New word: Copy-Pasta

Copy-Pasta: The cut and pasted nonsense people post rather than having opinions of themselves that go in every which way. Like they couldn't be bothered to make a good amount of real meat in their argument so they quickly made some pasta...

Pronoucing it Paste-ah might also drive the point home.

----

"I posted a carefully crafted thousand word essay on why he was full and shit and he just ignored it and gave me another helping of copy pasta."

Edward Current finds a Dark Sided person on Youtube.

He's not a christiAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

Darksided!



* In case your exceedingly dense (or lazy, or just off your game), that's Edward Current's page.

The Hiring of Jayne (Firefly), Kinetic Typography

Social Darwinism vs. Evolution on life, economy and society.

Social Darwinism is the general view of selection within societies being good for the species or that one's plight in life has to do with one's fiber, blood, character, superior breeding, genetics, race, class, etc. That the drunk who dies in the ditch earned his place in the ditch because he was somehow inferior to the businessman who inherited his father's fortune. That if we help the weak, heal the sick and educate the ignorant we are serving to weaken humanity because the weak are weak because they are inferior, the ill are ill because they are weak-blooded, the idiot is stupid because he is unteachable.

Social Darwinism suggests that somehow social situation is the principle result of ones abilities. That some people do well in business not because they had the opportunities and education and luck to succeed but because they are somehow more worthy and able in some intrinsic capacity. Social Darwinism is a hollow echo of actual evolution by natural selection.

In nature the geometric rise of populations of all organisms is checked by nature, predation, death, mate selection, starvation, illness, weather, and sometimes some of these attributes are a little better suited to a situation or a little worse and these improvements find they increase in the gene pool at a greater rate and keep doing so. So by sickness, death, and predation all organisms are naturally given to a propensity towards complexity, utility, adaption, and improvement spiraling off into the infinity of the unknown.

Now, we should notice stark differences between the two things. One is based on some nebulous idea of inferiority and the other is based on certain individuals doing slightly better as far as their genes were concerned. One has a vague idea that somehow peoples lots in life are their own fault or their lot, while the other recognizes the general struggle for existence. One asks that we withhold our mercy and condemn the victims of fate while the other asks that we do jack squat because it simply sits there explaining all the design of life. Social Darwinism is after all an argument about how we should act and general vague notions that that is how things should be or that they are somehow better that way. Whereas evolution by natural selection explains life whether we care or not.

While sometimes Social Darwinism finds political cover and adherents especially among the wealthy and affluent and gets rehashed over and over again in more modern social philosophies like Ayn Rand's Objectivism and finds strong comradeship with bizarre ideas about the need for anarchy as a system of government and deregulation to unbind the invisible hand of the market. That the world is better as a dog eat dog world because it demands we pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and become the captains of our souls and masters of our fate. Interestingly these related ideas find themselves properly opposed by the same thing that opposed Social Darwinism in the first place, actual evolution by natural selection.

Evolution, beyond simply being just a theory to explain the design of life, also finds itself properly applied in very diverse disciplines such as game theory, morality, and economics. It turns out the world isn't really best off as a dog eat dog world. In fact, one would be well advised to understand that the world isn't dog eat dog but that dogs are themselves pack animals and work together in cooperative groups. The invisible hand of the market isn't a magical wand but rather the economic equivalent of the blind watchmaker in biological evolution. And we should closely observe that the blind watchmaker doesn't craft simply efficient producers but is riddled with parasites from top to bottom. And that we should properly understand that cooperation is the natural propensity of evolution rather than necessarily competition. Markets will naturally gravitate towards parasitism or monopoly rather than simply producing the best product for the cheapest price. We should not nor cannot embrace the idea of letting the chips fall where they may while the greatest indicator for where you will end up in life is where you started in life.

Truth comes from understanding that we live in a cooperative society rather than a meritocracy and that the poor are not necessarily poor because of some vague sense of inferiority but rather more correctly because there but for the grace of God go I. That I was born in America has much more to do with my successes than my genes could ever account for. The fact that I was born to a middle class family and was able to go to college without trouble or incident, that I lived in a good neighborhood, that my country has public schools, that I went to honors classes, that both my parents are college graduates in the sciences. Dumb luck has more to do with individual success than anything else. Science has more to do with societal success than anything else. Morality has more to do with humanity's success than anything else.

