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Topic: Rankings ... ugh

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utee94

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Re: Rankings ... ugh
« Reply #1092 on: September 22, 2023, 10:15:48 AM »
two them are not like the others. Oregon and Oklahoma State have no business ever being good, but they both have old crusty geriatric prehistoric aged bored billionaires who are super-fans and way too into their college teams being good so they've both went overboard and to the extreme as fuuuuucccch trying to buy success for their teams. At that point- just go buy an NFL team bro.

Michigan at only 15 is kinda sad. They probably have a significantly wealthier alumni base than every school ahead of them on that list except for maybe the Texas schools- and even then they're still probably pretty close. Time for them to hit up their billionaires. What are we doing here guys? F the academics, let's win some god damn football games fellas.

Some of these numbers clearly include donations to capital improvement projects-- upgrades/renovations/rebuilds of stadiums, practice fields, other infrastructure.

So if Michigan hasn't undergone a major capital improvement campaign in the last 10 years or so, there's no way they're going to rank toward the top.  A&M spent over $600M on their major stadium rebuild, UT something like $250M, and I know Oregon just spent a fortune completely redoing their lockers/weight room/practice facilities.  Don't know about the others but Oklahoma State is quite obviously T.  Boone related.

So just keep in mind, these are not donations to operational expenses, these are almost entirely donations to fund capital programs.

MikeDeTiger

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Re: Rankings ... ugh
« Reply #1093 on: September 22, 2023, 10:16:15 AM »
What I've always wondered...

Man, I'd love to kill some time with you if this is the stuff you like to think about.  You've outlined a fairly well-known dilemma, or objection.  Just processing your version quickly, it's not logically fallacious, but it is missing some pertinent info that would change things.

Unfortunately it's way too much to type.  I teach a whole class on this stuff, I can't force-fit it into several paragraphs.  I'm trying to think of a good book that covers different views of this, but off the top of my head I'm drawing a blank.  If you were interested in further reading, I'll give you a rec if I think of one.  

betarhoalphadelta

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Re: Rankings ... ugh
« Reply #1094 on: September 22, 2023, 10:57:58 AM »
Man, I'd love to kill some time with you if this is the stuff you like to think about.  You've outlined a fairly well-known dilemma, or objection.  Just processing your version quickly, it's not logically fallacious, but it is missing some pertinent info that would change things.

Unfortunately it's way too much to type.  I teach a whole class on this stuff, I can't force-fit it into several paragraphs.  I'm trying to think of a good book that covers different views of this, but off the top of my head I'm drawing a blank.  If you were interested in further reading, I'll give you a rec if I think of one. 
Don't really want to dig into it too much. Something to ponder over a case of beer, not over a message board. I was just stirring the pot to see who would get sucked in. 

I minored in philosophy and one of the classes I took was Philosophy of Religion. First half of the semester was hitting all of the logical arguments for the existence of god (incl the cosmological and teleological, not sure if the third was objective morality or something else), all of which are lacking and non-persuasive. The second half of the semester was hitting all of the logical arguments against the existence of god, all of which are lacking and non-persuasive. I don't think you can "logically" prove or disprove God. 

In essence, it's an argument I don't personally spend a lot of time on any longer (online or offline), as it ultimately ends up pointless. I don't know that I've ever seen anyone on either side "convinced" by logical argument. And I've outgrown my "angry atheist" phase, so I don't like poking religious people in the eye like so many atheists do. I just quietly go around my business. 

I spent a lot of time around that dilemma back when I took that philosophy class. At one point I thought I might have found a way out of it, but I've forgotten what it is now lol...

MikeDeTiger

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Re: Rankings ... ugh
« Reply #1095 on: September 22, 2023, 11:33:28 AM »
So an argument isn't evidence.  Evidence is evidence.  I know, I know, it sounds like I'm throwing your big, lost post out the window, but I'm really not.
Okay, so the universe started, and the cosmological argument suggests something started it.  But believers like to leap to someONE, which is B.S.  But even positing a creator for it all isn't evidence.  WHAT creator?  Don't know?  Not evidence.

