Thank you, Will. BeDazed, do some research. Any college-level world history textbook will tell you about how the bronze age empires (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Indus River Valley) traded with each other through intermediates (such as nomads who lived on the empires' borders), and how once one empire fell, the trade network was disrupted, causing the others to fall as well. China was spared the destruction because its economy was almost independent of the ancient trade networks.

Let's say 90% of football fans believe that the New Orleans Saints are going to win next year's Super Bowl. That doesn't mean the Saints are going to do any better. They may have thousands of fans cheering for them, but that doesn't increase their strength, speed, agility, or any other football skill. I don't see how sheer belief makes anything more probable.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 12 2011, 7:04 pm by rayNimagi.

That is not my point. The point is that the statement he is making, is making a statement far beyond his reach. And exactly because of that, just one exception of China puts his statement moot.

Again wrong. There is no facts involved in this. The majority believing that the Saints are going to win relating to the increase of game related factors is unrelated to what I've said. I'm not sure if your college level is worth anything, or that it is of any value, in the fact that you are saying such things as this.

Majority sees Saints as the Best.
Best means best chance to win the Super Bowl.
Thus it returns as a result the majority cheering for the Saints.

But I hate Football talk. On what level can you view American Football with 'rationality'? There is none involved. Again, your statement seems even more dumb than it already is.

No, it applies to both. Sorry, you don't get to redefine fallacies.

I was using second person. I thus kept doing so. I flat out called Cecil's remark stupid in the previous post. If you want to extrapolate that to include me calling him stupid, be my guest, but that's quite clearly not what I said. Obviously I've thought my position through, are you going anywhere with this?

"logic is a flaw" ? Get over yourself, that isn't even proper English. If you have something to say, say it. You're very clearly trying far too hard to seem like you have a coherent point. http://www.staredit.net/topic/12722/#265913

Uh. Duh? Logic alone is merely a formalization of premises, we combine it with the parsimony principle to determine truth as best we can. Nothing can ever be proven outside of pure mathematics, but that doesn't mean we can't rationalize our thoughts with the evidence around us to determine the most likely theories: in other words, science.

What is true and what is more probable are two different things. What is more probable is relative to our limited views. The fact that our mind is drawn when many people are involved in something is because we automatically see that something is 'more likely'. And when there are no other ways to scale the probability, then popularity is a good candidate. There are times when the patterns of a fallacy is not fallacious.

I'm getting tired of obvious statements. Just simply put, our rational thoughts and evidences around us are irrelevant from whether or not God exists. The argument itself was doomed from the beginning.

This is simply not true. An appeal to popularity says that an idea becomes more likely simply because more people believe it. That is what you are advocating and it is flagrantly and utterly wrong.

I am evidently missing the part where I tried to prove God doesn't exist. That seems to be what you're arguing about, but it's completely irrelevant and foreign to this discussion, as I pointed out earlier.

In the past, the world being flat was the more popular idea however we know that this is not true. The amount of people believing in something does not make something true.

Johnny is right, but all I said is that it is relevant due to the amount of people wondering about it. When everyone thought the earth was flat, the question of "is the earth flat" was very relevant.

I'm just going to drop in here with a couple of snippets. I've browsed this thread but don't have much interest in bashing my head against a brick wall of religion. For those that have the patience - keep it up. Science salutes you!

rayNimagi mentions a possible explanation for the common flood myths being that these cultures lived in various river valleys and flood planes. One theory I have read about (which has some archaeological evidence) is that the entire Mediterranean sea may once (~20,000 BC) have been much much shallower than it is now. Given that the Mediterranean area is the 'cradle of civilization' and the generally mild and predictable climate, there were undoubtedly many cultures living in the area at the time. It's theorized that the straight of gibralter was created during a large earthquake, which would have caused the Atlantic ocean to come rushing into the basin, flooding it and drowning many. It would have taken years for the water levels to eventually even out, and provides a clear cataclysmic event on which flood stories could be based, and over a very wide geographic area even cultures that never interacted with each other would surely tell of the great flood.

Jack ridiculously said early on that homosexuality causes HIV. Someone else politely corrected him on this, but wasn't sure why HIV is so prevalent amongst the gay community. There are several factors, with the dominant one being promiscuity and multiple sex partners, which especially took off in the US in the 60's and 70's with drug and hippie culture and the gay rights movements where suddenly being gay was (more) acceptable and it became easier to find sex partners. Another large factor is the general dislike of wearing condoms - many men (including straight) really *really* don't like condoms, feeling that they kill the mood and spontaneity of sex, reduce sensation or they simply have psychological hang-ups about them (like losing their erections at the sight of one). Finally there is also a biological aspect - the rectum, being the lower end of the digestive tract, is designed to suck out as much moisture and nutrients from food as possible, which is why some medications come in suppository form. This, in addition to the ease of which the rectum lining can be scratched and damaged during sex (eg light grazing that wouldn't be painful or produce any notable blood), leads to easy absorption of semen into the bloodstream of the receptive partner. Wikipedia gives the transmission risk as 0.08% of male to female transmission per act, but much higher at 1.7% for receptive male to male transmission per act, or about 20 times easier in male/male receptive sex compared to vaginal sex.

