MTG Salvation

Four priests were walking along the beach, arguing about the will of god. Every day they argued and every day one, the youngest, stood alone against the other three. One afternoon he could bear this no longer and so stretched his arms out to heaven and cried, "Oh god, I know in my heart that I am right about your will and they are wrong. If this is so, send us a sign!"

Just then a giant black cloud raced in from the clear horizon to hang over the priests's heads. It then disapeared as quickly as it came.

The youngest priest looked smugly to his companions but they insisted that this could be a coincidence. The young priest rolled his eyes and called out, "Oh god, master of the universe and lord of us all, we need a bigger sign."

Just then four black clouds raced in from the four corners of the earth and came together over the priests' heads in a resounding crash. But the three arguing priests said that this was nothing that couldn't be explained by natural phenomenon. The young priest grimaced, turned his eyes up to heaven and called, "Oh god--"

The sky turned dark, the earth shook and a giant voice roared down from on high, "HEEEE'S RIIIIIIGHT!!!"

There was silence. Finally one of the three opposing priests cleared his throat and muttered, "Well... Now it's three against two."


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The thing is, God CAN be proven to exist. If something like this happened or there was a sudden epidemic of raining frogs in current times that would be strong evidence. What can't be proven is that god doesn't exist. Besides supposedly being all-powerful and easily able to erase memories or avoid our wiles - you just can't prove a negative.

There's been some misunderstanding on this point. What I mean when I say, "you can't prove a negative" is that the only basis for believing that something does not exist is the very lack of evidence! If I can provide no evidence that an imaginary wolverine exists - no sight, smell, fang marks, the wolverine can't be proven to exist. However, it may still exist - just like murders may still occur even when cleverly hidden. If something cannot be proven to be true then we can't call it fact.

However, it's just as foolish to make the claim that god doesn't exist. We can't know something isn't true, just as we can't know that WE exist. Trying to prove god doesn't exist is even more impossible than proving that Squire is a bad card. Magic cards are only as good as the deck they play in. While no one has yet proven Squire is a good card (no competitive deck has a reason to play squire over another card) there might, just might, be a deck out there that would make excellent use of it - even if the cards for it don't exist yet.

Even if we cobbled every possible combination of magic cards together along with squires and had the entire magic community evaluate them ALL... It's possible that we're missing something. It's just possible that we might all suffer from simultaneous magic-stupidity sickness and miss an awesome card for a deck. Is this likely? Not at all! But it's technically possible.

Despite this, no one can yet say that Squire is good. As there is no excellent decklist that makes use of squire as a key component there is no evidence for this statement.

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I make no statements about whether god exists or not. It doesn't make sense to. What I DO say is that believing something is true based on no facts is harmful in the long term if not always the short term. Intelligent action can only be taken based on facts. Clear thinking protects us from evils and mistakenly hiddeous actions. We can believe we're right all we want, but if we have no evidence then something is wrong. It might not matter right now, but the day will come when a bad idea - a horrible idea, the next holocaust, is presented to us. If we accept it on faith then the world will weep.

If we do not remain open-minded, mindful to the possibility that we can be wrong in our views no matter where those views come from... Well, it seems to waste the greatest gift that god gave us: the power to think.

Quote from Highroller

I Yeah that's good, let's hate Jewish ethnicity. Goodness knows that's original.

Sigh... I think you know that that wasn't my point. In fact, I'm more than a little offended. Actually, if you go back a few posts before that you'll notice that all my arguments about the dangers of blind faith cited the holocaust as the ultimate horror of idiotic beliefs gone awry.

It's understandable that you didn't automatically go back a page and look at my previous posts, but then it seems pretty ridiculous to jump to those conclusions. If this was a misunderstanding, I'd appreciate an apology. If not, you stand guilty as charged.

Quote from Vaclav

Religion getting in the way of technology is certainly a negative thing in my book - but you're pigeonholing quite a bit there - most technology doesn't have "obvious" ethical quandries.

