Disqus - Latest Comments for zachsmind

Re: Finally answered! Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

ZachsMind — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 17:30:33 -0000

The "proto-chicken" has a name: Wild Red Junglefowl. Gallus Gallus. And to a significantly lesser extent the Gallus Sonneratii aka Wild Grey Junglefowl. These are wild birds which are the genetic ancestors of the modern day domesticated chicken. Kinda like how wild wolves are the predecessors of modern domesticated dogs. So the answer to which came first the chicken or the egg is really the Wild Red Junglefowl. To be fair tho, the modern wolf and junglefowl have also evolved, so technically its more like they share a common ancestor, like how we humans didn't evolve from apes so much as we share a common ancestor with modern apes, and we are apes. Modern domestic chickens are technically still "Gallus." They're Junglefowl that left the jungle. Cityfowl, maybe?

Re: Mississippi Man Who Allegedly Shot and Killed 8 People Says God Will Forgive Him

ZachsMind — Sun, 28 May 2017 13:16:50 -0000

Said he "ran out of bullets" I wouldn't call this cowardice so much as he didn't plan ahead well. Rash and impulsive. Also probably not great at math.

Re: Mississippi Man Who Allegedly Shot and Killed 8 People Says God Will Forgive Him

ZachsMind — Sun, 28 May 2017 13:15:21 -0000

Muslims "sin" as much as any of us. Abrahamics has a a bad after taste no matter which flavor is advertised.

Re: Mississippi Man Who Allegedly Shot and Killed 8 People Says God Will Forgive Him

ZachsMind — Sun, 28 May 2017 13:12:39 -0000

Blind faith doesn't have to make sense. That's why it's so popular.
Religion sells itself as an all purpose tool, like a Swiss army knife,
but what you get when you unwrap it is essentially a metaphorical
hammer.

Re: Bad Atheist Arguments: “Atheists Have No Use for Faith”

ZachsMind — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 19:57:30 -0000

I shut down the concept of faith or belief when I argue with believers by saying I accept things provisionally given sufficient evidence. Or heck, sometimes just cuz i feel like it.

They ask, "Well then how can you know?" I don't know. That's the beauty of it. I could be wrong about how I feel about gravity, but it works the way it works regardless of my faith in it. The argument isn't "well you can't do anything without faith." The argument is "why do you believe faith is required to do anything?"

There's no evidence supporting that. I have been functioning fine since March 2009 when I stopped thinking in terms of belief and faith. They're not tangible concrete things. They're intangible, abstract, man made concepts and we don't need them. Faith doesn't even really exist in the natural world. We made it up. The laws of physics only exist as manmade constructs too. They are not what runs the universe. Sciences are what we call our perception of how the universe works, but physics and chemistry and molecular biology worked for ages before we started trying to figure it out.

Like the bible, the laws of physics are just man made constructs we use to better understand our universe. The difference between Abrahamic dogma and scientific papers is that when we get something wrong in scientific papers, we can use an eraser. Or we can update the paper with a new edition. Can't do that with bibles or qurans. At least not without one group of people insisting that's sacrilege, and other groups forming entirely new religions. Like when Jesus' followers started Christianity, or Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation. Or when one baptist church refuses to allow dancing, so youngsters go across down to some new church that offers live Christian rock bands. And on and on. Change happens, but it's a lot slower when belief is in the mix, and it's so unnecessary.

Ideas are versatile and pliable. Once people turn ideas into beliefs, it's trickier to change them. Suddenly there's a challenge to one's "faith." Remove faith from the equation, and you can change your mind with new information at the drop of a hat. So can everyone else. So long as the new data is verifiable and rational, there's no harm done.

Though sometimes I prefer to suspend my disbelief for awhile so I can imagine a TARDIS is real or a Gorilla City can happen or a Victorian England in which Sherlock Holmes was real. Cuz I feel like it. I don't need faith to do that either.

Re: New Video: Agnostic or Atheist? You Can’t Be Both!!

