Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	Dovina 12.72.34.176	9-Apr-06/8:32 PM
It’s funny. I can believe something without sound reason. It just seems right, so I go with it. It’s almost scary sometimes. I base critical decisions on unfounded beliefs. Today, I drove through a green light because I trusted drivers coming at right angle to stop. I did this at least thirty times, believing that people I have never met will do the right thing. I based my life on a belief in what usually happens. If I had never driven through a green light, I might respond more cautiously. I might stop until no car was approaching on a collision course. Trouble is, we have to keep trucking, most of the time, and only what feels right works in the moment. So, by habit, I suppose, I look at all the reasons for God and for not-God and, finding no clear logical answer, proceed onward with a feeling that has worked on an emotional level. I think sometimes that’s all we get.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	ALChemy 24.74.100.11	9-Apr-06/8:31 PM
Yes, nonsense. Stuff that isn't defined like in your story of the universe. Do you think saying stuff that hasn't been determined is any different than saying a whatchamacallit? Do you really think me and Dovina use God as a reason for all these things. We don't respond to the question what's 1+1 by saying wait a minute I've got to ask God first. My point isn't that you should believe in God and this is why. My point is(and this has been Dovina's point from the start) that you can't disprove something that is beyond comprehension. Once someone tries to explicitly define God then their God is open to criticism but if you're just saying I'm not sure what God is exactly but I sense God's existence then it is pretty hard to disprove that. And that is why trying to argue with Dovina and me about if God exists or not is found to be nonsense. In reality, atheists merely fail to accept the theists' claim “God exists” and, hence, the initial burden of proof lies with the believer. In short, it's our job to convince you God exists not your job to convince us he doesn't.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	zodiac 209.193.18.201	9-Apr-06/7:56 PM
Yeah, I thought I'd deleted that comment. Anyway, see below for my "reason for existence". I didn't say that there was no reason for anything, only that there was no point to asking for more than the simple, obvious reason for existence.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	zodiac 209.193.18.201	9-Apr-06/7:55 PM
Anyway, so things went for a long long long long time until two of those humans happened to have a child that they named "zodiac". They named him zodiac because his dad was named zodiac and his grandfather was named zodiac, and it seemed like an easy thing to call him, and besides, he was more likely to get love, attention, and inheritance with that name. Zodiac grew up and asked all kinds of questions, being a human question-asker. He asked sensible things like "Where should I eat lunch?" or "Should I get a job with the army to make money to buy lunch?" But he also asked other things, like "Why does chocolate taste like chocolate, instead of like poo?" And of course, he asked "Why am I here?" That was obvious enough, since "why" "am" "I" and "here" are pretty much the commonest words in his language. Zodiac didn't feel like that was a very important question to answer, but alot of other humans sure did. They'd made up a thing ages ago to answer the question "Why did my crops die when I worked so hard, while Steve's crops in the next valley didn't die?" They called the thing "A God" or just "God", and ever since they made him up, they'd been adding things to him as they needed them. They made him the answer to "Why do I feel bad when my mom dies?" and the answer to "Why shouldn't I kill Steve and take his crops?" So it was only natural that "God" should be the answer to "Why am I here?" The people who had God raised their children to think God was the answer to all of those things, and even those children who later didn't believe in God (or in the same God, because there were dozens, all made up for the same purpose) had trouble letting go of the idea that the question "Why am I here?" had an answer other than the one I've been giving, and that the answer was God. Zodiac found all of this to be nonsense.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	zodiac 209.193.18.201	9-Apr-06/7:54 PM
So the lifes (we'll call them "animals" now) kept producing offspring and kept getting bigger and stronger. Smarter, too, because smartness was a good way of getting away from things that were trying to eat you, especially if you were smaller and weaker than some of them. Over millions and millions of years, and with a LOT of accidents and things happening, one kind of these animals kept becoming smarter. These are what we call "humans", and they had to be smart because they weren't as strong as most things. Fortunately (for the humans) it turned out that being smart was better than being big, because you could figure out how to find food better and stay out of the way of things like glaciers. Among these "humans", the ones who asked questions had greater chances of living than the ones who didn't. These weren't "big" questions in the beginning, just things like "should I hunt mammoth here or there?" or "why don't I move to that valley where there's better food?" Asking questions became an "evolutionary trait", meaning the humans who survived were more likely to have children who asked questions and so on and so on for millions of years, until it was practically certain that you'd be asking questions as soon as you could talk.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	zodiac 209.193.18.201	9-Apr-06/7:53 PM
Pretty much everything happens for reasons. That's barking up the wrong tree. The difference between us isn't that you believe in reasons and I don't. It's that if I say, here's a simple reason why I'm here based on things we know, you'll say, no, I don't like that reason, I want a better one. Once again, here's the reason, without "whatsit" words: By some principle we don't understand yet, everything in the universe exploded out of the head of a pin in one instant a long time ago. We see that when there's a lot of stuff really dense, like in a black hole, certain things happen, and it seems this "Big Bang" might be like one of those things. All this stuff that exploded out of the Big Bang had certain characteristics. One of those is that it attracted itself; it had "gravity". As the stuff from the Big Bang zipped around in space, it began to gather together because of gravity. Another of the characteristics of this stuff is that, in its smallest parts, it had even smaller spinning parts. That meant that the stuff tended to gather together in spheres and to have spin. One of the smaller spheres ended up spinning around a large sphere that was big enough with enough gravity that it had begun to crush its insides, creating energy and heat. The position of the small sphere and the big sphere came from the way things bounce off of and attract each other. The small sphere happened to have a certain kind of stuff -- let's just start saying "matter" -- that, over a long long time and a process we don't totally understand yet, became "life". This "life" wanted to eat other "live" stuff, so a set of basic things started happening. The bigger, faster, more mobile life could catch and eat the smaller, weaker life. Life that could form more of itself had a better chance of not getting all eaten, too. So a lot of "live" things got eaten -- a WHOLE lot -- but a couple kinds of life managed to produce more of themselves and, if they were big and strong, they produced big and strong "offspring". It might not have gone this way. They could have all just died, but that wouldn't be much of a story, would it? Maybe that does happen tons of places we never hear from. Anyway, the strongest of the big and strong "offspring" had better chances of not getting eaten and THEY had better chances of having big and strong offspring too. This doesn't mean that only the strong survived. That's never been true about evolution. But you can see how if bigger/stronger lifes have just a 1% better chance of living than smaller/weaker lifes, over a very very long time there are going to be more bigger stronger lifes.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	ALChemy 24.74.100.11	9-Apr-06/7:51 PM
I don't think there's anything wrong with Zodiac believing God doesn't exist. I just wish he felt the same way about us believers.
