evenings can be good... I remember one evening where the surf built and built to a thumping 5 ft (that's about 7ft in today's girly measure). The sunset and the clouds and the reflectivity of the water surface made it near impossible to see them rolling in. A sort of pink swirled grey out.

It was my biggest surf till the next 5am... It was a real cranking 7ft reef churner. Got a little bit injured too.

I am too old and fat for all that now but the most sharks Ive seen are bullies investigating at sunset whilst I am estuary crawling for flatties and bream (porgies to the seppo's). Now that isn't a nice sensation at all.

I have seen a white take something once. My mate and Dad on the beach both leaped up too. The grey on grey, too far away...I think it grabbed a local seal. Who knows? It was quick and impressive and about two tonne.. A bit like my first girlfriend without the early 70's pallor. Had she been in the water, all the seals around Tomakin would have been mopped up.

I wasn't supposed to mention these was I? The bit about my first girlfriends eating habits I mean.

Does Rudolph have a girlfriend?

yep, I was wondering about the amount of scarring a crackenback would do to you!

Wow you're really going ahead with flying lessons? That's so cool: good on you for going after a dream.

Ahh, now you point it out, I see.

:-)

The hair is still there, it's the new iPhone camera, it allows you to bend light at different distances and angles.

I've always had one. it's just occasionally accompanied by a goatee.

What's up with the mo' ?

Jake, I think it's admirable that you waxed your back for the occasion. You caused quite a stir at the Darwin conference last year.

"To prove it, here’s a picture of me punching a bible!"

Classic Jake. As always, love your work :-)

Wish I could be there. Get plenty of pics and video. You ambush interview random people.

Thanks Sam - glad to make your morning! What's next? Well I start my first official flying lesson in a few weeks. I'll probably have a story about that too :-)

It's all starting to sound like it's very own religeon.

I don't have to prove that there is a God to anyone so why is everyone trying to prove to me that there is not?

Just believe what you want to beleive. Don't force your opiniuns on others and get on with your own life !

I have the original TRON in my DVD library and have seen it over thirty times.
Why? Because I like to look closly at the effects over and over again. Not too bad for its time although the acting was a bit ropey.
The new movie looks great but I won't hold my breath for a better story etc.
I will approach it without relating it to the old and because it is a continuing story that won't be too hard to do.

haha!

Did you make up 'business cards'

Im going! Cant wait to get 100 new facebook friends with nouse!

I have only very vague memories of Tron from my childhood. I was very young when I saw it on TV one Sunday afternoon and vaguely recall something about UV lighting and motorbikes. I do recall liking it at the time and playing "Tron" in my room for the next few days or so but nothing more.

Now, if it had lightsabers in it.. then we'd be talking.

Blasphemy! Where is the subtract kudos button when I need one... ;-)

What???!! So you're that guy!

To be really truthful, I wouldn't buy a book like that as a matter of fact a fellow that I sometimes communicate with agrees with me. What is presented is the authors point of view in a pseudo atheist light.

If you want to learn about things biblical get your selves a really good annotated bible. Note, stay away from NIV's, the translations may be ok but the footnotes in the various editions can be pretty wild (read everything is apocalyptic or anti communist. I'd recommend the Oxford revised annotated and augmented and there are some seriously good annotated hebrew bibles and text books for courses.

If I knew of a copy or the Quran that's unbiased in its annotation I would strongly recommend it too.

Frankly this author (and Rudolph for that matter) somehow has a bit of an axe to grind. Making money out of hammering home bad scholarship (from the interview) is a bit repulsive to me.

Go to the horses mouth.

Truly, as an atheist, god doesn't matter and this one doesn't exist except in folklore. But damn is the folklore interesting!

I'll give you an example of reading around, the concept of the immaculate conception does not appear in the bible yet a papal bull declares it to be true fairly late in the second millenium. The Quran has it as truth in its tradition and text.

Now Bob Eisenman should have been jumping with that like a rainbow on a black fly on an april afternoon. Another tile in the ebionite conversion mosaic, the Jacobite ministry? The Nazirite connection... that tidbit from the pseudo Clementines?

Maybe crazy Jews wont read the Quran.

It must be read inherently that since the apocalyptic prophet died in @25 CE within the pax romanus... little voices were heard all over.....

It's amazing.........

