warri0r45

Maybe people just thought he was the better candidate. What's to say that a white person as well spoken and charismatic with a strong message of "hope" and "change" couldn't have won against McCain? Obama just had a far better campaign as far as I'm concerned. I'm not so sure the media was as one-sided as you think either, considering Obama was grilled to no end by the GOP about terrorist links, a crazy former-pastor and socialism. God knows I heard as much about those things as I did about Sarah Palin being an incompetent idiot. To be honest I think you're just bitter because your candidate lost. It doesn't sound too good months after the fact coming on here to air your grievances.

My Will by No Emotions (album).

How is this a cop-out? It's a position one would take, much like "God is real," or even "God can exist." Yet you continually capitalize the term, implying a very specific conception of god. :lol: Announcing that "any or none of the models of the universe could be correct" seems rather obvious, wouldn't you say? [/hide] Soz to double post like this instead of on one...but before i left, i just wanted to say, There is still much debate even over the BBT itself, it can hardly be agreed on at all even by the scientist who understand it the most. Lastly, it state that it is still a theory that is still being developed. In the science world itself, a theory is stated as something that is NOT proven, but just accepted as being true. But if it is not proven, how can it then be stated as fact and put over religion? Wouldn't religion and BBT and evolution all be at the same place since none have actually been proven, even if all have some evidence? Even some of the things used to arrive at conclusions for BBT are using other theory's!! This just seems somewhat weird to me. If I could just butt in, there are a few points I want to make. First, it's worth getting the scientific view on the BBT correct. It's not true that there is significant debate that the big bang is the best model; most cosmologists accept it as such. [1] Sure, there may be some debate about the details and some problems to iron out, but there is no other alternate model which explains as much of the evidence as well as the big bang. Religious ideas weren't formed when we knew about cosmic microwave background radiation and the red shifting of galaxies, so they're not going to be able to cut it with modern science when it comes to explaining the evidence we find. Added, religious ideas don't adapt to the evidence like science does, and they can't be empirically tested. Religious ideas are based ultimately on faith and personal conviction while scientific theories are based ultimately on the objective empirical evidence available. While it's true that in science a theory is not something which in it's entirety is proven, good theories do contain many facts and some of their main tenets may be treated as facts by virtue of overwhelming evidence. I'm not sure exactly how cosmologists treat the main tenet of BBT, but from what reading I've done it seems it's treated as good as a fact. It's also worth realising that the main purpose of a scientific theory is to serve as an explanation and to make predictions to be tested to further our understanding. They're not half-baked ideas yet to be proven. ... Well see, My problem is that it's not KNOWN for sure. and isn't that the whole problem people have with religion? They say it's not KNOWN for sure. Sure there are facts behind the THEORY, but there are facts about religion that are just undeniable, some that science itself even verifies. Why then, being theory, which is comparable to religion "theory," can someone put it higher than any other "theory's" so to speak. The fact of the matter is that it can still be wrong, especially when you get into the technicalities of it which are very hard to speak on seeing as we have never actually been able to prove any of it. Lastly, i realized while reading last night, (i'm at school atm and cant get on the site for some reason**) that it expresslly states that BBT is the theory for how the world developed, not how it was created. This reminds me of a friend of mine who had once made the statement that science doesn't exist to contradict God or religion, but rather to prove [Christianity] it. Since religion explains the beginning, maybe the BBT is right and after God created it, it expanded and developed? I can't say for sure, maybe and hopefully one day we will be able to. Be it at the 2nd coming of Jesus, or when man is finally able to touch on the harder to explain and verify facts of the universe. **Hell i'm suprised i can even logg in as i couldn't just a few days ago. I can't even go to tip.it homepage, I have to type it in on google and go to one of the posts. lolz...but we do what we have to?...lolz \ The whole problem with religious ideas is not just that we don't know if they're true, it's that often they contradict what we know is true because they were written down millennia ago in a time where people were much more ignorant of how the world worked. What's more, religious ideas can't change and aren't able to be tested or falsified. I could claim that last night I made ice melt in a freezer or made lead float on water, but those things contradict what we know and can't be repeated. That's essentially the crux of religious claims, but they're more socially acceptable because they're made under the banner of religion. However, socially acceptable doesn't necessarily mean logical or rational. In science, such ideas will never be on the same level as real theories, no matter how uncertain such theories are. At least they're consistent. That's where you should start - internal consistency and consistency with what else we know about the universe and it's physical laws. That's most likely why science and religion are separated and not compared how you'd like (if they were, religious claims comparable to what I explained would be laughed at and ridiculed). Scientists aren't going to just give up the most basic principles of science known and give religion a free ride because it's not 100% certain like scientific theories. That's about as far as the similarities between religious and scientific theories go. On another point, I don't think you fully grasp the nature of a scientific theory yet. They're not fully proven and won't ever be, but that's because they're ever-changing as new evidence is being found and new studies performed all the time. Each piece of evidence and each new study serves as a point where you have to see if the theory can explain it, and if it can't then you have to revise the theory. The thing with theories like the BBT and other falsifiable ideas is that they're not just fleeting explanations that were pulled out of the air yesterday. The BBT has probably been the most well accepted and supported cosmological model for the universe since the 60's when CMBR was discovered. Even though, by some major error on our part, the BBT could be totally wrong, we can still say with confidence that it's the best model which explains the data. As far as I'm concerned, what you're suggesting is akin to accepting the null hypothesis over the alternative when the p-value for a statistical test is 0.001. Sorry to go crazy with the statistical jargon, but what I mean by that is that any original ideas that we had before the BBT have been so outplayed that it's now time to accept the BBT as the most likely model. ------------------------------------------------------------------ As for your second paragraph there, you're quite right to say that the BBT is a theory of the evolution of the universe. It doesn't explain nor does it seek to explain what happened before the original "big bang" event. Many theists have been able to incorporate it into their beliefs, and many even use it as the basis for an argument for theism. And you're also quite right to say that science doesn't exist to contradict god or religion. Many religious people can and do accept scientific ideas about the big bang and evolution.