You seem to be confused on what "evidence" is.  You're using the word evidence but asking for a decision on it  That's not what's offered, and that's not the basis for either side.  Similar to a court case, evidence is presented, and the evidence doesn't say anything.  People who judge the evidence based on their best logical thinking and extrapolations say something.....they judge evidence and draw a conclusion.  The evidence is just the evidence.  You frequently get two different people looking at the same evidence in a criminal trial who draw two different conclusions.  Why?  The evidence was the same.  In a court case, evidence should suggest something beyond reasonable doubt, but it's not proof of something.  In the case of the cosmological argument, no one is leaping.....not either side.  They are both looking at the evidence and then drawing their best conclusion about how to best explain the evidence.  You characterize believers as "leaping" but this isn't the case at all, and either you're unfamiliar with their claims--I didn't outline their claims, only their conclusions, and I don't believe you've ever taken the time to examine their reasons--or you just reject them out of hand.  Atheists are also drawing conclusions from the same evidence, but also like the theists, what they are NOT doing is making something up in a leap from evidence to conclusion.  They're trying to best explain the exact same evidence.  If you don't understand how any of it counts as evidence, well, it means you have never properly engaged in the long history of literature about the matter.  
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Teleological argument?  Sorry, but that one is embarrassing.  See:  puddle analogy.  Of course this world seems designed, we exist in it.  The teleological argument treats the universe like a snapshot and ignores the billions of years of primordial hot garbage.  Yes,  in the past 100 years, things seem so convenient for us.  As if the creators of this sidewalk made a shallow lull so our wet puddles asses fit right in. 
You're better than this one.

Now, unfortunately, you have really demonstrated your unfamiliarity with the subject matter.  You've hit on a very common objection, but not a good one, and pop-level atheists who try to use it do not fare well in debates and their writings are widely rejected by serious philosophers of the subject....even the atheist ones.  I'm not going to say something like "you're better than that" because again, I am positive you aren't even close to as familiar with these subjects as I am.  I do wish one day you'd really examine the best arguments for both sides rather than just rejecting things out of hand.  Not everything that seems a no-brainer actually is.  You don't know what you don't know.  I think you probably have no idea the amount of study, work, debates, and critical thinking that has gone on for centuries about this stuff.  Which is a shame.....you might enjoy it.  Without you knowing any more about it than you do, I realize I'm not giving you much here other than a summary of where the two sides stand and not offering any of the substantive content that accounts for why the two main sides think what they think, and that's because, well, it's just way too much to type.  I'll try to drop a quick arrow in the dirt and say that the crux of the problem with what you've said here is there's an implicit assumption that life could be anything.  We're here, so of course we fit in this universe.  Meaning some other kind of life could've/would've evolved in another universe.  The problem here is two-fold.  From a physics perspective, I don't think you understand the fine-tuning of the physical constants, just to use one area among, many, many, many.  Most universes would not permit matter as we know it and it's mind-bogglingly unlikely that this one does.  So how does some other life evolve in a world without elements?  Most people recognize that as a problem.  Secondly, from a biological perspective, it needs to be shown that something other than carbon-based life is possible, and the experiments dealing with other elements as a basis for life have not yielded promising results.  The assumption that whatever chemicals a universe does allow us will result in "life," let alone advanced life, is not one that can be supported from what is currently known about what's required for biological life.  As far as "we" know....it was this or bust.  Consider a quote from Fred Hoyle, prominent Cambridge astronomer and physicist:  "A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.  The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."  Fred Hoyle, by the way, was an atheist.  There are many, many atheists of high education who entered this realm in their careers, and none of them reject the idea of fine-tuning.  What they dispute is the cause of the fine-tuning observed, but they all acknowledge the necessity of an explanation for it.  Unfortunately I don't think you're aware of that. 
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It's funny, the moral argument is where I believe religion was born in the first place.  There was no objective morality, just the biggest, baddest got what they wanted.  Invent a god that is watching and judging them (unfaslifiable) and that they will be punished after death (unfalsifiable).  The warlords were dumb enough to fall for it, and thus religion was born.
It's hard to say there's no objective morality when you're raised in a society with generations of legal morality baked in. 

Again, you simply don't seem to be aware of the long, rich history of work, thought, and debate about this.  I suppose you don't realize that you're far from the first person to have ever thought that, and that that idea has been explored.  At any rate, the worst flaw of that "rebuttal" is that it completely dodges the question.  It says nothing about whether there's actually an objective morality, and if so, where does it come from?  All you've done here is commit the genetic fallacy, which is an attempt to explain something away by showing where it comes from.  So I won't spend time agreeing or refuting it, because explaining where the idea of morality comes from is an entirely separate issue than whether it's real and what the source might be.  And before you that you committed the fallacy of circular reasoning when you stated "There was no objective morality," which is what you're trying to argue for, thus assuming your conclusion, thus, circular reasoning.  This isn't a rebuttal, only an opinion that you don't like the moral argument.  
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But as you've acknowledged, and I give you credit for doing so, is that all of your "evidences" are disputed and maybes.  None of it's confirmed.  You know what "evidence" means, and none of these is actually evidence.  It's possibilities.  It's hopefulness.  It's want-to.
The next real, tangible evidence for a god will be the first.