But then again even these tie around your feelings on when personality, soul and such are formed and what is respectful to do with remains. I'd personally go in on mandatory organ donorship if such an idea was ever proposed, because the good of the many outweighs the good of the few - but not many feel the same.

I completely agree. Some techonologies are unethical and shouldn't see the light of day. But that's not what I'm talking about, I'm saying that the argument that a science should not be pursued because, "human's aren't supposed to play god" is bad - no matter the technology. Some arguments are just bad, even when used for good. If I said Adolf Hitler was a bad person because he wore a moustache... Well, he was a bad person (true) but the moustache wasn't the reason.

Some arguments are just bad. It's the argument I'm making fun of, not the opposition to SM research itself.

Isn't the problem with Ethanol that is burns more fuel to make than it saves? If we're tryin to save gas then that's a pretty big problem =).

Quote from Card Slinger J

When I was watching Joe Scarborough's show "Morning Joe" there was this guy that some people called the "Dr. Doom of the Economy" as he already predicted how the economy had turned out the past several years.

He says that in order to fix the economy we need to do the opposite of what we're doing right now which is less spending and don't bail out any more companies. He also says that the Obama Administration is doing exactly what FDR and the Hoover Administration did and could evidently cause another Great Depression.

So... Do you agree with my ideas? I'm having a hard time telling =). Well, my plan certainly calls for less spending and no bailing out of compaies since we wouldn't be giving the banks extra cash, we're having them sell off chunks of their balance sheet.

Also, did Doctor Doom say what we should be doing? If so, was it anything like what I said - because that would be awesome.

I always been confused by the objection, "Human's aren't supposed to play god." It's frequently cited against cloning and stem cells. But then, what are humans supposed to do? God didn't create health-care or democracy. God didn't create space shuttles or houses. God even outsourced building the ark!

If we're not supposed to play god, why are we inventing medicine or cooking our food? Human ingenuity in the quest to preserve life requires going beyond the things we were born with. Otherwise, we'd all still be living in caves.

Quote from PandasRpeople2

I essentially agree with you, but... what happens when you question a belief and find no actual evidence against it (as is the case with much of religion and superstition)? The Jews believe that God doesn't want them eating pork. No evidence, either for or against. And no one, no one, can conceivably be hurt by a Jew's refusal to eat pork. So what's wrong with this (fundamentally illogical) belief?

Ah! Another excellent agreement with my point! I think we have a real connection here:D.

True, no one can be hurt by a Jew not eating pork. What CAN cause harm is a Jew not eating pork just because the bible tells them not to. It's a short step from there to protesting gays or burning a woman for wearing garments woven from two different kinds of thread.

The very indulgence in implausible beliefs is what causes the harm - because people don't browse through illogal positions and just select the, "safe" ones. Turning on the local news is all the proof this statement requires ;).

Besides, as the lawyers say, the burden of proof is on the prosecution. You can't prove that something doesn't exist - someone has to prove it DOES exist. You can't prove a negative.

Your point about not needing to analyze a song to enjoy it is better. However, a song isn't an idea. A song can't be questioned any more than we can question the sun. Sure, we can question whether the sun exists - or is the source of photosynthesis or is a viable source of alternative enery or is going to burn out in the next millenia... But we need to quesiton something ABOUT the sun. You can also question if classical music improves child intelligence, or if playing music can help plants grow but you can't question music itself? What's there to question?

Even so, many people do analyze music. They're called composers. They need to analyze why they enjoy music in order to get better at writing it. However, NOT analyzing music proves no inherrant danger - as it doesn't recomend any type of action or inaction. Music with lyrics... that's another story. But even then it's only the ideas that are worth wuestioning, not the music itself

Well, not exactly. The assets I'm talking about are the property values and the bank's reserve cash. If these were exceeding what the bank owed to the people who had actually put money in the bank there would be no problem.

These assets aren't turning into liabilities, they're turning into what's called, "Toxic Assets." These are loans that probably won't get paid back to the borrower AND the value of the property is worth less than the bank paid for it.

