« first day (7 days earlier)      last day (114 days later) » 
00:00 - 17:0017:00 - 00:00

5:00 PM
It's just the one post about flaming shrubbery. They really take offense to that?
so so confused about this place today.
 
have to be sensitive to people
and their cherished beliefs...
 
0
Q: Would scripture encoded in mathematical constants constitute strong evidence for supernatural origin?

Thomas L HoladaySuppose that it were discovered that the digits of π or the natural logarithm, when expressed in terms of a particular base, perfectly encoded the complete text of the King James version of both testaments of the Christian bible. Would that be strong evidence supporting any of the following clai...

 
Is Juliet atheist?
 
so what happened with that question?
 
I think she's one of the softer ones.
But I've seen her make overtly atheistic comments.
 
5:02 PM
-1: Skeptics Annotated Bible sucks. Its a listing every "error" ever published, regardless of the accuracy of said error. – Juliet 17 secs ago
 
Which question Increed?
 
the math constants revealing scripture
 
maybe she isn't, hm
And I have no clue. I know it's trolling, but do we off topic it?
 
It's a comment she made on my answer after downvoting it.
I guess she may well have a point.
The one where conflicting or shocking bible stories are listed.
 
Looking at her answers, almost every one of them seems somewhat apologetic.
VITALY
 
5:05 PM
Yes?
 
SHE GOT A BADGE FOR FIRST FLAGGED POST
 
perhaps she's one of those atheists who is afraid of hurting feelings because she's been affected by the 'militant atheist' meme
 
HAH!!!
 
Theist.
The flagged post I just mentioned...although I wonder if noticing those two and saying it is a violation of mod tools usage or something.
If that's how theists are going to act, where it's ambiguous and hard to figure out where they stand, then I'm happy about that.
 
how do I see the posts she's been making?
 
5:08 PM
You go to her profile, but comments are not available there.
 
do you not have the activity tab?
 
Oh, my bad.
I somehow missed it.
 
In communist russia, activity accomplish you!
I prefer doing the impressions with a bottle of potato vodka, though
 
lol
 
it's hard to find potato vodka, but so tasty
 
5:12 PM
I haven't seen anything that suggests this Juliet is a theist
 
Hello @Ami
 
Ami
how are you today Vitaly?
 
Has anyone else heard about that study where evolutionary algorithms were applied to chips, which resulted in pretty much life-like behavior of the chips?
I am wholeheartedly fine, thank you, Ami. And you?
 
Chips? Computer chips?
 
Yes, I.
 
5:19 PM
I've seen evolutionary algorithms used in software but not hardware.
 
Ami
I'm good thanks
 
how does that work with hardware?
hi Ami
 
Ami
@Vitaly I've heard and read about many studies and experiments where evolutionary algorithms were found to be very underwhelming
Hi Increedable, Josiah.
 
Where are you from, Ami?
 
@Increedable here is a popular article about it, and here is the experimenter's page.
 
Ami
5:22 PM
@Increedable New york
 
@Vitaly, the first link doesn't work for me
 
Wow, it just worked
 
@ami New york city?
 
Ami
yup
 
Google cache should work.
 
Ami
5:25 PM
Looks interesting, but I have to admit I am very skeptical
 
an expensive place to live, I hear
 
Ami
Not if your in college there
But college is expensive...
@Vitaly found it!
This is what you should be looking at: citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/…
 
that article is quite fascinating.
what are you studying in college?
 
@Ami glad you've found it.
 
Ami
Physics and CS
 
5:31 PM
I was in physics/CS at one point..but I decided to focus on the CS in the end
has any tried a using n-ary forms of evolution algorithms. I wonder if we limit ourselves by sticking to binary.
don't you just hate it when you discover that what you just wrote is completely incoherent and there's no way to edit it
 
@Increedable As a non-native speaker of English, I certainly do hate it.
 
Good morning Ami.
internets decided to fail
 
@Vitaly you write English very well. Can't speak about your speaking thought.
though*
 
hahaha, thepreacher upvoted me for honesty
sighs
 
LOL @Josiah
That made my day.
@Increedable thank you kindly.
 