ZachsMind — Sun, 11 Dec 2016 23:55:20 -0000

I am an Abrahamic gnostic atheist. I treated the bible and quran and other Abrahamic texts like an hypothesis, and compared it to what science already knows about the universe. The god described in Abrahamic texts cannot possibly exist in this universe. I know this. Therefore I do not believe in the Abrahamic god.

I am a nonAbrahamic agnostic atheist. Maybe there is maybe there isn't. I see no evidence supporting this nonAbrahamic god, partially cuz it's not well enough defined to investigate. However, I still don't believe in such a god as I find it highly unlikely, given what we currently know about the universe through science.

Now here's the kicker. If you can describe this god well enough to develop an hypothesis, then we can investigate it, compare that god concept to scientific findings of the universe as we know it, and determine from there if such a god is viable. However, I probably still wouldn't believe it's a god. That word has such bad connotations. It's like if someone found a horse that had a horn sticking out of its head, I probably would not jump to the conclusion that it's a unicorn, cuz unicorns also have mystical connotations like they hang out with female virgin females and they can vomit rainbows and their horn has magical properties. I'd just call it a horse with a horn on its head until further investigation by scientific minded people was established and concluded.

So I doubt I will ever admit to there being a god, even if and when mankind discovers something tangible that a majority of human beings would call a god.

Re: ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ Season 4: Everything You Need to Remember Before the Premiere

ZachsMind — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 12:58:07 -0000

This article is incorrect. I do not recall Daisy referring to herself as Quake before this new season. I was listening for it and I do not recall her going by Quake in season two until the last few minutes of the finale. It's the name the media has given her now that she's gone rogue, but up until then it was either Skye, Daisy, or "Tremors" and that was just Mack. If anyone can cite evidence to the contrary I'm all ears.

Re: Please Stop Sharing Links to These Sites

ZachsMind — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 14:07:26 -0000

I'm guilty of doing this on occasion, but I don't take myself or any of this very seriously. I appear to be liberal by default, but I'm still looking for something better than "left, right, centrist" etc

Re: ‘A Star Is Born’ Gets the Greenlight with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga

ZachsMind — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 19:11:32 -0000

If a film script was meant to be remade it's this one. It's actually about twenty years overdue. Fourth time's the charm, eh? In today's Hollywood that seems stuck in a rut of repeating itself, A Star Is Born represents what these "remakes" really should be. The story is what's important, and the characters that make the story. It's not the stars playing the characters that ultimately matter. If you tell a good story, and tell that story well, you could tell the same story twenty times and people will come back for more. However, you can't just use the franchise name and some star power, and expect name recognition alone to make audiences happy. After you get them in the seats with the name recognition, you still have to put on a good show. Here's hoping Cooper and Gaga can put on a good show.

Re: ‘Supergirl': 10 Essential Episodes to Watch Before Season 2

ZachsMind — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 10:35:10 -0000

Sorry Craig Byrne and whoever else authorized this approach for a Supergirl article, but all this demonstrates that you can't boil Supergirl season one into even half the episodes. For example you can't really appreciate "Strange Visitor" without experiencing "Childish Things." Yes it's a corny show and the mainstream doesn't have the patience to sit through it all, but it's all necessary to experience or you miss the point of Kara's journey. The cast and crew of this series attempted a daunting task while managing great pressures and complicated obstacles. I'm hoping with CBS out of the way the next season will not feel so burdened, but the move to CW may be swallowing the spider to catch the fly.

Re: Collider Nightmares is Coming! Help Us Pick a Theme Song for Our New Horror Show

ZachsMind — Sat, 04 Jun 2016 21:33:40 -0000

I would like to unvote. I didn't bother to read the directions and clicked on Option One expecting to hear the tunes. The video is 26 minutes long. I'm trying to multitask here.

Re: Ray Comfort’s Plan to Evangelize to Atheists at the Reason Rally Has Been Thwarted

ZachsMind — Sat, 28 May 2016 20:06:26 -0000

I like Subway. Good sammich.

