zombie84

Originally posted by: Go-Mer-Tonic
I have just seen a lot of people (not here really) accuse McCallum of being a mindless yes man.

I wouldn't say that he's totally a "yes man," because I'm sure he brings his expertise to the table and offers Lucas suggestions when he thinks things can be improved. But Lucas today is a much different person than the Lucas of 1972 who first hired Gary Kurtz--that was more of a partnership, and because the two knew each other so early in life and experienced the rags-to-riches thing together, Kurtz didn't see Lucas as anything special, in fact he probably knew his faults better than anyone else and really helped Lucas where he saw him weak. McCallum however was hired under a totally different context--he was brought on when Lucas was already a legendary billionaire "genius," and his purpose literally is to make what Lucas wants to happen happen. So I suppose he's a yes man in the sense that his ultimate purpose is not to bring anything creative to the table but to simplyu carry out the tasks Lucas commands. And thats what many people feel one of the biggest problems with Lucas today is--the whole absolute power that corrupts absolutely thing. Because he's simply too powerful, he can just dispense orders. Luckily the art department at least gets pretty free reign to have their own creative input. But as far as McCallum goes, he's not there to question Lucas or give his opinions in to what will make a shot or a scene better--he's there to manage and carry out Lucas' orders. And publicly, he is the primary Lucasfilm spokesperson. These two things together contribute to the "Yes man" image he has, which i don't think is 100% accurate but certainly its not at all out in left field.



See, i don't know where you come up with this conclusion. The press crucified the film. The critics hated the film. The public was annoyed by the film. Fans hated the film. So then who the hell is left that matters?? Lucas-worshippers? 5 year olds? If Lucas made a film for five year olds then i guess he is a success--but Star Wars was not a childrens film. It was a film that was made to be enjoyed by children, but equally by adults. If he was making strictly a childrens film then why the hell would he put all that intellectual stuff about politics, about midichlorians, about prophecy, about governmental issues? The answer is that he was not making a childrens film. He was trying to make a film for kids and adults alike, a family film, like the original Star Wars--and while TPM is not a bad movie at all, i would say that if those were his intentions then he didn't know what he was doing and thats why he failed.

Just like the people who didn't agree that the original Star Wars would make any money were wrong.

Originally posted by: Go-Mer-Tonic
Yeah but the whole thing about why Luke and Leia were both powerful in the Force had to do with the fact that they were Anakin's children.

Originally posted by: Go-Mer-Tonic
See I don't see how Citizen Kane can still claim the top spot.

It almost seems like they are just repeating what others before them decided or something.

I mean it's good, but is it really the best movie ever made?

And the Graduate is better than Shindler's list?

How do they determine this list anyway?

Originally posted by: eros
The thing your forgetting is that most dvd's will look crap on big HDtv's because of the resolution of these sets. regardless of wether the dvd is anamorphic or not they will all have to be upscaled from their native resolution to fill a plasma/lcd HDtv.

You still keep claiming that you are not bashing religious people, I guess you have failed to read your own posts.

I don't have a problem with religious people per se, because a lot of them are level headed. But those proposing the earth is flat or that it is under ten thousand years old, yes I'll bash them, not because they are religious but because thats just bloody stupid.



In spite of your inability to understand this, pretty much every actual scientists believes in the big bang, and most of those are theists (out of the simple fact that most human beings are theists). How does that work? It just does, i guess. How does believing in the big bang immediately nullify god? It doesn't necessarily, because most theistic scientists don't believe in such a narrow, dogmatic religion-based god, and those that are christian don't take the Bible literally. They believe in "a god", not God (ie christ, etc.).

Sounds good to me. But I don't think we are so blissfully ignorant. You claim you do your own research and that you are well educated. I am not quite seeing this. The fact you gave the Jesus Seminar even a modicum of value shows you have no idea what it even was.

