2 dead & 6 injured as teens take after hours sled ride down Winsport bobsleigh track

[Two Fivenagame]

n/m

[8 Ball]

Originally Posted by Dion

It's funny how athletes give thanks to God only when they win. You never hear them thanking God for that embarrassing loss

They do all the time, watch an SEC college game sometime.

[MBates]

http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/science_religion

There...are we all good now?

[Dion]

Originally Posted by GGG

That assumes you have free will and that you don't just make decisions based on your genetic make up and previous experiences.

Also luck plays a much larger factor in the outcome of life then you might want to believe. In this case these kids are dead because they flipped a coin and it came of heads.

For example the mere fact you are born in Canada is probably the most significant factor in the life you have. That is random chance.

At best you could argue that free will sets a range of probable outcomes that you can attempt to reach the best outcome.

More food for thought on if free will exists....

In 2002, two psychologists had a simple but brilliant idea: Instead of speculating about what might happen if people lost belief in their capacity to choose, they could run an experiment to find out. Kathleen Vohs, then at the University of Utah, and Jonathan Schooler, of the University of Pittsburgh, asked one group of participants to read a passage arguing that free will was an illusion, and another group to read a passage that was neutral on the topic. Then they subjected the members of each group to a variety of temptations and observed their behavior. Would differences in abstract philosophical beliefs influence people’s decisions?

Yes, indeed. When asked to take a math test, with cheating made easy, the group primed to see free will as illusory proved more likely to take an illicit peek at the answers. When given an opportunity to steal—to take more money than they were due from an envelope of $1 coins—those whose belief in free will had been undermined pilfered more. On a range of measures, Vohs told me, she and Schooler found that “people who are induced to believe less in free will are more likely to behave immorally.”

It seems that when people stop believing they are free agents, they stop seeing themselves as blameworthy for their actions. Consequently, they act less responsibly and give in to their baser instincts. Vohs emphasized that this result is not limited to the contrived conditions of a lab experiment. “You see the same effects with people who naturally believe more or less in free will,” she said.

What’s more, Harris argues, as ordinary people come to better understand how their brains work, many of the problems documented by Vohs and others will dissipate. Determinism, he writes in his book, does not mean “that conscious awareness and deliberative thinking serve no purpose.” Certain kinds of action require us to become conscious of a choice—to weigh arguments and appraise evidence. True, if we were put in exactly the same situation again, then 100 times out of 100 we would make the same decision, “just like rewinding a movie and playing it again.” But the act of deliberation—the wrestling with facts and emotions that we feel is essential to our nature—is nonetheless real.

The big problem, in Harris’s view, is that people often confuse determinism with fatalism. Determinism is the belief that our decisions are part of an unbreakable chain of cause and effect. Fatalism, on the other hand, is the belief that our decisions don’t really matter, because whatever is destined to happen will happen—like Oedipus’s marriage to his mother, despite his efforts to avoid that fate.

When people hear there is no free will, they wrongly become fatalistic; they think their efforts will make no difference. But this is a mistake. People are not moving toward an inevitable destiny; given a different stimulus (like a different idea about free will), they will behave differently and so have different lives. If people better understood these fine distinctions, Harris believes, the consequences of losing faith in free will would be much less negative than Vohs’s and Baumeister’s experiments suggest.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...e-will/480750/

[4X4]

So glad I read today's posts in this thread. Topic = solved.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Dion

More food for thought on if free will exists....





http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...e-will/480750/

It's like a quantum mechanics problem as soon as you try to observe free will it changes the experiment.

[Fuzz]

On free will, Stephen Hawking said it best:

“I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street.”

[Dan02]

Well obviously, it was pre determined that they would.

[monkeyman]

That's pretty crazy that they'd done it prior, and puts a little context into why they just went down with such abandoned. Still absolutely stupid and they obviously didn't understand the gate could've been closed.
I won't wade into the religious debate here, we have a thread for that.

[CliffFletcher]

I liked being an atheist better back when it was a private thing, instead of a political identity that people feel gives them a license to be contemptuous pr*cks.

[Flash Walken]

Can someone explain to me what purpose the gate serves when the run is not in use?

Why would it be deployed at all?

[getbak]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Can someone explain to me what purpose the gate serves when the run is not in use?

Why would it be deployed at all?

It's not so much a gate as it is a switch (like on a railroad). The track has a Y-shaped design. Bobsleds start at one location and lugers at another and the two tracks merge where this gate is.

It can be set in either bobsleigh or luge position to allow those racers onto the shared portion of the track.


You can see the aerial view here: https://goo.gl/maps/jPM4DU9wRmn

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by getbak

It's not so much a gate as it is a switch (like on a railroad). The track has a Y-shaped design. Bobsleds start at on location and lugers at another and the two tracks merge where this gate is.

It can be set in either bobsleigh or luge position to allow those racers onto the shared portion of the track.


You can see the aerial view here: https://goo.gl/maps/jPM4DU9wRmn

Without having followed the small details of the story, there's no chance someone knew what they were doing (as we now know they were doing it quite regularly) and switched the gate on purpose not knowing they had started going to the top and tragedy would ensure?

[cracher]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

I liked being an atheist better back when it was a private thing, instead of a political identity that people feel gives them a license to be contemptuous pr*cks.

I would somewhat agree with this.

But when guys like Mike Pence are among the most power people on the planet, I don't think it hurts to make noise.

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

I liked being an atheist better back when it was a private thing, instead of a political identity that people feel gives them a license to be contemptuous pr*cks.

I liked being an atheist better back when Xtians kept their crazy thoughts to themselves.
err wait.
Their actions with forcing their beliefs on lgbt's, abortion etc. , when it has nothing to do with them except Jesus, provokes atheists to speak out, and it's a good thing, I'm proud to do it anytime.

[polak]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

I liked being an atheist better back when it was a private thing, instead of a political identity that people feel gives them a license to be contemptuous pr*cks.

This article was pretty much entirely about how the boys religion "saved them"

[GGG]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

I liked being an atheist better back when Xtians kept their crazy thoughts to themselves.
err wait.
Their actions with forcing their beliefs on lgbt's, abortion etc. , when it has nothing to do with them except Jesus, provokes atheists to speak out, and it's a good thing, I'm proud to do it anytime.

And this makes sense when they are forcing beliefs on people and when teens who have been through a traumatic event thank good for being alive it does not make sense to speak out.

[DuffMan]

Thanking god for anything is dumb. Why did god choose to kill their friends?

[GGG]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

Thanking god for anything is dumb. Why did god choose to kill their friends?

Please reread my discussion with reaper. you can criticize people who do it but it makes you a dink.

[DuffMan]

No, it makes me logical and realistic.
Why would god kill them after they just praised him.
Why would an omnipotent, omniscient being feel a need for people to worship and praise him or her anyways?