Date: September 12, 2017
01) Sean Carroll’s Best Arguments of all time, Part Two
Sean Carroll’s Best Arguments of all time, Part Two…
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Waking Up With Sam Harris – An Evening with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris…
Date: September 12, 2017
01) Waking Up With Sam Harris – An Evening with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris
“Waking Up With Sam Harris – An Evening with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris
In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Richard Dawkins at a live event in Los Angeles (second of two). They discuss Richard’s experience of having a stroke, the genetic future of humanity, the analogy between genes and memes, the “extended phenotype,” Islam and bigotry, the biology of race, how to find meaning without religion, and other topics.”
Ted Cruz Shares Porn, Blames Staff…
Date: September 12, 2017
01) Ted Cruz Shares Porn, Blames Staff
“Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) woke up Tuesday to find his name trending on Twitter — linked overnight to a certain video from the “Milf Hunter” series, perhaps unfairly, perhaps irrevocably.
The clip itself is just over two minutes, details of its contents mostly unprintable. It features a sectional sofa, the pornographic actress Cory Chase, her fictitious nude stepdaughter, and a very energetic young man.
Cruz, of course, is nowhere to be seen in the footage, which has been floating around the Internet for more than a year. But around midnight Eastern time, someone signed into the senator’s official Twitter account and clicked a little heart below the video — and thus did @tedcruz “like” porn.”
As the solicitor general for the state of Texas in 2004, Mother Jones reported, Cruz’s legal team tried to defend a law banning the sale of sex toys. His office drafted a 76-page brief that argued that the government had an interest in discouraging “autonomous sex,” Mother Jones wrote — and “there is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one’s genitals for nonmedical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship.”
Some recalled the case years later, when Cruz ran unsuccessfully for president in the Republican Primary in 2016. One was his freshman-year college roommate”
Did Ted want to pass laws against masturbation?
Struggling with Grace and Issues of Self Dignity, In the Face of Their Lexicon…
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Date: September 11, 2017
“Being a paedophile is a recognised mental health disorder. It’s something they don’t choose to have – Prof Derek Perkins” You know…I realize that not everybody is our enemy, even when they fundamentally disagree with us…and being too picky about your allies, will leave you without any… …I also realize that many people like Professor Perkins likely have noble intentions, and the words they use to describe us MAPs, are indicative of how they are trying to make sense of us…and make sense of how things are for us, in this kind of a hostile world… …Many things they say, may be conditionally true…mixed in with objectively true things… …I honestly appreciate, people who attempt to alleviate human suffering, including that amongst MAPs… …Which is why it’s such a personally hard thing, taking issue with people like Derek, when they claim we are mentally ill…Or when they talk about us in this manner, as if “you better get help to manage this, otherwise you are an imminent threat to others”… This is fundamentally dehumanizing…I’d go so far as to call it inhumane brainwashing… …It’s saddling someone with a prime foundation for mental illness, to impose these terrible ideological notions upon them, all of their lives. Being a MAP has nothing especially to do with being a predator. There are plenty of MAPs who are not predators…Just exactly the same, as there are plenty of androphiles, gynephiles and hebephiles who are not predators. Sexual orientation is not the same thing, as an inherent tendency towards sexual predation. …And that is such a basic point of fact…Why are we still even arguing about this, in society? I have to believe that most people have the capacity, to mentally grasp this point. I want to see the good, in people like Professor Perkins… …But a large part of me is left, shaking my head “no”, with my eyes closed, in utter frustration with all of this…Because even when it comes to academia…”this is as good as it gets?”… This is not good enough, at all… …We were putting ourselves on the line, decades ago…in hopes of guiding society out of the dark ages…We are still just as deeply imprisoned in those dark ages…And even the more theoretically helpful allies still behave like stubborn mules. This destructive paradigm about predatory MAPs, is so “1980’s sex panic”… …Are we ever going to get past that stupidity, and arrive at a sane discussion about the objective facts? As someone who’s spent roughly half of their life, deeply engaged in MAP issues…It’s extremely frustrating watching where things are going, after all this time. No…This movement does not belong to me…But I tell you what…I’ve known too many good people, who were MAPs…who fought to make this world a better place…and who suffered dearly for it…Some of them have died, along the way…Even some giants amongst us, ended up broken and disheartened at their end… …It really shakes me to the core and makes me want to vomit, when I recognize the road of compliance and submission, that they’re trying to lead MAPs down, today…And they’re trying to herd a new generation of MAPs, into this… We’ve not spent all these years, trying to build a foundation and network…just to watch it get hijacked by people who want to lord over MAPs, and other alleged “sexual deviants”. This is one of the worst perversions of a movement, I have ever seen. The fundamental MAP movement, is about human dignity and a right to exist on equal footing with anybody else… …It’s not about seeking out handlers to manage you. Note: Incase this was unclear…I fully support anyone with mental health issues, being able to seek safe help in dealing with them. What I condemn, is the equation of being a MAP with mental illness. Not even the DSM 5 recognizes the mere orientation, as being a mental illness [aka disorder] in itself. There has to be other accompanying circumstances, before a MAP can be recognized as mentally ill. Many MAPs are mentally healthy… …And a lot more could be, if society would stop messing with them. 
