John Jones
Penultimate Amazing
Weak or nonexistent evidence.
Intelligent Design
- Thread starter Thor 2
- Start date
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
Clearly you've angered the pink unicorn, and she is punishing you. You should try to figure out what you did wrong, and beg her forgiveness while making amends by sacrificing coconut macaroons to a set of stuffed-animal icons representing the earthly avatars and prophets of the great unicorn. Just make sure you get the correct icons in there, because hooh-boy! If you get the wrong icon in the mix, your vehicles will *never* run right...
Donn
Philosopher
O great Unicorn; we fart in your fuchsia direction.
Thor 2
Philosopher
Just to get this back on track and given that the existence of the pink unicorn is now proven, one has to wonder why a god would include a flatulent orbiting unicorn in his grand design? God's ways are certainly mysterious.
PartSkeptic
Illuminator
What ever you guys are smoking might make you see and imagine pink unicorns. Especially if you are so high you can see them in orbit.
I base my statements on observations.
For example. From the time I was eighteen until about 6 years ago when I turned 60, I have driven at high speed. My first car was a sports car and my open road speed was typically 105 miles an hour. There were no speed limits on the open road, and no speed traps in Southern Africa,
When the traps came into force, I had a lot of long distance driving working as a service engineer. I typically drove at 85 mph in 55mph open roads.
In the USA I did sales and service driving long distance mostly at 85mph in 55 mph roads.
In NZ I decided to obey the speed limits and in 18 months I was trapped for 101 kph in 100 kph while overtaking, and for a badly posted zone. I decided to speed and focus - no tickets after that.
Back in SA my tickets were false. They take a picture and send a fine. I knew the cameras were there. The photo shows my brakes on going down the hill.
In my life I have had one ticket in South Africa (1967 to 1977) for doing 18mph in a 15 mph zone, two speed tickets in the USA (1977 to 1992) both just over 80mph in 55mph zones while not concentrating, none in SA (1992 to 1999) and three tickets in New Zealand (2000 to 2007) and three tickets in SA (2008 to present) which I refused to pay.
If one uses the laws of averages, I should have been paying fines every month with the distances I traveled. But I did not. I could either brake before the gatsometer lines, or was behind a truck, or sensed the trap.
So here you have specifics, which are hard to explain by natural laws.
Yet what will happen. Show us the tickets, prove you only got that many, your memory is faulty, did not happen, you are a liar (Darat's favorite). Denial, denial, denial. And more unicorns.
Bottom line. I speed and focus = NO speed fines.
Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
So God wants you to exceed the speed limit provided you're thinking of Him when you do it?
Dave
Dave
Wudang
BOFH
Then over time the number of theists would increase and the number of atheists decrease. In fact, the opposite happens.
Wudang
BOFH
Who was it who said "A broken clock is right twice a day and over the years can look back over an unbroken series of successes"?
Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
9 speeding tickets? Bloody hell, that's a lot. I've had just two in 35 years of motoring (both during a period when my local council had ramped up the number of cameras to generate revenue), and I know plenty of people who've never had a single one.
Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
If PartSkeptic runs over and kills a child whilst speeding it will be because the child was naughty and deserved it. The suffering PartSkeptic would experience from getting a thoroughly deserved speeding ticket must be avoided by divine intervention (except for the 9 times it wasn't because he wasn't asking God nicely enough), but not the suffering of the families of children killed by irresponsible speeding drivers, because the latter would give the game away. Or something.
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FTFY
Oh sooper-special you......therefore god. This is much more about you not understanding maths and probability than anything whatever to do with the subject of the thread, which is Intelligent Design. There is simply no bollocks that you don't twist to suit your delusional theory that you are somehow (and for no good reason) singled out by your god for extra-special treatment.
Oh, and learn to drive. It's anti-social and dangerous to think the road rules apply only to others. I bet you swear like crazy at the mini-bus taxis.
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Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
I'm one of them. And the explanation - that I always keep alert and sense the speed cameras in time to slow down before I get to them - is entirely consistent with the materialistic hypothesis, in that the way I sense them is by seeing a bloody great yellow box on a pole by the side of the road. It doesn't exactly take divine intervention to look where you're *********** well going.
Dave
South Africa takes a rather different approach to speed cameras, Dave.