Sorry guys. Just not excited by this one.

Rudolph,
I bet your nose lights up when you touch your toes on those size 26's of yours. I know you can't, your vagus nerve would be screaming just starting to bend

i guess i have lived under a rock as i have never heard of Tron!!

I say we put all differences aside and have an RL outing to go grab some pizza and beer and then go see Tron in 3D. I'm SOOOOOOOOO excited to see this movie. My wife never saw the original and doesnt get why I am so excited.

But one question... when is the Logan's Run remake coming!!! ha

Here we go again... Look Rudolph, could you be a bit more consistent?

Its a massive killing machine no matter if kids see it whilst drinking coke and eating popcorn or its seen out at sea vying for a whales tongue. It's the biggest dolphin there is and behaves as an uber-predator. If you could catch and house a similarly sized white shark and emaciated it till it starts jumping around would you expect anyone to feed it with an anchovy in their mouth for tricks? They evolved for similar niches, they evolved for similar prey and both can invent predatory strategies at will (this says a lot for big brain smart animal?).

I really don't care about the christian comments but I am massively concerned about the comments in the press detailing this animal almost doing exactly what its trained to do and then doing the whale calf whammo (asphyxiation) to the trainer. This animal always knew what to do and the park should have retired it after the first incident ...or even any odd signs of dolphin predatory/play behavior.

Frankly, we need the genes, keep the animal.. maybe even free it.. so it can show other dolphins how to open clams or small boats containing solitary adventurers (I hate this idiotic practice too)


Apparently Orchitis can be painful and slow.. don't know what happened here

I have been using Chrome and IE for quite some time now. But I officially switched both of my browsers to Chrome and Firefox and I am enjoying Firefox quite a bit...

I should point out that in western society we are amoral to the greatest extent (read political convenience) we can be.

Binging up ethics and morals with respect to Adolph Hitler w.r.t. the beliefs, convictions or knowledge of others here (except for one brain burst somewhere) indicates a fixation on the behalf of the person posting.

Frankly, discussing goals in the sense of morality in the sense of western society is fractious.

If anyone thinks that rape and murder are moral issues, that person serious problems and about 5 fat Z's on their academic record.

If anyone thinks that rape and murder are ethical issues, that person has really serious problems and should be consulting a psychologist over their personality disorders.

I may have got the gist wrong but the discussion on goals and ethics really does apply to subsets of society. Ethical behaviour is totally removed from the religious domain even though members of the religious domain may offer their fair input into the development of a code of ethics.


Moral behaviour w.r.t. gods is another issue. That's your choice! I may point out that pantheons tend to balance out into a 50/50 split between nasty/nice. Yahweh by definition is amoral and essential punishes and rewards in his own funny way. On a lighter note, if the redactors had have known about El, they might have noticed that Yahweh might have been told to stop beating himself up around @25 CE. (Yahweh, let them sort it out for them selves.. they have Greeks and Romans that are sensible).

I really get uncomfortable when Hitchens or Dawkins field these questions. Why? Because they never point out that we have laws now, not morals, and the moral issues that pervade religious institutions only occur during their development not the wider communities.

Hitchens does this scathing attack on how morals are implicit (and they are, but we have laws) and Dawkins nearly always beats around the bush with we should have well reasoned morals and...doesnt mention our laws.

It is not a moral issue to use condoms. It is crucial to use condoms to prevent the spread of disease.

It is not a moral issue to use female contraceptives. Women are emancipated in this society, its their womb, their babies or not, let them get the career opportunities men have.

It is not a moral issue to have early abortions, It is a legal issue to have later abortions.Women are emancipated in this society, its their womb, their babies or not, let them get the career opportunities men have.

These issues are those that you can have an opinion or a point of view. If you say women can't control their reproduction, you have a point of view.

It is a moral issue to think that you can drive drunk at 3 times the speed limit. We have laws for that behaviour so the restatement is;

It is a legal issue if you drive drunk at 3 times the speed limit
It is a legal issue if you drive drunk at 3 times the speed limit and maim or kill someone.

Note that our second or third most famous whacko christian was caught "drive drunk at 3 times the speed limit. abuse officer, resist arrest, use firearm, threat to arresting officer and put the adultress scene in a movie about christ".

Not bad for half a bottle of tequila and two days off the lithium.

