My use of an ad hominem was not a fallacy because my conclusion is not based on it. I.e. I did not say "Only an idiot would say that, so it's wrong."

As you noted, my observation was irrelevant to the conclusion. However, I'm sure you realize that being irrelevant and being incorrect are two different things.

Those are not all statements of fact, particularly the latter statement. Jihad for the purpose of establishing an Islamic state is in keeping with Islamic values. If you're talking about other behaviors, you'll have to be more explicit. It's a fallacy to depend on abstractions too much because it leads to false equivalences, which I think you may have done.

I would never say people in the US Armed Forces are not Christians. That wasn't the question though.

The claim was that the US Armed Forces is as much a Christian group as Balaka is a Muslim group. That is a different matter. You have to look at the aims of each group, not merely the composition.

Remember, you said that some could argue that Balaka was merely paying lip service to Islam, just like some groups in America may pay lip service to Christianity.

Comparing the goals and methods of the groups, you'll see that supposedly Christian-dominated groups in the US, which are called Christian groups, do very little to promote Christianity within the armed forces or government. In fact if you have done any research on the subject you'll know how careful the US Army is to refrain from appearing "too Christian" by dint of its membership, going so far as to ban people from sending Bibles to troops in Muslim countries.

Muslim groups like Seleka in CAR, on the other hand, have a stated goal of establishing Muslim rule and sharia law over the territory they conquer.

So what evidence do you have that the USAF is as Christian in method, structure, and goals as Seleka is Muslim?

Did you really forget that? It's pretty well established.

Yes show me where Jesus says it all counts and can't be changed. Then I'll tell you why it doesn't matter. Oh heck I'll just tell you now. The point of Jesus wasn't to make things that used to be sins not sins anymore. The point of Jesus was that he died for the sins of man so that we could be forgiven even though we sin.

I guess you didn't get the message that Jesus transformed Christianity from a temporal religion to a spiritual, personal religion.

lol yeah, just like IS. I remember so clearly when the Islamic State said, "Hey Christians in Iraq, if you just want to be Christian and not bother anybody, if you want to just stay in your existing towns and not expand all over the place, that's cool."

You idiot.

They can argue that all they like, but the facts don't support them.

If you compare "how Christian" America is in terms of law, government, and military, and then compare "how Muslim" groups like Seleka are, only an idiot would come to the conclusion that they're about the same or that the US is more extreme. And idiots of that magnitude aren't worth talking to.

SJW being a pejorative meaning does not make the phenomenon any less real. As an example, "racist" is a pejorative term, but racists are real.

You're twisting the definition of SJW to make it apply to me, though. You chose too high a level of abstraction ("unfairly biased"). I'm against things that are unfairly biased for women as well. Where people think SJWs err is in HOW they determine things are unfairly biased. Disparate impact is one example, unequal outcome is another. SJWs are happy to stop at that level. Unequal outcome is evidence of unfair bias, and that's good enough.

You can't lump such people in with others (like me) who believe in equal opportunity, but not equal outcome. The views are far too different.

But the lowercase form "social justice warrior" -- sure, I'm that. I believe in social justice very strongly.

The press release says "At the urging of Rainbow PUSH Coalition and others, AMAZON finally released its workforce diversity and inclusion data."

That suggests Amazon's release of data was under pressure from interest groups like Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

Why do you keep saying things that imply the companies did this spontaneously?

From http://rainbowpush.org/pages/b... we see that: "The Rainbow PUSH Coalition is the product of a social justice movement that grew out of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's (SCLC) Operation Breadbasket. Founded by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Operation Breadbasket sought to combine theology and social justice, and to effect progressive economic, educational, and social policy in America."

How is that not descriptive of an organization fighting for social justice, i.e. a "social justice warrior?"

How can you call the concept a straw man when we have examples of them and their influence? (At the very least, their own claims of their influence.)

What is it about black females that prevents them from fitting in a company of white males?

I know that's your point, but it's not supported.

Yes, it's very different, because at an abstract level gang vs gang violence is violence between equals. Both gangs have the power of guns and violence at their disposal, both gangs have their own territory and power base, both gangs have relatively equal revenue generators like intimidation, prostitution, drugs, gun running, etc.

How on EARTH is that not much different than when the majority Muslim group in Pakistan (Sunnis) targets religious processions of minority religious groups (e.g. Shias, Ahmadis) and suffers little or no consequences for it?

Honestly I think your statement shows that maybe you just don't know much about the extent and type of terrorism going on in the Muslim world. Sunnis vs Shias in Iraq (perhaps this is where you got your gang vs gang analogy) is very different from Sunnis vs Shias in Pakistan, or Sunnis vs Alawites in Syria, or any other conflict. It's a mistake to think of even sects within Islam as monolithic.