In my example above I completely left out the fact that the wealthy companies might be getting income from their purchases as people pay their mortgage. I thought it would be better to assume a worst case scenario.

It's true that some mortgages changed hands to an absurd degree but the problem was lack of documentation and speculation in the original contract.

The whole reason why the banks need a bailout is so they once again have more assets than liabilities. If we allow rich companies to buy parts of their holdings the problem becomes a lot easier to solve. Actually, it usually stops being a problem. And even if there are a lot of completely worthless assets, even as much as half, then that still sharply reduces what the government needs to take care of.

Quote from Blinking Spirit

Logic provides no imperatives. One of the best illustrations of this in the modern world is the government of China: it is going about its goal of maintaining political power in a highly, even ruthlessly, logical manner. I do not dispute that many great evils are committed by idiots with the best of intentions; but that doesn't mean the world would be made a better place by smart men without the best of intentions.

I agree completely. It's the ruthlessness that is the problem! A person can be a criminal, no matter how brilliant. Logic isn't a guaruntee of goodness.

I don't think anyone here disagrees that some people are bad.

The problem is that lack of reason will often send a good person down errant paths. You don't need to be religious to be a good person. But mindless belief in something for the sake of making yourself feel better is a bad idea. It's minorly harmful and potentially dangerous.

My position is that we need to question everything, even the most basic personal beliefs. That's our best chance at finding the truth.

Now the panda portion.

Psychoanalysis of the great Nazi criminals revealed that they were disturbingly normal. You partition your brain so that, when not in the business of implementing the "Final Solution," you're a perfectly well-adjusted family man.

Doesn't this sort of prove my point? These were normal people, perfectly well adjusted family men, who didn't bother questioning their beliefs. My point wasn't that you can't compartmentalize your brain scientifically, it was that doing so isn't a safeguard at all! I'm glad you agree with me and I apologize if I stated my views in a confusing manner.

If you're in the business of genocide, I'm pretty sure you know it. And if you're turning a blind eye, or being passively complicit in genocide, it's most likely for financial gain or for the sake of simple comfort or apathy, not for mystical or fantastical reasons.

Whoozaonthewhatnow? Wait... wasn't your previous point that you CAN compartmentalize your brain (turning a bit of reason off in one regard while still being a critical thinker in another). I agree with that statement, in fact it's my main argument. You can't pick and choose what you question in case the one belief you don't question (i.e. jews are animals) is the one that's wrong!

But now it sounds like you're saying that these people knew it was wrong and decided to ignore it any way. Well, aside from the fact that it goes against the outright documented hatred of the Nazi party, this implies that people DIDN'T compartmentalize their brains - they were just too lazy or greedy to stop the slaughter.

Help me out, what am I missing?

Good combo with this: Thousand year elixer. That way she can save herself multiple times in a turn.

Quick question: Is returning the artifact part of the abililties cost? If so, it can't be burned in response to tapping itself - meaning if I tapped the transmuter to save itself and put a platinum angel into play and my opponent played incinerate in response targeting my transmuter then incinerate would fizzle because the transmuter has already left play. However, an instant discard spell could empty the rest of your hand before the ability resolves but still require you to return an artifact.

The War on Superstition is an even more vain and ridiculous enterprise than the War on Drugs. Besides, people compartmentalize things in their minds. Someone who is altogether logical in most areas of life might still have superstitions or delusions in a few areas (like the accountant who goes to the casino after work with his lucky rabbit's foot in tow). As long as those few false (or simply unverifiable) beliefs don't pose a foreseeable threat to anyone's well-being, what's the harm?

The war on drugs is vain and ridiculous not because of the message but because of the consequence. Mandatory rehab for people with addictions wouldn't be a bad thing - just like mandatory counseling for people with mental illnesses. Spending millions of dollars to throw people in jail for what really is a health-care problem is ridiculous. Saying people should avoid cocaine is not.

