601. Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty?

Comment #141438 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 12:17 pm

What the hell is going on. Why am I such a big heretic? Why don't I make limbo?

Lame. Oh well, less flowers and meadows, more moaning. Good tan weather.

Plus, I am betting all the cool people made heretics hell.

Yeah, heretics hell OWNS! Screw all other levels of hell, and even heaven. The other thing that could possible make limpo better than heretics hells is if I were moved to limbo.

602. Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty?

Comment #141395 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 10:50 am

Looks like I get level 6, heretics hell. I got "very high" on that, and tied between "virtuous unbeliever" and "lustful" with high.

603. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #141384 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 10:27 am

I think you might have saw me allude to having made other accounts Jon.

When someone suggested weirdo, I said that I would maybe have done that, but I didn't want to go through the trouble of making another e-mail address, as I only have the two.

Which reminds me. The e-mail I used for Wheeler was "GilksM@yahoo.com" is that didn't give me away, I don't know what would.

I wouldn't expect you to be able to distinguish between a parody of a creationism argument and a real creationist argument. If anything, the real one is often far more absurd.

604. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #141371 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 10:09 am

Not if you want to be sodomized...hell yeah if not.

In my opinion, Jesus appears to be enjoying himself. I don't know who it is though. Likely John, if I had to guess.

(edit)

Completely unrelated, but I thought I'd mention.

I was watching my brother play world of warcraft, and he walked into a croud of many 15 players, and just said, "at least one of you is likely a homosexual."

Someone whispered him and said "is something wrong with that?" and he responded "not at all, what would give you that idea?"

I just cracked up, I thought it was just amazingly funny. Though I think odd things are funny.

605. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #141367 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 10:01 am

Yes, it looks like my alter-ego got removed, I hope that the powers that be are lenient!

(*clasps hands together*) "Please Jebus, let them practice forgibness."

606. Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty?

Comment #141361 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 9:48 am

But then there would be a schism. Shiny side in vs shiny side out.

607. Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty?

Comment #141356 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 9:44 am

This is just hilarious. "I don't like what those people are doing for no really reason other than I don't like the sounds of it. Think I'll make up some rules and threaten punishment beyond the grave by magic beings if they don't obey them."

Why do a billion people subscribe to that lunacy? What the hell is wrong with them? It needs fixing.

I also like Steves hat, I have been balding lately, so I have been collecting cool hats. I don't have one like that yet though.

608. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #141328 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 9:21 am

Well, I am always plesently surprized. I thought the Tea Pot worshipers one was both sad and a riot.

609. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #141306 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 8:55 am

As hungarianelephant points out in Comment #141167: you think that the milky way, looks the way it does, because it comes from god's penis? In offering these answers to my questions I can only assume that you mean that god needs a penis so that he can ejaculate galaxies after fucking black holes.

610. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #141303 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 8:50 am

Got to kill a few hours anyway. This brings back memories of being called a christian in disguise be Brian Sapient awhile ago on a "backlash" thread I was posting on. I am happy to see that they are no longer linked from this site.

611. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #141299 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 8:47 am

I wouldn't want to imitate the others. Wee Flea is wooter with better english skills, and McGrath is a professional argument and question dodger. He isn't even a sophist, he employs obvious and blatant fallacious and evasive reasoning.

612. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #141297 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 8:44 am

I thought my first post did I good Wooter, Steve.

613. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #141295 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 8:42 am

That's hilarious Geoff. Do you just search the web for these things? You seem to always have something like that to link.

614. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #141291 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 8:38 am

Steve, I thought that the occation was perfect to slip myself in as a Wooter incarnation. I decided it wouldn't be fun to be a complete idiot though, so I thought I'd go for sophist.

Though clearly I need practice. To be honest I was pre-empted at every corner, I had arguments planned, but you guys are far too knowledgable about logic and philosophy to fall for them. MPhil clearly making my understanding seem infantile. I gave up quickly because I knew there was nothing I could throw at him/her that they wouldn't instantly devour without chewing.

I would have been a downhill slop.

615. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #141285 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 8:33 am

Phil, you should find Wooter, and give him your blessing; and by that I mean cripple him with a baseball bat.

616. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #141281 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 8:28 am

I thought I'd go crazy Steve, I haven't argually heard anyone argue for such a position.

Omnipotence is unintelligible to me.