Ami
5:41 PM
you can edit what you wrote within a certain time-frame
type something, submit it, then press the up arrow key
 
I just realized that..thanks
A handy chat feature.
how do you know who votes/unvotes for someting?
 
cee lo green = badass
you don't unless they tell you Increedable
 
The Preacher posted a comment starting with "+1", that's how.
 
There is one thing flagged as offensive on the mod tools, and Juliet got a badge for reporting a post as offensive.
 
I see... thought that maybe there was some privilege that gives you that kind of info.
 
5:43 PM
The one thing flagged as offensive was a burning shrubbery comment
that's why I vote theist.
The mod tools are really light. Mostly trends and offensive/spam flag lists.
 
Faitheist.
 
You can look at new users with posts and stuff.
 
just because she's trying to be sensitive doesn't make her a theist
 
So it's easy to pick up trolls coming in.
I'll grant you that, but mixed with her post history, I find it more useful mentally to categorize her that way even if she isn't necessarily.
 
I know plenty of atheists who pander to the feelings of theists
 
5:45 PM
Luckily I don't. All the ones that said they were agnostics now admit to being atheists..
The one christian I recently helped along is almost as militant as me and it's only been a few months.
 
@Increedable there is a good word for that: faitheist.
 
There are times where I think atheists go a little too far in assertions. For instance, I thought it was idiotic for David Silverman to argue that Christmas trees in the workspace are offensive.
 
Well, it's certainly not offensive to me, but maybe he was molested by a tree as a youth..
 
that's a useful term
 
Harbor day is his halloween.
 
5:48 PM
lol
 
*Arbor
Theists are incoming.
 
Would he find trick-or-treating offensive?
 
Ami
@Increedable you said you are Christian right?
 
BATTLESTATIONS
He would probably trick or treat in a forest...with an axe.
 
no, I'm an atheist
since I was like 6 years old
 
Ami
5:51 PM
I'm very sorry...I hope I haven't offended you
 
no, not offended
there are plenty of reasonable christians out there
are you Christian?
 
Plenty suggests there are enough...
 
Ami
No
Here's what threw me off:
"so many people fall into sentiments like "the militant atheists" are just another brand of fundamentalism so I'll stick to my modest Christian beliefs"
 
are you an atheist?
 
What do you care about morality. Your belief is that you live for but a moment in time and then you are ashes and bones. It all means nothing to you.
that's from the prayer thread
in an answer
 
Ami
5:53 PM
Obviously I didn't read carefully
 
oh...that was my poor use of quotes.shouldn't have had a quote after "atheists"
 
@Josiah I am tempted to downvote it but cannot think of a valid explanation for that.
*shifts eyes
 
downvote + laugh
 
where is the "prayer thread"?
 
5:56 PM
Wait, there are so many theists in that thread.
 
12
Q: What should an Atheist do when someone asks them to pray for them?

John IsaacksIf a loved one is in the hospital or going through a hardship and asks that you pray for them. What should you do? You don't want them to feel as if you don't care. Should you just do it anyways even though you feel you are praying to no one?

Yeah @vit, it's like church in there.
 
Actually, there is a valid explanation: morality does not come from the Bible.
 
so @NaN is a theist?
 
dunno
 
But I'm kind of dizzy right now to phrase it in a way understandable to a theist.
 
6:00 PM
It looks like it, though.
1
Q: I proved harsh treatment to the heretics of atheism. What will be done to prevent/offset this?

The PreacherIn my experience, one or other side of the (a)theism argument always tends to be vitriolic toward the other side. When a theist comes in here, they are going to be stoned with downvotes even though they may have a valid point. You're going to need more than standard SE moderation. Edit -- Proph...

 
An atheist would not claim that the Bible is the only source of morality.
 
Yeah, seems like the kind of strawman one would make when it comes to morality
 
I vote “theist.”
 
Is there a Christian forum here too?
 
