In the US, corporations now have all the rights of people, and few of the responsibilities. The US is a democracy, but now it's one dollar, one vote.
This is what happens when a country has only two political parties. In democracies which have at least three major parties, lobbying is neutralized by minority governments. The ruling party has to listen to smaller parties, instead of lobbyists, to stay alive politically.
It doesn't surprise me at all to see this come to pass.
Yours is a false (or even misleading) statement. Atheists and atheism don't make claims, and don't make distortions about evidence; clarity and finding certainty through examination are the whole point.
You disparage and dislike uncertainty? The smartest thing a person can say when they don't know is, "I don't know". When one admits uncertainty, it's difficult to be arrogant.
By the by, the scientific method is based upon uncertainty: "We don't know, so let's test". That computer you're using wouldn't exist without it, nor would the medical care that keeps you alive nor a myriad of other things. For you to be using a computer while being against uncertainty is contradictory, to put it politely.
As for faith, all religion is based upon it and wouldn't have legs without it. Not one person can verifiably show they've had first hand experience of something inexplicable by rational means. Nobody can factually claim a John Denver "oh god!" moment. They can believe it all they like and have every right to, they just can't prove it nor claim to have proof.
Clearly the point went right over your head or you didn't bother to read carefully.
I was talking about when a person is incapacitated, unable to defend himself against religious violation by being injured, unconscious, comatose, or dead.
Do you expect a dead person to get up and tell a priest to shove off and stop saying "last rites"? Or do you not know the meaning of the word incapacitated?
And all of that was said without any sarcasm, derision or invective.
You know what else is in Italy, besides the catholic religion?
The Italian Mafia. And how do the Italian Mafia feel about membership in their organization? "Once you're in, you're in for life."
The catholics feels the same way: once you've been a member, they "think" they have some "right" to your life while you're incapacitated, and some "right" to your corpse after you're dead. Just because the OP stopped attending doesn't mean some priest wouldn't try to use the OP's corpse after he dies.
At least with catholicism one can get out, but only by explicitly saying so. But even then, they'll probably try to ignore a person's wishes.
(1) You're erroneously assuming being single equates to being lonely. When one is desperate, that's the worst time to look for a relationship. You'll end up with someone who takes advantage of you.
(2) Even if someone is miserable, it's better to be single and miserable than be married and miserable. Single people don't have to deal with divorce, acrimony, or arguing about money, property or child custody.
Is yours a selective memory, or are you that uneducated of world history in the past century? You have completely whitewashed out the decades of US-backed fascist regimes and illegal coups, International Monetary Fund "loans" and international corporations stealing Argentina's wealth with bribes to its leaders.
Obama has been the US president for only a year, so you're only making yourself look that much more of a loon by saying he had anything to do with it, rather than the U of Chicago and its "neo-conservative" economics which caused the US collapse in 2008. What happened in the US is what bankers have been doing around the world for fifty years, causing economic failures and foreign debt in other countries. And that's without mention of "foreign intervention" and "regime change", the US's removal of popular governments and democracies in other countries in favour of US-friendly dictatorships, such as Salvador Allende of Chile.
Haiti is one of those countries. It was once a self-sufficient farming country, even exporting food. Now it is a net importer of food and starvation is happening because of so-called "free trade" and "privatization" which caused Haitian farmers to go bankrupt and put government wealth into private hands. This has happened in dozens of countries that were once rich but are now poor. It also had a popular twice-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristie, who was removed by US-backed coups because he was trying to stop corruption and privatization. Both of those coups d'etat happened during the presidencies of George Bu**sh** Sr. and George Bu**sh** Jr.
Narnia was so disgustingly blatant that JRR Tolkien, who was a friend of CS Lewis, said it was excessive and unnecessary and gory allegory of religion.
Look up Naomi Klein and her book, "The Shock Doctrine", if you're not already familiar with it. The exact same things she has pointed out about Iraq, Afghanistan, tsunami-hit countries and many others are already being repeated in Haiti within days of the earthquake.
