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Messages - More Than Mortal

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8911
Serious / UN finds evidence of ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the CAR
« on: January 09, 2015, 11:39:14 AM »
sigh

Quote
New York - A UN commission of inquiry says it has found evidence of ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Central African Republic.

But it found no proof that genocide has occurred amid months of unprecedented sectarian violence that has killed thousands of people.

The report released on Thursday also says that while death toll reports ranged from 3 000 to 6 000, any such number is a "radical under-estimate" of the people killed in the vicious fighting among Christians and Muslims in the impoverished, landlocked nation.

The three-member commission of inquiry accuses both sides of war crimes and crimes against humanity but accuses the anti-Balaka Christian militia of ethnic cleansing of Muslims.

Thousands of Muslims have fled the country, where a fragile transitional government is trying to hold elections by an August 2015 deadline.

Well, 2015 could've started off better. Such a shame.

8912
The Flood / Re: So my college is reprimanding me for "Islamaphobia"
« on: January 09, 2015, 11:36:53 AM »
jokes
Jesus Christ.

Re-read the fucking OP.

8913
The Flood / Re: So my college is reprimanding me for "Islamaphobia"
« on: January 09, 2015, 11:36:07 AM »
You got called out for making ignorant statement and you're surprised they took action?
Would you be saying the same thing had I put any other religion into that slot?

I've said exactly the same thing about religions previously--including Buddhism--and it's never been a problem. Primarily because nobody is that ridiculously sensitive to get butthurt about it, and also because what I'm saying isn't incorrect.
If you said something like that about Christianity and Judaism you would get the same treatment, more so if it was judaism.
Which is exactly the point I'm making.

Ignore the fact that a specific Muslim girl got offended by a remark lacking any significant context, the fact that I should attend a SENSITIVITY CLASS for advancing such a proposition is retarded.

Fuck, I'd think it even more retarded if it were for a religion like Judaism or Buddhism.

8914
Quote
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A suicide bomber blew herself up inside a police station in Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet district on Tuesday, killing one officer and wounding another, the city's governor and Turkish media said.

The woman spoke English as she entered the building but her nationality and identity were unknown, Governor Vasip Sahin told reporters at the scene.

Turkish media said one of the officers died from his wounds.

Fuck me.

8915
The Flood / Re: So my college is reprimanding me for "Islamaphobia"
« on: January 09, 2015, 11:29:49 AM »
You got called out for making ignorant statement and you're surprised they took action?
Would you be saying the same thing had I put any other religion into that slot?

I've said exactly the same thing about religions previously--including Buddhism--and it's never been a problem. Primarily because nobody is that ridiculously sensitive to get butthurt about it, and also because what I'm saying isn't incorrect.

8916
The Flood / Re: So my college is reprimanding me for "Islamaphobia"
« on: January 09, 2015, 11:28:30 AM »
Christianity hasn't exactly shed its violence, you only need to look at Africa and see the horrible things done there in the name of God.
I know, I was talking about exactly this with Icy a minute ago.

Quote
Point is, it's not Islam at fault, it's those who take their beliefs to the extreme whatever that belief may be.
My criticism is that the propositions in question lend themselves to such violence in the first place.

8917
Serious / Re: Charlie Hebdo suspects dead; hostages safe
« on: January 09, 2015, 11:11:52 AM »
Well at least the hostages are safe.
Media seems to have spoken too soon.

Four of them were unfortunately killed when those in the Kosher supermarket learned the other two suspects had been killed by the police.

8918
The Flood / Re: I'm sick and had to miss work :'(
« on: January 09, 2015, 11:06:59 AM »
It's not rocket science, ffs.
What if he recreationally studies rocket science?

8919
The Flood / So NASA made a bunch of "space holiday" posters
« on: January 09, 2015, 11:04:06 AM »
Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

bretty gud

8920
Serious / Re: Obama to Propose 2 Years of Community School for 'Free'
« on: January 09, 2015, 10:48:05 AM »
So what are we going to cut? Social security and welfare programs? Military spending? Foreign aid, perhaps?
All of those should probably suffer some restructuring and some cuts.

8921
The Flood / Artificial leaf converts water and light into oxygen
« on: January 09, 2015, 10:45:05 AM »
Could help with space travel.
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One of the persistent challenges of manned space exploration is that pesky lack of oxygen throughout much of the universe. Here on Earth, trees and other plant life do us a real solid by taking in our bad breath and changing it back to clean, sweet O2.

So what if we could take those biological oxygen factories into space with us, but without all the land, sun, water, soil, and gravity that forests tend to require? This is the point where NASA and Elon Musk should probably start paying attention.

