T.M., do not post the contents of other websites or publications in violation of copyright or Fair Usage.
You may post a relevant except and a link, but
[ul]
[li]Do not post the entire piece or any major portion of it[/li][li]Always identify the source from which you have taken it.[/li][/ul]
[ /Moderating ]
As to the claims made by Pat Robertson’s propaganda site, one will note that while CBN claims that it is “Islam” perpetrating these actions, the local mosque actually condemned them. You posted one of the articles that was used, several years ago, to promote the lie that there were “no go zones” in “Muslim held” areas of Britain and Europe. Those claims were proved lies, and the authors ridiculed, as soon as they were distributed.
There was a small gang (not “Islam”) that promoted the idea, but they were rejected and condemned by the leaders of the local mosque when they made their claims (see link, above).
As to the gang members who were posting the signs and attacking people on the street, they were arrested and convicted of their crimes and condemned by the local Muslim leaders.
Pointing to a small gang that was harassing people, who were then charged with criminal acts and condemned by representatives of Islam, and claiming that “Islam” is trying to take over Britain is just silly.
I look forward to your report But sadly I already know what it is going to say a quick visit will tell you nothing
This misleading nonsense has already been debunked by previous posters, but I’ll just point out that in the US there actually is a community that officially promotes religious-modesty codes of dress and behavior for all residents and visitors, whether or not they belong to that religion.
And it’s not Muslim. It’s the Hasidic Jewish enclave of Kiryas Joel in Orange County, New York, where signs at the boundaries read
We’re not talking a small group of radical fanatics who are condemned by the religious leaders within their community. We’re talking a united bloc of conservative religious practitioners who have taken it upon themselves to tell their non-Hasidic neighbors and visitors to abide by Hasidic Jewish modesty standards.
If a Muslim community attempted that in the US, the right wing would be screaming themselves blue about the shari’a takeover and mosque attacks would skyrocket. But nobody gives a rat’s ass about “halacha takeover” in Kiryas Joel, apparently.
I maintained that religion would go away because science falsifies imaginary things not based on scientific principles, and the application of western education would cause the demise of all belief in the supernatural.
By Monty (referring to my grasp of science):
“…what’s your excuse for getting it so incredibly wrong?”
If you want to agree that the Tooth Houri cannot possibly exist (aka, is falsified), why I am all good with that.
If you want to argue that the Tooth Houri is non-falsifiable because the epistemological construct you hold is not based on science but is based on non-scientific premises, and one of your premises is that the scientific approach does not embrace all possible reality, I am fine with that as well.
But if the latter, then I suggest you (and others here) point out that within that non-scientific epistemology, nothing at all is falsifiable in any sense of the term with respect to what we call “existence”. This entire world and the thread we are reading may have popped into the Tooth Houri’s imagination moments ago, and we ourselves are simply figments of her imagination.
Should you hold this latter position, let me know what upgrades you would like to the non-falsifiable Tooth Houri so that in the event it turns out she exists, I can make her as super cool as you would like her to be. In the interim I’ll give her one blue eye and one brown one just in case heterochromic eyes turn you on.
My pleasure. 
LOL. Just literally laughing here.
But hey, if it makes you feel good to admit to believing nonsense, but the nonsense is not “false” because you accept an epistemology where nothing at all is false, enjoy.
Western education is still going to make belief in the supernatural disappear for any educated person unless I can make my Tooth Houri so damn attractive even the educated want her to exist.
Any thoughts for upgrades that would help me sell her?
See, you just can’t have a belief in “nonsense” and a simultaneous belief in science and be consistent. They are, by definition, incompatible, and all I have ever argued for is scientific falsifiability since all other epistemologic schemas end up with nihilistic nonsense where nothing at all is falsfiable. While in a philosophic world that may be fun to chew on, I personally prefer knowing whether I am picking my own nose. So I stick with scientific premises, which enable an investigation of whether something is false or not.