Doubt it.
 
6:02 PM
Does anyone remember a question here where the morality fallacy is addressed?
 
personally, I love it when theists engage on atheist forums. Gives us the opportunity of implanting viral memes.
 
This isn't the place for that, they're really just causing noise.
 
Ami
I'm guessing this chatroom will be used for that (atheist theist engagement)
 
What, you think theists will come here?
 
Josiah?
 
6:04 PM
I don't Vitaly
 
Thanks.
 
Hopefully they'll come here. i try to be so nice on qa
 
Ever tried to go to a theist forum and engage them there?
 
Ami
@Increedable No need at all. In my experience atheist forums have tons
 
I have.
They claimed I was the Antichrist and banned me.
 
6:07 PM
For saying what?
 
Owned owned owned owned.
For trying to be reasonable.
In their words, “tempting them to quit their religion”
 
Ami
I must be going now
 
Exposing logical fallacies and so on.
Have a good day, Ami.
 
ooh...temptation...theology has already programmed the defense for that
 
Ami
Have a good day
 
6:08 PM
have a good one, Ami... and Merry Christmas/holidays/solstace or whatever you celebrate
 
the name is feminine, but physics and CS? And she has over 4k on stackoverflow.
They don't have enough of those girls.
 
is it a girl or a guy?
 
I haven't asked.
 
not a lot of atheist girls bother with forums of this sort
 
My doubts arise from stereotypes about girls not liking math mostly.
 
6:09 PM
yeah, same here
 
Programming and physics are pretty math dependent. We also had a conversation about symbolic logic last night.
 
then probably a guy...maybe "ami" is meant to be the french for friend?
 
lol
I'm not that comfortable just going with guy. We'll figure it out sooner or later.
 
Josiah :D
 
She/he will start wondering at the: "So Ami, shaving really sucks huh?"
 
6:12 PM
lol
 
;)
 
I like girls that love maths.
I knew one in real-life.
 
maybe (s)he'll respond with something about waxing
 
Okay. I have to procure a gallon of apple cider, a gallon of apple juice, cinammon sticks, vanilla extract..
and a bottle of everclear.
 
She was an American who went to Russia to study maths in a Russian university.
 
6:13 PM
Nice.
 
And my, she really knew maths.
 
did she have a russian background?
 
I had to teach myself trig. Other than that I'm nto great.
 
No.
 
I once went on a date with a russian girl who claimed to really like chess.
 
6:14 PM
I asked the question about morality with a view to fetching him (NaN) the clip on the side of the head.
 
I was thinking, wow, this girl is great!
yeah, saw that question... I expect to see something about reciprocal altruism in other animals and such..
 
By the way, here is a Google translation of roughly the mathematical study programme in that Russian university: translate.google.com/…
So that you get the idea how much she loved maths.
<3
 
my wife loves science (she even teaches it) although she's more into the biological sciences than physics and such
I guess I'm pretty lucky that way
I was assuming that you guys already knew whether ami was a girl or guy. I'd probably just ask off the bad to be sure.
Anyway, folks, I've got to return to the real world now. Have a nice day and nice chatting.
 
You too, Increedable.
I'm thinking along the lines of trying to explain morality as an evolutionary adaptation in strictly scientific terms.
Not that it would challenge religious people.
>_>
 
I shall return after liquor! Enjoy your day @inc
 
6:28 PM
And I am still too dizzy to verbalise it as an answer.
 
yeah, i've never been great at organizing and explain concepts that have so many little trails.
brb
 
Ok.
Have fun :P
I usually tell theists that if their religion told them to kill their own parents or kids (which the Old Testament does, as a matter of fact), they wouldn't follow their religion but rather their own intuitions; and therefore morality has biological origins.
However, the argument is a bit incoherent. I am not sure it qualifies as a refutation.
:s/biological/sociobiological
 
6:55 PM
4 downvotes, only one commented
cowards
@Vitaly, I do like the guy that deleted his answer for your question.
I often use it in random debates
They should be raping children less
 
Let's work on an answer together or something, I dunno.
FSM bless library.nu. *shifts eyes
Finally, someone else answered.
 
