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Explain how dreams can give you part of the correct sequence. How many numbers do you dream? Did you dream some, most, all or any of the numbers that were part of the winningish sequence? How many non-winning numbers did you dream? How many tickets did you buy? What happens if you dream more numbers than you are allowed to pick? How do you know what you are dreaming is meant to be lottery numbers? When was the last time you won? Have you any explanation as to why you get the dreams? Could it be part of a plan to make you rich to stop you getting into heaven? Can you offer any evidence that any of your story is true? Can you dream some winning numbers (I'll take 3 out of 6) for the UK Lotto game to be drawn on Saturday? If that works I'll put all the winnings on the numbers you pick for Wednesday and you can have half, for no outlay. If that isn't how it works please explain how you know. -- Martin Willett http://mwillett.org
How can you explain how you were given some correct numbers but not all of them? How can you explain why this came to you in dreams rather than in any other way? What evidence have you got of your premonitions? Please bear in mind that the word of somebody who claims to have had premonitions is worth less than the word of somebody who doesn't make absurd and impossible claims. Evidence is required. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What evidence have you got that you have ever won a significant lottery prize? If you posted premonitions online you should be able to show me evidence. A failure to provide such evidence will show you to be an unreliable witness, even for uncontroversial claims, which these are not. Of course you don't have to provide me with evidence. If you don't I will simply conclude you are a deluded individual or an ineffectual charlatan. The scientific method is not difficult and it is not a secret. You can easily teach yourself what is required to be a reliable and credible witness. A journal is lousy evidence, faking a journal requires no great effort or subtlety. If you want to become credible you should send a copy of your journal to somebody else as soon as you write it, and that person has to be a scientist or a sceptic not a believer in whatever you call your "gift" or power. How do you know that people cannot receive unless they believe? How long have you not believed? Explain the source of this "knowledge". And don't try the remember trick on me again, you can't remind me of something new and alien as if it was something I have known all along and accepted previously for a reason you don't care to go into. If you don't want to be doubted don't make absurd claims without evidence. Faith is not a good thing, it is the source of evil in this world. No doubter ever blew himself up for a cause. Evil acts require faith and certainty: goodness, mercy, love and compassion doesn't. Ever. -- http://mwillett.org
What a surprise: no proof and that's my fault for not believing. You seem just the same as all the other religious nutcases out there trying to make people believe in absurdities as if that was a good thing. Of course I have won things in my life. I have won holidays, a bottle of whisky and some small cash prizes. The idea that attitude determines who wins is as ridiculous as suggesting that information is sent backwards through time to people's dreams. Attitude may determine how people respond to winning and how much of a win counts as something special. If no people bought tickets, just machines, there would still be winners and losers and no mind over matter explanation for apparent patterns in winning and losing would be necessary or possible. You have still provided no evidence at all of anything remotely unusual ever happening and yet you expect me to give up rational thinking. You have to be out of your mind. I would rather be poor and right than rich and have my brain up my arse. Do you want me to believe you or do you enjoy feeling superior for holding onto your absurd beliefs? -- http://mwillett.org
If you don't like my opinions don't read them. Move on. -- Martin Willett http://mwillett.org
No reply I see. Also no answer to any of the points I made in my article. Just the usual claptrap about racism and the Nazis. I have never had any gypsies square up to the points I actually make, they always try to attack their preferred racist strawman. Are you incapable of addressing my points? Do you just want to silence all comment with the one-size-fits-all gag of racism and holocaust shroud-waving? -- Martin Willett http://mwillett.org
Have you read the article yourself? I get the impression that you haven't, that somebody has told you about it. I wrote the article, therefore it is my point. Not yours. Address my point or don't bother to address me. You have no right to expect me to stop expressing my own opinion on my own website. The things I write on my website are my opinions, some of them strongly held, some of then rather speculative. I don't know if my opinion is correct, I want to improve it, but that can only be done by debating it. You seem to be telling me that my opinion does not accord with the opinions and views you wish to see disseminated and therefore I should be silenced and remove all records of ever having such thoughts. That isn't debate, that is censorship and hounding. To conduct a debate you have to do more than fire off a group of links. I suggest you might like to consider reading the article and addressing the points within it rather than the points you imagine are in