Suffice it to say that Social Darwinism in all its iterations both old and modern are predicated on rather staggering errors, and evolution as properly understood within society, biology, and economics strongly indicates that our greatest prosperity will be seen not within the idea of laissez faire (hand's off economics) but in the domestication of our markets and the socialization of the essentials of modern life, the promotion of science and embracing of international cooperation.

I will be avoiding fast food in the future.

I just had some really rough food poisoning from Jack in the Box. *shiver*

85 million? WTF!

For a dowsing rod? Are you shitting me? Who the fuck gets control of that much money and has no common sense. This is bizarre! Why am I not instantly rich. I could have saved them 84 million dollars (pounds) by telling them they were absolute shit for 1 million. Wow. I'm actually floored.


Update:

http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesRandiFoundation&rclk=cti#p/u/0/ruTmqfGJhTI

James Randi obviously on the case.

Was part of the Book of Mormon stolen from Halmet?

In a post I made several years ago about problems with the To be or not to be speech in Hamlet also sharing the same problem in the Book of Mormon which cribs the line "from whence no traveler returns" in an attempt to sound Bibley. In Hamlet we are met with the odd problem that Hamlet talked to his father ghost and king specter earlier and so the line seems out of place, whereas within theology the line in the Book of Mormon seems odd considering the supposed resurrection of Jesus. Well it turns out several months ago I got a comment about the post from Brandon:

Not really...

You see, in a long speech like the one in Hamlet, the one part that is said to be plagiarized from Shakespeare has 3 words in common, "no", "traveler" and "return". True that the ideas are similar, but the speeches are very different.

Shakespeare said: "To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?"

Lehi Said: "O that ye would awake; awake from a deep asleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal dgulf of misery and woe.
14 Awake! and arise from the dust, and hear the words of a trembling parent, whose limbs ye must soon lay down in the cold and silent grave, from whence no traveler can return; a few more ddays and I go the eway of all the earth.
15 But behold, the Lord hath redeemed my soul from hell; I have beheld his glory, and I am encircled about eternally in the carms of his love.
16 And I desire that ye should remember to observe the statutes and the judgments of the Lord; behold, this hath been the anxiety of my soul from the beginning."

The messages are different. Shakespeare speaks of the uncertainty of death. Lehi knows where he is going, but knows where his 2 elder sons may be headed as well, therefore he drives it into them that he will be gone soon, and not return within their lifetime. Read the rest of the Book of Mormon and try to prove that Joseph Smith didn't believe in the resurrection.

Also, before we start playing the plagiarism card, take a look at the epic of Gilgamesh, and the story of Noah, then look at Hammurabbi's Code then read the law of Moses.

It is not my personal opinion that bible was stolen from these sources, but there is a better case for that than what you are claiming here, and a lot more people pushing that concept.

Yes really. The turn of phrase "whence no traveler returns" is Shakespeare and well known Shakespeare and as people really did travel around like Duke and King in Huckleberry Finn and give terrible renditions of Shakespeare.

It really isn't far fetched that Joseph Smith when writing the Book of Mormon would try and sound fancy and include that. After all he wrote the whole damned thing in 16th century English (which fades in places) while "translating" from Egyptian plates to what should have been modern English. If nobody returns from the grave, that's problem for Hamlet and for Mormonism. And more generally yes he stole it.

As for your latter claim, I freely concede that there are more obvious copying in parts of the Bible proper. It is quite clear that the Epic of Gilgamesh is very much the story from which Noah's story was copied. There are a lot of similarities between the Jewish law code and the code of Hammerapi (nothing word for word but the two are cut from the same cloth). And yeah, the legend of Sargon birth is pretty much exactly the legend of Moses' birth. And let's not forget that Luke and Matthew are pretty clearly copied from Mark.

