Roadtoad
Bufo Caminus Inedibilis
Welcome new Members! Introduce yourselves here!
- Thread starter arthwollipot
- Start date
-
- Tags
- newbies welcome welcome posts
- Status
COLONEL
Sniper of the Galactic Universe
The Colonel says welcome and have a glass of Goats milk.Then when you're finished, Road Toad will give you a ride in his K-Wopper
Hello. I've greatly enjoyed lurking this forum for some time now, and I thought it might be fun to finally sign up.
My name is Stefan. I'm a young man with a background in ecology, scientific computing, and web technology. I enjoy long moonlit debates about semantics, games of rock-paper-scissors to allocate burden of proof, and spotting logical fallacies with my fiancee.
I promise not to post passive-aggressive suggestions that empiricism is flawed because it rejects my irrational belief system, nor to defend that irrational belief system with fallacious arguments and then ignore or dismiss all rebuttals of those arguments.
My name is Stefan. I'm a young man with a background in ecology, scientific computing, and web technology. I enjoy long moonlit debates about semantics, games of rock-paper-scissors to allocate burden of proof, and spotting logical fallacies with my fiancee.
I promise not to post passive-aggressive suggestions that empiricism is flawed because it rejects my irrational belief system, nor to defend that irrational belief system with fallacious arguments and then ignore or dismiss all rebuttals of those arguments.
Last edited:
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
Actually it's the posting that's the most fun of all, but I suspect you knew that.
Gosh! Sounds like there just aren't enough hours in the day.
Bummer. Nobody here ever seems to do those things anymore.
As if.
Welcome to the funny farm, Stefan.
COLONEL
Sniper of the Galactic Universe
Welcome Stefan Along with you Glass of Goats milk how would you like your Roo steaks ? The MINTIE bowl is on your left help your self.
swright777
Muse
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2012
- Messages
- 897
Common theme: blame the Jooz!
Anywoo... welcome aboard. Normally I would offer you some Belgian beer, but since out national holiday Queen's Day is coming up, I'd like to offer you some Dutch beer (not Heineken)
I've noticed that the 'Blame the Joooos' theme is common in almost every conspiracy. I wonder if these people have ever even met a Jewish person.
I spent two weeks in Haifa when I was in the navy (US) back in '89. All of the people that I met were friendly. A Jewish family invited several of us into their home for dinner having just met us. We were headed back to the ship and a taxi full of locals stopped to give us a ride. We told the driver that we were broke (as usual), and he still gave us a ride.
Anyway, thanks for the beer.
Last edited:
swright777
Muse
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2012
- Messages
- 897
I guess it would be boring if everyone used logic and common sense to explain or defend their views.
And thanks for the milk. I think I was too late to order from the menu.
derchin
Critical Thinker
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2012
- Messages
- 353
Hey everybody. Name is Derchin if you haven't caught that by now. I've been lingering around this site and reading some of the threads for some time now. Aside from some previous hurdles concerning registration, I'm finally a member.
Cool.
Cool.
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
I keep telling them to get rid of the 'steeplechase' option on the registration page and go back to the more familiar 'jumping through hoops' process but will they listen?
Harumph, I say.
Anyway, that's all behiind you now and it's sane pailing from here on.
Or something.
Welcome aboard.
Last edited:
derchin
Critical Thinker
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2012
- Messages
- 353
I keep telling them to get rid of the 'steeplechase' option on the registration page and go back to the more familiar 'jumping through hoops' process but will they listen?
Harumph, I say.
Anyway, that's all behiind you now and it's all sane pailing from here on.
Or something.
Welcome aboard.
Hello there. I hope I haven't done anything wrong.
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
I assume not, mate, since you're here.
To tell the truth, the only thing I remember about the registration process is that it wouldn't accept that I was 3,500 years old.
Stupid machine.
COLONEL
Sniper of the Galactic Universe
Welcome have a glass of Goats milk and the only thing I can think of is if you have not returned all your library books yet, the Library Lady will be after you . Although she might be on vacation as she has not been around for a while, so you have a chance to get them returned.
Hello all! I'm a near-lifelong skeptic and atheist (in fact, I would call myself a gnu atheist… not sure to what extent that may be controversial in these circles).
My first intro to this stuff was Joe Nickell's book The Magic Detectives. Other than that, nearly all of the books I have read about the paranormal were more on the credulous side, but I could usually figure out what was really going on, and recent Internet reading has helped sharpen my BS-detection skills.
I work for the after-school program of a middle school, where some of the kids are into the paranormal, especially cryptozoology. I don't like getting into arguments with them since I don't want to harm our relationship (or likelier, get into even more frustrating arguments with their parents). Fortunately, the kids themselves are quite good at arguing against the woo anyway; in fact, most of the "cryptozoology club" meetings seem to consist of the kids watching YouTube videos and pointing out how things were faked or played up.
Like all upstanding folk, I believe in "open-mindedness", but I believe much much much more strongly in the faultiness of human minds and our tendency to project all sorts of inner silliness onto the universe, as if reality were supposed to obey the intuitions of a few billion primates. It would take a very, very, very large amount of evidence to convince me that "the supernatural" exists, because of the long history of fakery-and-mistakery, plus my feeling that the supernatural doesn't really refer to anything that logically could exist so much as a kind of set of quasi-dualistic attitudes.