it, or worse, that you imagine are behind it. Forget about proving that gypsies are a persecuted ethnic minority because I have accepted that completely and it does not change anything. Being persecuted does not give any individual or group any rights. Wallowing in the horrors of the holocaust or recounting tales of persecution and misunderstanding in the past has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the point in hand. That point is: does a settled community have any obligations at all to a community of travellers who travel within the borders they secure and police? My answer to that is no. My family has always been nomadic is of no stronger significance for public policy than saying your family has always been robber-barons, Viking raiders, pickpockets, prostitutes, cattle rustlers, coal miners, longbowmen, bear baiters, bare-knuckle prize-fighters, upland sheep farmers or has been driving down that street both ways every day since 1925. In a country which does not recognise race as a legitimate grounds for discrimination how can race be a legitimate grounds for granting extra rights? To me race is totally irrelevant in this matter. To my mind there is no good reason why any country or local authority could not or should not forbid nomadism within its territory if it (the majority) chooses to do so and that such a decision is probably right in respect to the part of England that I live in. That is the point. You have not addressed it, you have merely tried to stop me even getting to that point by accusing me of being a no-nothing racist. How do gypsies and travellers acquire the right to veto the wishes of a particular community, province or country? The answer seems to be down to some wrong-headed bits of national, European and international law. Laws can be changed, that is what politicians are for. My article was designed to get people asking the crucial questions and not just accept the standard received opinions, either wishy-washy self-loathing liberal or xenophobic-conservative. Do not equate a lack of agreement with a lack of knowledge or a lack of familiarity with arguments which you (from your position of faith in the rightness of your righteous cause) trust to be compelling. I have knowledge, and it leads me to an alternative conclusion. So far nobody has ever debated with me on the issue in hand, when gypsies and their apologists contact me they indulge in incoherent rants, accusations of racism and demands that I read something and get wise to the truth. That isn't debate, it isn't polite and it isn't going to work on me. Your replies are of course going to be published on my website. How foolish you look is entirely down to how you decide to respond. -- Martin Willett http://mwillett.org
There's no hypocrisy. You are a freak attracted to freaks because they are freaks. I am attracted to women. -- Martin Willett http://mwillett.org
The difference between you and I is that I see my wife as a wonderful person who happens to be obese. Whereas you only take notice of her because she is fat. If my wife lost half her weight, or more, I would find her attractive because she is a wonderful person. I suspect you would see her as some kind of traitor to your cause. I will have nothing to do with people who promote extreme fatness as a good thing or something sexy. Being extremely overweight is unhealthy. Unhealthy is not attractive. Finding unhealthy fatness attractive is dysfunctional and perverse. You might think I am being excessively rude to you and you have good cause to. For too long I have allowed people to misrepresent my views. I am not in favour of obesity. I am a fat man with a fat wife but I don't see either of those things as anything to celebrate. The point I am trying to make is that being fat does not make a good person bad or an attractive person ugly. But being fat does not make a plain-faced woman with a ropey character into some kind of a goddess requiring worship. It is totally wrong to say that very heavy women can be healthy. Show me any 300lb women in their eighties who can ride a bicycle. You would be hard pressed to show me any 300lb women who could ride a bicycle or who were in their eighties let alone both. I am not down on pornography. I use it. But I don't look for pictures of obese women. Anybody who who pays for pornography needs to improve their masturbation techniques. I haven't paid for any pornography on the internet and I don't often look at the previews for sites with big women very much because few of them are attractive, most of them abuse their models and most of the images of really big women are not attractive to me. When I first sat down to write the article I intended to discus tall and strong women, that is why I did not use the word fat in the title. My views represent my views. I will not have people claim me to represent their cause and then criticize me for expressing their views incorrectly. If you don't agree with me then fine, I am am one of millions of people who don't agree with you, and I am happy about that. -- Martin Willett http://mwillett.org
You think those women in the Norman Lindsay paintings are unhealthy? I don't. Read the whole thing. My opinions do not correspond to the stereotypes my readers want to take them to be. -- Martin Willett http://mwillett.org
When did Tacitus write? When did Josephus write? -- Martin Willett http://mwillett.org