Originally posted by: Number20
Coov is right, Zombie. You are saying you aren't insulting Christians, but then you turn around and do so. You continue to say that all Christians are rural, uneducated and stupid, and the urban, intelligent, educated people are all athests because they are smart and 'know better'.

Did you even read my previous posts? I made it explicitly clear that many theists are brilliant, and that this is not a total rule, nor was i saying "all theists are idiots." In fact, none of those statements were my personal opinion, which i made very clear. I was pointing out that STATISTICALLY, theists are less educated than atheists.


I believe that the earth is approximately 6-7-maybe 8 thousand years old.

Originally posted by: Number20


I have a real problem when you say that Christians are a bunch of superstitious, uneducated people, and that everyone who 'knows better' are atheists.

As for the statements that science, specificially evolution, is superior than faith in God because science can 'prove' evolution, the big bang, etc. I say that it takes just as much faith if not more to believe in evolution than creation. Ultimately, there is no real proof of the big bang, or no explination whatsoever in where the stuff came from that exploded in the bang. Its just accepted that since it doesn't involve God, it must be what 'really happened'.

Originally posted by: theredbaron


I never said it was anything different.

My point was that in that quest to find the historical Jesus, pretty much the entire New Testament wilted away as fabricated. What they were left with when the seminar was settled was that hardly any of the acts and sayings attributed to Jesus were actually done by him, if we are to believe he existed at all. That was my point.


To say that all of these religions are 'not much different' from each other is ignorant and ridiculous. I thought you'd studied religion in some capacity. If they were so much the same, you could take a crash course in one and become an expert on them all. Looking at the Greek tragedies and comedies, it is pretty clear to me that a large cohort of the Greek people didn't even take their gods seriously, resigning them to flaws, foibles and human-like drama atop Mt. Olympus. They were the Days of Our Lives of Ancient times.

Originally posted by: C3PX
You have also spent a fair deal of words talking non sense about pink elephants and little men named Fred. Somebody here said it takes as much faith not to believe in a god as it does to believe in a god.

There's nothing faith-based about science, if we are to take that word in the same meaning as it applies to theistic belief. Science is the accumlation of observable and measureable knowledge about the natural world. It is true that our current scientific paradigms have holes in it, and also that science has been proved inaccurate--these historical inaccuraces are actually what make the scientific process so exact. Theories are refined and updated by new discoveries and knowledge. No one said that our current understanding of the universe is the end-all paradigm of knowledge, because I'm sure in 300 years it will be quite a bit more advanced based on the discoveries to be made in that time. The important part about science is that it is the most accurate description of reality that we can currently make based on what we know.



Actually, this is partially statistically true. Most religious people--and the highestly religious people--come from rural areas, areas which are not at all as eductaed as the urban areas. By the same token, hardly any atheists come from rural areas--how many atheists have you met in rural small towns? Not very many. Conversely, most atheists can be found in metropolitan areas, areas which are more educated than the rural counterparts. Thus, in areas where education is the lowest, supernatural belief is the highest. There have actually been studies done on this, although i am admit i cannot at the moment recall the official name of the inquiry. But basically, the findings was that as education increases, belief in the supernatural decreases. That, to me, seems like a logical following. Obviously though it doesn't apply to everyone--there are tons of brilliant people who are also highly religious. But, preportionally, atheists are much more intelligent than religious people. Theres also a study done recently that suggests that religious people may be happier than non-religious people; i guess that confirms the old expression that ignorance is bliss.

Anyway, I am not really wishing to make a fight, it is just annoying how you openly insult people who believe in God. You believe what you will, I have plenty of atheist friends and I wouldn't hold it against you. But you really shouldn't belittle people just because they believe differently than you. It is good to see things from more than one point of view, and it can be a great insight to have friends with an extremely different world view than yourself. It helps you understand the world better. Also, don't worry, progress of society won't be impeded by religious people. It has not been and it won't be. Also I am willing to bet that religious people have made as many contributions to society over the history of the world as atheists have been. I would love to see an example of them holding back the progression of society today.

