SteveInCO

Thanks.

I think, once that feature becomes well known, it will help make non-nested threads a lot more comprehensible. @Unseen was the most articulate complainer about that, it will be interesting to see what he thinks after using it a while.

It would be cool to see such a video properly done, based on actual science. Alas, I haven’t any skill whatsoever in this area.

I saw one web page that tried to explain the earth’s orbit, and precession of the equinoxes, with respect to the plane of the galaxy, using animations. Unfortunately the point of view of the animations was itself…[Read more]

@Davis, to put it more concisely, some apologists are experts at using weasel argument tactics.

Good, thanks!

I noticed something else odd. No matter what filter I pick on the Activity page, Reg’s Sunday School initial post (for today’s Sunday School) doesn’t show up. Fortunately, I did see it on the “Topics With Recent Replies” plugin, and once someone replied to it it showed up in recent replies and also in the filtered replies. What…[Read more]

Possible enhancement. Given that the topics don’t thread, I often like to quote the exact text I am responding to (I copy/paste inside a pair of em tags). This is in addition to doing the @UserName thing.

I notice there’s a reply link above everyone’s response, but it doesn’t seem to do anything other than send you to the comment box at the…[Read more]

We certainly have the illusion of free will. Whether it’s just the fact that everything we’ve ever seen is interacting in a complicated way, too complicated for us to predict, so our actions seem at least somewhat indeterminate, is another question.

A lot of the arguments against free will are (ultimately) based on the premise that the universe…[Read more]

Oh crap!!!!! I find myself agreeing with a theist!! (Drbob)

Well Dr. Bob professes to accept evolution. I agree with him on that. That doesn’t mean he isn’t wrong about theism and it certainly doesn’t mean that his moral evaluation of the Catholic Church as an institution is even remotely accurate.

This, I am pretty sure is a (minor) bug, and (unless he’s a developer) Umar will have to pass it on.

Sometimes in the activity, if it starts with an @username link, the entire post’s text is in blue. It’s like it doesn’t properly close the formatting tags. When you follow the link to the actual post (click on the time of the post in the…[Read more]

Clearly many churches don’t read the whole friggin’ book. And this is a good thing, because if all Xians read the whole book and abided by it, this would be a truly horrible place to live.

The book itself gives them “outs.” They’ll point out that Christ “fulfilled” the laws (so somehow, they are now inoperative) but then somehow, only some of…[Read more]

@Strega and @SimonPaynton

I took “the evolutionary base for mysticism” to be a reference to recent work highlighted by J Anderson Thompson, where for various evolutionary reasons, we are predisposed to make some cognitive errors, such as seeing agency in events when it isn’t there. (The idea being that if you are wandering around in the tall…[Read more]

@Strega

I know one major group here that really, really REALLY REALLY loves “Imagine,” a song which I’ve become sick of through repetition in their podcasts.

Always look on the bright side is much more entertaining, a lot less cloying, and I’ve seen it sung at counter-counter-protests. I believe an impromptu chorus treated Westboro Baptist to…[Read more]

Now that statement makes a bit more sense to me. As written, it’s an assertion that two things came about in similar manner.

But that doesn’t mean they are necessarily integrally connected with each other.

Are you asking for a feature that is specific to only logged in users?

Now that you mention it… it would have to. Because it has to compare what you read the last time you looked to what’s out there now (or it couldn’t show you the difference), and in order to do that, it would have to recognize you as being the same individual who was here X…[Read more]

Well it appears that Umar has managed to do something to make the text darker (yet links are still blue).

Vast improvement, @Umar!

You know, when I was down in Louisiana, I discovered the people there do not call it the “American Civil War”. They call it the “War of Northern Aggression”. They also claim some of the northern states still had slaves, and that the war was fought because the north was losing out on import taxes etc when the southern plantations decided to develop…[Read more]

“Batshit crazy” about covers it.

Strega’s idea might work exceptionally well if you can find the links that make the most direct claims of “big oil” and “big coal” not giving a damn and trying to suppress the science. Go find the ones you think are verging on crazy and/or sensationalistic (as opposed to sober recitations of the science), find…[Read more]