The stuff about emperors shows seriously warped thinking. Of course emperors existed, we have evidence of their lives, material written while they were alive that did not know the end of their story. We don't have this for Jesus, from anybody. Nobody wrote a word about Jesus until the story was over. Nobody, not even Christians, wrote a word about the life of Jesus until there had been decades of early Christianity. No non-Christian who wrote about Jesus was alive at the time Jesus was meant to have been alive. Why wouldn't Josephus mention Pilate? Why would Christians invent a provably bogus figure as part of a story they wanted to be believed as history? The story "yesterday a green duck flew down in a flying saucer and spoke to Bill Cosby" is not strengthened in any way by the fact that Bill Cosby is real and was alive yesterday. Yes, Pilate was real, and he did not leave us any accounts of Jesus. The matter in hand is the historicity of Jesus. We know that large parts of the story were made up to make it appear that prophesies had been fulfilled (any teenager can understand this unless they have been brainwashed) and other parts of the gospel stories are flatly contradictory so we have to make a decision on just how much of the story is true. Why not none? It is not unheard of for people to invent characters and tell myths about them. History is littered with mythical leaders who might not ever have lived, especially rebel leaders. There is nothing at all unusual about the supposed teachings and acts of Jesus. Ever since Alexander the Great there had been the myth of the son of a god walking the Earth and doing amazing things. All of these sons of gods were mythical. In addition there were real travelling teachers and miracle workers about whom mythic stories had been woven. And then there is Jesus, who could well be a bit of both. -- Martin Willett http://mwillett.org
If every point you make is accepted and given the benefit of the doubt there is no point in having a debate, we might as well agree that we are both right and end it there. That point did show signs of warped thinking. Pointing out logical flaws in your argument is not to destroy your status as a person. If you want to be that precious you might as well stop. Nobody doubts the existence of emperors, some of whom have been recorded by multiple historians from different sources and perspectives. Why would them claiming to be gods make any difference to the way their existence was viewed? We know there was a Roman Empire, there is massive evidence for it so it follows there were emperors. We expect to find emperors. We do find them. The Christian church exists. From that we can deduce there must have been a Christian cult. Religions cannot spring fully formed from thin air, churches start as cults. We know how cults form because, just as we can understand ancient volcanoes by looking at modern volcanoes we can look at modern day and recent historical cults and see the very same processes at work. There is no such thing as the age of volcanoes and there is no such thing as biblical times. There only ever is here and now. In the here and now gods don't walk the Earth, charlatans do. Charlatans like David Koresh, L Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith and various Muslim Mahdi pretenders. Expecting human nature in the past in a foreign country bathed in the light of the True God to be different from human nature at other times and places is childish wishful thinking. The founder of Christianity is not Jesus, it is Paul. The first words written about Jesus are written by Paul, a man who never met the living Jesus. Read his words. As you do ask yourself if it is a man like any other man who he is describing or a hero who lived in a world of heroes, on a higher plane. The lack of curiosity about Jesus the man is very notable. Here was a man who never met the man he is following and yet he leads a church full of people who apparently did know Jesus the man, some of whom who followed him around for the best part of three years, and including his mother and brother, and some of the five thousand people who saw the brought-back-from-the-dead Jesus and yet Paul is seen as the leading Christian authority. Please explain how you can find that this makes sense. I am not convinced that Jesus was a man or totally mythical. The church has dominated intellectual life for so long nobody can be sure of their ground any more. Lies have been layered on lies. Hardly anything remotely resembling an original text exists any longer despite the value that such material must have. Just think how valuable the original manuscript of any of the gospels would be, laying aside historical value, simply as an object such a thing would be, weight for weight, the most valuable matter in the human world. And yet somebody saw to it that all those original documents were destroyed utterly. None of the books of the bible exists in the form of a definitive manuscript. And yet Jews and many others of a religious-obsessive bent go to the extent of not putting an O in the middle of the name of their (annoyingly eponymous) god in case the piece of paper it appears on is defiled or destroyed. That doesn't even begin to add up, does it? -- Martin Willett
Atheists don't believe in gods. That includes your god. It follows therefore that atheists do not believe any book contains the inspired words of any god. Therefore your quotation from the Bible is of no more significance to me than an incoherent daub on a wall or the motto out of a fortune cookie. Content counts, not authorship. I am not a fool and your words and the words of your old book cannot make me a fool. Go back to school and learn to write and to reason. |
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