Originally posted by: Coov
If there was no God, then religion would be simple.

That's like saying "if a human being wrote Star Wars then the story would be simple" or "if a human being wrote Hamlet then the story would be simple." Those two examples and religion are simple in a lot of ways but filled with complex subtlies and intricate weaving of themes and concepts. "If human beings created government then politics would be simple." Yeah, sure.



That is such a simplistic and inaccurate description of the scientific principle of the big bang that you have provided a prime example of the manipulation of religion to provide an easy and "logical" answer. Because you can't really even sum up such complex scientific principles in a mere sentence.

Through the reality of Gods inevitability, man has really messed things up. Religion is merely mans attempt to reach God (even to the point of manipulating God to be who He is not.)

Originally posted by: theredbaron

I didn't say that the burden of proof lies with you and other atheists to disprove God's existence, I said that the burden of proof lies with you to prove that all religions are bullshit. There is a difference. And you really haven't produced any hard evidence. It is hearsay, because all you've mentioned is basically 'a bunch of guys at some conference sometime all of a sudden realised that religion was bullshit'. That is really all you've said - no names, no sources, no quotes, no comparison of texts to suggest how they may have unanimously come to this conclusion. The definition of that, my friend, is hearsay.

Well, with regards to the Jesus Seminar you can verify and research that yourself since i have included a reputable, verifiable and highly reliable source that is well known to serious scholars of the New Testament.

As for "all religion is BS"--the human origins of every religion are clear and well known by scholars. Everyone on the planet accepts that the Greek religions and the Nordic religions and the Egyptian religions and the Roman religions, for example, are all bullshit--simply because they are seen as "unbelievable" and "impossible" "myths" of ancient lore that were made up to explain natural phenomena not understood by primitive man. But what is the difference between these and the more "modern" religions like Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism? Not much. Only the social entrenchment, much like how a Roman living in AD 50 would have accepted the cult of Jupiter as a valid establishment in the same way that an American accepts the cult of Christ as a valid establishment.
The supposedly unique thing that seperates modern religions from "primitive" "false" ones like the Roman or Greek ones is the illusion of a historical basis. Firstly this is not unique--in attempts to rectify ones religion as the "true" one, many have fabricated evidence and claimed historical places as a means of grounding their myths in reality. Heracles' and Mithras birthplace was claimed to be found by the Greeks and Persians, and all sorts of similarly wild means have been used ad nauseum by various cults and sects of religions. But the fact is that every supposed historical reference to a deity of modern religions has been uncovered to be a forgery. In the case of Jesus there are a handful of early first century references that have been upheld by some but that have been proven through historical research to be false. Not one single actual reference remains. The most recent one was the "James brother of Jesus" bone box that was discovered to be a fraud.
But getting back to my initial point about people dismissing Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Persian and other ancient myths as "myths" but then inexplicitly accepting the exact same things in modern "religion"--if Roman and Egyptian mythology is accepted as "false", for instance, then the lineage of modern religions in origin to these "false" myths would therefore render them false as well. Because when you actual study it that is what happens--one religions flows into and borrows from the next. In fact, there is a term invented just for this occurance--syncretism. Ideas and beliefs don't just pop up overnight, the way they would had some revolutionary deity come down to earth from heaven and astounded the world--the develop slowly and naturally as part of the socio-political system of their birth. In the case of Christianity, it was mainly borne from the Platonic "Son of Man" cults that were overtaking the middle east and parts of Rome in the first century in response to the chaos uprooting the world at the time. These eventually gave rise to Paul and his Messianic Son of Man, whom was later called the Christ, which then melded with the savior passions of the Mystery Cults that Rome was infused with. These types of beliefs were not unique or new--they were the prominent philosophies of the region. This confounded early scholars who began with the assumption that Christ was a real person--they discovered that certain Christ cults were springing up randomly in different regions with wildly different belief systems. It was because those followers were simply adopting the philosophy of the Platonic Christ cults on their own, and this was a common occurance to simply adopt religious belief in those times because polytheism allowed multiple gods to co-exist together. It wasn't until the second and third centuries that these beliefs became organized together after an ananymous author combined them and committed them to paper in the form of a document called the Gospel of Mark, which then was copied and transformed by various other authors and which formed the Christian Church; there were so many different local variations on the Christ myth that a council was created to select which ones were to be considered part of the canononical mythology (the Council of Nicaea) after the Church gained the authority fo Rome due to Emperor Constantine's conversion. The critics of Christianity were then silenced by death--because everyone from the Mystery Cults knew that Christianity was just another Mystery Cult, but Christians who by that point were being born over a hundred years after the supposed death of their savior, began believing that their myth was historical because the Gospel of Mark document placed the Son of Man/Sacred King passion in an earthly setting. This is why most forged historical records stem from this period.