This leads me ask what is YOUR criteria for belief?  And is it a reasonable one?  What evidence do you think needs to be present for one to reasonably assume some sort of theistic position?  This is a rhetorical question and I'm not looking for an answer.  Just posing you the question to think about.  It's one thing to hand-wave everything away, it's another to honestly ask yourself what standard should be met, and if it were, would I change my mind?  I'd like to say in advance, this one gets tricky.  What tends to happen here is atheists I talk to, once they've thought about it, usually come up with whatever they think God (or anything like him) should do, or demonstrate, or have done in the past, in order to meet their criteria for belief.  In other words, they want God to be whatever they think he is, and then prove THAT.  What they almost never do is seriously engage religious claims on their own terms.  For example, if one wanted to investigate the Christian God, then you can't just make up whatever character you think God should have and then set your criteria.  You have to take that God on his own terms, i.e., what is the character and nature of God generally understood and agreed on by the teaching of that religion, and THEN assess whether such a deity can meet the burden of proof of its own claims.  For example, I could decide that if a god existed, he should make it to where I make a million dollars a year, but I don't make a million dollars a year, so what rube could possibly believe in that god?  But maybe the god under investigation, according to the traditions and claims of the religion, has no reason to grant me a million dollar salary, or maybe actively doesn't want me to have such an income.  So I'd be ruling him out completely erroneously.  I'm sorry to say that Christians at large haven't done society many favors in this regard.  IMO most Christians aren't good at explaining the nature of God or outlining much helpful theology that gives vital context to what people should be expecting IF the Christian God exists.  

FWIW, I realized the necessity of a falsifiable criteria one day myself, and was shocked to realize I'd never thought about it.  Fortunately Christianity has one built in, which is the resurrection.  As one of the writers of the New Testament put it (paraphrasing), if Christ wasn't raised from the dead, this religion is pointless.  Christianity distinguishes itself from other major religions precisely in that it's not a philosophy (Hinduism, Buddhism) or built on divine revelation (Islam), both of which are nigh impossible to falsify.  How do you prove or disprove a philosophy or supposed divine revelation?  Christianity hinges itself on a historical event which can be investigated like any other historical event for it's probable truth of falsehood.  I mentioned earlier different resurrection theories, and my point in all this is if someone could convince me that one of the other theories better explained the 4 minimal facts than the resurrection theory, I'd be forced to admit this might be hooey.  What I obviously didn't do was outline the pros and cons of each theory, but I suppose it's obvious which one I find most plausible.  I'm aware this all probably moves your needle exactly 0 degrees.  That's fine.  I just don't appreciate the constant jabs that Christians are all gullible idiots, and not from someone who doesn't even seem to know where we are in the ongoing conversation.  I'm not trying to jab back, but I really don't ever see anything from you other than pop-level, angry internet meme level accusations and talking points, and this is so far below and beneath where the scholarship is on both sides that it makes me sad.  If you want to be an atheist, I could probably steel-man some way better arguments for you. 


Riffraft

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Re: Rankings ... ugh
« Reply #1096 on: September 22, 2023, 03:26:31 PM »
 I don't think you can "logically" prove or disprove God.

Which is why I operated with the idea that we all build our worldview on certain presuppositions. And it is impossible to build a worldview without some presuppositions, then it becomes what are your presuppositions. (I found most of the most vocal opponents of others worldviews do not recognize their own presuppositions). THe issue then comes to whether your worldview is logically consistent or it falls apart at certain points. If it falls apart, it very well could be that one or more of your presuppositions are wrong. 

OrangeAfroMan

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Re: Rankings ... ugh
« Reply #1097 on: September 22, 2023, 08:11:36 PM »



Hey @MikeDeTiger when you quote my post and only type within it, I can't quote it.  So it kind of breaks off the convo.


But in regards to my curt responses, it kind of goes along with what @betarhoalphadelta has said - a fully-fleshed out retort of a list of the popular apologist arguments is a conversation, not for a web forum.
You get my cliff's notes versions because the longer a post is, the fewer people will read it.

Your long quote-post sounds like Jordan Peterson.  Suggesting I'm not taking into account all the minds and hours and lifetimes dedicated to the idea of a god.  I'm well aware of it.  And I can't name a bigger waste of smart minds and man-hours than religion.  Humanity has wasted an incalculable amount of time, effort, money, etc on the idea of a god and coming up with the mental gymnastics and word salads to try to prove a god.