That's because Muslim terrorism is global in nature. Even among domestic Muslim terrorist incidents in the US there is generally a link to foreign groups. The US is the target of many Muslim groups around the world. Compare that to something else... how many times did IRA separatists attack domestic targets in the US? (I don't know, but I suspect never.) How many times did Mexican drug cartels attack NYC? (Never.)

MOST threats are local in nature and can be dismissed by people who aren't right there in the target area. For instance there are zero local terrorist threats that I'm aware of where I live. Puerto Rican separatists are absolutely not going to attack the city I live in, I would wager a lot of money on that. The only real threats are global, and Muslim terrorists are the biggest global threat.

I don't understand this.. are you not aware that the conflict in Nigeria is based on the south being predominantly Christian and the north being predominantly Muslim? That's the basis for all of the terrorist attacks by groups like Boko Haram.

I thought you were going to give non-religious examples of terrorism? Somalia's tensions are between a relatively secular central government and the very radical Islamic Courts Union. (Among others.) But what does this have to do with terrorism?

I didn't know terrorism was a big factor in Mali.

You're joking, right?

Yes, finally a good example of non-religious terro... hold on. Terrorism? What happened in the Georgia/Russia conflict that was related to terrorism?

Ukraine would be a better example since they had some terrorist incidents (though people speculated a lot that the downing of that airliner was unintentional, so it wouldn't really count).

I think you've forgotten that you said "Globally, the greatest terrorist threat is not religious based - it's political." and then you were going to list examples to demonstrate that.

You aren't listing non-religious terrorist threats, you're just listing threats. I never said terrorism was a bigger threat than war, or disease, or poverty, etc.

Here's a news release: http://www.rainbowpush.org/new...

"At the urging of Rainbow PUSH Coalition and others, AMAZON finally released its workforce diversity and inclusion data."

Explain how this is not related to SJW activism and is actually a straw man.

Begging the question. You're justifying your own childish "straw man" retort by saying the other person's argument was invalid... but you can't actually explain why it was invalid.

Your distinction makes no sense, because nobody is saying black females have to become not-black or not-female (or both).

We are talking about soft skills like getting along and fitting into the group. Are you saying that black females inherently have characteristics like snobbery that make them unable to fit into a group and be well regarded??

There are many things. A lot of them revolve around dealing with kids...
* Good maternity and paternity leave policies
* Flexible time to accommodate daycare, school, sports, etc events
* Work/life balance (reasonable working hours, not on call all the time)
* On-premise or nearby daycare (I honestly don't know why companies in business parks don't pool resources and provide free daycare)

Then there are issues that sound sexist like more openness about salary and fewer closed-door negotiations (because women don't like negotiating about sensitive subjects).

I agree with a lot of these things, and I'm not at all on the pro-diversity bandwagon. Diversity for diversity's sake is retarded. Claims that diversity makes your team better are BS. But things that make the work environment better for everyone, including women, seem like a good idea.

The problem is these things may make you less competitive due to higher costs, so it's hard to get much traction on these issues unless it were made law and all companies had to participate (so they would have an even playing field).

If we're all equally worth having in organizations, then a 70%, 80%, or 100% white male organization is equally valuable to a more diverse organization.

Or perhaps it's just advantageous for men. So since men and women are equally worth having in your organization, why does this matter?

If the work environment becomes less advantageous for men and more advantageous for women, then fewer men will apply and more women will apply, and your mix will be different, but you haven't actually improved the situation because of your assertion that men and women are equally worth having in organizations.

You think social justice warriors who want equality of outcome are mythical? Do you even read the news?

For the last few weeks we've been hearing about how Google, Apple, Amazon, and other tech firms don't have enough women and non-Asian minorities working for them. Companies are being described by the media as "overwhelmingly white and male."

Calling things straw men that aren't actually straw men is a fallacy of its own. It's a pathetic attempt to deflect the argument that is no better than "No because I said so and you're wrong anyway!"

That chart is very misleading. It says solar will use many times as much silver as current energy production. However the drawing makes it look like it will use many times as much silver as it would use of aluminum. Actually it will use far more aluminum than silver. Same error applies to every comparison of different materials, whether inside a given energy source or between them.

The text gets it right: "Solar needs much more silver and tin than other energy sources, albeit relatively little by weight". It also states "solar uses aluminum, and a lot of it, more than one gram for each kilowatt hour". Aluminum is a bigger problem for solar than silver, despite the incredibly misleading graphic.

Another strange mistake is that the relative use of stuff is biased by the current fraction being used. An obvious one is that it shows Nuclear power as using about 8x as much uranium as "the current power mix". But that is because the current power mix is about 20% nuclear! If "the current power mix" was 0% nuclear then the uranium circle would be HUGE.

A better graphic would be to show absolute sizes of the materials (to produce a given amount of energy), or perhaps multiply the sizes by the amount of carbon produced to make them.

Tidal flow is not sinusoidal.