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Lawrence Krauss – Science, Politics & The Law…
Date: September 11, 2017
01) Lawrence Krauss – Science, Politics & The Law Part 1
“Lawrence Maxwell Krauss (born 27 May 1954) is an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist who is Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, and director of its Origins Project.
He is known as an advocate of the public understanding of science, of public policy based on sound empirical data, of scientific skepticism and of science education, and works to reduce the influence of what he opines as superstition and religious dogma in popular culture.
Krauss is the author of several bestselling books, including The Physics of Star Trek (1995) and A Universe from Nothing (2012), and chairs the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Board of Sponsors.
Krauss has argued that public policy debates in the United States should have a greater focus on science, and that the public have a right to scrutinize the religious beliefs of Presidential candidates in the ways that they relate to public policy.
Krauss describes himself as an antitheist and takes part in public debates on religion. Krauss is featured in the 2013 documentary The Unbelievers, in which he and Richard Dawkins travel across the globe speaking publicly about the importance of science and reason as opposed to religion and superstition. He has participated in many debates with religious apologists, including William Lane Craig.
In his book, A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing (2012), Krauss discusses the premise that something cannot come from nothing, which has often been used as an argument for the existence of a Prime mover. He has since argued in a debate with John Ellis and Don Cupitt that the laws of physics allow for the universe to be created from nothing. “What would be the characteristics of a universe that was created from nothing, just with the laws of physics and without any supernatural shenanigans? The characteristics of the universe would be precisely those of the ones we live in. In an interview with The Atlantic, however, he states that he has never claimed that “questions about origins are over.” According to Krauss, “I don’t ever claim to resolve that infinite regress of why-why-why-why-why; as far as I’m concerned it’s turtles all the way down.”
Lawrence Krauss – Science, Politics & The Law Part 2:
Waking Up with Sam Harris #96 – The Nature of Consciousness (with Thomas Metzinger)…
Date: September 11, 2017
01) Waking Up with Sam Harris #96 – The Nature of Consciousness (with Thomas Metzinger)
“In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Thomas Metzinger about the scientific and experiential understanding of consciousness. They also talk about the significance of WWII for the history of ideas, the role of intuition in science, the ethics of building conscious AI, the self as an hallucination, how we identify with our thoughts, attention as the root of the feeling of self, the place of Eastern philosophy in Western science, and the limitations of secular humanism.
Thomas K. Metzinger is full professor and director of the theoretical philosophy group and the research group on neuroethics/neurophilosophy at the department of philosophy, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany. He is the founder and director of the MIND group and Adjunct Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute of Advanced Studies, Germany. His research centers on analytic philosophy of mind, applied ethics, philosophy of cognitive science, and philosophy of mind. He is the editor of Neural Correlates of Consciousness and the author of Being No One and The Ego Tunnel.”
Hydrogen Hillary Clinton is Whining so Much Even the Legacy Media is Getting Bored With Her…
Date: September 11, 2017
01) Hydrogen Hillary Clinton is Whining so Much Even the Legacy Media is Getting Bored With Her
“She couldn’t beat Trump at being president so she’s trying to beat him at being unlovable: http://archive.is/0Fe4e“
The Evolution of Homosexuality: From Criminal, to Mentally Ill, to Equal – Bennett Singer…
Date: September 11, 2017
01) The Evolution of Homosexuality: From Criminal, to Mentally Ill, to Equal – Bennett Singer
“It wasn’t that long ago, says Bennett Singer, that our nation’s most progressive doctors considered homosexuality a psychological disease. That goes to show how far we have come—in areas like gay marriage—to guaranteeing equal rights regardless of one’s sexual preferences. But some rights initiatives have started to backslide in the United States and elsewhere. Conversion therapy is still met with approval by some government officials, and sexual orientation and gender identity remain excluded from the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbid discrimination against individuals on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Singer brings to light a fascinating and essential array of knowledge in his new book LGBTQ Stats.