The sad thing is mandatory sentencing does not apply in that state. NOW THAT IS IMMORAL.

"I was rejecting the analogy as simply not adequately representing the topics being discussed."
You misunderstood the topic of the analogy, (it is not about whether morals are real or not) maybe if go back and read what let up to it you will understand.

"I have no authority or right to impose my preference on others. It is not in my ontological nature."
Does that mean that my saying "thou shall not murder" does not make for an objective moral?

"Morals are illusions – followed by statements that morals guide us"
This is the only statement from your list that I recognize as mine, and I do not see it as contradictory, which leads us back to:

"A goal and a moral are just fundamentally different."
Assertion is still not a valid argument, so let me rephrase.
What warrants using one as a guide but not the other?

"I didn’t give up on my [Human moral nature] argument"
Well lets see if you can defend it without resorting to epistemological fallacies like "we NEVER doubt the existence of morals".

Its really difficult taking on other peoples mind set without getting into heated arguments.

You have to understand that some people take on their artistic issues in the knowledge that they either can be artists or just talk about art (with the exception of popular music where the most musically illiterate folk are referred to as musicians).

I must admit, the amount of exhilarating sport I get from Rudolph by inflicting just and (incredibly) unjust cuts into his argument is probably the most unfair way of going around things. It is patently fair that someone at a laptop somewhere on this planet is claiming he has; the source that was taught to him by professors (ie didn't have to study), is an expert on the bundle of books we call the bible (and hopefully a lot of ancillary texts) and maintains his authority and will apply that authority onto issues he has no training in, does deserve to cop just a bit of the caning.... But let's cut to the chase....

Art is art. Art follows the sciences. It's a wise thing to accept that the same brilliance (analysis ond authority) used by specialists and engineers is used by artists. If you can't accept that, you have a further division of "Snob Humanism" entering into your view (Arts and science students do pretend to this position because they think each others faculties work the hardest).

This is where a lot of things fall over in religious debate; there is not a dividing line between the art and the attempt to capture and disseminate histories (you can't tell me that any historian is that honest that he won't put his own bent on current events). The histories are then captured within the art.

I have a son and a daughter both have artistic and scientific interests. When you are asked something by your kids you have to provide directions for them to investigate. In the field of art I have made an edict; "Your dad is to be considered to be stupid. Divide art into two components; devotional and impressionist. You can work your categories up from there.

Arguing the following;
a) morals of now in terms of then morals (what are morals?),
b) ethics and if there ethics of deities (now and then for that matter),
c) the histories,
d) the motifs,

Is easy for the atheist philosophising theologist because these are detached from a conforming or evangelical agenda. For the theist, the recognition of the art becomes hidden. The recognition of a gods word being sacrosanct then applies to biblical and worldy issues. Point of view has always got to be based on that ART not the current science. I must say, I have watched textual cherry picking since 1970 from all literature.

From the above examples are;
a) how is your consort treated throughout the bible if you take the bible to be reflection or the word of gods?
b) how do you hold within yourself throughout the bible, how does your society practice ethics when it comes to your neighbouring tribes.. have these been consistent in the entire region. With the diminution of polytheism to practical montheism how does an amoral god hold to his people. Girls, please tell me the number of times women have uttered this line "He says he cares"?
c) How well do you understand the redactive process within the bible so as to make things fit?
d) the continual reference to other very powerful gods in battle, the continual separation for gentiles.


If you understand the real histories on how people lived at any given moment and place in time, you may actually understand why people did what they did and the beautiful art they wrote.

Sadly your cherry tree starts dying and every replacement shoot gets hacked down a day after you let your bullsniffer down. Yes you have blown your artistic nose with the tissue called..the real world.

Genesis does have it right in one sense and I am convinced it was the elohist source that was captured in the mid first millenium redact. You will become as gods of you exercise your choice. You see, the story of genesis relies on ancient sources that are juxtaposed.

If El is the creator of the enuma elish, he creates man for purpose and they stay within the Edn. If El is the creator of human kind and allows man to create his own destiny then god is certainly amoral but his creation is good 7 times and very good. Mind you the Eden is now reversed.

Now that is beautiful.. Its art at its best. Using previous tools and a new meter the compression of sources captures the mythology and makes a mind blowing statement. "you can be as gods".