Re: Requiem for ‘Castle:’ How the Fans Had to Kill the Thing They Love

ZachsMind — Tue, 17 May 2016 23:14:11 -0000

Thank you for the eulogy.

I guess a spinoff series featuring Ryan and Esposito is out of the question?

Re: ‘Captain America: Civil War’ Made Some of the Same Mistakes as ‘Batman v Superman’—It Just Made Them Less Obvious

ZachsMind — Tue, 17 May 2016 22:50:36 -0000

Growing up, I was a diehard DC fan. Dial H For Hero. Teen Titans. Firestorm. Sandman. Swamp Thing. DC was very me at the time, and I related to it in a way I couldn't explain. My friends were Marvel fans. I felt alone in that argument. Except for Nightcrawler and Kitty Pryde, I didn't really see much in the mutant world that appealed to me. I didn't understand what others saw in Marvel and I couldn't get them to understand what I liked about DC. That was a long time ago. When it comes to TV in more recent years I'm still in support of DC. I also like what Marvel's doing. I don't objectively see a need to pick one team and blindly defend it while berating the perceived opponent. That was childish when I was a child and it still is.

I'm talking about the movies here. Today Marvel movies are entertainment, and DC movies are an embarrassment. I was ashamed to be a DC fan even as the Christopher Nolan films were gaining traction. Seems the more popular DC movies get, the less I enjoy them. My Batman is a thinker. He's a detective. Yes he uses violence when necessary, but he's also always the smartest man in the room. He doesn't grab someone by the scruff of the neck and shout almost unintelligibly "TELL ME WHERE THEY ARE!" or whatever. It's shameful. Batman wouldn't need to interrogate you. He could figure out where you'd been by the mud on your boots and the receipts in your pocket. He could knock a guy out and then learn more from his unconscious body than a shouting match would ever accomplish.

My Superman is the soul of a boy scout in the body of a god. Christopher Reeve got it right even when everything else around him got it wrong. This ain't that hard to pull off and make entertaining for a couple hours. It's really not that tricky.

You can compare the stories of BvS and CACW all you want. Yes there are many similarities in plot and theme and genre. Both stories are reactions to fan criticism. The bottom line is Marvel has a game plan and a vision. The stories they are telling have more weight and while not following the source material, they are being true to it. DC pays lip service to the source material but focuses more on what they think will sell. Bells and whistles sell in the short term, but already from a storytelling perspective I can see where DC is writing themselves into corners with the clumsy introductions of Cyborg, Aquaman and Flash. They're dancing as fast as they can but they are not pacing themselves and have no clue what kind of song the next dance is gonna be.

I felt ripped off when "Martha" became a deal in the finale of BvS but when Tony watched the footage of (Manchurian Candidate) Bucky killing his folks in cold blood, my heart sank. I bought it. It was obviously just as dorky and corny a plot device, but Tony Stark has always been established to be a bit of a hypocrite, so it made perfect sense. All his attempts to go along with registration and being policed just went out the window cuz that guy killed his mom. What sells in the long term is getting your characters right.

Marvel knows what will sell is getting Peter Parker right. He's always been a kid from Queens. He should sound like a kid from Queens. Clark Kent's a farm boy from Kansas. Did anyone think to wonder if maybe he'd sound just a little like a farm boy from Kansas? Not a dumb hick, but just a little rural charm? Christopher Reeve had it. This Carvill guy, I don't know where he's from, but I don't believe it's Kansas and I don't believe it's Krypton.

I don't believe DC anymore. Not their movies. The TV shows are more like the silly dorky fun I remember in the pages of comics in my youth. For some reason the DC movies lose all of that and replace it with serious darkness and nobody's having fun being who they are. Grant Gustin's Flash gets sad and upset sometimes but he still relishes being who he is. He enjoys his place in the multiverse. Compare that to Ben Affleck's Batman who (while far superior to Bale in the role no doubt) doesn't seem to enjoy where he's been or where he's going, and if he ever believed in his mission and in justice, he's lost it along the way. The DC movies need to learn from its TV counterparts, but instead it seems to want to stay as far apart as possible and I think that's a crime.

