the truth or falsity of this conviction. But now you do not accept that the rapist Peter Sutcliffe was justified in doing just that. The example of the rapist has exposed that you do not in fact agree that any belief is justified just because one is convinced of its truth. So you need to revise your opinion here. The intellectual sniper has scored a bull's-eye!
My opinion is that one can say that they have a firm belief about something such as God ordering them to do something. Yet it's another thing that I would have to put faith in and there's no concrete evidence to; in this case I don't believe what he said is true and he can't prove it to me; I'm rationalized believing either way because there's no concrete evidence to support either idea; that he was or wasn't influenced by God.
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You've just bitten a bullet!
In saying that God has the freedom and power to do that which is logically impossible (like creating square circles), you are saying that any discussion of God and ultimate reality cannot be constrained by basic principles of rationality. This would seem to make rational discourse about God impossible. If rational discourse about God is impossible, there is nothing rational we can say about God and nothing rational we can say to support our belief or disbelief in God. To reject rational constraints on religious discourse in this fashion requires accepting that religious convictions, including your religious convictions, are beyond any debate or rational discussion. This is to bite a bullet.
If God created all, and developed the physical engine of mathmatics on which the world runs, then he can alter that or perhaps create a new one, at least in his power as "God" right?
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You've just had a near miss!
You claim that it is justifiable to believe in God based only on inner-convictions. But earlier you stated that the serial rapist, Peter Sutcliffe, was not justified in believing, purely on the basis of inner-convictions, that he correctly discerned God's intentions in his raping and murdering of prostitutes. In order to reconcile these claims you need to show what makes the same form of justification acceptable in one circumstance and unacceptable in another. Perhaps you can do this. But until you can show where the difference lies, you are in danger of taking a direct hit!
explained earlier; it's more of a personal thing to rationalize yourself- you can't rationalize yourself to others based on personal conviction, and neither can they do you. It's up to you to believe what you do.
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You have reached the end!
Congratulations! You have made it to the end of this activity.
You took 1 direct hit and you have bitten 2 bullets. The average player of this activity to date takes 1.33 hits and bites 1.07 bullets. 54273 people have so far undertaken this activity.
Congratulations!
You have been awarded the TPM medal of distinction! This is our second highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.
The fact that you progressed through this activity being hit only once and biting very few bullets suggests that your beliefs about God are well thought out and almost entirely internally consistent.
The direct hit you suffered occurred because one set of your answers implied a logical contradiction. The bitten bullets occurred because you responded in ways that required that you held views that most people would have found strange, incredible or unpalatable. At the bottom of this page, we have reproduced the analyses of your direct hit and bitten bullets.
Because you only suffered one direct hit and bit very few bullets, you qualify for our second highest award. A good achievement!
Click here if you want to review the criteria by which hits and bullets are determined.
How did you do compared to other people?[list]
[*] 54273 people have completed this activity to date.
[*] You suffered 1 direct hit and bit 2 bullets.
[*] This compares with the average player of this activity to date who takes 1.33 hits and bites 1.07 bullets.
[*] 48.28% of the people who have completed this activity, like you, took very little damage and were awarded the TPM Medal of Distinction.
[*] 8.00% of the people who have completed this activity emerged unscathed with the TPM Medal of Honour.

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quote:

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That little quiz is terribly biased.

I love how they regard belief in God to be illogical, but a strong disbelief in God is just fine, despite the fact that it is essentially impossible to prove or disprove. Also, since I am a Christian who believes in God-guided evolution, the quiz just assumes I don't exist, and starts crowing about how I just took a hit when I say I don't think the scientists are wrong.

Too many devout atheists are smug wankers.

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This is the wrong thread (and the wrong forum) for this, so I will keep it brief. If anyone feels like responding, we should probably head over the Fights Go Here (not that I want a fight, but that's the best forum for a debate).

I think it is ridiculous to assume that everything is black or white, rational or irrational. I admit that the core of my belief in God is not logically arguable, but this should not exclude logical argument being applied to my beliefs. Let's get hypothetical for a moment... let's just say that one day, for no discernable reason, the moon turns orange. Scientists try to work out why it happened, but no explanation can be found. Later, somebody digs up an obscure Bible verse that says something about God turning the moon orange. Now, this would not be proof of the existence of God, by any means, but it would certainly be strong logical evidence for His existence.