Re: The One by deval1516	Dovina 12.72.34.176	9-Apr-06/7:48 PM
Like a diary entry. Nothing wrong with the feelings you have, just that they are not expressed so as to be interesting to anyone who is not poersonally involved with the situation.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	Dovina 12.72.34.176	9-Apr-06/7:29 PM
lol
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	ALChemy 24.74.100.11	9-Apr-06/7:22 PM
I didn't ask for things that happen for "A" reason. I asked for things that happen for "NO" reason. By the way there is a lot of things that science hasn't found a verifiable reason for, namely what I've been talking about, the great catalyst.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	ALChemy 24.74.100.11	9-Apr-06/7:16 PM
Apperantly Occam was a psychologist hundreds of years before his time.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	zodiac 209.193.18.201	9-Apr-06/7:12 PM
Tons of things happen for reasons. Science finds reasons for them all the time. If I drop my corndog it will accelerate toward the earth at a predictable rate because masses exert an attraction upon each other according to a formula. My dog died because it was stupid and ate trash. Some matter fizzes because at certain energy levels it is atomically unstable. I could go on, but this isn't the point.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	ALChemy 24.74.100.11	9-Apr-06/7:11 PM
It's funny. If I told an atheist or scientist that I just made an apple appear out of nothing from nowhere into my hand they'd laugh at me but that's what they want you to think the whole universe came from.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	ALChemy 24.74.100.11	9-Apr-06/7:03 PM
Name something that surely happens for no reason. Science is about finding reasons but apperantly that all goes out the window for you when one starts asking questions about things you don't have your own satisfying answer to. Do you think all that knowledge you've accumulated was always there? People had to go looking for it. They had to theorize and test theories. If everything else happens for a reason then why not the origin of the first thing. The whole idea that your theory is simpler than mine or someone elses is retarded. E=mc2 looks simple but it's not. I really would like to know what your theory is about what started it all and no whatchamacallit words are allowed this time. Here's a better site for his theory:http://www.paul-almond.com/OccamsRazorPart01.htm
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	zodiac 209.193.18.201	9-Apr-06/6:50 PM
Look at it this way: Suppose you, human-Dovina, are kept in a cage. Suppose you ask your keeper "Why am I here?" and the keeper says, "Because I'm bigger than you so I'm going to eat you." Are you saying you wouldn't understand that? Now suppose there is no farmer, or he's in the house watching TV. You ask, "Why am I here?" and you get no answer. Do you think, I'm getting no answer because there is no keeper? Or, I'm getting no answer because the keeper's not around? Or, I'm getting no answer because I'm not saying the question right? Or, I'm getting no answer because I'm really just a nosy hen that likes to ask pointless questions about everything? NO! You think, There IS an answer, but I'm just too obtuse to understand it! O Wise and Powerful Farmer! And so on and so on. That's absurd. If you don't presume to start with that you won't be able to understand an answer, you can find - what? - at least FOUR perfectly reasonable answers to the whole scenario. And I don't start with the assumption that an unknowable God is giving unintelligible answers, so I do find all those answers. And that's why we can't be friends.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	Dovina 12.72.34.176	9-Apr-06/6:42 PM
I knew there was no point. I'm bored. So long.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	zodiac 209.193.18.201	9-Apr-06/6:41 PM
Sorry, I don't believe a chicken can ask anything.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	Dovina 12.72.34.176	9-Apr-06/6:38 PM
A chicken can ask, "Why am I here in this cage, being fed?" with about as much capability of getting an answer as we can ask, "Why am I here?" In either case, even if the one in charge gives an answer, the one in the cage is not likely to understand it.
Re: a comment on The Battle of Fort Bragg by Dovina	zodiac 209.193.18.201	9-Apr-06/6:33 PM
Oh. Well, anyway, consider that a chicken can't ask "Why am I here?" (If it did, its answer would probably be: Because God sucks.") In other words, ask yourself, "Why was I born a giraffe?" "Why was I born on the inhospitable surface of Saturn?"
Re: a comment on Or Outward by MacFrantic	zodiac 209.193.18.201	9-Apr-06/6:31 PM
By whom?