https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/books/book-list/

@SunFlower If religious people are making a specific scientific claim about the natural world which defies what we can see and test and demonstrate, he (as well as all of us) has a duty to point out that flaw in reasoning.

There's no utility in taking away prayer beads from a sick and elderly person who is deriving solace from God. There IS utility in getting people to believe in biological evolution.

What do you think about Ray Comfort?

I'll be able to join at ~1:15

oh right, how egocentric of me

of course everyone's in MY time zone

EDT

but with it being "Richard dawkins" day I'd enjoy talking about this

It doesn't surprise me that much. He's one of most well-known science popularizers in the world, even disregarding the God Delusion

He was famous before that

oh I'm talking to the president of Flat Earth Society today too, so that'll be fun

let me know if you think there's something I should ask him

he thinks the earth is zooming upward at the rate of gravity due to an "Aetheric whirlpool"

i mean c'mon Sunflower, how can I argue with that?? AETHERIC WHIRLPOOL

This is an interesting thought experiment, but I'd be very curious to know of a single time in history where war ever maximizes well-being

be back soon

Matt Dillahunty is a lot closer to the "hack getting famous from atheism" you mentioned the other day @SunFlower

My friend Thomas Sheedy has started this organization called "Atheists for Liberty," trying to get more nonbelievers on the right, but it's like, the atheist movement is dead, no one cares about it anymore. and that's a good thing

He fails at any and all arguments that are not atheism. His logic fails in every other domain

Veganism, antinatalism, abortion, it's quite interesting how unskilled he is at applying his debating skills to those topics

in his defense, I wouldn't be able to have his patience probably. For 20 years to have thousands upon thousands of Christians call in and recycle the same claims from Scripture. And only one call in all those years did I see where he actually got someone to change their mind in real time

yeah @therealdandan has a point, if enough people believe (or don't believe) in something, it starts losing social importance. I think it'd be a lot less socially acceptable for george bush to say he "talks to God" so cavalierly now than it was in 2000

But @SunFlower, those are the people that matter. The average christian isn't going to watch William Lane Craig vs Antony Flew. It's the average caller in Texas that's going to cause a ripple effect in his community if he starts questioning

not converting to atheism, just questioning. For example, if he could just get someone to not believe in biblical inerrancy, that would be a HUGE step

he'll just hang up on you haha

i called in once to argue for an afterlife and I wasn't prepared for their rebuttal so I just gave up

I am a lot more curious about what you were saying the other day defending Christianity

@m.miller

If you guys want a fiction novel, my all-time favorite is The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. Unbelievable book

i've already read it but i'd be willing to revisit it. I radically disagree with a lot of it so I look forward to the discussions

sweet

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/lawrence-krauss-sexual-harassment-allegations#.txmVvGYJP

This article outlines a lot of the accusations that have been made against him. Virtually all of the accusations are him talking out of turn and/or making inappropriate jokes

Right. To me, this is the only accusation that really deserves any notoriety

He claims they had a discussion about it beforehand. I tend to doubt that, but I still don't think it's predatory. It sounds like it's part of the awkward interactions that humans have when trying to navigate the sexual landscape

Yes, but even if I were to go with what she said, it still doesn't sound predatory

It sounds like he was misreading body language and other social cues, so he took the first step, and then she left.

I think we pretty much can, unless more evidence comes out. There's a thousand things that get lost in translation when trying to speak about an event like this a year later, or even an hour later. The most important part of this is that as soon as she said she needed to go, she did. She didn't say he protested or stood in front of the door, or anything like that

But what does "taking seriously" look like? There's no way we can prosecute, and this accusation forced him to resign his position at university, and it will be in the first paragraph of his wikipedia article until he dies, right up there with all his books and accolades and research. To me, that's taking seriously

I said that before. If you were in the public spotlight for 30 years and met 10,000 people, maybe 10 of them heard you make an inappropriate joke once

that doesn't prove a life of debauchery

but then at the culmination of 30 years you have 10 allegations and it looks like a lot

"Terrible things are done, by a person or a people, but over time memory fades. People gradually forget the exact details or nature of a scandal. A cloud surrounds a person or an action and then that too dissipates among a mass of new discoveries and experiences. But as the insult and grievance fade from generation to generation, those who hold on to this grievance are often regarded as displaying not sensitivity or honor but belligerence."- Douglas Murray

Has anyone in this chat met someone who they think would lie about an accusation like that? I certainly have

it just takes a different form

how do you know that?

I have no clue how anyone could begin to find this out

and effectively I can do nothing more than shrug my shoulders

But I repeat, what does that look like? Are we still allowed to have him at our campuses? Can we have him on our podcasts? Can he still teach?

because it'd make me very sad to see someone qualify every time they speak to him for the rest of his life as saying "Oh by the way, just so everyone watching knows, i'm neither confirming nor denying the allegations against him and I don't wish for anything i say henceforth to be taken as an endorsement or condemnation of what has been levied against him"

It puts a barrier between humans that is insurmountable

he can never be "fully human"

have you watched the movie?

Cuties

the movie seems to make it pretty clear that the girls themselves are unaware that they are performing sexual movements

is there a reason you always type "wemon?"

interesting

i'll hop on voice if someone wants to join me

I think it's a lot more layered than that

what a waste of ink

@ola you wanna finish those thoughts in voice?

k i'll be there in 5 mins

useful but one-sided

join the voice chat

had a great time

thanks @ola

@T2the2ndpowr he was one of the most insufferable people i've ever spoken to

i don't understand this scene without context

is there any discussion today?

@ThePangburn you understand that within a rounding error, no one employs skepticism in the slightest on the big moral questions. And even within this chat room, people here who think about this stuff all day every day are employing skepticism and STILL see some of what you say on this issue as problematic. you had to have known this would be the reaction

Outside a rounding error I should say

But what I'm saying is that when you speak that way to the general public, of course that's what they're going to jump to. It took a very long time yesterday on voice for people to find common ground with you on this. I don't really think it's something that can be explained in a few hundred characters. If people don't know anything else about you, that's going to be the reaction you get

Exactly what I'm saying^

I didn't say the twitter reactions were the right response, but it will be the response. and with zero other context about who you are, it sounds worse than if you knew you were a philosopher

they knew*

the united states goverment forces rape victims to effectively marry their rapist:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermesmann_v._Seyer

she raped him when he was 12

and he was forced to pay child support

the supreme court has upheld this many times. there's never been a case where it hasn't been

Seriously? Hilarious???

I wonder what the religion of fourth wave feminism would say about it

I don't like the word "better"

You can't consent at age 12

right, and she was found criminally guilty of misconduct toward him

of course it is. For an act that was committed as a violation of his consent at age 12, he will go to prison if he does not pay for child support

Feel in yourself how carefree you can be about that statement. Imagine for a moment the consequences of an adult male raping a 12 year old girl and having her go to prison for it, whether indirectly or not

yeah it's getting iffy

that's an EXTREMELY controversial claim

"consent regardless of age" is an extremely controversial claim

theoretically yes but in reality no

but you're playing two games at once, because then you still have to say that he doesn't deserve to go to prison if he doesn't pay

because if he goes to prison, he's (indirectly) criminally responsible for something he didn't consent to

click on "live youtube feed" and then unmute your mic

this is WORD FOR WORD what he said to me yesterday

@kaizen How do you know what you know? What do you use to determine what is true?

lol wish i paid more attention in hebrew school

@T2the2ndpowr are you saying someone in this chatroom does?

open to elaborating on that sometime?

dan i don't describe myself as a jew btw. to me, people who describe us as a 'race' is part of what perpetuates the anti-semitism