chris logan

english is my native language (although it's hard to believe if you check out some of my spelling mistakes ) I did Spanish in school for 3 years and i know this guy who failed english (his native language) but passed spanish....go figure! I picked up more Spanish from Madonna's La Isla Bonita than in Spanish class!

some of us out there are stuck playing solitaire...

make a model and include coloured plastic, maybe layered over each other, a different colour for a different layer. i really like the cake idea though.

 

Topic: "Should drug testing be mandatory for politicians caught having sex in church?"

 

wow now you get to the point don't you

Hey! i just joined a (highschool) debate team, any advice or maybe a couple of tips? Need a bit of help here guys..

I thought Satan owned the place...

you guys don't believe in god but you believe in satan Oh! the horror ( sounds like a rolling stones concert!!!)

It's possibly how our memories work. They enhance beauty, and pleasure. Please consider, if you will, this passage from C S Lewis's book "Out of the Silent Planet". A Martian hross, Hyoi, is explaing to Ransom:

 

"A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered...when you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it..."

 

Ransom says: "In a poem, does a hross never long to hear one splendid line over again?"

 

Hyoi replies: "The poem is a good example. For the most splendid line becomes fully splendid only by means of all the lines after it; if you went back to it, you would find it less splendid than you thought."

 

I've usually found that to be true. Fond memory brings the light of other days around us, but the remembered light is brighter and more beautiful, than it actually was at the time.

wow...That was truely amazing..

A classic one is visiting a company that produces electronic devices, rub one of their devices on a rug, then watch as it breaks 5 minutes after the warranty ends. Works every time.

 

Other than that, it depends on your threshold for "cool". Most experiments of this kind seem to be pretty basic (at least from what I could find).

 

A simple one is rubbing a balloon in your hair (if you're one of the lucky ones who have such an attribute), then sticking it to the ceiling. Also, combing those wavy curls and the holding the comb next to a slowly running water tap works as well.

 

If you completely darken a room, and pull of a knitted sweater (or a similar attire), you can sometimes see the static shocks go off as small sparks.

 

Wikipedia also has an experiment involving tape strips.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_electricity#Charged_adhesive_tape

and that my friend was cool

HEY! does anyone know any cool experiments to demonstrate static electricity? ( P.S nothing too complicated )

Yes, the beholder's eye can capture only a fleeting image of beauty. The image is transferred into the brain, and recorded in memory. There it acquires a beauty which doesn't fade, but rather becomes more beautiful as time passes.

 

Because the recorded image is, so to speak, continually re-mastered and enhanced by the pleasure-seeking parts of our brain. Isn't that why we remember things as more beautiful than they actually were?

is that really possible?

Although I agree that for some people Religion is a good thing in that Religions have a basic Reward/Punishment doctrin that does have an effect upon Human Behavior.

 

There in lies the root of a Greater Problem.

 

If people could evolve to the point that treating another in a good way...a way that they themselves would like to be treated...would be THE SOLE PURPOSE OF HUMAN KINDNESS AND UNDERSTANDING...this world would be a far better place.

 

I mean...how sad is it that for many...the only reason they do not behave in a murderous or vicious manner is the threat of Eternal Damnation?

 

Split Infinity

well if it makes them better people, I guess that's okay... but read previous posts, sometimes people do horrid things in the name of god..

Then you get the wonderfully circular logic of these types of things. If you don't want to be saved you are being misguided, thus you have to be saved. The thought process is similar to a parent making a child get a flu shot. A little hurt so it won't be as bad later on. If you truly believe in an afterlife that lasts forever, and religious authorities consider themselves parents, which is either permanent torture or eternal bliss (purgatory is for losers) then that little bit of torture is justified. Not saying it's right, just saying that it almost makes sense.

But at the same time there is the reverse....Like buy that new Harley and enjoy it NOW and listen to your mom complain LATER. It's amazing, people talk about 'living in the present' and still they worry so much about the afterlife, which is something no one can prove, because, well excuse me for this one, 'dead men tell no tales' because they are dead.

It's a bit like ancient Egypt: people write on walls and worship cats.

reminds me of a joke i read once

DOG: wow! she feeds me, takes care of my every need, she must be a god

CAT: wow! she feeds me, takes care of my every need, I must be a god.