A better way to have phrased it would be that sexual immorality causes HIV to spread. This includes homosexuality, multiple partners, and promiscuity. If everyone had just one partner in their life, there'd be no spreading of HIV (from what I understand of it, anyway.)

Yes, that's a valid viewpoint.

I would suggest that if everyone just had one partner in their life, there would be even greater amounts of unhappy marriages and spousal/child abuse than there is right now. That's simply human nature.

I think most unhappy marriages ARE CAUSED by sexual immorality
for example:
-Cheating on spouse.
-Getting married because she got pregnant.
-Other variations of the same thing.

Basically any occasion in which a couple get married for the wrong reasons and then realize they aren't compatible at all.
If everyone avoided from premarrital sex STD's would stop spreading.

Hey Jack, I'm glad to see that there are still other Christians out there who have actually picked up a Bible before and can think for themselves

and where's the fun in that?

I quite enjoy not having any STDs

This is the same reasoning I use when I don't do drugs and stop at stop signs.

I've had pre marital sex and no STDs.

His point is that there is 0 risk of an STD without sexual promiscuity, whereas there's a much higher risk for you.

... sharing needles, blood transfusions, non-sexual secretion contact, in the womb, etc. Again, demonstrably wrong.

Having sex is not being promiscuous, and people who have sex safely have an equal risk of contracting STD's as do celibates. On that matter, sexual abstinence or lack thereof is a pretty personal choice- I'm curious how either of you would go about defending wanting to police other peoples' lives so intrusively. Also, the jump from sex to immorality is quite a funny one. Do not assume that people do not have the same moral code as you, I assure you that most will not.

also:
Considering pretty much every argument he's given is either a direct copy+paste or paraphrase from the first Google search result on the topic, that's a rather odd thing to say.

Dear Cecil, before you delete that, actually give it a try. I'm not kidding.

Not demonstrably wrong sure, the disease gets passed around by those means, but it wouldn't exist to BE passed around if people weren't sexually promiscuous. More than that, the disease would die out or drop to an extremely low number of infectees if people weren't sexually promiscuous.

No, having sex isn't being promiscuous, no one said it was.

The only safe sex is when it's with one partner over your lifetime. Condoms break

We never said we wanted to police it. We want you to change your ways.

Your grammar failed right there but I get what you mean. The jump was from sexual promiscuity to immorality, which isn't a jump at all. And let's not get into morals here, your morals are based on evolution and mine...aren't.

For the most part, I came up with my arguments myself. I didn't google anything for the majority of them. Your inecessant use of the strawman fallacy is rather annoying, please stop it.

As for thinking for yourself, I daresay none of your arguments were first thought up by yourself, yet whenever I use an argument which has been used by others you shoot me down for not thinking for myself. Hypocrisy is generally looked down upon in both debates and life in general.

Well actually I would say a minority are directly a result of sex. Most unhappy marriages boil down to different views on spending money, with distinct groupings around drugs, gambling and alcohol.

So lets put it this way:
How many bad marriages have been avoided because of pre-marital sex? Having a fulfilling sex life goes a long way to helping a marriage stay together (one of the warning signs of a marriage/relationship that is going to break up is a distinct drop off in sex). If you have pre-marital sex, you might just find out that as much as you love this person in other ways, they're just never going to fulfil you when it comes to sex, and so you don't marry them, avoiding a marriage that was destined to fail.

My point is that if you execute it responsibly the risk is negligibly small. Certainly small enough to not spread the diseases.
The real problem is the people not informed enough, too lazy, or too whatever to have safer sex. Those are the ones spreading it.

To put this in proportion, you're like demanding to banish all cars because people sometimes drink and drive and thus cause car accidents.

It would drop, I don't disagree. It would also drop if as certain sect of people weren't trying to convince everyone that sex is some sort of heathenish action and banning protection. Abstinence education doesn't work: the most religious parts of the US have the highest rates of teen pregnancy by far, even when you factor in abortions. [Src.]

There's these cool things called STD tests. Guess what they do? Condoms do break, and there are backup methods. Many safe people choose to double-protect with some sort of pill or UID in addition to condoms.

... what? My morals are based generally on egalitarianism, evolution has nothing to do with morality. Your morals are based on a 2000 year old book that you only listen to selectively. When's the last time you stoned someone, and how are your slaves doing? Quite the moral code those guys had, wouldn't you agree?

People accept the risks of their actions by making them, safe or not. As long as they don't infringe on unwilling people, it tends to be allowed. This is how free countries work.

Half of what you say is copypasta absolute standard conservative talking point reply, and the other half is factually untrue. Whether you google it or not you're just repeating what you've heard without regard for factual accuracy. On the other hand, as I said earlier: "A simple 5 minute research session on virtually any one of the original pro-religion points in this thread will render it flagrantly untrue and generally demonstrates a vast ignorance on any of the topics cited. Re: fossils, vestigial organs, recapitulation theory, carbon dating, neanderthals, dinosaurs, trees under water, etc. Blatantly false and easily fact checked things spouted authoritatively (and inevitably without reference) as true." If you want to cite a source as an argument, awesome. Two things: understand it yourself, and make it a source by someone with reason to be trusted, like a professional in the field in question.

What arguments have I used from anyone else that don't follow those basics? I "daresay" there have been none.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 21 2011, 7:19 pm by FaZ-.