Are you one of those needy guys who would like apologies?
Absolutely. I am very very very very sorry if I misstated your position in any way.
In fact, I am abjectly sorry, beg your forgiveness, and mortified that I got your position wrong.
So, to clarify:
Can you help me understand whether or not you hold the Islamic Houris to be falsifiable?
And if they are not falsifiable, how is that different from saying they might exist?
And if they might exist because science may not be the only path by which we decide what exists or not, is there any non-scientific sense in which “falsifiable” has any meaning?
A fundamental tent of Islam is that Allah is the one who “revealed” the Qur’an contents to Mohammed, who in turn had those revelations transcibed. This plenary verbal dictation is distinct from an authorship model where the authors could put down their own perspective on events and simply had close contact with the almighty.
Most Muslims do not typically consider the Qur’an to have multiple authors, although obviously multiple scribes literally put down the words. The author is Allah, revealing his message through Mohammed the prophet, over a period of some 23 years (as I recall).
I apologize if you almost urinated on yourself because I did not put this down more clearly. Beats the other kind of incontinence.
s/b “tenet” not “tent”
Science admits, up front, that it assumes the existence of existence, that cause precedes effect, the definition of “cause” itself, and the community of human minds. You’re right: science cannot falsify “Last Thursdayism.” It doesn’t try. “Reality” is a postulate, just as Euclidean geometry must begin with certain postulates.
That is highly dishonest of you. I never said I believed in it. I demonstrated a non-zero probability, which you cannot falsify.
There is a non-zero probability that the Yellowstone supervolcano will explode later today. I don’t believe it will.
If you can’t tell the difference, then you are guilty of severe debate-format deficiency.
Nitpick: All this is true, but it somewhat invites confusion about the meaning of the term “probability”.
We all understand what it means for a scientifically meaningful hypothesis, such as “the Yellowstone supervolcano will explode today”, to have a nonzero probability of being true. “Probability” in this sense is defined according to scientific premises.
But a supernatural hypothesis which is meaningless in terms of scientific premises, such as “some kind of supernatural entity exists”, doesn’t really have a “probability” in the technical sense of the term. We can speak of its having a “nonzero probability” of being true in a more colloquial ordinary-language sense, meaning only that we can’t determine absolutely that it can’t be true. But I think we should be careful about using the word “probability”, unqualified, to describe both hypotheses.
I have stood in front of Anjem Choudhry and heard him speak of his vile hatred for none Muslims, he is a hate preacher who encourages young Muslims to fight for ISIS. the government has shut him down on more than one occasion
This article is in one of the main UK daily papers
And?
Anjem Choudhry is not “Islam.” He is a proponent of one version of Islam–a version that he cannot even get many other Muslims to support. (Remember his anti-alcohol Brick Lane demonstration where he and his buddies predicted that hundreds of Muslims would show up to join them, only to be supported by a couple dozen?)
He feeds into the nightmares of the “Eurabia” idiots with threats that Muslim families are going to overwhelm Britain with families of 12 to 15 kids, each, yet Muslim families who have come to Britain and Europe have followed the same patterns repeated throughout the industrialized world with birth rates that are nearly identical to the rates of their non-Muslim fellow citizens.
There is no question that he is hateful and supports Daesh. He hardly represents any very large number of British Muslims and is in no way representative of a majority of those Muslims.
Were you equally terrified when Ian Paisley made speeches for his odd, twisted version of Presbyterianism?
You’re right, of course, but my hypothesis cleverly walks the tightrope between “natural” and “supernatural.” My non-zero-probability hypothesis is “We’re in a simulated environment.” This isn’t really “supernatural” in the “spiritual” sense; it relies on nothing more than an extension of existing technology.
In a sim, the sim operator could introduce just about anything he wants, and the Tooth Houri would be a trivial programming object in existing sim languages.
I agree I’m playing games with definitions, but it does invite a sterling philosophical question: is a “sim universe” supernatural or not?