I may treat believers like "gullible idiots," but I doubt I've used that phrasing.  The gullibility aspect isn't damning, as belief in a god sort of feels good and gives many people a "why" for our existence, so "gullibility" is less accurate than "hopeful" or "desired."
The idiot aspect has nothing to do with stupidity or intelligence.  A person who loses faith and is unconvinced of a god didn't suddenly get smarter.  If I treat a believer like an idiot, it's mostly because of how much our culture has learned and what year it is.  2023.  Just imagine how much humanity has learned in the past 2000 years.  It's vast.  "Idiotic" isn't really accurate, as a person smart enough to use reason and prudence in every other aspect of life is smart enough to know that giving religion a pass isn't reasonable nor prudent.  It's more "willful ignorance," not "idiocy."

What all the apologist arguments come down to are hopeful, desired almosts and maybes.  None of it is actual evidence.  And while disproving a god is also a fool's errand, it's also unnecessary.  Everyone who isn't convinced a god exists is an atheist.  The agnostic crowd are atheists. 
I don't have to make a claim either way.  But as a believer, making the claim there is a god, that's on you to prove.  If you think you can prove a guy literally rose from the dead 2000 years ago, good luck.
The what, tens of millions? of man-hours having thus far failing to prove the point should tell you something.

The time to believe a god exists is when the evidence tells us.  Maybe you'll find the evidence in the next 2000 years.  Maybe not.




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OrangeAfroMan

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Re: Rankings ... ugh
« Reply #1098 on: September 22, 2023, 08:24:26 PM »
Honestly, though, you have to admit a simple case can be made for christianity being obviously invented.
a - it has a god-man who is an amalgamation of several B.C. characters
b - it's pleasing that there's some sort of post-mortem cosmic justice
c - you believe the dominant religion where you're raised (U.S. - christianity)
d - it's the truth!  (just like every other religion is, too - just ask them)
e - it indoctrinates the youth (for future monies and growth)
f - it hijacked ethics, when the golden rule does just fine
g - none of the believers can get on the same page about anything (denominations)
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Why normal, smart people suspend their reason for this is beyond me.  It's blatantly obvious.  If you grew up in India, you'd be Hindu.  You'd have deep faith in it and defend it vs me.  You'd post long-ass diatribes about the holy prophet mohammad if you grew up in Saudi Arabia. 
But hopefully you'd love college football in any case.
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FearlessF

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Re: Rankings ... ugh
« Reply #1099 on: September 22, 2023, 09:06:58 PM »
Some of these numbers clearly include donations to capital improvement projects-- upgrades/renovations/rebuilds of stadiums, practice fields, other infrastructure.

So if Michigan hasn't undergone a major capital improvement campaign in the last 10 years or so, there's no way they're going to rank toward the top.  A&M spent over $600M on their major stadium rebuild, UT something like $250M, and I know Oregon just spent a fortune completely redoing their lockers/weight room/practice facilities.  Don't know about the others but Oklahoma State is quite obviously T.  Boone related.

So just keep in mind, these are not donations to operational expenses, these are almost entirely donations to fund capital programs.
Nebraska just finishing the $165 million, 315,000-square-foot North Expansion Project
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Cincydawg

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Re: Rankings ... ugh
« Reply #1100 on: September 23, 2023, 07:59:41 AM »
I think we went through the money thing before and agreed it comes in all shapes and sizes and generally isn't comparable.

And the real money thing probably depends mostly, or significantly, on TV revenues, aside from a few cases where Mr. Rich is a fan.  It would be fun to see a list of how much NIL monies are doing here and there.  I wonder if that has cut into direct contributions.

847badgerfan

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Re: Rankings ... ugh
« Reply #1101 on: September 23, 2023, 08:25:24 AM »
I think we went through the money thing before and agreed it comes in all shapes and sizes and generally isn't comparable.

And the real money thing probably depends mostly, or significantly, on TV revenues, aside from a few cases where Mr. Rich is a fan.  It would be fun to see a list of how much NIL monies are doing here and there.  I wonder if that has cut into direct contributions.
Mr. Wealthy?
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847badgerfan

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Re: Rankings ... ugh
« Reply #1102 on: September 23, 2023, 09:41:36 AM »
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Cincydawg

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Re: Rankings ... ugh
« Reply #1103 on: September 23, 2023, 09:46:31 AM »
I've spent a bit of time in Knoxville, I wouldn't consider it a top college town, however one defines that, whatever.

847badgerfan

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Re: Rankings ... ugh
« Reply #1104 on: September 23, 2023, 10:02:52 AM »
I've spent a bit of time in Knoxville, I wouldn't consider it a top college town, however one defines that, whatever.
Agreed. It's more of a big city with a college in it. 

@GopherRock and I were there as part of a board meeting. Maybe he feels differently.
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847badgerfan

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Re: Rankings ... ugh
« Reply #1105 on: September 23, 2023, 10:31:50 AM »
Agreed. It's more of a big city with a college in it.
I guess this could describe Austin, but Austin actually felt like a college town to me.

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