Don't worry, I'm not about to start throwing religious people in jail and I don't think mandatory counseling is a good idea either. In fact, it's a bad idea. Religion isn't an illness, it's just a belief... based on no actual facts. I'm not about to start wrestling elvis-sighters onto therapy couched either.

Now on to your other point.

Over the last few posts I've noticed that our discussion is becoming less and less interactive. In every post you say that, while religion can't be proven, it doesn't do any harm so what's the big deal? In this you have a strong argument. It's the same way homosexuality doesn't harm anyone so there's no grounds to make it illegal.

However, I disagree with you when you say religion does no harm. While it was once one of the great civilizing forces in history it's now a refuge for people who refuse to think. If you don't question everything, everything, and constantly accept that you can be wrong... Well then you're just asking to be decieved.

More harm has been done throughout history by good people acting under falty logic than most anything else. I'd rather teach a man to think clearly than give that man a conscience.

Clear thinking is the mark of a civilized society. Yes, religion comforts people but that's not my issue with it. Hard Drugs comfort people but such an addiciton is horribly harmful to the person and society.

The thing is, suspending thought for any purpose DOES matter and it DOES cause harm. A rational person can't pick and choose when to put on his thinking cap - he needs to train his brain for inquiry. As you agreed with my previous statement about that I'm having a hard time understanding how you can say people can compartmentalize their brains. It just doesn't work like that. You need to question everything so that you can be sure one of your few faith-based beliefs isn't the one that's killing the jews.



On another note... I like your avatar. Nice black/white motif =).

Quote from Darklightz

True, ridding the world of religion won't rid it of war as well, but it would drastically reduce it. Face it, religion is one of the greatest source of violence, bigotry and hate in this world

I'd be a little careful there. A lot of religious wars were started by the political leaders who probably just used religion as an excuse to get what they wanted. Would war reduce if religion vanished? Maybe, but I don't know. Sometimes people just like to call someone an enemy.

I prefer to focus on, "lack of thinking" rather than making a leap like that. History would have been markedly different if there was no religion - so different in fact that we can't begin to imagine what would have happened. While it seems obvious that religion causes wars, I hesitate to implicate religion itself.

I think religion is a negative force not because of the bigotry of certain dogmas but because of its direct contradiction to logical thought. That's the difference between religon being bad and a religion being bad. I know it's a small distinction but I feel it's an important one.

Quote from PandasRpeople2

I didn't say that such beliefs don't matter. I was trying to get across the point that usually, they don't matter enough to where the rest of us should invest in actively trying to put an end to them.

Hmm... I find this hard to accept. It's not the actual belief in hypothetical sugar faeries that worries me, it's what it leads to. Does the sugar faerie belief matter in itself? No. But beliefs don't exist in a vacuum - they're part of a person's mental framework.

If someone is not willing to approach things logically then we have the beginnings of racism, bigotry and misunderstanding on a gigantic scale. The mind needs to be trained to question ideas, or else people become cattle that can be herded by any errant dictator. If you believe things just because it's comforting or someone in the government said it was true... well... That's kind of how the holocaust happened.

Insanity is the inability to think rationally. Rational thought is based in logic. Even the little things need to be constantly questioned and re-evaluated if we're going to make sure we don't descend back to the middle ages. It's like lifting weights for the mind, we need to make sure our reasoning muscles don't atrophy.

I prefer it when people are sane.

I think we're missing the point here. One of the problems that religious discussions have is that the anti-religion people start trying to pin all of humanity's problems on religion. Whether religion is a good or bad thing, it's not the only issue in the world. If it was, philosophy would be rather boring =).

However, the religious side of things usually respond by talking about the value of faith - of believing in things that don't have proof. The funny thing is, this isn't how religion started at all. People seem to forget that mankind is naturally curious. We search out answers for questions. In ancient times we wondered how a giant black stone wound up in a land with no rocks like it (see: Al-hajar - the black stone ). Back then, the most logical explanation was that it came from somewhere else - from the sky perhaps. Only a being greater than man could cause that, so it made sense to believe that a god had sent the rock.