Just because other things are copied too and the cases for those things may be better that doesn't mean other copying doesn't exist. And so it came to pass... Smith borrowed from Shakespeare while trying to sound all Bibley.

Bertrand Russell On God.

How militant and strident!

The Secret Life of Chaos

Well worth watching several times...

What the hell is that?

Good post and this post helped me alot in my college assignement. Gratefulness you as your information.

 That's not a real message. What could  it do. It's by anonymous. There's no links. I've seen others that are formulaic like that and when you search Google you end up with a lot of exact matches. But, what's the point of posting to a blog some prewritten stuff that advertise. Is it meant to encourage or see how much various blogs are checked? Is it some sort of study on whether or not encouraging posts motivate bloggers. Is it a flag to other bots that this is read? I just don't know what the heck it's doing? Is it suppose to post a link and yet failed? Just freaky.

Science and the Koran.

There's a lot of fun things with apologetics. One common tactic of Muslim apologists is treating the stuff the Koran says as some sort of Bible code (go figure). The Koran says:

[Quran 32.5] (Allah) Rules the cosmic affair from the heavens to the Earth. Then this affair travels to Him a distance in one day, at a measure of one thousand years of what you count.

And then calculating the difference between one light day to the amount the moon moves in a thousand years we find that the the two numbers only differ by 12%. Only 12% off for some random things made up and taken out of and moved around and twisted to mean bizarre things. Well in a page on such apologetics I uncovered this gem:

The Quran says that angels use these wormholes to reach any place in the universe.

Lol. That is all.

Quadruple Homophone.

Where
Ware
Wear
Were

Interestingly this isn't the only Quadruple homophone in English. I know of another one. Can anybody guess it. (It's insanely cheap).

The Fine Tuning of Mathematics.

There are certain things about functional systems like mathematics that need to work absolutely perfectly in order to work at all. For example, did you know that 1+2+3+4=10? But, did you know that if any of those values were off by even a fraction of a millionth of a millionth of a degree of a billionth the entirety of mathematics would fail to work. And as a consequence one could prove anything at all, even and especially if it were false. If 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 really equaled 10.00000000000000000000001 all of mathematics and logic would collapse upon itself. Really! It would.

Here, allow me to prove that I'm a cherry pie given this rather minor bit of mathematics.

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10.00000000000000000000001
1 + 2 + 3 = 6.00000000000000000000001
1 + 2 = 3.00000000000000000000001
1 = 1.00000000000000000000001
0 = 0.00000000000000000000001
100000000000000000000000 * 0 = 0
100000000000000000000000 * 0.00000000000000000000001 = 1
0 = 1
1 = 2
Because I am a cherry pie because a cherry pie and myself are two, but we can see that two equals 1 and therefore I and a cherry pie are one and therefore I am a cherry pie.

You see, even given the most minor amount of alteration in the fine tuning of mathematics we are left to conclude anything and everything. Everything becomes true and everything becomes false. So how can it be that mathematics is so perfect? Doesn't it seem as though math is too perfect to have arisen out of nothing or on it's own?

There are an infinite number of numbers that humans have ever thought of and a finite subset of all numbers that humans have thought of. And due to a quirk in set theory the infinity set of all numbers and the infinite set of humans have thought of are the exact same size. For every number that humans haven't thought of I can give you a number, and we can find that these numbers have a 1 to 1 ratio. See Cantor Sets. So there are as many numbers as there are numbers humans have never conceived of so it cannot be the case that numbers are a concept of minds. Further, because numbers don't have a physical existence we aren't going to have the number 8 die in a car crash or 72 get his by an asteroid. It must be the case that the perfection of numbers, the fine tuned nature of numbers, the transcendental quality of numbers can only be explained by elves.