Of course, the “sim” hypothesis is “nonsense” in the operational sense, because it can’t be tested, and so, again, you’re quite right in that “probability” isn’t the measure of its plausibility.
(To get really strict, probability can’t deal with events that aren’t within a strictly defined event-space. “What is the probability of Hoover Dam collapsing?” We all know exactly what we mean by the question, but, in the strictest sense, the question is not defined. What we are envisioning in addressing it this way is “running the tape of history 1,000 times” and counting how many of those “alternate worlds” see the dam collapsing. It’s a thought-experiment, and not in any way a concrete one.)
(Pun intended.)
I can cope with the tl/dr post…but why does it include huge swaths of blank space? Condense and edit, man!
T.M., do not simply copy an entire page from a website into your post.
Figure out what highlighted text you want to extract from the page, post that, then link to the entire page.
[ /Moderating ]
I did not want to send the entire article just the lead in and the author so that people could go to the newspaper on line and read for themselves, they could also leave comments if they wished. I tried to edit but run out of time, Hit the moderator button but my pc security for some reason gave it the red light. If anyone wants to read a U.K. daily newspaper (themailonline) should find it
Sorry will edit on word in future before sending
I hated both Paisley his gang of criminals and the I.R.A. with an equal vengeance, the only hero’s were the people of the peace movement who took to the streets and made a stand. I had some near misses with bombs that did not make me hate all of Ireland, just the hate mongers who slaughtered innocent men woman and children.
A thousand plus Muslims have left the U.K. to join ISIS if each of those Muslim has ten supporters That is ten thousand supporters of ISIS living in our country, that may not be many to you in the U.S.A but remember that my country is smaller than N.Y. state
You are coming along with an admission that reality is a postulate. That’s why “falsification” is meaningless outside of science and adds zero value to a possibility of “existence” for my Tooth Houri, however much you want to pretend she just might exist.
The ONLY reason she cannot be “falsified” in your construct is because “falsification” has no meaning in that construct. It is not that some things can be falsified and others cannot in a non-scientific epistemology. In epistemologic constructs which begin with non-scientific premises, the idea of falsification carries no meaning whatsoever for existence. Indeed, the idea of existence carries no meaning whatsoever.
This is the component of the argument you are having trouble grasping.
“To exist” outside of a scientific approach, has no meaning. It is an arbitrary, content-free, word creation that derives from imagination.
Because you have not grasped this, you are confusing what is contained within science but cannot be proved using a scientific approach (Yellowstone*) with what cannot be “falsified” in your epistemologic scheme.
When we use the term “proof” or “falsify” within a scientific paradigm, we can talk about specific approaches, and how to define an absolute proof.
When we use the term “proof” or “falsify” within any epistemologic paradigm that fancies itself transcending the basic premises of science, nothing at all can be proved. This cause the term to lose all meaning.
Promoters of the supernatural are fond of confusing a non-falsifiable, very low probability event the fundamentals of which are still scientific (Yellowstone popping off today), with imaginary creations the fundamentals of which are completely non-scientific (religious Houris).
Mull on this for a bit and get back to me. It’s an important distinction.
Unfortunately, science is unable to rescue in any fashion, the ridiculousness of the Houri. Your efforts to find a possibility for her “existence” (perhaps so you can avoid offending the Islamic devout?) may be sweetly intentioned, but will not prevent western education from stamping out belief in the supernatural if it is given half a chance. One hopes that with stamping out the Houri, we can also stamp out those inclined to die for them.
*I will leave aside whether or not Yellowstone exploding today is a good example. I get your point. Yellowstone exists scientifically; a means to explore its volcanic potential exists scientifically. Now if I upgraded my Tooth Houri to include some kind of super-rapturous lava explosion at orgasm to further pleasure the dead Islamic devout, why that would be nonsensical to falsify in a completely different sense of the word because the Tooth Houri (sadly) does not exist scientifically (having been falsified out of the box).