Royal College of Art graduate Julian Melchiorri has created the first man-made, biologically functional leaf that takes in carbon dioxide, water, and light and releases oxygen. The leaf consists of chloroplasts -- the part of a plant cell where photosynthesis happens -- suspended in body made of silk protein.

"This material has an amazing property of stabilizing (the chloroplast) organelles," Melchiorri says in the video below. "As an outcome I have the first photosynthetic material that is living and breathing as a leaf does."

In addition to its potential value to space travel, Melchiorri also imagines the technology literally providing a breath of fresh air to indoor and outdoor spaces here on Earth. The facades of buildings and lampshades could be made to exhale fresh air with just a thin coating of the leaf material.

But perhaps best of all, a man-made breathing leaf could be the key to not just space travel but space colonization. No need to figure out how to till that dry, red Martian dirt to get some nice leafy trees to grow; we could just slap them on the inside of the colony's dome and puff away.

8922
The Flood / Re: Tolerance is the greatest virtue of all mankind
« on: January 09, 2015, 10:43:42 AM »
The thread about me being potentially Islamaphobic had reaching two-and-a-quarter pages in this amount of time.

Yeah, I'm the one who focuses on the negative.

8923
The Flood / Re: Tolerance is the greatest virtue of all mankind
« on: January 09, 2015, 10:37:54 AM »
I actually do believe that people have some degree of control over what kind of personality they have, they just have to recognize what influences their personality and act according to what will influence them in the manner that they wish.

The first issue with this is that you can't change what has already happened, thus having certain genes, disorders, birth defects etc. is out of your control. But you can theoretically control how you are influenced by your environment by putting yourself into one of your choosing. (I say theoretically because the opportunity to put yourself into the environment of your choosing doesn't exactly present itself to everyone.)

The second issue is that the vast majority of people do not recognize this when they are developing and thus never act according to it in the most influential time of their life.
Even if that were the case, being able to control one's environment to whatever degree still can't mitigate the quite serious physical defects of people. I mean, it's not that psychopaths are evil per se, there's just an emotional deficit which prevents empathy. You really can't mitigate that.

8924
Serious / Charlie Hebdo suspects dead; hostages safe
« on: January 09, 2015, 10:35:11 AM »
We all owe the French police a debt of gratitude here.

Quote
PARIS—Explosions and gunshots rang out and smoke rose outside a building, where two brothers suspected in a newspaper massacre were reportedly killed after holing up with up with a hostage on Friday.
Their hostage was safely freed, according to initial news reports.

The move by French commandos came after security forces had surrounded the building for most of the day, cornering the suspects in the killings at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper.

Police tactical forces could be seen on the roof of the building.

Trapped and surrounded, the desperados have only one possible end-game left to them: Going outs in a blaze of martyrdom glory.

The terrorism suspects — brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi — were holed up Friday in a printing factory in Dammartin-en-Goele about 65 kilometres northeast of the Paris, having taken at least one hostage, believed to be a female.

Le Figaro reports that Amedy Coulibaly, 32, the suspected hostage taker in the Hyper Cacher kosher deli in Paris on Friday, is also believed to be the prime suspect in the murder of a French police officer in Paris on Wednesday.

The French publication also reports that Coulibaly knows the Kouachi brothers. It writes that police are investigating
whether Coulibaly went on the attack in hopes of creating a diversion that would let the brothers escape.

The Kouachi brothers have been on the run for 48 hours, since unleashing a massacre in the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

They are clearly prepared to keep killing, having already slain 10 journalists, a police officer and a body guard.

That means the elite SWAT team, with a commander who’s been given the authority to launch an assault, is proceeding gingerly, with the primary objective of “preservation” of the hostage’s life.

The men were pursued to the industrial complex in Dammartin-en-Goele, situated near Charles de Gaulle airport – two runways were closed to avoid interfering with the standoff but have since been reopened – after commandeering yet another car nearby around 10 a.m. At least three helicopters hovered above the town.

They impersonated police officers to get inside the printing plant. Another employee, a salesman, described for a French radio station how he shook hands with one of the men, who then told him to leave the premises. The salesman became alarmed when the men said: “Get out of here, we don’t want to kill civilians.”

Christelle Alleume, who works across the street, said a round of gunfire interrupted her coffee break Friday morning.
“We heard shots and we returned very fast because everyone was afraid,” she told i-Tele. “We had orders to turn off the lights and not approach the windows.”