7:11 PM
Haha, Moses thought rape was okay before AND after the ten commandments.
 
lol
 
Can you see the deleted post?
 
No, it's a moderator privilege
But I read it before it was deleted
 
I didn't know if it let questioners see.
 
Do you link to something in a comment by []()?
Or is there some other way?
 
7:16 PM
I use the bracketparen
I think you can use html, though
 
WHAT THE
 
<a href="http://url">Linky</a>
 
Someone upvoted NaN's answer.
 
lmfao
what's the opposite of whiteknighting?
probably blackknighting
 
7:27 PM
The points limit for voting sabotages Atheism.SE.
 
Once it goes live we'll do better.
 
80 days is a sufficient timeframe for theists to circle-jerk each other's reputation.
 
I don't think it is.
I think that we'll get enough offense flags.
They simply don't fit here and are outwitted and outnumbered.
Although, it would be hilarious to be the first SE to be destroyed by a differing faction.
 
Haha.
 
It would be as if Einstein got a crew of anti quantum physics people to attack quantumphysics.se
That's great, you asked another question then used it as a weapon to hit him with.
 
7:31 PM
Excuse me?
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
 
I'm not.
 
Ok, thanks.
 
it has a certain flair, like a quick counterattack. Think of it in war terms, I do.
 
lol
I have asked about going through a list of theistic claims on meta.
I couldn't do it myself because I couldn't find a good list (the one I linked to was mocking theists).
 
lol
 
7:39 PM
Those theists that came here recently could well provide a source of new questions to fill the database.
 
And every answer, by virtue of being true, will mock them.
 
And thus they would unintentionally help the website to pass the beta stage.
Owned owned owned owned owned.
 
lol
Someone there said that whilst going through the original sources of stupidity (theistic and pseudoscience websites in this case) they feel like being boxed in the head repeatedly.
I so-o-o love that expression.
I certainly can relate to it.
 
So it is like a more specific reddit
 
7:54 PM
A community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality.
If you went through some of the Sequences, I am sure you would find some useful mental techniques.
And descriptions of how the human brain can fail.
I don't know about you, but for me it's useful to know how my brain can fail, so that I could correct for my own cognitive biases.
Alternatively, you could browse through the top posts, but this would present the ideas in a rather incoherent manner.
 
I agree.
I find brain sciency stuff fun too.
Showing people how eyes saccade and the blind spot on their retinas
Although those are physical failures
 
What?
The brain is a physical machine!
Ergo cognitive failures are physical too. :P
 
Sorry. I draw it somewhat analogously to computers.
Hardware is the eyes, software is the interpretation.
sometimes I let my metaphors leak
 
No problem.
On some deep level, hardware is indistinguishable from software though, and that's true even for computers.
Software can always be represented as electrons and magnetically charged areas on a HDD.
The more so for the brain.
 
8:10 PM
You can model a computer with maxwell's equations...
 
Exactly. :D
 
Can you imagine the pain that would cause?
That's why I love technology so so much.
We can go buy microcontrollers and LEDs and servo motors and put them together and toss in a little programming and have a robot
even if we've never heard of Maxwell
 
9:09 PM
@Josiah how could a theist ask a question about acquiring the necessary logic toolkits to be skeptic without the question being offtopic on Atheism.SE?
Any ideas?
 
"How does an atheist approach theological questions?"
that's not right, but
something along those lines
they would have to see some advantage to how we process things and ask , god damnit, my dog is chewing on a chair
 
Ok, thanks.
 