617. Oklahoma: One Step from Doom

Comment #141119 by Mitchell Gilks on March 10, 2008 at 4:25 am

Bunch o'goons. I can't believe this crap.

JamesDB, it is a misconception that our beer is stronger, the alcohol percentage is only larger because we use a different measurement system. It equates to the same alcohol content.

618. Out of the Blue

Comment #140932 by Mitchell Gilks on March 9, 2008 at 5:57 am

Hey, if you don't want to discuss it then fine. No need to be hostile, and imply I'm an idiot because I don't immediately see things your way.

Forget that I mentioned it.

619. Out of the Blue

Comment #140928 by Mitchell Gilks on March 9, 2008 at 5:50 am

Then you are arguing that reductionism can't reduce something, not that it shouldn't. That is a whole other story.

620. Out of the Blue

Comment #140927 by Mitchell Gilks on March 9, 2008 at 5:47 am

Then don't use ambiguous and easily misunderstood terms. They are obviously meaning it is a crude version of Marxism, which makes sense. They are not saying that Marxism is valgur sometimes, they are saying that form of it is a crude representation of it. You are not saying that. You are saying that reductionism is valgur and inappropriate sometimes. Hardly the same thing.

621. Out of the Blue

Comment #140923 by Mitchell Gilks on March 9, 2008 at 5:42 am

Bonzai, your point is that either not everything is reducible (in which case you need to demonstrate it,) or that it is sometimes inappropriate and vulgar to do so, (which is what I understood you to be saying) in which case that is merely your opinion, and you are entitled to it. Not something that can be argued for.

622. Out of the Blue

Comment #140920 by Mitchell Gilks on March 9, 2008 at 5:38 am

Steve, all the things I mentioned as software are quite portable, and can be abstracted. Language, mathematics, trade, or technical knowledge and skills. Everything I mean when I say software is portable, and abstractable.

623. Out of the Blue

Comment #140917 by Mitchell Gilks on March 9, 2008 at 5:36 am

Bonzai, words like "vulgar" and "inappropriate" are words if personal opinion, and "vulgar" specifically is a word that conveys personal dislike.

Nothing is catagorically vulgar, that is what you personally think.

I don't need you to go into explaining why you don't like it. I got it the first time. What I said in response counts this time as well. Changing your example doesn't change your basic point.

624. Out of the Blue

Comment #140905 by Mitchell Gilks on March 9, 2008 at 4:54 am

From what I see I am with Bonzai on this, who seems to be the most tentative in his appraoch of cataloguing, and defining consciousness.

I don't see eye to eye on his dislike of reductionism, which seems to be spilling over into a few slight red harrings, but I agree with his major point. Though I also harbor a distrust of transhumanism, for its necessarily arbitrary nature.

I have my own ideas of what consciousness is, but they are merely ignorant conjecture, and nothing I'd voice or argue for. I'll just wait for the evidence to come in, I'll go with what it seems to indicate. The one thing I do think that it indicates is that consciousness is an emergent effect of properly working brains. I think that is where the evidence sways anyway.

625. Out of the Blue

Comment #140904 by Mitchell Gilks on March 9, 2008 at 4:49 am

Steve Zara, I personally think "software" is a damn good analogy. I would call the brain, hardware, and language, math skills, knowledge and learnt skills of any kind to be software. I use the term to mean information, or programming that is more or less installed into the hardware.

I think it works excellently. Not as if it has to be taken to mean completely 100% the same thing as software for computers.

626. Out of the Blue

Comment #140686 by Mitchell Gilks on March 8, 2008 at 10:51 am

You're correct Steve, I overlooked all of those very good points.

I still think 10 years is overly optomistic, but I could be wrong. I haven't a clue how much of our brain is used for cognitive awareness, I doubt anyone knows. It could be considerably less than I may suppose.

I don't think that a 1 inch tall person can be as smart as someone our size, without a far superiorly evolved brain. Size seems to be the easist solution, it is the only major difference between a chimps brain and our brain.

627. Out of the Blue

Comment #140682 by Mitchell Gilks on March 8, 2008 at 10:38 am

I wonder if an equivolently intelligent AI would be able to sort through all the bullshit we believe, and how poor we are at reasoning, or if it would be no better, and believe a load of bullshit too.

