When one activist website tell you that the earth is warming, and another activist website tells you that the earth isn't warming, it's a good idea to check the actual scientific data to determine which activist website is getting the facts wrong. Here's an 18 year graph. The earth has in fact been warming over the last 18 years.

Here's the 50 year graph. That's a neat website that lets you generate graphs over any date range. If you want to play with it, just be sure to update the year-values for both series 1 (the red graph) and series 2 (the green graph).

There was also an unexpected surge in heat being pulled from the atmosphere into the deep ocean. This has recently pulled a vast amount of heat off of the typical graphs of surface-level atmospheric temperature. This is why air-temperature-graphs gives a false impression of somewhat slower warming the last few years.

Air is extremely low density. Very little of the global heat resides in the atmosphere, and what does show up in the air is extremely variable as heat shifts between the air and the land&sea. In fact the atmosphere only accounts for 2% of global heat content. The land surface temperatures are about 8%. The massive oceans account for 90% of the planet's heat content. Here's a graph of ocean heat over the last 50-odd years. The vast majority of heat ultimately goes into the oceans. That graph shows that there has been absolutely no slowing in the rate of global heat increase. Global warming hasn't paused. Global warming hasn't stopped. Global warming hasn't slowed.

There doesn't exist ONE scientific body of national or international standing that still denies man-made global warming. The last national or international scientific body to dissent was, comically, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists back in 2007. Yep, even the oil geologists stopped denying it seven years ago.

-

The only true theists I have known flew airplanes into buildings.

I have also met a lot of people who describe themselves as theists, but I am so blinded by my own ideology that I am utterly incapable of understanding anything outside it, therefore I just fucking made up my own definition that fits into my dysfunctional understanding.

-

No, you're missing his point.
He's an utterly awful excuse for a human being. He has absolutely no understanding of, and absolutely no interest in, any moral framework that isn't based on obedience to a precivilized mythological authority.

When someone vigorously makes the argument that they would be utterly selfish people who murder rape and steal if they were an atheist - therefore atheists are immoral - the proper response is to point out that makes THEM vile evil people, not the atheists.

-

Why should you even care about your own personal survival and comfort? Obviously most people do, but that's a far cry from should.

Even if God exists, why should you do what he commands? Even if the answer is back to "because he will punish you if you don't", why should I avoid punishment? That is, come back to the first question up there: why should I care about my own personal survival and comfort?

Most people do care about their own personal survival and comfort, sure. But then a lot of people just do have empathy for others too. Then again, a lot of people do get sadistic pleasure from hurting others too —sometimes the same people as have empathy for others too, just in different circumstances. And a lot of people probably would obey the commands of something they considered God, if not just to avoid punishment, then just because a lot of people just do obey supposed authorities, whether they should or not. (Look at the Stanford Prison Experiment. Or the Nazis who were "just following orders").

Asking what people do do isn't going to tell us anything about what they should do, and when you start asking what people should do and why, "God says so" doesn't really add much to the conversation. Maybe we'd better take a few steps back and start asked what exactly "should" even means, and how the heck we're supposed to assess the truth or falsity of "should" propositions in the first place.

I lost it as soon as he got to "by definition" and making room for God. As soon as you get into arguing about things from definitions you're doing analytic philosophy and if you're just saying "by definition" without offering support for why that is the right definition, you're probably doing it wrong.

Translation: You don't understand atheism, therefore your personal religion gets to claim all credit for any and all positive common-sense-truths.

Christianity incorporated things that were widely accepted as true or good long before Christianity existed, and which are widely accepted as true or good in societies that have never had contact with Christianity.... and you want to claim Christianity somehow "owns" them, and that atheists cannot interdependently agree with them.

I do not need to believe in Native American animal spirit guides to come to the conclusion that it's a good idea to avoid violence.
I do not need to believe in Reincarnation to come to the conclusion that it's a good idea to avoid violence.
And I sure as heck don't need to believe in your even sillier walking-talking snake stories to come to the conclusion that it's a good idea to avoid violence.

There are pure-logic reasons to come to that conclusion.
There are good reasons to come to that conclusion which may range beyond a strict definition of "pure logic", which have absolutely nothing to do with invisible mystical magical beings.

One of the great things about atheism is that we see absolutely nothing wrong with adopting anything in Christianity that is true or good. Just as we see absolutely nothing wrong with adopting anything in Judiasm that is true or good. Just as we see absolutely nothing wrong with adopting anything in Islam that is true or good. Just as we see absolutely nothing wrong with adopting anything in Native American religion that is true or good. Just as we see absolutely nothing wrong with adopting anything in Buddhism that is true or good. Just as we see absolutely nothing wrong with adopting anything in Hinduism that is true or good. Just as we see absolutely nothing wrong with adopting anything in Confucianism that is true or good.