Various reports – unconfirmed – indicated there had been a shootout earlier in the morning at a checkpoint on the main road leading towards the town. All roads have since been barricaded by police – upwards of 80,000 gendarmeries and soldiers mobilized for the massive manhunt which had concentrated, Thursday night into Friday morning, on densely wooded countryside around two nearby villages.

The printing factory is CTF Creation Tendance Decouverte, with town hall spokesperson Audrey Taupenas telling French media there appeared to be one hostage inside the building.
The town has been sealed off, as a heavy police presence rings the plant in concentric tactical positioning, journalists pushed far back from the site. Three helicopters circled overhead.

Residents of Dammartin-en-Goele have been warned to stay indoors, one of them describing their town as “like a war zone.” It has been on lockdown for hours. The mayor has said all schools in the area were being guarded and the children kept indoors. At least one police sniper has been spotted on the roof of a building opposite from the print works.

While the terrorists may have carried out a carefully formulated plot in their broad daylight assault on Charlie Hebdo Wednesday, they now seem to be improvising on the fly, perhaps never expecting to get this far without a confrontation.

Events today have an eerie similarity to the pursuit of the Boston Marathon bombers in 2013, where one of the suspects was discovered hiding in a dry-docked boat in a homeowner’s backyard after his brother had been killed.

But French authorities are more mindful of what transpired in Toulouse in 2012.

In what had been until this week France’s bloodiest terrorist experience in the past half-century, a petty criminal by the name of Mohammed Merah carried out a series of attacks targeting French soldiers and Jewish civilians in Toulouse and Montauban, in the midi-Pyrenees region, killing seven and injuring five.

Merah, of Algerian descent, shot dead a French paratrooper on March 11 but remained on the loose and roaming for victims. Four days later, he shot two uniformed soldiers at a shopping centre in Montauban. On March 19, he turned his attention to the Ozar Hatorah Jewish day school, slaying three children.

An elite police unit ultimately surrounded Merah’s apartment building in Toulouse, where a 30-hour standoff ensued as the suspect sporadically communicated with officers on a walkie-talkie.

An official in Dammartin-en-Goele tells The Associated Press that phone contact has been established with the men. A lawmaker inside the command post tells French television the men “want to die as martyrs.”

Overnight, police blew out the window shutters on the apartment unit with a grenade and entered the next morning. Merah emerged from a bathroom, shooting, and jumped out of the window, still firing. He was shot in the head by a sniper.

Two officers were wounded in the confrontation. That’s the scenario authorities are trying to avoid here now.

It’s still unclear whether there’s any connection between the atrocity at Charlie Hebdo and a Thursday morning shooting that killed a unarmed female traffic cop, only a few hundred metres from a Jewish school. But that episode has suddenly veered into hostage territory as well, with reports emerging early Friday afternoon that the man responsible for that murder is holed up, with a hostage, at a Paris kosher shop just east of the Charlie Hebdo offices.

This lends credence to the suspicion that the two shootings – the magazine offices, the traffic officers – were always linked, perhaps the coordinated work of an Al Qaeda sleeper cell in Paris that has been activated.

8925
The Flood / Re: So my college is reprimanding me for "Islamaphobia"
« on: January 09, 2015, 10:21:39 AM »
. . .
The only difference here is that you're speaking descriptively and I'm speaking prescriptively.

I'm not denying that this is the way things are. I just don't like it.

8926
Enlightened despotism is quite clearly the best structure and function for a government.

It's just a shame they're exceptionally difficult to manufacture.

8927
The Flood / Tolerance is the greatest virtue of all mankind
« on: January 09, 2015, 10:16:40 AM »
Something Chronic and I were discussing--about free will--sort of sparked this in my head. But I'd like to make a few proclamations which will probably surprise a lot of you.

First and foremost, is a profession of tolerance. It's probably difficult for a lot of you to reconcile the idea that I'm actually a tolerant person, but--without tooting my own horn--most of the people I know would agree with me. I'm just certain of the idea that intolerance of intolerance is no vice, and you can thank the work of Karl Popper for that one.

But, essentially, this relates to free will in the sense that we don't have it. People really aren't the conscious author of their thoughts and--in all honesty--aren't morally responsible, either. When a bear gores a person, we often think of them as amoral or otherwise not responsible for their actions in some way because. . . Y'know, it's a fucking bear. And yet, we don't hold the same view when a psychopath murders somebody, despite the fact that bad genes and neurological anomalies combine to make people like this--which are totally out of their control. This (the idea of moral responsibility) only works if you really, seriously believe that people are capable of choosing to do otherwise in certain situations.

