Note: In my email I got an AtheistZone notice of PopeBeanie’s post in Small Talk. I was able to read it but I wrote a response that simply failed to get posted. Another clue.

TheEncogitationer wrote:
Somehow that word bespoke escaped my attention until a few weeks ago.

“Bespoke” meaning a custom or one-off design is not a “thing” in American colloquial English. It’ll send most of us running to the dictionary.

DUH!!!

What happened to the forums? Were they wiped out during an update? When will they be restored? When will we be able to post there again? Or will we?

WTH?!!!

Here’s the lyric video:

It looks like the disease took its toll. One hopes she will bloom back into a full recovery in coming months.

That the account of experience it gives is counterintuitive and implausible can be explained in terms of the unreliability of experience.Nevertheless, the entire…[Read more]

Some years after my mother died, I was standing on a street corner…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
Fellow Unbelievers: Trump tells Iranian protesters against Islamist tyranny that “Help is on the way” two weeks after the uprising starts and after anywhere from 12,000 to 20,000 Iranian citizens are dead. I’d say time and agency are pretty damn real. Can you relate?

The problem of agency regarding free will isn’t about…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:
No, you feel you have a certain amount of agency.

What I’m saying is, we treat ourselves and each other as if we have agency, whether we “really” do or not. It’s on this level that we’re held accountable.

See, you can’t talk about agency without implying agency where there really is none. And I mean you you,…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
As far as accountability and free will go, I’d say that we all operate in an everyday world of “as-if” free will – we have a certain amount of agency over our actions – and we’re judged and held accountable on this as-if agency.

No, you feel you have a certain amount of agency. If you are sure there’s any agency at all, exp…[Read more]

It seems like everything we do is in a world defined by Zeno. You know, that paradox guy.

Simon Paynton wrote:
I think it makes more sense if we consider a structure of the universe as being one of deterministic cause and effect.  The proposal is that the universe, from start to finish, was formed in one go.  All events and timelines of objects’ spatial movements were put in place by this process that formed the block det…

[Read more]

The notion that the big bang, the trillions of galaxies and septillions of planets, the inception and explosion of life forms on Earth or anywhere, the construction of the Pyramids and…[Read more]

Some will say, “But that’s…[Read more]

The evidence for the Block Universe theory isn’t based on a single “discovery,” but rather on the logical conclusions we are forced to draw from Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity.

If the math of relativity is a correct description of t…[Read more]

Under the current ‘standard model” of physics, accepted by the majority of physicists, we exist in a so-called “block universe.”

I asked Gemini AI to define block universe in layman terms and I got this:

In simple terms, the Block Universe theory is the idea that the past, the present, and the future all exist…[Read more]

But the video quality of the clip I put up is the the quality of the actual TV performance and your clip is mostly NOT the music! I can do without voyeuristically watching them get their hair and makeup done. LOL

BBC article on the subject HERE.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Tá roinnt teangacha agam, cuid acu ar chaighdeán passable, cuid eile caighdeán “turasóireachta” an-bhunúsach. Ach tá an Ghaeilge líofa agam chomh maith, nó ar a laghad bhí mé nuair a bhí mé níos óige. Má chaitheann mé seachtain i nGaillimh (abair) tagann sé ar ais chugam. Is í an teanga is deacra a fhoghlaim.

[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Many U.S. students will very likely start going to Chinese Universities soon.

Might be a good idea for all American schools to start teaching Chinese.

When I was young (I’m 79 now, so a long time ago), the choices were French, German, and Spanish. French was recommended as the language of diplomacy, German for kids…[Read more]

PopeBeanie wrote:
I’ve been experimenting with youtube shorts, which is why you’ll see the “was#x#” underneath each of my video shorts, in case I need to change the dimensions to fit on different screens.

I looked underneath the video and didn’t see that code. Am I missing something?

Well, not for me.

I’m running ChromeOS, but since links I put up (normal ones, not shorts or verticals) tend to work okay, the issue seems…[Read more]

Why won’t this display? Any ideas?

Strega wrote:
Simon, with the introduction of ‘a personal relationship with Jesus’ concept, no two Christians have the same set of strongly held views – your post seems to imply that it’s a set based on the religion, rather than on the individual’s pick-and-choose approach to what God wants 🙂

The “cafeteria Christian” picks and chooses what to b…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
What the difference between a religious exemption and a philosophical one?

One embodies an irrational belief with no need to support it in any way and the is based on facts and a rational argument in support of the belief. Of course, that would mean that someone qualified to examine those the arguments would be…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
Unseen, You didn’t even read my questions, though you did answer them despite yourself.

I’ll humor you.

So, this is the sort of thing that goes on around the ICE facility in Portland. It’s very localized. Portland is not burning. It’s simply the sort of protest that has happened innumerable times in America’s history.

Now, there are circumstances when a governor might want to call in Federal help. One…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
If the “Blues” are the ones who create the programs that redistribute wealth and the “Reds” are the beneficiaries more than the “Blues”, doesn’t that make the “Blues” dummies?

I suppose it might if the blue states had a way of directly controlling how the red states spend their money. They don’t.

And aren’t the “Blues…

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Nope. Just the annual Portland marathon going on without a hitch.

I just watched a clip of Trump earlier today condemning the judge who put his militaristic plans for Portland on hold mixed in with the…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
Unseen,

The problem with blue cities with high crime rates existing in red states is that they are in red states with state governments that don’t feel like helping any part of the state which isn’t white and conservative.

But wait a minute, you just said before and almost in the same breath that Red States were the “ta…

[Read more]