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/bennett-singer-are-gay-rights-civil-rights
I think the question of acceptance of LGBT folks really does depend on geography. In some places on Earth I would say, when it comes to legal equality and cultural acceptance absolutely there’s been this revolution, and progress has occurred at a pace that even in our own lifetimes was almost inconceivable in terms of how quickly things had evolved.
At the same time, just today 2.8 billion people live in countries around the globe where being gay is a crime. And in some places like India progress toward equality has actually been reversed. So back in 2013 India’s supreme court recriminalized sodomy and same sex activity, which had become legal. So there are examples of countries where progress has actually been reversed.
When we talk about how have things changed in terms of equality or the movement toward equality for LGBTQ folks I think the biggest and most dramatic example is marriage equality which somewhat miraculously I think—and not inevitably—did become the law of the land, and all 50 states thanks to the Supreme Court and the Obergefell decision are now required to recognize same sex marriage.
But I think it’s important to remember that marriage equality does not mean or is not synonymous with full equality in terms of constitutional protections. And it is in fact true that a couple could get married on a Sunday and then one of the partners goes to work on Monday, puts a picture of his husband or her wife on the desk and gets fired, because in the majority of U.S. states it is still completely legal for people to be fired on the basis of sexual orientation.
And the Civil Rights Act of 1964 doesn’t cover sexual orientation or gender identity. There’s a movement among activists and gay rights organizations to expand the scope of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to go beyond race and gender and color and national origin, which are covered categories. But at this point sexual orientation is not covered by the 1864 legislation.
I guess the context is, it wasn’t until 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association came to the conclusion that homosexuality in general is not a mental illness, and that was the year when the APA voted to take homosexuality out of its diagnostic manual. Until that point every gay person, no matter how well adjusted or healthy or functioning, was considered mentally ill.
So that’s the background, and really that wasn’t so long ago that our most progressive doctors were under the assumption or were working on this theory that homosexuality was, in fact, a mental disease.
So I think conversion therapy is kind of the contemporary cousin to that belief that gay people are sick, and that they can be cured or that they need to be cured.
And certainly, you know, dozens of medical establishment organizations ranging from the AMA to youth organizations have condemned conversion therapy.
But this idea that people who are gay can be converted into not being gay is indeed still alive.
My sense is that at this point seven states have outlawed conversion therapy among minors, meaning that in the other 43 states it’s still allowed for parents to send their children, their minor children into this kind of therapy and to require that kids under 18 go through this process.
There have been studies of people who have undergone the therapy and consistently there’s this sense of finding that therapy not only doesn’t change people from being gay to straight but inflicts its own harm and trauma. And there is federal legislation being considered where there would be an national ban, which again I think is common sense.
And I hope that as we see a new generation of young people becoming more open and more accepting, and the sense of allies among teenagers and young people, I think that’s the key to ultimately ending conversion therapy.”
Angry Democrats Attack Hillary Over 2016 Book…
Date: September 11, 2017
01) Angry Democrats Attack Hillary Over 2016 Book
“Even some of Clinton’s allies have grown weary of her insistence on re-litigating the 2016 campaign at a time when the Democratic Party is looking to forge a new identity in the age of Trump.
“The best thing she could do is disappear,” said one former Clinton fundraiser and surrogate who played an active role at the convention. “She’s doing harm to all of us because of her own selfishness. Honestly, I wish she’d just shut the f— up and go away.”
Since her loss, Clinton has taken fire from both sides of the aisle for what’s seen as her refusal to acknowledge her own role in her campaign’s defeat.
She has blamed Russian hackers, sexism and former FBI Director James Comey for her defeat. But she has proven less vocal about flaws in her own campaign.
Clinton’s latest election musings have also reopened old wounds from the bitter primary fight with Sanders right as Democrats say their focus should be on finding an economic message that appeals to the Rust Belt voters who abandoned the party for Trump.”
Bernie Dismisses Hillary Clinton’s Nonsensical Attacks in ‘What Happened’ Book:
Hillary Blames Bernie For Her Election Loss & CNN Agrees:
Brendan O’Neill on Your Vote is a Hate Crime…
Date: September 11, 2017
01) Brendan O’Neill on Your Vote is a Hate Crime
“Spiked. The Hate Trap: Should we be free to hate? (11/2016)”