Maybe we've been visited by aliens… but they couldn't possibly be humanoid any more than they would speak Pig Latin. Maybe someone has experienced actual prophecy… but not Nostradamus or any other claimant.* Those are really tiny maybes. Tinier still are the maybes for homeopathy and astrology. Finding out that either one is "real" would be equivalent to finding out the Earth is "really" flat; it's not even imaginable.
I get really frustrated by the self-contradiction whereby woos insist their stuff in in some way untestable. You can't discover anything to be true in the first place if it's untestable! Even the supposed counterexamples they like to trot out, like love, are entirely testable. There are empirical differences between a situation where two people love one another and a situation where they don't. If someone told me that they knew as a matter of faith that Ellen Degeneres loved me, and I said "That's absurd. She can't possibly know I exist, and she's in a committed relationship, and I'm a man and she's a lesbian", would that person be entitled to reply "But love isn't a matter of evidence!"?
Anyway, rant over. Whew. Nice to be here…
*(The eeriest instance I can think of is the incident of that novel "Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan", seemingly predicting the Titanic sinking — but that's probably a Law of Large Numbers thing coupled with a few interdependent facts, eg, if a ship is going to be way short on lifeboats, it will probably be a very large cruise ship, with a "big" sort of name — look at the Titanic's sister ships! — whose makers are a tad hubristic, going too fast, etc.).
My first intro to this stuff was Joe Nickell's book The Magic Detectives. Other than that, nearly all of the books I have read about the paranormal were more on the credulous side, but I could usually figure out what was really going on, and recent Internet reading has helped sharpen my BS-detection skills.
I work for the after-school program of a middle school, where some of the kids are into the paranormal, especially cryptozoology. I don't like getting into arguments with them since I don't want to harm our relationship (or likelier, get into even more frustrating arguments with their parents). Fortunately, the kids themselves are quite good at arguing against the woo anyway; in fact, most of the "cryptozoology club" meetings seem to consist of the kids watching YouTube videos and pointing out how things were faked or played up.
Like all upstanding folk, I believe in "open-mindedness", but I believe much much much more strongly in the faultiness of human minds and our tendency to project all sorts of inner silliness onto the universe, as if reality were supposed to obey the intuitions of a few billion primates. It would take a very, very, very large amount of evidence to convince me that "the supernatural" exists, because of the long history of fakery-and-mistakery, plus my feeling that the supernatural doesn't really refer to anything that logically could exist so much as a kind of set of quasi-dualistic attitudes.
Maybe we've been visited by aliens… but they couldn't possibly be humanoid any more than they would speak Pig Latin. Maybe someone has experienced actual prophecy… but not Nostradamus or any other claimant.* Those are really tiny maybes. Tinier still are the maybes for homeopathy and astrology. Finding out that either one is "real" would be equivalent to finding out the Earth is "really" flat; it's not even imaginable.
I get really frustrated by the self-contradiction whereby woos insist their stuff in in some way untestable. You can't discover anything to be true in the first place if it's untestable! Even the supposed counterexamples they like to trot out, like love, are entirely testable. There are empirical differences between a situation where two people love one another and a situation where they don't. If someone told me that they knew as a matter of faith that Ellen Degeneres loved me, and I said "That's absurd. She can't possibly know I exist, and she's in a committed relationship, and I'm a man and she's a lesbian", would that person be entitled to reply "But love isn't a matter of evidence!"?
Anyway, rant over. Whew. Nice to be here…
*(The eeriest instance I can think of is the incident of that novel "Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan", seemingly predicting the Titanic sinking — but that's probably a Law of Large Numbers thing coupled with a few interdependent facts, eg, if a ship is going to be way short on lifeboats, it will probably be a very large cruise ship, with a "big" sort of name — look at the Titanic's sister ships! — whose makers are a tad hubristic, going too fast, etc.).
serpentine
New Blood
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2009
- Messages
- 17
Hmmmm...Don't know what the 'Goat's milk' thing is, but I've had plenty of it, since I grew up on it....Yummy!...
And yes, I know the 'paranormal' exists, since I've experienced it myself.
It's kind of like a 'sense' that many people just don't experience...And since there is a lot of corruption regarding 'psychics' and such, it's easy to doubt it all...Which is very understandable, and healthy.
And yes, I know the 'paranormal' exists, since I've experienced it myself.
It's kind of like a 'sense' that many people just don't experience...And since there is a lot of corruption regarding 'psychics' and such, it's easy to doubt it all...Which is very understandable, and healthy.
Last edited:
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
I can think of no better response to this than to nominate it for a language award.
I hope your stay here is as rewarding for yourself as it promises to be for us.
Sideroxylon
Featherless biped
I can think of no better response to this than to nominate it for a language award.
I hope your stay here is as rewarding for yourself as it promises to be for us.
I just read it in the nominations thread. What an auspicious entry.
Akhenaten
Heretic Pharaoh
I have to say, I've been here for five years myself and I don't have any idea what's going on with that either. This seems to be the only thread in the forum where it's ever mentioned.
Interesting times ahead, I'll warrant, when you start meeting up with the folks here who know the paranormal doesn't exist.
Vive la difference and welcome aboard!
LibraryLady
Emeritus
- Status