You see, elves are the only creatures able to make numbers work. Elvish magic is well known to bind things together and make things work. And since this is exactly what we see when it comes to the fine tuning of math, it must be the case that elves exist. It must be the case that elven magic is what makes all mathematics work, for if any number were off by as little as one googolth, the entire system would collapse and down would be up, left would be right (I could make proofs for these as well). Elven magic is the only magic that could so perfectly craft the numbers for elves are known the world around as the greatest of craftelves. So when ever you calculate a good tip for a waitress and then round down, or help do your nephew do his math homework, you're going to be using a system crafted by elves. To not believe in elves when you know quite well that 2 + 2 still equals 4 is the height of arrogance and frankly takes more faith to accept than to accept that elves exist.

Gospel of Clark Kent

The Gospel of Clark Kent.
Jorely the 47^th , 1739 After Superman
September 16^th, 4005 Common Era

We have all heard of the story of the Holy Trinity, Superman, Clark Kent, and Kal-El who are both the same and different aspects of our eternal protector. We all know the story of His death to save all mankind and His resurrection. He gave his life to prevent Doomsday from destroying all of humanity. His powers were manifest. He came to protect us from ourselves. He came down from the Heavens to deliver us from the evils of the universe. And yet, a number of nonbelievers have attempted to spread their villainous lies to undermine our faith and expose us all to the Kryptonite of supervilliany.

I shall list some of the arguments lodged against our faith, as well as show the truth to these nonbelievers.

If Superman is all-powerful and all-good why is there still evil in the world.

From time to time, evil defeats itself so as long as there is some it's best to have some more. So long as one evil party is counteracted with another we won't feel the full effect. Secondly, nowhere in the Action Histories does it say that Superman is actually all-powerful. He has a lot of power, He can travel through time and fly through the Sun, but the Scriptures never say that He could simply blink all evil out of existence.

There is no historical evidence outside of scriptures that Smallville or Metropolis existed.

This is simply a lie. A bold-faced lie. There are a number of references to Metropolis throughout literature contemporary to the Protector. There are countless references to “the Metropolis” or “a Metropolis”. As for Smallville, scriptures tells us that it was quite small. You need to understand how many small towns existed at the time. But, as we can tell it was said to be located within Kansas, which nobody denies existed. Just last year we discovered a the ruins of a small town located around central Kansas that matches the given description quite well.

Superman was no different from other Gods of the time. Batman, the Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, the Flash.

This is just foolish. First off, those “gods” didn't really exist. They were simply myths of the time. Several of them were simply humans with advanced technology anyhow. Not one of those Gods could fly through a Sun. There is a big difference between myth and our Good Protector Clark Kent.

Even the scriptures note that Clark Kent is really just Superman in disguise.

People who do not have Kal-El within their souls should not attempt to read the Scriptures. In a number of instances Clark Kent becomes jealous that The Holy Wife Lois Lane loves Superman. If he were actually, physically, one entity and not Triune, why would He be jealous of Himself?

We have never been attacked by any supervillian. I don't think there are any.

The Scriptures list out the all the supervillians that our Protector fought and saved us from. He gave His life to protect us from Doomsday. I don't know why you keep yourself woefully ignorant. Simply because we haven't encountered a supervillian doesn't mean they don't exist.

The story of a Man-God come from the Heaven to take human form was widespread prior to the first century AS (after superman).

The greatest trickery every performed by Lex Luthor was to convince the world that he didn't exist. The Lutherans were widespread even before Superman sent his Human form, Clark Kent, unto the world. They were simply attempting to pre-pollute the truth of the Protector with some bronze aged nonsense about somebody who couldn't even fly. As if walking on water would stop people from believing in a Man-God who can fly through the Sun. You must avoid being tricked by supervillians. You must have faith.

The time frame of the scriptures are contradictory. Some appear to be set in the 1940's (by old reckoning), where as others are as late as 2010 (by old reckoning). In each case many of the apostles from Jimmy Olsen to Lana Lang all appear to be the same age? There's no conclusion as to when they are set.

Again, you must have faith. But, as for the time frame one must note that because of the Great Protector's dense molecular structure, He would age at a different rate as others even though He Himself is in Human form.

The great prophet Nietzsche was referring to a non-existent idea of Superman rather than a protector due to come in the future.