I think we can safely consider atheism as a sub-sect of skepticism
as much as religious skeptics fucking hate that
fuck them for special pleading
I should probably avoid the internet until I'm drunk.
I have the apple cider and apple juice heating up on the stove with cinnamon sticks in it.
The fun part is that liquor is sold here in 750ml bottles, I have two gallons I have to get the liquor into.
But fuck me if I have anything that can measure more than 150ml at a time
 
10:11 PM
I got the chance to ask someone who denies evolution whether their watching nature shows (David Attenborough, Iain Stewart, BBC, National Geographic, etc) adds to their understanding of Nature.
The short answer is no.
They're amused and get to think that “God is cool because He thought of all that,” as opposed to picturing a more coherent map of the territory.
Learning and being amused by facts as opposed to actually understanding what's going on.
That's what you get without the solid framework of evolution to build on.
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution —Theodosius Dobzhansky
Really? No, I mean, really? Does it never occur to them that what they get is a random mosaic?
I know I am committing the typical mind fallacy, but by gee by gosh by gum by jove by jingo, that's just… difficult to envisage.
Rats.
 
@Vitaly, exposure to British English?
 
@Josiah Huh?
 
It's not just evolution that they fight.
by gosh, jove etc
 
It's an old song.
Which I heard in a britcom, Jeeves and Wooster, so, yeah I guess.
 
ah
 
10:26 PM
The question is not about what they fight, the question is how they manage to completely miss the feeling of having a random mental mosaic instead of a coherent map of the territory?
When I feel that I am confused, I always take it as a clear signal that something is terribly wrong.
Which is not the case for evolution denialists.
 
They don't have that signal.
If we have a sentence __ a gap in it..
__ OH, with!
them
__ OH, GOD!
 
lmfao
 
A lot of what I do is filling in information I don't have, figuring out things I don't know.
I spent so much time at work learning trigonometry
Completely unnecessary. I use a computer and have calculators and a smart phone.
 
<3 BBC
it's sad we in Russia don't have popular scientific documentaries of that quality
and as far as I know, you in the US don't have anything remotely similar either
way to go, Britain.
 
10:50 PM
lol
Socialism does at least one thing right.
do you know what Everclear is?
 
A sort of intoxicant that is a solution of a substance in which a hydroxyl functional group is bound to a carbon atom?
 
Yes.
 
:]
 
95% alcohol by volume
i have about 10% by volume apple cider cocktail
It's essential to a successful christmas. I have to deal with religious family.
 
I see.
I used to drink alcholic beverages but then decided that its effects on my mind were not particularly desirable.
The dizziness, y'know.
Wouldn't want to lose crystal clear thinking for a second.
Which, unfortunately, happens even without alcohol.
 
11:04 PM
lol
I have social anxiety, so sometimes it feels like the only way to stop thinking clearly.
 
Did you know the last Great Auk (a huge flightless bird) was killed by superstitious people?
 
I did not, did they get some supernatural prize package?
 
They captured it and then a storm occurred, so they concluded it was not a bird but a witch who could conjure up storms.
And… There. The bird is extinct.
 
lmfao
That makes it so much more amusing that a scientist trained birds to be superstitious.
 
Lol.
 
11:07 PM
I have to go for awhile.
Apples must be converted to intoxicants and Heavy's must be rocketed in the face.
heavies*
 
Have fun, see you later.
 
thanks, you too sir
 
I was just talking about the BBC. Man, I am like totally convinced that the BBC have contributed to that achievement.
I gotta move to the UK, find a British mathematician girl, and live in a personal paradise.
Feed British birds, watch British popular science shows, and feel superior to the lest of the world.
Wait.
Something is missing.
OH! And talk to Richard Dawkins and David Attenborough, every day.
the rest of the world***
 
11:29 PM
i'd be happy just shaking hands
And I would rather have a less pure science than math as a wife
but I agree
 
Some questions started getting a sh#tload of views.
Someone must have shared them or something
about time I started another bounty to attract more votes
there is a dirty manipulative trick I figured out: when your answer is at the top and has at least 5 votes, you won't lose reputation by starting a bounty
because it would attract more people who would quickly give another bunch of votes to compensate
and as a side-effect, more answers
 
11:45 PM
lol
 
Hello @DmitryDzygin
 
00:00 - 17:0017:00 - 00:00

« first day (7 days earlier)      last day (114 days later) »