Atheists don't define "morality" as obedience to some random religion's claims about what some invisible-silent-magical-man wants. We are free to accept the best examples of morality and the best teachings on morality and the best reasoning on morality, from anywhere. Jesus said a lot of very wise things. Buddha said a lot of very wise things. Confucius said a lot of very wise things. I see no shame as an atheist, taking the best that Christianity has to offer. But there's no way in hell you can claim Christianity has some monopoly-ownership on the idea of non-violence.

-

Agreed. It's awesome how science is getting a better and better understanding of how much of the universe is hospitable to us-like life. But it's always mentally-painful when stories like this make loudly-screaming-assumptions that we are a typical, or exclusive, model of what life in the universe looks like. The most trivial problem with the current story is that undersea or underground us-like life won't be much bothered of the atmosphere gets nuked with radiation. Stretching things a bit, we have no idea if gas giant planets could support some sort of life in the ocean-like depths of their atmospheres. And to go onto the deep unknown, there's about 6x as much dark matter as regular matter. The little we do know about dark matter does give some cause to doubt it's suitability for life, but our understanding of dark matter and our understanding of unlike-us life is far too thin to make any reasonable assumptions on the subject. Is there life out there? It's looking increasingly inevitable that more us-like life does exist, but we still know far too little to presume that we aren't a wildly a-typical form of life.

-

Law enforcement began as [any given region's] largest street gang, long before recorded history.

You mean that that was in the brief period where it was a relatively popular idea to make law enforcement something better than that

As a Californian, it sure would be nice for the drought to end, but the last time El Niño struck, a mountain fell on my house. It's still there, the house holding back the mountain. I'd like to not repeat that experience.

Here in California we have four seasons just like everywhere else:

Sunny
Hot
Flooding
On Fire ...what, you don't have On Fire where you come from?

The original Liberal Arts (a term which literally means, more idiomatically translated from ars liberalis, "skills [needed] of free men") were, funny enough, mostly things that we would consider branches of mathematics today, and thus STEM fields.

First there was the "trivium" (from whence our word "trivial", because these skills were considered so basic and elementary):
- Grammar
- Logic (now considered a branch of mathematics)
- Rhetoric

But then there was the "quadrivium" which followed that:
- Arithmetic (obviously a branch of mathematics)
- Geometry (obviously a branch of mathematics)
- "Music"
- "Astronomy"

The last two are the most interesting ones, because "music" was not about playing instruments or singing, it was essentially harmonics, the study of "number in time"; and likewise, "astronomy" was not about the actual particulars of celestial bodies, but was essentially dynamics, the study of "number in space and time". These complemented geometry as the study of "number in space" and arithmetic as "number in itself".

In short, the quadrivium, which was over half of the original Liberal Arts, was entirely things we'd now consider mathematics; and a third of the remaining portion in the trivium, logic, would also be considered mathematics today. Five sevenths or over 71% of the Liberal Arts were all math subjects.

These were all intended to prepare one for the study of philosophy, which at that time encompassed what would become the natural sciences of today. (In the middle ages philosophy was in turn considered to be essentially in a support role to theology, but of course you'd get that kind of attitude in the continent-wide theocracy that was old Christendom.)

The Liberal Arts were to teach people how to communicate their thoughts coherently, rigorously, and persuasively, and to be able to think quantitatively about things in themselves and also their relations in space and time, all of that for the purpose of conducting the kind of broad and deep critical thinking about of the world we live necessary to live life as a free individual and to preserve the freedom of one's society.

Dismissing all of that for "science lol stem envy much" is the start of the road to serfdom.

Just want to say I love the idea in your sig.

I would think, if the stuff kept flying off the shelf like that (even is only due to one customer), you would just stock more of it and then sell more of it. Stock enough to let her buy all she wants and still have enough left over for everyone else who wants to buy it to get theirs too.

Reference frame is irrelevant to this question. If you, in whatever reference frame, measure travel distance as 80 mile and speed as 80mph, you will measure travel time as 1 hour. Others in other reference frames may measure different travel times, but they will also measure correspondingly different distances and speeds; and whatever they measure as 80 miles will still take what they measure as 1 hour to traverse at what they measure as 80mph.

Etymologically, to prove means to test. Hence phrases like "proving grounds" and, more tellingly, "the exception that proves the rule" -- an apparent exception, an anomaly, which puts the rule to the test.

So a well-tested theory is "proven" in an etymologically sound way, just a way that doesn't mean "demonstrated to be true with absolute certainty".