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FCC urged to revoke Fox News' license by sullen_ole_geezerin politics

[–]SexWithTwins 0 points1 point ago

The commons select committee findings weren't as clear cut as this report makes out. The 'fit and proper persons' remark was reference to the policy of the UK's media regulator equivalent to the FCC, but the phraseology wasn't agreed unanimously by the cross party committee. The conservative party members of the panel cited this as being a partisan remark with which they did not agree, and it was included at the insistence of Tom Watson MP, who has had the bit between his teeth on this story since well before the hacking scandal was known to have affected the family of a murdered teenager and the parents of a missing child.

The only real chance of this spreading to Murdoch's American interests, is if someone as tenacious as Watson Stateside looks into earlier now buried suggestions, that News Corp. journalists attempted to bribe New York City police officers for details of 9/11 victim families. This practise of paying corrupt police was commonplace in the UK wing of News Corp., News International, whose former Chief Executive and former editor of The Sun newspaper, Rebekah Brooks, is currently staring down the wrong end of a 10 year prison sentence for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

If it can be shown that this practise was as common in the US as it was in the UK, even the fact that Fox News is broadcast on cable won't protect Murdoch from the authorities, because although the FCC has no remit over cable television, there would be reasonable grounds to find him unfit to head a media organisation, under US competition law. But this largely depends upon the findings of the still running Leveson Inquiry into Media Ethics, because if this concludes that Murdoch couldn't have known about the true scale of the problem, it gives him some wiggle room with the US authorities, who can only act if he is found guilty of a criminal offence in a foreign country.

what is christianity's view on deists? by ToastyRaichuin DebateAChristian

[–]SexWithTwins 0 points1 point ago

Thereby proving that you're a good and moral person without having to believe in a book.

what is christianity's view on deists? by ToastyRaichuin DebateAChristian

[–]SexWithTwins 0 points1 point ago

Yahweh is the biblical God, by the way.

what is christianity's view on deists? by ToastyRaichuin DebateAChristian

[–]SexWithTwins 0 points1 point ago

Which God? How do you know the bible is true?

what is christianity's view on deists? by ToastyRaichuin DebateAChristian

[–]SexWithTwins 0 points1 point ago

Well the immediately obvious problem there is that your position — indeed all faith-based positions, do not in fact provide the answers to anything, least of all everything, and there are myriad 'loose ends' flapping around all over the place.

Consider the following hypothetical. I've had it privately revealed to me, by the ghost that never lies, that when we die our consciousness floats away from our physical body, up into the sky, and comes to rest on the surface of Jupiter, where it spends the rest of time playing Scrabble with Darth Vader. How would you begin to disprove my truth-claim, without also providing the perfect argument against your own faith-based position, that Yahweh created the entire universe with Christians in mind?

The problem with faith-based positions is not that they lack cultural reference points, or traditional values. To throw these aspects of religion away would be a mistake no atheist I know of would condone or advocate, precisely because the best aspects of Christianity are the perfect argument in favour of humanism. The problem with faith based positions, is that they cannot tell us anything which is objectively true, because they're derived from the confirmation biases which those who hold them just so happen to have for certain aspects of reality.

For this very simple reason they can't all be right, be they can all be wrong, and without empiricism and logic, we have no way of telling the difference between the ones which are true and the ones which are false, without immediately disproving the validity of our own faith-based claims.

Science works because the opinion or subjective experience of the individual scientist is completely irrelevant. It's what she can repeatedly demonstrate to be objectively valid which counts. If we adopted a faith-based position about gravity, for example, we would be obliged to consider everyone's opinion on why objects fall to the ground as equally likely to be true, as those which are based upon repeated observations, experiment and logic. This would leave us completely incapable of telling the difference between fiction and fact.

So while there is nothing wrong, per-se, with holding the faith-based view that the universe was instigated by the particular deity towards which you just so happen to have a cultural and emotional bias, you have to also recognise that it is these very biases which make you less likely to accept the worth of any evidence that you are simply wrong, than someone who holds the scientific method in higher regard than they do their own personal opinions.