My inner child still wants to support DC, but the mature adult in me says Make Mine Marvel, at least until DC starts learning from their mistakes.

Re: “Hey Everyone”: Enter to Win a ‘Captain America: Civil War’ Shield—Signed by the Russo Brothers

ZachsMind — Fri, 13 May 2016 19:17:25 -0000

Sweet.

Re: ‘Supergirl’ Soars Over to the CW with a Season 2 Renewal

ZachsMind — Thu, 12 May 2016 19:21:50 -0000

They could establish in the Flarrowverse there are doppelgangers of all Supergirl characters, but the Kara Barry's Earth still doesn't know she's an alien. Somehow her powers have been suppressed, and something mysterious happened to the Clark Kent on Flash's world. Maybe he never made it to Earth. Maybe Cadmus has him and has kept him imprisoned for years. There were some clues between Barry and Kara when they met. He ran some searches on names he knew and couldn't find matches. I don't have it memorized tho. Some people and places in Barry's world don't have duplicates in Kara's and vice versa.

I just read that rumor has it Calista Flockhart will also be making the transition as well, tho I can't imagine her taking a pay cut. I have been assuming she's the most expensive piece of this series, and the drop in budget would mean she's the first thing they'd have to let go. Anyway, if she's staying on board I'm a lot less worried about this new development.

Re: Dear Fanboys Angry at Rogue One‘s “Mary Sue” …

ZachsMind — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 12:41:14 -0000

My inner child is very okay with Mary Sues taking the Death Star Plans. After all, I had two older sisters. This is the least of my concerns about the Star Wars universe.

Re: We Won't See a Russo Brothers Ghostbusters Movie After All

ZachsMind — Sun, 20 Mar 2016 23:20:08 -0000

They are not jumping the gun. If this film tanks, it's gonna ruin the franchise for the near future. Long term they'll be able to try again maybe. Depends on the fall out. Maybe this current film will do every well, in which case they may not want to make a separate continuity that will compete with this one. Perhaps it will do alright, but there will be room to explore multiple avenues, including a franchise of films that do not shy away from the continuity of the first two (yes I recommend they include the events of GB2 also if they are dead serious about getting continuity right). Perhaps this current film will do awful, and audiences will be clamoring for GhostBusters to be treated properly with more respect for its roots, and a storyline that explains what happened to the original team, whether an attempt was made for GhostBusters to go international with incorporated franchises and a remarkably different looking world today than the one the audiences left when they entered the theaters. And maybe, just maybe, this current film will be so terrible, people will realize it's just not feasible to attempt a film today that can live up to the reputation of the original, like trying to recreate Casablanca or Citizen Kane or Gone With The Wind. Sometimes you just need to leave well enough alone.

Those who would like to attempt a GB3 that continues the story, instead of starting from scratch but not really as we're seeing with this latest effort, can't really formally do anything until after we know what happens with this latest film. Whether they've cashed in their chips or are just keeping their cards close to their chest, we probably won't know until after this summer blockbuster season is over. We'll see how things look in September. I've waited this long for GB3. I can wait a little longer.

Re: Several Atheist Bloggers Are Moving to “The Orbit”

ZachsMind — Sun, 13 Mar 2016 23:07:44 -0000

Free Thought Blogs is still going? Huh. Don't think I've clicked over there in years.

Re: J.J. Abrams Explains That Rey/Leia Scene and How It Was Just Kind of a Mistake