Of course now we are gods in their sense and realise its no big deal to be a god . Its pretty damning of the human race to exercise its blood lust just to try and hold our selves back from being amoral creatures

So if any human holds morality it is evidence for objective morality and not individual morality?

How would you differentiate the two? Just because human beings seek morals does not make a case for objective morality-- it just says morality is true. But morality differs. Explain.

Papa and Kim,

I was rejecting the analogy as simply not adequately representing the topics being discussed. I could appeal to loons in the psycho ward as those who reject morality and use them as an analogy of the atheists. But I don’t because it would be an inadequate and quite misrepresentative analogy. The same goes for Kim’s attempt at an analogy. It was constructed in such a way that it did not adequately serve as an analogy. That is, it was not analogous to the issue before us.

Kim, in your analogy, the coke bottles represented moral codes. Your analogy was an attempt to show that whether God is there or not, we cannot tell the difference between one coke bottle or another. I rejected it because EVEN BY YOUR OWN ADMISSION objective morals are a coke bottle, but subjective morals are an illusion or an imagination or a desire for a coke bottle, but not a REAL coke bottle. So your analogy just doesn’t fir what we have been saying. So if we have an objective (real) coke bottle, and a subjective (illusion of) a coke bottle, then yes. We could fundamentally tell the difference between the two. The fact that you would have two REAL coke bottles would only occur if you have two REAL (and thus objective) moral systems. But you reject this, so in fact you reject your own analogy. Its not just me. Its you. But I guess I should be used to you being content to hold two mutually exclusive truth claims.

Now, is there a difference between you saying “thou shalt not muder” and God saying it? Yes. Just like there is a difference between me saying “you shall pay your taxes” and the government saying it. It is the ontology of the law giver that determines its level of obligation. Since God is universal, infinite, immutable, and omnibenevolent, and you and I are far from those, then yes. There is a drastic difference between me being a rule unto myself, and God being a ruler over me. Me saying “you shall not murder” WITHOUT reference to God, but as if I am the originator of the standard, is to say “If you murder, I don’t like it.” But I have no authority or right to impose my preference on others. It is not in my ontological nature. But God is a different story.

Glad you see the actually difference between being goal driven (something that pulls) and morally obliged (something that pushes). I don’t refrain from rape because I see a brighter future, I refrain from rape because it is wrong – as you have said yourself (even though to say so contradicts your own system of subjectivism). A goal is something I also do other things to achieve. If I want a phd, I work hard, I study, I do homework, I meet with study groups. And I don’t want it as an end in itself. I want the phd for education, career, a sense of success, etc. I don’t do things in order to not rape. I also don’t rape because the action itself is wrong, not because I want some higher end. I really think you are trying to compare apples and oranges. The two are quite different. A goal and a moral are just fundamentally different.

And I didn’t give up on my argument at all. In fact the very fact that even you are able to self-reflect and notice the difference between a goal and a moral is further support of the innate human moral nature. We fundamentally recognize morality as self-evident. Again, we NEVER doubt the existence of morals expect when an atheist/secularist wants to distance themselves from God in a debate like this. An in order to do so, end up saying such contradictory things as you and the others have said.

So far:

Hitler was not evil.
Hitler was moral according to his own context.
We cannot say Hitler was evil.
Rape is not evil.
Rape is evil.
Morals are not objective or real – followed by objective and real moral statements.
Morals are illusions – followed by statements that morals guide us
Morals are preferences – followed by statements of moral indignation and evaluation of other people.
Morals are not obligatory – followed by statements that are expected to be obliged.
Morals are based on culture – followed by universal moral statements
Morals are evolved – followed by statements that morals are innate

And the list goes on and on. It is impossible to reject objective morals because our human nature is innately moral. To try and reject them leads to such irrationality that it is just flat out shocking that you guys are so oblivious to it. It would be like me claiming that math is irrational but that 2+2=4.

DITTO!

Wow Tyler, maybe you should put down your gotcha-gun for two seconds and see if you can understand the point of the analogy and that an analogy is not literal.
In the analogy I traded coke bottles with God, which most presuppose the existence God, and therefor I must be a theist? And if I tell you a fairytale it must mean that I believe in fairies?

But if you cannot understand the analogy or are bent on rejecting it for who know what reason, let try a different way.