Epoch of Methodic Carnage by Abysmal Torment (album).

Leaving Your Body Map by maudlin of the Well (album).

How is this a cop-out? It's a position one would take, much like "God is real," or even "God can exist." Yet you continually capitalize the term, implying a very specific conception of god. :lol: Announcing that "any or none of the models of the universe could be correct" seems rather obvious, wouldn't you say? [/hide] Soz to double post like this instead of on one...but before i left, i just wanted to say, There is still much debate even over the BBT itself, it can hardly be agreed on at all even by the scientist who understand it the most. Lastly, it state that it is still a theory that is still being developed. In the science world itself, a theory is stated as something that is NOT proven, but just accepted as being true. But if it is not proven, how can it then be stated as fact and put over religion? Wouldn't religion and BBT and evolution all be at the same place since none have actually been proven, even if all have some evidence? Even some of the things used to arrive at conclusions for BBT are using other theory's!! This just seems somewhat weird to me. If I could just butt in, there are a few points I want to make. First, it's worth getting the scientific view on the BBT correct. It's not true that there is significant debate that the big bang is the best model; most cosmologists accept it as such. [1] Sure, there may be some debate about the details and some problems to iron out, but there is no other alternate model which explains as much of the evidence as well as the big bang. Religious ideas weren't formed when we knew about cosmic microwave background radiation and the red shifting of galaxies, so they're not going to be able to cut it with modern science when it comes to explaining the evidence we find. Added, religious ideas don't adapt to the evidence like science does, and they can't be empirically tested. Religious ideas are based ultimately on faith and personal conviction while scientific theories are based ultimately on the objective empirical evidence available. While it's true that in science a theory is not something which in it's entirety is proven, good theories do contain many facts and some of their main tenets may be treated as facts by virtue of overwhelming evidence. I'm not sure exactly how cosmologists treat the main tenet of BBT, but from what reading I've done it seems it's treated as good as a fact. It's also worth realising that the main purpose of a scientific theory is to serve as an explanation and to make predictions to be tested to further our understanding. They're not half-baked ideas yet to be proven.

Thanks, they sound awesome. As for Foxtrot, try 100 Knives Inside. I seriously want to get my hands on a copy of their EP...

Haha. Currently Listening to Scream Bloody Gore by Death (album).

Already know some Carcass. Good stuff. :thumbup: Try Porcupine Tree for some great prog rock/metal.

If you haven't heard of them already, try Demigod.