Religion was originally a hypothesis - the most logical explanation humanity could come up with for its surroundings.

But now when we look at such a stone it makes more sense to assume it's a meteorite.

Mr. Panda, I think you're comment about religious wars being akin to blind pride in country is an excellent point. Wars aren't going to end because religion disapears. However, your statement about a fantasy belief in processes not mattering gives me pause. If sacrificing goats did indeed bring rain then I would head the legalize-goat-sacrifice lobby for people in deserts. But since it doesn't, it's a horrific and wasteful practice.

I don't blame religion for this, any errant belief about cause and effect can be harmful. Take ulcers. People, even doctors, used to believe that ulcers were caused by stomach acid gone awry. In 1983 it was discovered that ulcers were instead caused by bacteria. This meant they could be cured and easily - to the relief of millions of people across the world.

However, the interesting part is that the medical community refused to accept the theory until 1994. They had some reasonable objections, but mainly they just couldn't believe that the research was correct. It wasn't until the minor scientist who developed the experiment actually drank down a vat of bacterium and got an ulcer from it that people started taking him seriously.

An errant belief not only inhibits progress, it can cause suffering to millions of people. Self-delusion is dangerous, no matter where it's found. And that is the problem with religion - it glorifies the fact that it cannot be proven... while denying the possibility that it could be wrong.

Certainties are dangerous things.

I've been researching the American economy for the past three years. I know that doesn't sound impressive, it's not, but I'm often asked to give lectures in economics classes and I've been devoting a lot of time and attention to what's going on. I think I have a few ideas and I'd love to hear what everyone thinks of them.

One major policy suggestion is that the government should buy the banks, clean em' up and sell them to a company once their profitable. Problem is, even if you could find someone who actually could buy an entire bank, that leaves a lot of tax payers holding the bag.

I think we can do a lot more good with a lot less money by going to the root of the problem. The only reason banks are in trouble is because they owe more money than they have. If they had extra cash they'd still be humming along and be viable businesses.

So why not go to the root of the problem: the assets and liabilities. Instead of having the government try to fix the whole banking system (no mean feat) AND THEN sell the banks let’s cut out the middle man. Let’s give their balance sheets to people who can handle the debt, make money with them and aren’t so desperate for cash that they send thousands of people into homelessness.

How do we do this?

I think we should put the banks contracts up for sale – not the whole bank, just their contracts.

Rich businesses buy failing businesses all the time. They have enough income to take the initial loss and then they pay off the debt over time. No one business is big enough to take on the entire banking system (our own government might not be enough) but if we split up the contracts it would make things a lot easier. Companies could buy a piece of the banking industry's obligations without actually buying the bank.

For example, right now Coca-Cola has about half a billion dollars in Gross Profits. That's a lot of buying power. Now let's say a portion of AIG's balance sheet includes 100 billion in debt but 95 Billion is assets. Coca-Cola could pay AIG a nominal fee (say hundred million dollars). And take all those assets AND debt off their hands.

Imagine hundreds of similar transactions (it would only take about ten on this larger scale to buy ALL of AIG's balance sheet ) with dozens of companies, even small companies, buying bits and pieces of the bank. What would happen at the end? AIG would be wiped clean on their balance sheet with all their obligations taken care of... And have over a billion dollars in their pocket (from the companies paying those nominal fees) to start lending money again and start paying back all those bailouts.

This gets a lot closer to the root of the problem, without requiring massive allocation of government funds.

But why would businesses want to do this?

Because it's a great investment.

Coke would invest all that extra money over the next few years paying off the debt with their current earnings. Even assuming that all those houses they bought NEVER went up in value (which we know is not true, espescially at a low market like this) they would be able to pay off the excess debt of 5 billion within about ten years even if their earnings don't grow at all (which we also know is not going to be true, their earnings will grow).

Besides, these aren't just financial bets we're settling - there's real value here. Real estate developers would make use of the land, building companies could harvest the materials etc.

What are your thoughts?