Now, this isn't to be confused with fatalism or to say choices don't matter--of course they do. But what it seriously does is undermine any attitudes of hatred you may have towards other human beings. Retribution, in effect, makes absolutely no ethical sense whatsoever. I don't hate Jihadis, I don't hate Hitler, I don't hate Saddam Hussein and I don't hate my bipolar uncle who makes my grandpa cry and calls me a "wanker".

It doesn't make any sense to hate--at all. Of course, the recognition and willingness to deal with threats is important, but that's just part and parcel of life. So, essentially, I just wanted to extol the one message I have that really is worth giving--we need to intellectually, if not emotionally, tolerate even the scum of the Earth. Hatred and punishment breeds more hatred and punishment; the only thing that truly makes sense is operating on a mechanism which ensures future prosperity for all parties.

8928
The Flood / Re: So my college is reprimanding me for "Islamaphobia"
« on: January 09, 2015, 10:04:54 AM »
Debatable, obviously.
Not really. The only way you can defend free will in the face of certain neuroscientific findings is to dilute the original, metaphysical meaning of the term. Free will, as referenced to unhindered agency--being the conscious author of one's own thoughts and desires--isn't really a defensible position anymore.

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So you're telling me that something created by sentient life, something that we give power to, has more power than us now? That we can give beliefs momentum in our minds but we can't take it away?
Of course we can take away the momentum of these beliefs, but only with significant effort. Neurocognitive imaging has shown that when people accept religious propositions they are having the same neuronal activity as when you accept even the most basic and truthful propositions like "water is wet".

But, essentially, it's like being mad at a psychopath when he murders somebody. He's just being a psychopath.

8929
The Flood / Re: So my college is reprimanding me for "Islamaphobia"
« on: January 09, 2015, 09:59:24 AM »
Yeah, no - they're still extremely violent.
I don't disagree. Especially in the Central African Republic.

Terrible, terrible violence.
So, you'd say that religion in these underdeveloped countries with shitty economies and rampant corruption is more violent than in democratic western nations?

By virtue of the countries being more violent as a whole, then obviously. The point is that people's attitudes towards certain propositions (moral or not) isn't perfectly correlated with socioeconomic factors, and certain propositional content clearly lends itself to producing more violent. Also, the retarding effects of religion can also cause depressed socioeconomic factors.

I'm actually quite interested in the extent of Christianity in these groups. I know the likes of anti-Balaka is motivated also by mystical and animist beliefs, which are quite widespread in Africa, but I haven't seen the likes of that in any Islamic group.

8930
The Flood / Re: So my college is reprimanding me for "Islamaphobia"
« on: January 09, 2015, 09:57:05 AM »
And a dead baby joke isn't the same as an offensive comment towards someones religon. Religon is treated differently.
Point being it shouldn't be. The comment is only offensive if you want to construe it that way. If anybody seriously claims to represent the idea that certain beliefs motivate certain kinds of behaviour--which is essentially what my propositions reduce to--then they shouldn't be in a college.

I'm not saying people should be allowed to go around offending people. I'm saying the whole idea of having to bend over backwards for people's feelings when I wasn't being intentionally offensive and then taking a sensitivity class is retarded. If she really felt it was that much of a problem (this girl is a cunt, by the way), then she could've spoken to me. Shit, even the faculty could've asked me to explain myself and I would've been able to then tell them I wasn't saying "All of Islam is barbaric and produces only barbaric people".

8931
The Flood / Re: So my college is reprimanding me for "Islamaphobia"
« on: January 09, 2015, 09:53:30 AM »
Yeah, no - they're still extremely violent.
I don't disagree. Especially in the Central African Republic.

Terrible, terrible violence.

8932
Serious / See if you can properly challenge any of these premises
« on: January 09, 2015, 09:51:20 AM »
> Moral sentences express propositions.
> These propositions refer to objective features of the world.
> Moral features are reducible to non-moral features.

8933
The Flood / Re: So my college is reprimanding me for "Islamaphobia"
« on: January 09, 2015, 09:41:55 AM »
free will?
Doesn't exist.

But, in a sense, yes, religion does supersede our autonomy to act in certain manners. If you believe a certain proposition to be true (religious or not) then your belief will necessarily motivate you to act in a certain way.

8934
Serious / Re: Why did we evolve to have morality?
« on: January 09, 2015, 09:39:48 AM »
If it is the case that ethics are based on the survival of your society rather than an ideal that we invented, then ethics are objective.
Ethics are objective and are necessarily based on concerns for feeling, thinking, living beings.

