GENIUS FORUMS

Well, Christopher should definitely stick to debating God and religion.

Peter, in his first constructive (affirmative) makes, essentially, one point: supporters of the war hold their own arguments in contempt. He quotes a few lines from Kiplings "Recessional" to highlight the nature of this contempt, painting supporters as powermongers. Yet, he doesn't realise himself, I don't think, that Christopher proves Peter's point in his own first constructive (negative) at a much deeper level. Christopher promotes certain facts of the first Gulf War as pertaining to the second, and I'm 100 percent sure he's smart enough to know that he's done exactly that. How much more contempt could you have for the veracity of your own arguments--that is, your own reasoning--not to mention the virtue of your own people and democracy, I wonder?

To give you one example, the reactor at Al Tuwaitha (built circa 1968) was first attacked by Iran in 1980 and completely destroyed by Israel in 1981. Second Gulf War? 2003. It wasn't discovered "as a result of" the invasion of Kuwait (1990) by a Hussein Iraq.

http://cgi.fark.com/cgi/fark/vidplayer. ... nk=3820289
religions?

The Temporal Lobes & God

Loki, this might be up your ally. You probably think Jesus was a bit like this guy, don't you.

Part 2

Part 3

Very interesting.

Yes, Jesus likely had a similar condition, which explains why he was willing to be nailed to a cross. His frontal lobes were so titillated, so infused with passionate feelings about an ideal, that he didn't care about pain.

Well.........until he was actually hanging up on the cross. Then he realized it wasn't such a good idea.

"God, why have you foresaken me?!!!"

Tragic stuff.

Zeitgeist

What do you guys think about this one? Is it worthy of absolute TV?

Loki wrote:What do you guys think about this one? Is it worthy of absolute TV?

I think I watched that a long time ago. Does it promote the idea that the American government were behind the 9-11 disaster? If so, I think the video is too much in the realm of fantasy.

Kevin Solway wrote:

Loki wrote:What do you guys think about this one? Is it worthy of absolute TV?

I think I watched that a long time ago. Does it promote the idea that the American government were behind the 9-11 disaster? If so, I think the video is too much in the realm of fantasy.

You may find the 2nd half of their more recent one more interesting Kevin.Although alot of their ideas are fairly immature at this stage they do seem to at least have the right attitude about the future.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 7695921912

Aubrey de Grey: Why we age and how we can avoid it

Just imagine if we developed therapies which ended aging. On the surface it would seem to portend disaster - but on the other hand, it might force people to think more sanely in regards to the whole 'finite resources' issue. Too many people have the attitude: "oh well, I won't be around when resources become scarce, so sustainability and environmental destruction is not my problem." It would be impossible to maintain such an attitude if one didn't plan on dying.

Cory,

I absolutely agree with that. People as a whole would live far more sane, wise, and efficiently if they knew they could go on living indefinitely. When I ask people why they don't do more with their life than get a job, marriage, and consuming vast amounts of resources their reply is that life is too short and they want to have as much fun as they can before they die, regardless of the consequences. That's the answer to a lot of the reasons why people do what they do. Live fast and die hard.

Good point. But knowing how humans work, if they know they have an infinite amount of time to do something they will likely put off important things indefinitely - the will to procrastination.

When I ask people if they'd want to live forever they often say "no" because they wouldn't want to see everyone they love pass away and be left with nothing. So if everyone lived forever, they could also hang onto them forever.

I think it could just as easily be more of the same. You can't teach on old dog new tricks. If they don't get fundamentals down when young...

yeah, marriage would take on a whole new meaning for people if they could live for hundreds or thousands of years, it would probably become far less popular, it doesn't have the same ring to it when death is so far in the distance....

I researched the the biologist in the link that Cory posted, and he has some good points, but such a feat is probably quite far away if you ask me.... Each factor that ages the body will require its own therapy, and combined together, they will yield some impressive results, but own their own...not so much so...

Cancer will probably be the first to be cured. I bet they'll probably create a nano-molecule that travels throughout the body and is designed to search and destroy problem cells that maybe malfunctioning by detecting problems within the nucleus, organelles and mitochondria, and once detected, the nano-molecule could work like a strain of RNA, and enter the nucleus, find the gene that causes the cell to self-destruct, and activate it... as cells have the capacity to self-destruct, but there is not an intelligent mechanism inside the body to inform the cell ALL the cases when it should self-destruct.

Is this a good place to talk about the "Men of the Infinite" videos, or should we do that in the comments section on YouTube?

I just watched "The Importance of being an Atheist" and couldn't help but notice the image of "Bob" arose several times.

Nothing wrong with that, just gave me a smile.

Nick Trelis wrote:When I ask people why they don't do more with their life than get a job, marriage, and consuming vast amounts of resources their reply is that life is too short and they want to have as much fun as they can before they die

Job and marriage equal fun?

People don't realize that the more fun they have, the shorter life will seem. For example, I'm sure in prison, time passes quite slowly.

DHodges wrote:Is this a good place to talk about the "Men of the Infinite" videos, or should we do that in the comments section on YouTube?

I just watched "The Importance of being an Atheist" and couldn't help but notice the image of "Bob" arose several times.

Nothing wrong with that, just gave me a smile.

When I was making those images I scoured through the clipart options available at the site and he was the best I could find. Took me back to some good ol' days.