It is not that gods are improbable but not impossible which makes the prime mover argument more or less likely to be true or false, it is that it tells us nothing which we can test, while contradicting all the existing evidence, which is objectively true. If that evidence expands, at some point in the future, so that we can be sure beyond any doubt that the universe was created by what would seem to us like a God, we would no longer require faith in order to believe in God's basic existence. And since without faith gods do not exist, proof that a specific God of a specific religion exists would lead inextricably to a paradox of its own making: Proof that Yahweh exists, would prove that He does not.

The only way that we avoid paradoxes of this nature, is to eliminate entirely anything which cannot be falsified. Science does not deal in absolute truths, it deals with evidence which has yet to be shown false. That's why we call them scientific theories, not scientific hunches, or scientific certainties. Science is always open to the possibility everything we know is completely false. The only thing which is required in order to disprove an existing theory, is evidence which exceeds existing knowledge while accounting for those same observed phenomena with greater detail.

If simply saying "God did it" added this greater detail and clarity, we would use it all the time. But it is a conclusion drawn from its own proposition (which is what we mean by circular reasoning) to say this, without immediately recognising that it places the burden of proof upon the shoulders of those who say it, not those who do not. It is not a question of proving Yahweh does not exist, it is a question of proving He does. Without that, we cannot know anything about which gaps we're inserting Him into, or why it should be that Yahweh provides better answers than an infinite number of other possible deities, towards whose basic existence you are just as much of an atheist as I am towards Yahweh, and for exactly the same reasons.

Remember, if I simply adopt your worldview for arguments sake, no matter what you say in response to this, I can always claim the ghost that never lies told me in advance what you would say, placing me under no obligation to prove how he communicates with me, and in a way which I know to be true. How do you show that the ghost who never lies is imaginary, without making the perfect argument against your own position?

what is christianity's view on deists? by ToastyRaichuin DebateAChristian

[–]SexWithTwins 2 points3 points ago

What we don't know are the exact details, but the working hypothesis which is supported by multiple disciplines in both mathematical theory and physics, is that a quantum fluctuation of the kind which occur billions of times a second inside every single atom in the universe, caused matter and anti-matter to self-annihilate. What we don't know is why this happened, but happen it did since we are here. We know it happened, we just don't know why.

Many are tempted at this point to say, "ah ha! Therefore God did it", but it's not that simple. While it's true to say that previous to the big bang there was 'nothing' for anything to happen in, 'nothing' doesn't really mean not-a-thing when we're talking about quantum field theory. Previous to our universe coming into existence there was no space-time, so words like 'before' and 'after' lose all meaning, but until string theory is falsified, there is no reason to suppose that the quantum field doesn't in fact predate the coming into existence of the universe we just so happen to inhabit, which is but one of a literally infinite number of potential universes in the multiverse. So any possible gods, who might exist within this timeless, massless state, are by definition more complicated than the events they are accredited with instigating. And so you're left with exactly the same problem you started with, only now it's carrying around even more loaded terminology, and even less objectively valid meaning.

So since we can describe exactly how virtual particles come into and go out of existence all the time, we're no longer lacking a sound working model for the causes of the big bang — all of which are, rather unsurprisingly, non-supernatural.

While this doesn't rule out entirely the notion of their being a non-physical aspect to the universe, which we are literally incapable of measuring or testing, it does rule out completely the likelihood of any intelligent agents who might exist within that realm having attributes which we can reliably say anything about. Hence the theological descriptions of any specific gods, in this case Yahweh, simply cannot be true, because they claim to present that which cannot be demonstrated, and contradict that which can be.

Hence a-theism, as opposed to a-deism. It is not the position of any right thinking atheist that no beings which to us might seem like gods definitely do not exist, merely it is the case that if they do exist, our descriptions of them are self-evidently wrong, since they are anthropomorphic, and in many cases make truth-claims about reality which are demonstrably false.

To presuppose the existence of the particular God of your particular religion creates enough of its own multi-self-refuting problems as it is, particularly with regard the contradictory truth-claims made by other religions. But to additionally claim that the particular God of your particular religion is the only possible explanation for the existence of the entire universe, places a burden of proof upon your own shoulders which you are literally incapable of bearing; because you're effectively claiming to know something which you cannot know, and on zero objectively valid evidence.

