Recent posts by Einar on Kongregate

Topic: Serious Discussion / Bible

I’m saying that the guy who wrote this made people think 40 people wrote it. Believe me, I know a lot about the Bible, at least for someone who doesnt believe in God.

Sorry, no dice. You cannot simply assert that “a guy” wrote the Bible when there is actual historical evidence otherwise and expect to be taken seriously. Provide backup for that claim and maybe people will believe you; if you don’t, you’re probably just one of those weird people who troll by deciding to have some strange unrealistic position and endlessly defending it by assertion.

Topic: Serious Discussion / God, the Bible, and religion - a Kong search for truth

Yes, but if the Bible contained things we know are true today, their children’s children would have had a leg up on the whole “science” thing.

I mean, think about it. If you were tasked with writing a holy book for some nomadic civilization, and you really wanted to help them out, what would you put in it? I know I would definitely include sections on things like, say, willow-bark tea helps to relieve fevers, but don’t drink too much because it will burn holes in your stomach; many diseases are caused by tiny little creatures who live much like you do, so make sure you boil any water you drink; in the same vein, wash your hands in running water and scrub them with fine sand and was them again before handling people with open wounds, and apply the same treatment to your instruments of healing.

If some truly all-knowing benevolent being was inspiring the book, you would think they would have put some good, practical medical advice in it – not just crap like “don’t eat shellfish or pig, and also I hate those dudes over there so go slaughter them for Me plzkthx”.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Bible

What, you want me to tell him to go visit the library and read books? How likely do you think that is?

Wikipedia he might look at, perhaps even skim. In any case, if he’s not willing to do any initial research on the subject, I’m not going to find better sources for him to read on the Internet.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Religion Poll

Given that this is a religious poll, all the Secular Humanists should be listed as atheists. The religion of someone who claims to be a Secular Humanist is by definition atheism – it’s in the name (they didn’t just put “secular” in there for kicks). Secular Humanism is a philosophy, not a religion.

Also I’m impressed that no one’s said that they’re a straight up atheist yet. I’ll be the first one!

Topic: Serious Discussion / Bible

No, unfortunately I understand your point better than you do. You think your point is, “We don’t know anything about the Bible, so it could just as well have been written by one person!”.

Your real point, however, is “I don’t know anything about the Bible, so it could just as well have been written by one person!”.

Read this Wikipedia article, then this one, then this one for good measure. I’m certain they will provide answers to all of your half-formed ideas.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Bible

It was written by many people, and assembled by committee.

The reason why it’s the most sold book in the world is because it’s the most printed book in the world – when they first started mass-producing books, the first book they mass produced was the Bible.

For the rest of your post, you really need to get an education. I’m just sayin’.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Minimum age to use Google?

Actually, it’s already illegal for you to break the rules of a website. The Terms of Service are, well, the terms of service – the web site agrees to provide you with its services as long as you agree with those terms. It’s a violation of civil law if you use the services but violate the terms.

What happened was Lori Drew. Some asshole woman trolled the next-door-neighbor’s girl on Myspace by pretending to be a boy who was interested in her, and then having the “boy” tell her to fuck off. She killed herself.

For some massively retarded reason, instead of charging her with child abuse or something actually valid, what the DA did was charge her with computer fraud, as per the Computer Fraud and Abuse act. They convicted her of (essentially) violating MySpace’s terms of use, and unless she wins on appeal (and I certainly hope she does) she will get jail time for it.

If this stays, it means that whenever you lie on the Internet, you can be sued and go to jail. Whenever you violate a website’s terms of service, you can be sued and go to jail. This was theoretically true before, but everyone thought that, you know, it’s too stupid a law to be enforced. Now that someone’s actually been charged with it, all bets are off.

Topic: Serious Discussion / God, the Bible, and religion - a Kong search for truth

I’ve never understood this argument.

“There are some things that are true in the Bible, so therefore all things in the Bible are true.”

In the Bhagavad Gita, there are some things that are true. Therefore, all things in the Bhagavad Gita are true.

In the Qu’ran, there are some things that are true. Therefore, all things in the Qu’ran are true.

In the book of Dianetics, there are some things that are true. Therefore, all things in the book of Dianetics are true.

In Neal Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle, there are some things that are true. Therefore, all things in The Baroque Cycle are true.

Topic: Serious Discussion / God, the Bible, and religion - a Kong search for truth

Josephus records how Jesus did exist and was killed by the Romans, and he both was secular and lived near the time of the events.