We will have to engineer it a prolific ass like ours, so it can be just as good at pulling stuff out of it.

628. Out of the Blue

Comment #140680 by Mitchell Gilks on March 8, 2008 at 10:33 am

Ten years isn't nearly enough time to meet the raw processing power it would require, maybe 30-40 year supposing moore's law obtains. No sooner.

Perhaps more, being that it could only process 22 trillion instructions per second. The fastest supercomputer in the world is up to 500 trillion instructions per second, and won't match the human mind for 20 more years worthy of doublings at the least. So their brain would have to keep up with the fastest computer in the world. Highly unlikely, it will follow at the very least a decade behind.

629. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #140297 by Mitchell Gilks on March 7, 2008 at 5:43 am

What other groups claims to have covered the mark on morality Epeeist?

630. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #140291 by Mitchell Gilks on March 7, 2008 at 5:33 am

I can't comprehend these situations. I feel like an outsider looking in. Everyone is reacting relatively the same way. I never know what to do when things turn personal.

631. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #140286 by Mitchell Gilks on March 7, 2008 at 5:26 am

MPhil, I'm a smart guy. I'll manage. I am interested in philosophy as a hobby only, and read and discuss it as a hobby only. If I were going to do it professionally I would clearly need intimate understanding of everything. As I am doing it for personally pleasure I want to absorb as much of philosophical thought as I can in my life.

Personally though, I am more interested in the rules than the players. I see the players as being pros at the game, and are interested in how they play. Nothing more than that.

632. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #140279 by Mitchell Gilks on March 7, 2008 at 5:12 am

Agreeing with someone's position or opinion A in no way implies agreeing with position or opinion B. So I find such a point moot.

I said I agree with him on that point.

Although I should have seperated that my critique of ontology was seperate from Kant's of existence being a predicate. I have a whole other unrelated issue with ontology...I have my problems with metaphysics as well, but I won't let them needlessly spill over.

633. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #140275 by Mitchell Gilks on March 7, 2008 at 5:04 am

MPhil, I have a few hundred books at least to go through if I am not mistaken, it will surely take years. I'm young though, and reading a book a week or so, I'll get through a large amount.

I don't agree that existence is a predicate. I agree with Kant. So the rest of what you say doesn't follow from my position. It seems you only have a problem because you accept the ontological baggage created by the verb "to be", which doesn't exist in eastern philosophy because they don't have an equivalent verb.

It is a problem created by language, and nothing more.

634. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #140269 by Mitchell Gilks on March 7, 2008 at 4:58 am

I don't understand these sorts of situations...maybe I'm sociopathic or something.

635. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #140260 by Mitchell Gilks on March 7, 2008 at 4:39 am

No offence, MPhil, but I'm not in the mood to read a thread about it, it seemed like something that could be quickly answered as you have.

Then you were merely playing with context. Denial of one does not necessitate denial of the other.

I'm trying to get through reading all the major figures in western and eastern philosophy, and if it is important I'll run into it eventually.

636. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #140206 by Mitchell Gilks on March 7, 2008 at 3:48 am

Often it is the complete opposite Steve Zara, a hefty amount of philosophical disagreement centers around symantics. Nothing I hate worse than someone attempting to build an argument around distorting language. (Which I am not saying MPhil is doing, I'm still unsure what they are talking about.)

637. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #140204 by Mitchell Gilks on March 7, 2008 at 3:45 am

Mphil, what are you talking about? That seems like a completely non sequitur to me. How does that follow?

There are two types of existence (traditionally accepted ontological states of being) which are the conceptual and the actual. How does denial of one imply denial of the other?

638. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #140193 by Mitchell Gilks on March 7, 2008 at 3:34 am

I love philosophy, a lot of it is garbage, I'd agree, but a lot of it is extremely useful as well.

Mphil, we only have to presuppose that it exists conceptually. Which I have no problem with, with anything at all.

639. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #140184 by Mitchell Gilks on March 7, 2008 at 3:28 am

I'm going to have to side with Irate Atheist and Anslem, for surely a cunt that doesn't exist cannot be greater than a cunt that does exist. (*Ssshhhh*) Quite Hume.