I see what you're saying - so in reality what we define as race is due to a very small amount of genetic variation when compared to all the genetic variation within the human species. Interesting article, thanks. :thumbup:

1) I get racism from that because the only people that attempt to point out that he's "half" are the same people that go, "He's half and not black, therefore we still haven't had a black President." It's a subtle attempt to take away the significance of his election from all Americans (especially African Americans). I would call that racist because it's almost as if they have to point it out so that they can sleep soundly knowing that there still hasn't been an "African American" President. It's not like we're blind, we can see that he's "half", why point it out? 2) Anyway, I should have clarified: There is no biological basis for classifying race. True, there are some scientists that disagree with this notion, but the consensus is that there is no biological basis for defining what one's race is. Therefore, making claims that Obama is not black because he is "half" biologically is just plain ridiculous because they have no basis for these claims other than their own social constructs, and bigoted thought processes. edit: Is Ardenal a troll here? I haven't seen him much, and all of his posts drip with racial stereotypes, and bigoted ideas. 1) I wouldn't jump to that conclusion, especially from a few words on an internet forum. I wouldn't put words in their mouths, either. I can understand why they point out that he's half-black when it comes to milking the race concept for political gain. I might not agree with them, but still, I can understand what they're saying without assuming they must be racists. Let's not get into the habit of calling people racists at the drop of a hat. 2) As for this, would you mind giving me a source to clarify what you're arguing here? Even if defining races based on genetics is a difficult thing to do and there's some grey area and debate, what we classify as "black", "white" or "asian" is still obviously because of genetic traits. That was my point.

How is it racist that one president gets more attention than another? A ridiculous statement. Because he's black? If Obama was white he wouldn't get anywhere ner the hype he has now. If anything it's implicit racial discrimination, not racism. There's a big difference. The former doesn't mean you have to think the other race is inferior, and it's implicit, being generated by the historical nature of the event rather than any conscious choice, while the latter does mean you have to think the other race is inferior. Thank you! Just cause the black skinned gene in his DNA happened to dominate the white skinned gene all of a sudden makes him African American, when he was raised by his white mother and grandmother for all of his life, not his black father. Environmentally he is white, and genetically he's gray, so why do people worship him? Hey, racists, race is not biological, it is a social construct. Go find me evidence that race is biological, and I'll apologize for calling you racists. Obama identifies as a black man, he would be viewed by the world's social construct as a black man, he is therefore a black man. How do you get that they're racists from that? Anyway, there's obviously a biological component to it, because skin colour is encoded in your genes. You can't identify as a black man if your biology doesn't do the work first. But that's really beside the main point, which is that although biologically he's half-black, I think it's more than reasonable to call him black. He would have been denied rights just like any "fully black" person prior to racial equality in America, so it's still a huge symbolic punch in the face to racism.

Speaking of money, probably one of the most interesting things to show how much Obama is adored at the moment is the amount of merchandise being sold. It turns a massive profit, apparently. I can't help but get a feeling that he'll never rise up to the massive expectations being placed on him right now. I hope he does a great job for everyone's sake, but I'm not buying into the hype just yet.

He's not even president yet and there seems to be this pseudo cult of personality building up around him. I'm sure he's a great guy and will do just fine, and being the first black president is certainly a significant thing, but I think the media has hyped him up a lot.

I've been getting into death metal a lot lately, and I've definitely noticed it. Bands that I once thought were unstructured noise are now casual listening. I think I'm fairly immune to the most brutal of metal so long as it's got decent production and good songwriting.

Never really heard a remix that I liked. Come to think of it, I don't listen to much music which is likely to be remixed in the first place.

Bloodthirst by Cannibal Corpse (album). Probably my favourite of theirs. :thumbup:

The Scepter of the Ancients by Psycroptic (album). Awesome tech-death from right here in Aus.

Agreed, I thought it would have been better in the art forum.

Planetary Duality by The Faceless (album).

Gorod - Gorod (1999) Checked out Atheist yet? I reckon you'd love them for sure. Still on Leading Vision by Gorod.

Leading Vision by Gorod (album).

And the lovely scapegoat of atheism is to ask for proof that we all know doesn't exist. You think that's a scapegoat? I think Venomai meant cop-out, not scapegoat, in which case he'd be right. A scapegoat is a person/thing that is made to take the blame for something, despite whether it should or not, while a cop-out is an excuse used to evade responsibility/a difficult situation. You can call some theistic beliefs cop-outs, but atheists asking for proof when they know there is none isn't. We're merely challenging you and in a way we're saying that some proof should be required before we believe in things; faith is entirely the wrong way to go about it.

Slumber of Sullen Eyes by Demigod (album).