You’re probably talking about this bit right here, known as the “Testimonium Flavianum”:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

Looks like some excellent historical evidence for Jesus, right? Unfortunately, it was almost certainly fabricated. To summarize, no early Christian authors ever mention that passage even though they certainly had access to it, Josephus was a Jew and disliked Christians (which he does mention in a different place), which makes it odd that he would fawn like this, and the paragraphs that sandwich this one flow well into each other, meaning it’s likely that it was inserted later.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Why Cops Shoot Guys with Knives

Heh, one of my martial arts teacher’s teacher (so I guess my grand-teacher) worked in law enforcement at one point. He got into essentially this position we’re discussing – it was dark, his squad was raiding a crackhouse or something like that, and some dude ran at him with two knives. Police are of course trained to deal with such behavior using bullets, but my grand-sensei decided that he was enough of a badass to handle it nonlethally.

He broke one of the guy’s arms. The guy kept on attacking, so he broke his other arm. The guy still kept on going – if I recall correctly, they ended up having to shoot him because he would just not stay down.

In the aftermath, they figured out that he’d taped the knives to his hands, and he was drugged up to the point where he simply couldn’t feel pain. No nonlethal takedown would have stopped the bastard.

So basically, the reason why cops shoot guys with knives is because anyone attacking a police officer armed with a gun using a knife is crazy, and crazy people will kill you.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Why Cops Shoot Guys with Knives

I think our government is flawed in the sense that officers defend us and our cities, yet they are so vulnerable when it comes to sue and obvious medical issues. Maybe a few laws that will help cops be more protected from sue would be good considering all they do for us. Most officers are educated enough to be a doctor or lawyer, yet they prefer protecting us.

Oh man, Sue sounds like some sort of ravening beast who’ll kill us all!

No, cops don’t have to pay if they are sued (note conjugation) for something they did in the line of duty. Like I said before, police precincts retain lawyers to handle that sort of thing.

Also, most police officers have a high school education and maybe an AS or Bachelors. They’re nowhere near educated enough to be lawyers, much less doctors.

But the case stands that a suspect CAN sue for being shot… his argument? He hadn’t committed a crime.

No. You are wrong. If a suspect is shot while charging a police officer and wielding a knife, he has committed a crime – assault with a deadly weapon. Even if he never gets close enough, the fact that he was charging is enough for it to be assault.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Why Cops Shoot Guys with Knives

I really doubt “because you’ll get sued” is the answer, Ion. A criminal would have absolutely no case against an officer who shot them in a limb because the criminal was running at them with a sharp object, and in any case the cop wouldn’t have to pay to defend against such a stupid lawsuit (police precincts handle that sort of thing themselves with their on-site counsel).

The real answer is that shooting someone in a limb is difficult. If some whackjob is rushing at you with a knife, you’ve got enough time to shoot at him maybe twice before he kills you. The limbs are maybe 1/4th the size of the total body volume; if you aim for them, it’s entirely likely you won’t hit anything. If you do manage to hit a limb, you won’t reduce the attacker’s momentum nearly as much as if you’d hit him square in the chest or gut; you’ll probably twist him around a bit, but that’s all. If whoever’s attacking is high on certain kinds of drugs or or even just adrenaline, they might still be willing to close in on you and stab you up a bit after a limb shot.

Basically, when you’re in a crappy situation like that, it’s a choice between the other guy’s life and yours.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Death at Kongregate

But he had told me of a deadly illness that he had, and that he had a week to live.

Maybe I just missed it, but I can’t be the only person to have noticed this. You can’t accurately predict whether or not someone will die in a week, no matter how terminal their illness. It’s simply not possible.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Shocking survey... (Teen sex)

Why would anyone take this survey seriously? It’s basically a giant anecdote. It is meaningless.

The “one in five girls wants to be a teen mom” bit says to me that one in five participants were Anonymous.

Topic: Serious Discussion / God, the Bible, and religion - a Kong search for truth

There are many, many Christians in the world who believe in God/Jesus and try to follow the teachings of the Bible, but who don’t regularly attend a church or who are not verbal about their beliefs.

There’s also many, many Christians in the world who regularly attend a church but don’t actually believe in what it says. You can easily see this by noting that almost all people in jail are Christians, most of those corrupt corporate executives are also Christians, and the majority of scandalous governmental officials are Christian.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Is this a good reasons to start a fight?

Errr… “happy house” is a euphemism, and it’s not politically correct.

Anyway, why would you want to get into a fight with that guy? Just tell your teachers.