Do you think there is any difference between me saying "thou shall not murder" and God saying it?

'you really don’t see the difference between “I want to earn my phd” and “I shouldn’t rape that girl” '
I see differences, but I do not see any that warrants using one as a guide but not the other, that claim is incumbent on you to justify.

Did you give up on your "Human moral nature" argument?

It's hard for new movies to capture the same feeling of the older movies and Tron is no exception. But for some weird reason I do feel that the cinematography captures the feeling of the original, so this makes me very excited.

Seeing this on opening night fo' sho'.

Gah!

Update: Alcala has received the death sentence: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1256827/Serial-killer-Rodney-Alcala-sentenced-death-California.html

" I simply reject it. "

You say that like its something new? You want to change us and pray for us everyday... But you cannot branch your mind out farther than your conservative professors will let you.

Yeah that's a pain but IMO that change came about because of security concerns not because of usability tweaks.

The menu bar used to be ubiquitous which was the main benefit, but now that's fading away so I think it's now being exposed as the generic and non-contextual system it is!

You'll find that there is a problem with that term too. I used to despise Paul up until 15 years ago.. I was worse than Lincoln or Jefferson in that department.

The distillation of what we now call the christian testament is due to so very many writers and redactors that some incredible things happened.

I'll give you an easy exercise... follow the travelog in Acts and Galatians. Given that the majority opining is that Paul may have caused Galatians to be authored.. what was in the mind of the author of Acts (and Luke)... you'll see.

Aah my friend, hindsight is useful when you pull things from your arse.

Update my study texts? New Oxford 200+ surely the must be annotated NOR and Septuagints in new ed paperbacks... I am looking at 500 to get a new set of fun stuff.

Ive got a schofield ref with concordance for sale... all the annotations are about communists, gog and magog.. Its my very prized possession but to Rudolph... $500

OK guys, get in yer wayback machines.....El is the Caananite/Semitic creating god by definition. The god you know and love is an elohim (just as Baal was)... sort of dragged over from the far previous mini pantheon of the Sumerian cults. He was introduced by the SE Canaanite region as another version of Haddad (the real Baal) or more scarily YvH or Yaw. The yahwist/ baalist/molochian cults flourished side by side in Canaan till about the time of Josiah (better known as the "Great Party Pooper" as other Yahwehs and Baals weren't too greedy on sacrifice requirements). The upside of that is that the asherah became a tool from that time rather than the matron of the pantheon and less sacrifice was needed.

The zinger here, is that there is pretty much a purity based religion going on everywhere in the region from word go.. Business practice is the same (raping, murdering, slavery) and xenophobia just matches tolerable trade practices... Had I been a Sumerian I would have cleaned the area to the dead sea.

As you can see, the variety in service was pretty good..a bit much like in down town hedonist Brisbane.

You can't argue that point (well you can, but fido wont pay much attention).

The creation from the fertile crescent is the same everywhere. With the incredible amount of redact our religious roots started appearing in our "heroic" mythology, the bible was made up.


Had you understood that in grade 1 we wouldn't be in all this shit now... Mind you, humans being what we are, would have invented other reasons for war.

Anyway, Ive got to put my swastikas and deaths heads on... Lutheran wednesday service.. Readings from Matthew and John....


Now to let out where you can offend a christian really big time.

Either your town was named after a God (Baal-beck etc Al something) or your god married your town (yes Beirut and Baal may be in retirement but they are doing well, Yahweh married Jerusalem but kicked the kids out and adopted a nicer set before the kids moved back) or in Canaan your town was the house of a god....Beth.... no, not bethlahem house of food (stupid) Bethlehem (house of bread) lying astrologers, Bethlehem House of grain... nope... over to you mythology experts.

Metal Skeptic Statement of the week..

You see, no matter what you believe in, its not even going to have opinion status in an argument. eg Someone once said I lost my mind ... I released she believed in people having minds and souls and practiced consciousness. In my world.. points of view.

Saying that you believe something and using that concept as a point in an argument is a logical fallacy..... I believe Kevin Rudd is the most boring man on the planet..I wont use it as an argument because he might buy me lunch one day.

No, no, I'm quite cognisant of it's placement in the New Testament, however I find it hilarious that Christians refer to Jesus as the creator of Christianity when it was quite clearly Paul. Christianity should be called the Pauline Christology!