ZachsMind — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 12:26:34 -0000

Kind of a mistake? Hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. How can you make kind of a mistake at the end? The story needed that hug. Those of us who watched all the movies expected Leia and Chewie to hug. However, if you just watch this movie. Episode seven, it made sense that Leia and Rey felt a kinship in the Force and just hugged it out. There was no connection tween Chewie and Leia in this film. No time was invested. It would have been weird if she hugged the walking carpet cuz there wasn't enough time in this ep to explore their relationship. People new to the story, watching only episode seven, woulda been weirded out. It didn't make sense. The throughput of this movie is Rey's connection to the Force. The principals of the original trilogy are only here to serve that purpose, and we the fans of this franchise are supposed to just accept that. A lot of time was used to point out the love tween Han and Leia, but not Leia and Chewie's friendship. We don't even know if they still talk, really. Han didn't come back. Rey felt close to Han IN THIS MOVIE. However, Chewie was closer to Han than Rey ever could be. This isn't just a simple mistake. JJ Abrams is passing the torch from the principals of the original trilogy to the kids in this new rebirth of the franchise. It was a tactical move storywise to pull on heartstrings and get us to forget about Chewie and concentrate on Rey. For those of us who have enjoyed Chewie's presence in all of these films, and are annoyed how he's been perpetually little more than set dressing and comic relief, it's more than just a simple mistake. However, it IS in keeping with the tradition of the franchise, cuz Leia neglected to give Chewie a medal in ep four. I think Leia's just a douche to wookiees.

Re: Does Science Disprove God? Rebutting Richard Dawkins’ Recent Claim about “Wonder”

ZachsMind — Sun, 08 Nov 2015 10:18:42 -0000

Yes. Science has proven the Abrahamic god is fiction. We have mapped the human genome, and there is evidence that the Y chromosome is an edited and truncated copy of the second proto-X chromosome. The Y derived from a predecessor of the X. This means in order for the Y to have existed, the X must have existed first. XX precedes XY. There was never a point in human existence when Adam preceded Eve. Even in an allegorical or figurative sense, the story of creation physically never could have happened as described in Abrahamic literature. The female gender preceded the male gender, and happened before homo sapiens EVOLVED. That's not a belief. That's evident. It's written in the human genome. Without Eve, the entire foundation for judeo-christian-islamic theology breaks down. Man wasn't 'created' by a god and woman was never 'created' from the man. That's not even a good figurative description of reality. It's intentionally misleading, to give men this illusion of superiority beyond the physical upper body strength thing. So faith and reason are not merely conflicting. Science has proven the Abrahamic god hypothesis wrong. Any other god hypothesis, under similar scrutiny, would need to prove its claims before it deserves any reasonable acknowledgement. Abrahamics fails The Scientific Method. Why are we even still arguing this?

Re: ‘Doctor Strange’ Set Footage Features Benedict Cumberbatch, Scott Derrickson, and Mysterious Figure

ZachsMind — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 17:14:12 -0000

This is the best news. Just this glimpse tells me we're getting Strange's origin story and it's in good hands. He looks exactly as I've imagined at this point in his journey. After the accident but before the zenith. Looks great. Looking forward to it.

Re: ‘Fantastic Four 2′: Simon Kinberg “Really Focused” on the Sequel, Reuniting the Cast

ZachsMind — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 16:40:09 -0000

is there some legal way to stop this from happening? What if enough fans sued them for psychological torment?

Re: Writer “Figuring Out” Fantastic Four Sequel

ZachsMind — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 16:04:31 -0000

FOX has repeatedly proven it can't do justice to The Fantastic Four source material (Marvel 616; not the "ultimate" fiasco), so they need to pass it on to someone who can. They won't, but they need to anyway. They have had four chances incl Roger Corman's effort (ironically the most sympathetic attempt to the source material of the bunch) and they struck out every time. The latest effort had a strong first act, but fell apart halfway through, and it was NEVER the character chemistry or action dynamic found on the printed page, or even previous efforts. FOX will continue to fail at this, cuz they make the same mistakes expecting different results. They can't use the current form. They can't reboot it yet again. FOX has no options but they will attempt it anyway cuz they're stubborn and have more money than brains. The 5th FOX FF sequel is a recipe for failure.

Re: Has Anyone Seen Kevin Smith Lately? Or: Why I Can’t Tell What’s Real Anymore

ZachsMind — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 18:46:33 -0000

"Sometimes Number One, you just have to bow to the absurd." Trust me. It's still funny. You just have to have a broader perspective on reality.