640. Lords Approve Abolition Of Blasphemy

Comment #139999 by Mitchell Gilks on March 6, 2008 at 11:27 pm

It's pretty sad when a bunch of old men in dresses that believe in magic are the ones deciding civil laws. "Should we drop our "don't say anything mean about the invisible man in the sky" laws or not?" What's really overwhemlingly sad, is that isn't a joke, that is seriously what they are deciding.

Bah!

641. Crossing the Divide

Comment #139985 by Mitchell Gilks on March 6, 2008 at 10:33 pm

Ha! I was raised in a fundementalist christian family that believed all that crap too. I never did, I did buy into some of the objections of evolution when I was like 13, though I never embraced creationism, as I never believed in that God stuff. It always was over my head, and I'm a pretty conceited fellow. I consider myself to be considerably smarter than my parents, and their friends, so them being able to understand it, and me not being able to grasp it, just didn't fly. I came to the conclusion that it just must be nonsense that they are pretending to understand when I was about 12 I think.

My accepting evolution went as follows:
some stupid objection I thought made sense, followed by a clear and comprehencive answer that seemed so obvious I felt like a tool. Which repeated for all of my objections. I then decided to actually read about the theory instead of embarrassing myself again. After becoming marginally aquainted with the theory, I decided it was overwhelmingly the best explanation, and had far more backing then I ever dreammed, and an answer to every conceivable objection that could be raised.

I also found it quite addicting to watch and read such amazingly intelligent and inspiring people dicuss science. Something I hadn't experienced before.

By the time I was 16 I was arguing it constantly with everyone. It wasn't until I was 19 that I actually came accross the term atheist though, and found out what it meant. I knew instantly that is what I've always been.

When I hear Christopher Hitchens use the quote from Pascel, saying how he is addressed "those so made that they cannot believe." That always speaks to me directly, I am such a person as well.

642. Contribute to science directly by volunteering some of your computer's processing power!

Comment #139744 by Mitchell Gilks on March 6, 2008 at 1:00 pm

Well, I'm not running any such thing, and I never turn my pc off anyway. I'll see how much processing power they plan on taking from me. I think my PC is a little bit over average, I built it about 6 months ago. AMD 3800 dualcore athlon processor, 4 gig memory, my board can handle two pci express graphic cards, but I haven't gotten around to picking up a second one yet. I have 1 8600 geforce gts.

So I think I have come processor speed to spare.

643. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #139605 by Mitchell Gilks on March 6, 2008 at 7:48 am

I also thought that was a riot Philip. It was a mixture of sad, and funny. Although surely that women didn't buy into her own crap. I hope not anyway.

I laughed my ass off when he got "re-energized" by crystals. He just had a nap with plastic glowing crystals above him.

Sadly I had to break it to her that I was an afairyist. She was devistated. Asked me how I could possible account for how my crops grow, or where love came from.

644. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #139598 by Mitchell Gilks on March 6, 2008 at 7:19 am

I use a variation of that all the time whenever I hear statistics quoted, Hungarianelephant.

I say "statistics indicate that 85% of statistics are bullshit".

645. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #139593 by Mitchell Gilks on March 6, 2008 at 7:11 am

I think the important point is that 20% of nothing is still nothing (my brother was there at the time, but make the opposite conclusion, that 20% of fairies existing would equal 100% of fairies in existence). I have no idea where she pulled a 20% figure out of, I assume the same place fairies were originally pulled out of.

646. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #139586 by Mitchell Gilks on March 6, 2008 at 6:46 am

You think that's bad Irate Atheist, one time after I used my tired old "fairy anaolgy" when talking to my mom (whenever I visit it inevitable turns to religion) and she told me that she thought that 20% of fairies exist.

I shrugged and said "so do I".

647. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #139565 by Mitchell Gilks on March 6, 2008 at 5:08 am

Or God left the earth empty an unused for 5 billion years

648. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #139548 by Mitchell Gilks on March 6, 2008 at 4:17 am

A women was tricked into eating an apple by a talking snake, and as a result there are flesh eating diseases and parasites. What don't you understand Ian Bamlett?

649. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #139540 by Mitchell Gilks on March 6, 2008 at 3:37 am

Insulting me proves that you are wrong.

650. The Salamander's Tale

Comment #139538 by Mitchell Gilks on March 6, 2008 at 3:36 am

Maybe his english isn't improving, but instead the "million monkeys at a keyboard" hypothesis has just gained some weight. I posit that some of the monkeys have better grammer and spelling than others!