Remember, there are two classes of logic - deductive and inductive. Only deductive deals with Boolean values, ie. sharply right or wrong, true or false. Inductive logic deals with evidence, strong arguments versus weak arguments. In terms of inductive logic, there is a very broad, fuzzy border between the possible and the impossible.

Urm... yeah, that's about all I wanted to say.

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It really is funny, the things you find at random on here.

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Dad was flammable

Well I'd be up for the discussion this time(not to argue, but to discus it), only I'm going away...

[Click to view comic: 'Dr. Pedantic shows you the door.']
I suddenly realized that this should have been done by Captain Obvious. Or did we have Captain Obvious when lara made this back in that thread?

Capt. Obvious has been around plenty long enough. I guess ol Dr. P has just been more memorable.

quote:

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I suddenly realized that this should have been done by Captain Obvious. Or did we have Captain Obvious when lara made this back in that thread?

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Urm... my guess would be a complete and utter lack of creativity and intelligence in the brains of the plagiarists.

Just a stab in the dark.

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quote:

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Too many devout atheists are smug wankers.

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Go shave your palms, boo.

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The problem with inductive reasoning is that it's totally illogical. This means that we do irrational things all the time, which makes it difficult to accuse anyone else, theist or atheist, of illogic.

What a crazy world.

Inductive logic is not even remotely illogical - it's just a different type of logic.

For example, my first year Critical Thinking lecturer (a fantastic bloke named Ross Phillips) introduced the concept of physical possibility along these lines.

"Is it possible to drive from here to the city in an hour?" he asked the class. We answered the affirmative - from my uni to the city takes about half that time by car.

"Okay," he went on, "Is it possible to get to the city from here in thirty minutes?" Again, we replied in the affirmative. It might sometimes take longer, but good luck with lights and traffic would get you there within half an hour.

"How about twenty minutes?" he asked. We paused, and replied that it was possible, but you would have to speed and run red lights to do it.

"Ten minutes?" This time, we really thought hard and argued a bit amongst ourselves. We concluded that it would be possible if you were an excellent driver in a fast sportscar, and broke almost every road law in existence.

"Alright then... could you do it in five minutes?" he finally asked. We all agreed that five minutes was pretty much impossible, unless you had access to some kind of top secret military automotive technology - rocket-powered car, or something.

Now, there is no sharp line where the possible and impossible meet, in this instance, but most people would agree that you can't travel thirty kilometres by car through a city in five minutes, legally or otherwise. It's a fuzzy border, but that doesn't make it irrational or illogical.

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The problem with inductive reasoning is that it's totally illogical. This means that we do irrational things all the time, which makes it difficult to accuse anyone else, theist or atheist, of illogic.

What a crazy world.

Them's fightin' words!

Inductive reasoning, abductive reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, and even intuitive reasoning are quite logical and completely rational. That's not to say they're truth-preserving, or always going to be right, but without them we are faced with an even more irrational and illogical result: the failure to reach more than the most trivial of conclusions, and from that the failure to make any decisions.

I mean, think of it. When the weather report on the news says it will likely rain in the afternoon, and you as a result take an umbrella with you, what type of reasoning are you applying? Deductive? Hell no! You have no proof that it will rain. Rather, you apply inductively the meteorologist's known past predictive accuracy and conclude that it suggests a high likelihood of rain. Are you saying that the taking of an umbrella is an irrational act?

Similarly, popping back to the earlier topic, I think neither a belief in God nor atheism is necessarily irrational. All of us see plenty of circumstantial evidence around us, and interpret it to the best of our abilities. Totally rational, even down to some of us coming to quite diverse conclusions based on our differing sets of inputs!

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ken.kaufman@gmail.com

Oh yeah, and agnostics are quite rational too -- nothing wrong with deciding that you can't decide.

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ken.kaufman@gmail.com

Or deciding that the proposition itself is illogical and thus neither true nor false.

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What others say about boorite!