Topic: Serious Discussion / We are screwed

Obama loves pie. I have photographic evidence right here:

(hey, there’s about as much evidence that he’s a muslim)

Topic: Kongregate / Ring of Curses, Sharpening Stone and Yellow Rock of Cowards Full Card Art

No you don’t understand! He’s making a mod. A mod! Mod mod mod. You know, a mod. He’s incapable of explaining what it’s for or how it’ll be used; it’s just a mod.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Evolution, tell me please

One could indeed argue that we are less complex than bacteria. Our complexity comes as a result of our minds; the complexity of bacteria, on the other hand, comes from the gigantic database they store in their genes. If it suddenly gets really hot, you might build a shelter so your children can survive; with bacteria, n% of your children die, but 100-n% of them activate previously un-used pathways (or create new ones) that allow them to survive.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Fox News tosses Sarah Palin under the bus! Newsweek tells all on "The Wasilla Hillbillies"!

It was about a week, long enough, plus factoring in the nerves of her first big interview streak.
Not saying she’s a genius, just want to point out she’s not a dumb bitch like the media has portrayed her out to be.

You shoulda listened to those videos up at the top. She refused to be briefed before the Couric interview. At the very least, this screams “arrogant moron”.

Topic: Serious Discussion / God, the Bible, and religion - a Kong search for truth

Eh, every civilization has flooding myths.

Human civilization tends to spring up near flood plains for various reasons (mainly you don’t need to know about fertilization when the river does it for you). The stories get exaggerated through the centuries, and after a couple hundred years “your grandpappy’s house was knocked down in a huge flood” turns in to “the entire world was covered in water and your great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather saved two of every animal”.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Fox News tosses Sarah Palin under the bus! Newsweek tells all on "The Wasilla Hillbillies"!

Err… so the entire Katie Couric interview was one long episode of mind-flatulence?

Topic: Serious Discussion / Do the methods used by NAET work? (Formally A cure for HIV?)

because if it is found to work, a lot of science tells us would then become obsalite.

That’s exactly why, if there were any evidence of efficacy, scientists would in fact test this. If the NAET theories were even slightly right, then there’s at least one Nobel prize in it for whoever figures it out.

Unfortunately, there’s absolutely no evidence of any effect better than placebo when using NAET methodologies. This means that you could provide NAET treatment to one group, and sugar pills to another group (or whatever placebo treatment is appropriate) and get essentially the same response in both groups.

If you see people saying “I had <blah> and NAET cured it!”, keep in mind that most diseases that afflict humans are self-limiting. For most things, if you just ignore it, it will eventually go away. If <blah> is something like cancer or HIV, then there’s many other factors; for instance, is there evidence that whoever it was actually had HIV? Were they diagnosed by an actual physician? Do HIV tests performed on their blood show up negative now? Did they show up positive before?

In the case of cancer, you have to keep in mind that almost everyone has surgery to remove the actual cancer. This “cures” the cancer (IIRC) 70% of the time. The point of chemotherapy it to make sure cancer doesn’t come back. Frequently what happens is that people will have cancer, have it surgically removed, and then refuse chemotherapy – instead going with something like NAET. They then claim that NAET “cured” their cancer, when the actual cure was the surgical removal of the cancer.

If you’re interested in finding out more about this sort of thing, feel free to visit any of the many, many medical blogs dedicated to combatting this sort of thing. My personal favorite is Respectful Insolence, though you may not like the tone Orac takes with many things.

(note: replace NAET in the previous post with anything from homeopathy to accupuncture, and it’s still valid.)

Topic: Serious Discussion / Universal Language

You’re assuming the aliens are like us, they may not have eyes or senses as we know it, etc.

But they will have some senses. Our sense of smell is pretty terrible; if aliens whose form of “written” communication consisted of tablets impregnated with scents sent us a letter, we wouldn’t be able to decipher it as easily as they could.

The thing is, though, that we would be able to tell that there’s something going on in the tablet. We could examine the tablet in myriad different ways, and figure out that the chemicals deposited on the surface vary.

Aliens who can come visit us on Earth or who are capable of receiving our broadcasts won’t be stupid, they’ll probably have at least as much technology as we do.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Universal Language

Furthermore, deciphering a language when you have as large a body of samples as English is a trivial exercise in applied cryptoanalysis.

Why does everyone assume aliens will be dumb idiots who can’t do something as simple as figuring out another language? Even we’ve managed that, for goodness sakes.