Islam of course is an offshoot of Christianity in the same way that Christianity is an offshoot of the Platonic Christ cult and Mystery Cults. Buddhism and Hinduism are even more ancient and basically come from the same source that ancient Egyptian mythology did--in fact, many still debate as to whether Hinduism fed into Egyptian myth or Egyptian myth fed into Hinduism. Likely it was a back and forth process. But if the myths of Osiris and Horus and Ra are considered "false" and "mythical"--wouldn't that make Hinduism and Buddhism the same. What do we have that disproves the glorious Osiris or ominipotent all seeing eye of Ra as false deities? None, really, if you are looking for some kind of objective proof, some type of "confessional" by an Egyptian priest; but a search for such a document would be futile because that isn't even the nature with which mythology is created.



Universiality between philosophy, yes--most humans have a basic underlying philosophy and way of life that is similar, and many disconnected civilizations arrive at similar conclusions. Hell, the Ten Commandments is identical to the Code of Hammurabi, a secular code of conduct from many thousands of years prior that had such universal tenates as "thous shalt not kill", etc.

At the end of the day, we're all placing our faith in something.

Originally posted by: C3PX
Actually, I was thinking of writing something to the same effect, but decided against it. You seem quite confident that there is no chance of a God existing and anyone who thinks differently is a moron. I am of the belief that there is no way to 100% prove the existence or non existence of a God.

This then leaves us with the belief that there must not be one. You must believe in a negative until a positive is proven. There is no way of proving that an invisible, undetectable leprachan named Fred secretly controls the universe--and who are we to say its impossible? But there is no way of proving or disproving it either way. Therefore we must accept that, until it is proven positive, we must assume the negative. This is called burden of proof. Its why religious wackos like the scientologists are considered idiots.



That depends on your definition of god, an often overlooked aspect. Is god supernatural? Does he submit to natural law? Or is he "above" such things, being more of a traditional "magical" type deity? If he is the latter then it would indeed be impossible to prove such a thing--god would be supernatural, as in not part of the natural universe, in which case science no longer applies. If god exists in the natural universe then he would be provable but also not omipotent since he would be regulated by the same laws of physics that we are and hence not fit many peoples defintion of god.

Only a fool decides the answer is no without really thinking about it and studying it on his own (which means not just believing it because our parents, teachers, or other influentual people in our lives thought this way). In the same way I think it can be foolish to believe in god for these same reasons.

Originally posted by: theredbaron


Zombie, I think you're an alright kind of fella, but here you are pretty much forcing atheism down our throats. You're practically talking down to all non-atheists without any real evidence to back up your claims. If all religions are unequivocally bullshit and it can be proven conclusively, then how is it that we are even discussing religion in this very thread? I'm not saying that the burden of proof lies with the atheists when it comes to the existence of God, but if you claim that all religion is bullshit, then the burden of proof lies with you, and that requires more than just generalities and hearsay.

Originally posted by: auximenies


Okay. So in Nov. '78 only "Ep4" became a reality but not the specific ANH title? Am I reading you right?