metadigital

I think if you won the lottery you would spend it all trying to win the lottery.

Perhaps it should, though it isn't normally distinguished suchly. We can call it Martha. GOLD

exploding

Only insofar as the total number of dancers can be measured per pinhead.

roman

Cardio-pulmonary transplant?

Betcha can't say that six times fast, underwater with a candle in your cheek.

I'm not sure if theodicies are pertinent.

Are you impugning my t'internet honour, sir? *slaps face with glove*

Is that a care barometer? A carometer? Steady carometric pressure?

Why does this sound bad? I didn't think the dialogue tree in Oblivion was poorly implemented, if only because it mimicked reality, similarly to the way you paraphrase it for a putative Fallout 3:

Jorian, I volunteer to act as escrow agent for your noble charity. Please forward all funds to me at my earliest convenience.

All racism is equally bad. Some racism is more equal than others.

Was that meant to be a Ralph Wiggunism?

They can also do a prequel. Plenty of precedent for that in Hollywood, what with the Tom Clancy novels and even Lucas.

I knew a guy who used to be able to sneeze with his mouth closed (and stifle the energetic release), and yet he used to make the most atrociously stentorian noise when burping.

I'm hesitant to say Christians have freewill. The book is already written supposedly, if their religion is true then it sounds something more like soft determinism to me. Can omniscient God, who Knows the future, find The omnipotence to Change his future mind? -- Karen Owens

I'll leave aside your scientist-bating for the moment. (Why can't science give guidance for morals? That is the very basis for humanism, after all. Are you denying humanism exists?) I'm more concerned with why you think science can't AND SHOULDN'T speak to faith. The reason I enquire is that we must be careful to not give too much respect to religion, past its due, lest we end up giving the Narcisistic Personality Disordered carte blanche to delude those "willingly gullible" cult members. Good Lord! (a little prayer on my part) Science cannot speak to faith in the sense of morals. If we're disussing universal laws governing our worldly circumstances, I think we should always give the nod to science. Is eating fatty foods bad for you? Is it dangerous to drive without a seatbelt? These are questions science should answer. Should I care enough about my life to eat a balanced diet and wear a seatbelt? Science does not answer that question. Science will never answer that question. Science might say that the reason we value our own is a matter of genetics or a survival instinct. It might say that the species would die should we not value our own lives. ...But it doesn't care if we die. Science doesn't care if our species dies. What we value, other than in the most hedonistic sense, will never derive from science. Our values are a separate issue. Why can't science give guidance for morals? Because science doesn't care. It just doesn't care. It can tell you what the effects are for a variety of actions by looking at what the effects have been. It can provide the basis for convincing others once you've made a decision regarding policy. ...But Science doesn't have a conscience any more than a rock feelings. As far as putting words in my mouth, meta, I'll trust that you can find a place where I said that humanism doesn't exist. Does science insist that secular humanist: "...search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility?" Hell, even my toothy colleague owned up to the fact that science, as a set of universal laws, does not have a stake in a moral argument. Does science care about enhancing human well-being? You are using the fallacy that "science" is the knowledge learnt from observing the world, the book of facts and laws therein derived from same ... the codex. Science is the mental discipline of only accepting as true what can be demonstrated, predictably, from observed phenomena. It is a rigour of denying what is merely comfortable or convenient to find what is TRUE. You are dodging the spirit of the science by trying to adhere to the letters it is written in. No, it is scientific. Science informs my ethical decisions, rather than them being handed down (probably from empirical observation and induction by some wise person in the mists of human (pre-) history) or given up by revelation. Now isn't that less strange? I didn't know anyone was insulted; for my part I'm just trying to clarify a misconception you have. Empirically-driven, logically designed ethical framework derived from laws of mutual benefaction .... versus a divine revelation about how to behave.

You're learning how to heckle better from your work colleagues?

What are you doing in my delirium?

I like satsumas, too.

So you're playing Oblivion with an Icewind Dale character!

Do I have to answer that?

You'd be a Moral relativist, then. I.e. you don't hold that there are any absolute ethical truths. Like eating babies is wrong under all circumstances, for example. Thats not what I meant when I said the DS is your own choice and views. I'm not saying I support it, I'm just trying to say that the "DS" is not absolute in the fact that the "boundaries" of the dark side can be changed and peoples view of the DS will change with their circumstances. Just look at our world today. 300 years ago, white europeans saw nothing wrong with having slaves or treating them like dirt, not like actual people. Today, the very idea of slavery is disgusting and revolting to everybody, even those whose ancestors probably had slaves. The view of society just changes over time. There have always been people who didn't buy into the populist view that slavery was justified because the slaves were less than human, despite being human. Slavery was always justified primarily on economic grounds (it makes the slavers and business owners very, very wealthy ... which tends to help assuage any doubts of the ethically weaker members of society) ... one of the reasons that slavery became untenable in the eighteenth century was because the public found out about the details of the trade ... and the public weren't the direct beneficiary of the pecuniary windfall. And irrespective of the populist position, the fact is that it has always been wrong.