Drawing a conclusion from your own premise, that Yahweh exists because you know it to be true in a way which cannot be demonstrated, or described, merely asserts you hold a faith-based position, despite that it is syllogistic and therefore logically fallacious. So while you're perfectly entitled to hold that view, it doesn't make your subjective opinions one and the same as that which can be objectively verified, it makes them the complete opposite.

This is why metaphysical truth-claims are essentially meaningless, in the Popperian view of logic and scientific discovery. It is not that the faith-based claims are meaningless from the perspective of those who hold them, just that they are useless when it comes to constructing accurate predictions, measurements and falsifiable theory about reality.

So, yes, I can provide a more logical explanation to how the universe came into being, than that it was imagined into existence by the specific God of the particular religion towards which you just so happen to have a cultural and emotional bias. But I don't think you're going to like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdUYw59ztyw

Is it wrong that I find this woman totally sexy? by SexWithTwinsin unitedkingdom

[–]SexWithTwins[S] -2 points-1 points ago

When you see it...

what is christianity's view on deists? by ToastyRaichuin DebateAChristian

[–]SexWithTwins 2 points3 points ago

How is it "the most logical" to hypothesis something for which there is no objectively valid evidence, and which is contradicted by a plethora of empirical observations?

Everyone On Google Today by Fishookedin funny

[–]SexWithTwins 0 points1 point ago

But that's a Korgi

Can anybody name a worse iPhone feature than minimizing the App Store everyfuckingtime you buy something? by wefandangoin iphone

[–]SexWithTwins 0 points1 point ago

It's easier done on the iPad than it is the iPhone. But I was referring more to when it insists you're going to spell a word wrong; when it won't let you use any other letter than the one you incorrectly typed the first time. The irony of this is I'm replying in my iPhone and it's behaving itself impeccably. Look at that! Impeccably. How about antidisestablishmentairianism. Yup! No problem there either. Hmmm. Maybe I'm being a bit sesisitve.

Can anybody name a worse iPhone feature than minimizing the App Store everyfuckingtime you buy something? by wefandangoin iphone

[–]SexWithTwins 15 points16 points ago

Having to delete the entire word if you spell it wrong, because it just tries to put it back as it was if you go from the first bad letter.

I tried a Strat and it wasn't what I expected. by GrumpGoatin Guitar

[–]SexWithTwins 1 point2 points ago

Could it be that the one you already have is actually better than you might realise? I had a really cheep Strat copy once which played brilliantly.

British Redditors- Stop Pandering to our American cousins. by dontbogartthatjointin unitedkingdom

[–]SexWithTwins 8 points9 points ago

First time I ever flew to San Francisco from Heathrow, I made the mistake of getting a connecting flight via North Carolina. 11 hour flight, straight into a busy American airport, to wait for three hours, to fly for another 6 hours.

Zombiefied, I stood at the gate waiting to board. After half an hour I turned to the guy in front of me, stared for a second, and said, "You're British, aren't you?", he said, "Yes, how can you tell?". We were the only two queuing.

Skyfall teaser trailer by jerry111in videos

[–]SexWithTwins 1 point2 points ago

How did Tosker get Geordie a job like that?

Bee Gee's singer Robin Gibb is dead. by noni_fivein worldnews

[–]SexWithTwins 1 point2 points ago

Mooo airrrrr

At the risk of starting a massive argument, what is the full story with people being banned from /r/worldnews and /r/politics exactly? by SexWithTwinsin AskReddit

[–]SexWithTwins[S] 0 points1 point ago

I know. Like, why does there have to be 16 fucking posts about, say, the earthquake in Italy? Is it too much to expect that you might not be the first person to report it? Just freaking glance at the subreddit first before you post to see if you are the 16th person.

Girl Thrown Off Train For Talking Sex! Tunbridge Wells by Forcoughin unitedkingdom

[–]SexWithTwins 0 points1 point ago

What a fucking slag

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