8935
Serious / Re: Why did we evolve to have morality?
« on: January 09, 2015, 09:38:57 AM »
Are you sure?
Yes.

The warrior gene reduces empathy and causes psychopathy. There's quite clearly a link between genetic predisposition and moral behaviour.

Although, I agree with you, that isn't the only factor. There are a number of neurological, cultural and environmental things to consider when trying to figure out morality.

8936
The Flood / Re: So my college is reprimanding me for "Islamaphobia"
« on: January 09, 2015, 09:31:07 AM »
I'm not sure I'd equate their religious beliefs with an act of cutting your nose off to spite your face. That is exceedingly retarded of them though.
Given the extent of Islamism in the Gaza Strip it's the best explanation.

But, fuck, this thread wasn't meant to be about Islam. It was meant to be about being forced to accommodate people's feelings--should've made that more clear >.>
Surely that's because the college doesn't want people running round insulting everyone and anyone, leading to a pretty shitty college experience. If that was the case, nobody would want to go there, and they'd end up closing due to no students.
So the solution is to stifle free speech?

I'm not following her around calling her a dirty Jihadist. She was eavesdropping and didn't like something I said, so what? The same could happen with a dead baby joke, but it isn't my job to accommodate the particular sensitivities of others.

8937
The Flood / Re: So my college is reprimanding me for "Islamaphobia"
« on: January 09, 2015, 09:28:26 AM »
. . .
That's not my logic at all, but I see your confusion. I should've made my initial point clearer.

I know there are good Muslims and I've acknowledged their vital existence since I've been aware of these people--Malala, for example--and I'm not even coming close to saying all Muslims are violent. I mean, hell, the Old Testament is probably worse than the Qur'an, but we don't need to worry about Jews.

The point is that the representation of scripture in the actions of human beings is all that matters--not whether it's being twisted in some grammatical or semantic sense; it may well be--and given what we know lies within the Qur'an we can safely say that the actions of these--as you rightly say--twisted individuals were caused by their Islamic values.

If a Muslim robbed a liquor store and took a packet of bacon on his way out, I wouldn't attribute that to his Islamic beliefs because there's clearly no correlation there. And, in the same sense, I wouldn't attribute Jain suicide bombing to Jainism; these things just don't correspond. Islam, however, and violence correspond very well, even given the existence of the admirable moderates.

EDIT: I also disagree with the assertion that if they were Christian they would do the same. Christianity shed it's violence a long time ago (if we were living in the 15-16th Centuries, I'd be attacking Christianity, no doubt) but also because Christians face the same sort of satire nowadays as Muslims do, and yet Christian fundamentalism is nowhere near as substantial.

8938
Serious / Re: Why did we evolve to have morality?
« on: January 09, 2015, 09:18:47 AM »
But why would evolution give us fairness? How does that help us in any way?
Evolution gave us sentience, not fairness. Because the fact is, not everyone thinks fairly. Some people are self-serving, self-interested cunts. We achieved sentience as a complex scheming tool to help us propagate the species more efficiently than any other organism. It's not that evolution is a god who is giving us the ability to perceive this rule-set that it created. We rationally constructed the notion of fairness by ourselves.
So there is nothing in our DNA that would cause us to have morality, just the intellect in order to support it?
Well there are genetic traits which would lead us to have the faculties to support moral judgements.

But there isn't an ineffable "moral code" in the genetic framework.

8939
The Flood / Re: So my college is reprimanding me for "Islamaphobia"
« on: January 09, 2015, 09:17:34 AM »
I'm not sure I'd equate their religious beliefs with an act of cutting your nose off to spite your face. That is exceedingly retarded of them though.
Given the extent of Islamism in the Gaza Strip it's the best explanation.

But, fuck, this thread wasn't meant to be about Islam. It was meant to be about being forced to accommodate people's feelings--should've made that more clear >.>

8940
The Flood / Re: So my college is reprimanding me for "Islamaphobia"
« on: January 09, 2015, 09:12:12 AM »
I'm not just saying to this to troll, but is it possible that Muslims are more violent because they come from such a poor socioeconomic status, rather than because they worship the Qur'an?
I'd say it's certainly a possibility, or at least explains *some* of it. But even then, they are fanatics carrying this stuff out. So the seed of dissent/hatred comes from it perhaps, but by the time they start breaking out the IEDs and AKs it's because of religious fanaticism <.<
Not to mention, the religion is part of the destitution in the first place. The Palestinians destroyed a rich infrastructure of something like 3,000 greenhouses--gifted by the Israeli government to help them with economic redevelopment--after the IDF pulled out of Gaza in 2005.

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