Porpoise of Life
Illuminator
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2014
- Messages
- 4,950
No, you don't. You base your statements on your prior assumptions.
I have asked you this many many times, and never gotten an answer, but I'll try again.
Let's, for the sake of argument, assume that your observations are correct. You have the special power to warp reality by focusing your thoughts.
Now, How does it follow from there that your vaguely Christian God (who might or might not be running a cosmic game if SimCity) is the most likely source of this power?
And no, you not believing it could be anything else because it's 'obvious' is not an argument, that's just restating your premise.
Show us how you've ruled out other possible explanations like chance, superpowers, wizards, genetics, different kinds of gods, aliens, transdimensional pranksters, and so on.
Show us the evidence that your God is behind this.
And remember, "I haven't gotten as many speeding tickets as I deserve, so how could I be wrong about the reason for that?" is still not an argument. (Well, an argument from incredulity, but that's fallacious)
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Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
Which, no doubt, is why God doesn't notice them and warn PS either.
But really, is this the stupidest line of argument yet, or what? "I've only been ticketed for speeding nine times, therefore God?" By that argument, my being an atheist who's never been ticketed should be an over-riding argument that God doesn't exist, otherwise why would he protect me more than the faithful?
Dave
Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
Just out of curiosity I googled for speeding ticket statistics and found this site for the US:
https://www.statisticbrain.com/driving-citation-statistics/
About 20% of American drivers get a speeding ticket each year, so on average that's one every five years. So over 50 years motoring the average American driver can expect to receive about 10 tickets.
In the UK, according to this BBC news report, the number of speeding tickets issued each year in England and Wales is approaching 2m. It doesn't give the number of drivers but assuming it's 40 million (the total population of England and Wales is currently about 60m) that's 5% of drivers, or an average of one speeding ticket every 20 years for each driver. So my two in 35 years is about average.
https://www.statisticbrain.com/driving-citation-statistics/
About 20% of American drivers get a speeding ticket each year, so on average that's one every five years. So over 50 years motoring the average American driver can expect to receive about 10 tickets.
In the UK, according to this BBC news report, the number of speeding tickets issued each year in England and Wales is approaching 2m. It doesn't give the number of drivers but assuming it's 40 million (the total population of England and Wales is currently about 60m) that's 5% of drivers, or an average of one speeding ticket every 20 years for each driver. So my two in 35 years is about average.
Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
And I have none, yet if one uses the laws of averages, I should have paid two fines by now. But I did not.
"So here you have specifics, which are hard to explain by natural laws."
Dave
"So here you have specifics, which are hard to explain by natural laws."
Dave
Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
It's also interesting to examine the assumptions PS is making here:
Clearly he has pulled this "a fine a month" statistic out of his nether regions, but he is also assuming that the more miles a driver does the more likely they are to get a speeding ticket. At first sight this seems obvious, but if you think about it a little more a counterargument could be made. Experienced drivers whose jobs are dependant on them retaining their licence may actually be less likely to get tickets than someone who does far fewer miles and (a) hasn't learned where the cameras are most likely to be positioned and (b) hasn't got the same investment in retaining their licence.
I have no idea what the actual statistics are (a couple of minutes googling couldn't find them and I can't be bothered to look further). I just thought it was interesting that we have here yet another example of PartSkeptic assuming that whatever seems obvious to him must necessarily be the case, without bothering to check whether the actual data backs up that assumption.
Clearly he has pulled this "a fine a month" statistic out of his nether regions, but he is also assuming that the more miles a driver does the more likely they are to get a speeding ticket. At first sight this seems obvious, but if you think about it a little more a counterargument could be made. Experienced drivers whose jobs are dependant on them retaining their licence may actually be less likely to get tickets than someone who does far fewer miles and (a) hasn't learned where the cameras are most likely to be positioned and (b) hasn't got the same investment in retaining their licence.
I have no idea what the actual statistics are (a couple of minutes googling couldn't find them and I can't be bothered to look further). I just thought it was interesting that we have here yet another example of PartSkeptic assuming that whatever seems obvious to him must necessarily be the case, without bothering to check whether the actual data backs up that assumption.
Have to remember that in regards to significance of statistics and events that have happened to him he is a proven liar.
I doubt that his latest claim has any more truth than his previous claims did.