My 10-year old neice did this video,  she was born in NY and lives in florida .   My wife and her sisters do a christmas charity in Guyana each year,  I know I have mentioned this before here.  I get to play Santa Claus.  The charity is called Forever 7 Foundation.  In the video the 6 women in white Tee's are the sisters. There was once 7  sisters, one died [ergo forever 7 foundation] In the red tee's are neice's and nephews [they hand out the gifts] in the green tee's are the helpers.   The pictures were shot at my house in Guyana.  At 1:36 is ME with my wife [in blue/green dress] and a sister in law.  At 3:54 is my wife alone. Otherwise I am in the Santa outfit.                         If you want to contribute to the Forever 7 foundation,  DON'T; it's a family charity they would just send the money back to you with a thank you note. If you want to fly down and help; you are welcome, I have a big house and several other houses nearby so you will have a nice place to stay. For very little money you can live like a millionaire for the time you are there. Please enjoy the video and remember it was done by a 10 year old.

I'm not going to say this is true, but I find it plausible and interesting.

Let me paraphrase an argument by Nick Bostrom: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

If you believe that human technology will continue to advance, and that we will colonize the solar system and beyond, then there will eventually come a point where we will be able to build enormously powerful computers (e.g. computers with the mass of Jupiter). Look at how far video games have come in 20 years and consider what could be done with such a computer. With a sufficiently powerful computer, we will be able to run simulations of our ancestors' lives with accuracy. In fact, we will be able to run such simulations a great many times.

Presumably the ancestors living in the simulated world will have minds and feelings just like us - their minds do not depend on the substrate (e.g. brain, silicon, or other) in which their mental and neurological processes are executed. Now, if the number of simulated ancestors is very large in comparison to the real population of people, then the question is, how do you know you aren't living in such an ancestor simulation right now? Statistically, chances are that you are one of the simulated beings and not a "real" person.

John Shook explains naturalism to William Lane Craig in this five minute clip of the debate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcnZRctcleM  A theist put the clip up on YouTube, so he titled the video saying that Craig humiliated Shook, but it's really the other way around.

Atheists have commonly said this life is the only one that we have therefore every minute is precious. If this is the case, why do atheists spend so much of their "precious" time talking about, discussing, arguing, researching and complaining about something they dont believe exists?

How many of you are on big foot, tooth fairy and Lepricorn websites arguing with believers that what they believe exists is false?

Now i suppose i will hear responses regarding the negative impacts religions have on society, however the last time i checked, the biggest mass murderers in history are atheists. I am not saying that atheism caused these mass killings, but am just pointing out that this reason shows that the objection is false.

So atheists, why do you spend so much time.

Talk about irrational........

The complete text of my sig...

Christianity remains a disgusting perversion of the human psyche, a vile middle eastern blood cult born of human sacrifice with sacraments of vampirism and cannibalism and whose highest icon is the image of a near naked man hanging in torment from a device of torture. Christianity replaces human ethics and morality with the absurd concept that wrong doing, guilt and the common faults all people share can be transferred like loose change to a third party, the reanimated corpse of the faux sacrifice, and that entry to the cosmic amusement park can be gained and damnation to an eternal torture chamber avoided by the expedient of planting ones lips on the celestial buttocks, often, and with gusto, (optional ball squeeze depending on denomination). The aforementioned ass kissing supplants the need to actually be a good human being, as the book assures us is impossible at any rate. This vapid superstition writ large has as it's endgame the horrible death of 3/4 of the human race followed by the pitiful remnants crawling from the rubble only to be ruled over by an undead Hebrew revanant, the remains of that long ago 'sacrifice'.

Any. Fucking. Questions?

LC

Dear Members

To promote skepticism/critical thinking I wrote some questions for the Christian believer. Are you able to put the link to these questions at this forum.

Thank you very much,

Piet - Rotterdam - Netherlands.

The original questions

http://www.freethinker.nl/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=8382
The translation
http://www.freethinker.nl/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=10033

Ps. Many years ago I read a very good historical review written by Rook Hawkins. Is he still active?
My knowledge of English is too poor for a good discussion. So I spent my time with reading and watch the replies.

Not sure where this goes - feel free to place it properly. 

It’s December 28.

I woke up this morning and my wife was already watching a Passion Week DVD. She just barely celebrated Christ’s birth and she’s already watching him get the crud beaten out of him.

Why is that? Christians spend one day (a few days more if one celebrates Advent) on Jesus’ birth (celebrating a whole bunch of harmless pagan rituals along the way). They celebrate one day for His resurrection (again celebrating a few more harmless pagan rituals along the way).

The rest of the year seems to be spent on the passion and his crucifixion. It’s as though they'’ve stopped using it as a time of remembrance of what He did for us and concentrate on glorying in the blood, gore and brutality. playing it over and over making sure they get the full picture.  

Can’t theists remember His suffering without treating it like a cage fight?

If anyone was wondering why some people call Christianity a blood and death cult - this is why.

thepiratebay.org/torrent/3939624/Joseph_Yahuda_-_Hebrew_is_Greek

It is hardly a surprising work but if you have a bittorrent app you can get a copy -- 207MB -- scanned not OCRed for very good reasons which will be obvious when you see it.

It should have been obvious to the world for over a century but believers have too many problems. At one time there was a serious debate as to the Septuagint having been the original something that I am raising again two centuries later. The major argument against it was the "hebraisms" in the Septuagint. If styles and structures from Hebrew are found in the Septuagint then the Septuagint must be the translation.

Problem is around 1890 a huge cache of Greek documents was found in Egypt. It was in a style different from classical Greek. It came to be known as Koine Greek. Surprise! Surprise. Koine Greek had all the "hebraisms." Thus the iron-clad argument reversed. The "hebrew" is the translation of the Greek Septuagint.

This has literally been known for over a century.

www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/generic-religion.html

                                                   Generic religion

All religion is based upon two principles. The first is catastrophic change is rare. The second is the placebo effect.

The rarity of catastrophic events makes the basic success of religion a near certainty. Pray for a successful hunt or a bountiful harvest and in most cases the results will be roughly average. That seems obvious. Singing a ditty from a TV commercial is just as effective.

In practice a religion may pray for a mild winter and has an even chance of it being milder than average. Without good record keeping any winter short of catastrophic can be sold as mild. A religion must never pray for no winter at all as that will not happen. Thus religions must always bet on the obvious, on the lowest risk outcome.

It works for things like childbirth. It even worked back in the days when it was really dangerous. Pray for an easy childbirth and the results are most likely to be in the broad range of average which are counted as successful prayer. Also the unusually easy births are credited to prayer. Obviously prayer works well over half the time.