Most of the time it boils down to 'the ends justify the means'. If you truly believe you are killing/torturing/etc. a group of people for a short period in their lives to allow them peace and happiness for eternity you are helping them. That is the inherent problem when acting upon a belief such as an monarchic god in control of an afterlife. Any atrocity can be justified in life if it saves their immortal soul.

What ever happen to freedom of choice? What happens when you don't want 'to be saved'? Assuming that there is a god, he won't come down and save you in a court of law, and I doubt your lawyer could represent you in the afterlife....

It's the internet. It has a weird preference for cats.

Why?

ummmmmm why are we talking about cats again? Anyway, the same goes for adopting a dog, right?

Again, religion, given real power, always results in conflict over who is worshiping the right way or the right god, often that conflict is violent and deadly.

A right God? A proper definition of God can't be reached in the first place, then how on earth could there be a 'right way' to worship or a 'right' god when no one has any proof that there is a god to begin with? (when I say proper defination i mean one everyone can agree on).

The reason I want to know if these beliefs really matter is because i don't see why people give these things 'real power'

 

 

 

 

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Are you saying, "Let everyone believe what they will" or are you saying, "Stop treating people badly if they don't believe the way you do"?

a bit of both, i don't see the harm, (ignorance is bliss?). And yeah, you shouldn't treat people badly based on what they believe in (why treat people badly at all?)

If God exists, and He created the Universe, He must have done it for a reason.

 

The reason was probably this: the Universe provides Him with a source of entertainment. Like watching a soap-opera.

 

After all, suppose you were God. A huge, omnipotent Being. Wallowing in the glorious radiance of your own existence. This would be nice. But it'd get boring after a while.

 

So you'd want some diversion, such as creating Satan, and humans. Then watching how the wily Satan tempts naive Eve with an apple. She eats it. And then (get this) Adam, her dumb schmuck of a husband, eats it too! What a laugh! God must be having a fit, watching His divine soap-opera unfold - you must admit, it's great entertainment.

man! now that is what I call love!

Is the belief of a god important? does it really matter if a person believes in a higher power or not? How does that belief impact our world? Why should people debate whether or not god exists, can't it be a simple case of 'live and let live'?

I think it would depend on your definition of God as to how many believe in God here, it's a sure bet the fundamentalist Christian view is not as popular as it might be in a more representative sample of the population outside the forum...

 

Looking for divine intervention are we?

you would be surprise!

 

In his words (not my own):

• His roommate was shaving in the bathroom and the towel supposedly came off the rack and "flew and hit him in the butt."
• He hears footsteps upstairs when he's downstairs.
• When he was leaving his house through the door by the kitchen the chandelier above the kitchen table began aggressively swinging. He tried recreating it by opening and closing the door (to simulate a kind of draft or wind) and the chandelier didn't flinch. I actually witnessed him trying to recreate this. The chandelier did indeed not move when he opened and closed the same door at varying speeds.
• He had his high-speed internet installed recently and without mentioning anything hes been experiencing the technician said the previous tenants told him they couldn't sleep upstairs because they heard footsteps up there and didn't feel comfortable in the house.

Again, I'm extremely skeptical of all of these items. My coworker is a dear friend I've known for a long time and for the most part I trust his judgement but I don't believe his accounts.

I see no reason for you not to believe if you truely trust his judgement. i believe these things are 'mind over matter'. if you're someone believes in the paranormal, every time something 'strange' happens, every time a heavy book falls off a shelf there would always be a 'what if...' There are logical explalanations for all of the so called strange occurences, but i think your friend has made up his mind. I think it's ok to be a skeptic but right now maybe your friends comfort should come first...

 

 

Yes it is getting into a big problem worldwide. I been to schools in Nanjing China and Canada, both have some flaws in them. The science classes in china were too focused on equations not the practical uses behind them and the canadian schools tend to focus on the underachievers ONLY.

i noticed the same thing...it's all equations, i don't get it, what's the use of knowing the equations when you don't know how to apply them?

Clearly the maker/editor of that image is biased. He/she only showed an exaggerated image of religion.

 

If I may ask...who believes in God here in this forum?

i always get this sudden urge to be religiose before end of term exams...

How can we define beauty in people without defining beauty in other cases. Where would we draw the line. What about works of art, can we say one style of painting is more beautiful than the other? I always thought the concept of beauty was deeper than that new haircut you got.