This is the height of ignorance. Nietzsche was given unto the world by Kal-El the vision of the coming human form of Superman, Clark Kent. He told of the great struggles that would exist, and how the old religions were false and that Superman was the one true God

Other arguments against our Great protector, and they are all equally baseless. I believe in Superman, Clark Kent, and Kal-El, our holy Protector. For only He shall save us from the supervillians of this world. I believe in His Life, His death for all mankind, and His resurrection unto the world.

Yours in Superman,

Dr. Samuel David Johnson,
PhD Kryptonian Studies,
New Los Angeles.

Carl Sagan predicts the AntiChrist.

"There's another reason I think popularizing science is important, why I try to do it. It's a foreboding I have -- maybe ill-placed -- of an America in my children's generation, or my grandchildren's generation, when all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when we're a service and information-processing economy; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest even grasps the issues; when the people (by "the people" I mean the broad population in a democracy) have lost the ability to set their own agendas, or even to knowledgeably question those who do set the agendas; when there is no practice in questioning those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and religiously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in steep decline, unable to distinguish between what's true and what feels good, we slide, almost without noticing, into superstition and darkness. " -- Carl Sagan.

Christian: BTW, I find much irony in Sagan's quote in that technology will indeed be hijacked by a dark force so as to force the world population to accept a "mark" whereas they may buy or sell anything. I sincerely hope you will have chosen to not be numbered among them.

 *facepalm*

The personality of science

Some nice anon was good enough to give me a fairly pointless criticism of my previous blog entry.

Really?

Yes, really.

You give personality to a discipline? Science isn't biased because science doesn't think, have a personality or take sides. It is a discipline which has the job of observing and making observations on what is observed.

No. Science simply weighs its biases against various aspects of truth. It simply allows others to check the work of different individuals and see what does and doesn't work out. It tries to neutralize the biases and mistakes by employing many different people who get brownie points for disproving things.

It cannot and should not deal with what it cannot observe. AND, not everything that exists can be observed. There is much of space and the microscopic world yet to be observed so science is silence in these arenas at this time.

I'm sure God will be found in one of those areas of microscopic space. Wait, no that's pretty damned silly to think that.

"Science is trying to figure out reality. If God isn't part of reality, tough cookies for God; don't blame the messenger."

I never suggested that science has something to say about everything. Just that science tries to figure out reality and God doesn't seem to be a part of anything science has investigated thus far. Maybe God is a bacterium at the bottom of the ocean in some unexplored part of some trench somewhere, but I don't think so.

In those areas science cannot observe and so is useless...for now. God, if there is a God, is not subject to science's observations, but it doesn't mean he doesn't exist...

I didn't say it wasn't. I said if God  isn't part of that reality, tough cookies for God. For a God who is said to be everywhere we seem to have to search some pretty distant places to find such a being. It isn't that we have no evidence therefore it's not real. I'm fine with that statement, but rather the point is that we aren't finding any evidence for God in our quest to understand reality. That doesn't mean that science is necessarily a godless quest but rather tough cookies for God.

it simply means it's an arena where science cannot go. Science, if done right, is not biased, but it becomes biased with comments like yours today.

No. It doesn't mean that at all. Science has uncovered no evidence for genies. None. It doesn't likewise mean that genies are an arena where science can't go. It means exactly what I said for God. Science tries to figure out reality and if it finds no evidence for genies, well tough cookies for genies.

If my comment was biased shouldn't I need to have overlooked some bit of evidence? I mean, tough cookies for invisible pink unicorns if science doesn't find them. It's not sciences fault that in fiddling with reality to figure out the truth it uncovered no evidence. There's no need to blame science for failing to find evidence for something that doesn't seem to have evidence.

Very pathetic post today, you can do better than this....come on!

Hardly. You misunderstand my comment as being some kind of claim against absence of evidence being proof of absence. Really I'm just saying that science doesn't find God because science concerns itself with reality and the evidence thus far finds that gods have no more support than werewolves do. Tough cookies for werewolves. Tough cookies for gods.

Science isn't biased against God, it just has a different goal.

Science is trying to figure out reality. If God isn't part of reality, tough cookies for God; don't blame the messenger.