Erich von Crackpot is more like it, known tax evader that he is (see also: Kent Hovind, "intelligent design" advocate and currently incarcertated tax evader). von Daniken is a loon who made up nonsense and misinterpreted evidence to sell a hokey scam and make money.
von Daniken's "ideas" are no better than Ray Wallace's, the only difference being von Daniken (probably) didn't threaten violence against his own family as Wallace did (if they ever dared expose his fraud while he was alive). It wouldn't surprise me if the same exposure of von Daniken's fraud happens after he dies.
The Incas and Egyptian pyramids were as involved with "aliens" about as much as the "face on Mars" was, i.e. not at all. And his "claims" have been debunked by objective investigation (e.g. the Iron Pillar in India does rust, the crystal skull was made after 1950, etc). Every claim of his that has been scientifically challenged has fallen.
PBS's NOVA episode from 1978, "The Case of the Ancient Astronauts", tore von Daniken's nonsense to shreds. I still remember that episode for waking me out of believing such twaddle. Speaking of NOVA, you might want to watch their upcoming episde on "Breaking the Mayan Code", its language. No doubt the same could be done someday for the Incan language to find out what really went on. (Hint: Aliens won't be a part of it.)
Don't forget that Robertson did business with and supported Charles Taylor...until he was ousted and charged with crimes against humanity, of course. Then it became "Taylor who?"
There are also crible accusations of Robertson profiting from blood diamonds.
About 2200 years ago, Hannibal of Carthage attacked Rome with elephants, intending to destroy it.
Hannibal failed, but he put such a scare into Rome that the Roman empire went on a 150 year rampage across many nations unrelated to Carthage, destroying populaces and stealing their wealth. When the empire had conquered nearly all known nations, it's enlarged military needed even more funding yet their was no more wealth to acquire from the invaded nations or from Rome itself.
Rome collapsed not because of attackers from outside, but because of its own greed, waste, corruption and warmongering. The collapse of Rome sent the known world into the Dark Ages, where religion (catholicism, in this case) ruled as people lived in ignorance under its oppression for a thousand years.
Of course, that's nothing like what has been going on with the US and the world.
Osama bin Laden didn't commit suicide, like Hannibal did.
Why do people arrogantly assume that we are not the first sentient life forms in the universe? Then again, there are plenty of people who arrogantly assume the universe was made for humans.
As for abiogenesis(life forming out of inanimate chemicals) on other planets happening the same way it did on ours, it's nearly inevitable one waits long enough. But that doesn't mean it has happened or has to happen.
Think of it as coin flipping. If you flip a coin four times, the chances of four heads in a row is 1/16. If you flip a coin twenty times, the chances of four heads in a row is more than 50%. If you flip the coin 1000 times, the chance of four heads in a row is better than 90%.
For life to occur is like flipping a million heads in a row out of an infinite number of flips. It is possible that it will never happen again (since it did happen once, on Earth), but the chance of it happening grows as the number of flips increases. Or in the case of the universe, as its size and number of stars and planets grows. The Earth is a lucky occurrence, with life happening early, only around 1.5 billion years after its formation, which was around 10 billion years after the Big Bang.
And for those who talk about life, it doesn't mean the life has to know how to speak, let alone travel in space. Proteins are alive, and they don't even have DNA; the simplest living organisms on Earth have only around 40,000 atoms, not the roughly 10^25 atoms (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) that a human adult has.
And no, I don't believe space aliens have visited the Earth. Even if they exist, the distances involved and the energy required to travel that distance make highly improbable.
There is/was a catholic priest in Brazil who refused to marry couples if the woman didn't have proof from a doctor that her hymen was intact, proof that she was a virgin. I kid you not.
All private money-making businesses have the right not to sell their product to customers who don't abide by their Terms Of Service.
But that also means consumers are not obliged to buy all of that company's products. Just as Microsoft programs can be run under Linux using Wine, a franchise of a religious chain probably won't bar a couple if the two get married elsewhere.
The people who see this as a "problem" are the same people who see 30 million Spanish speakers in the US as a "problem".
Those 30 million Spanish speakers mean the US has 30 million people to do business with 400 million South Americans. That's not a problem, that's an opportunity.
The same goes for whites becoming a minority. It's only a problems to those who expect others to bend to their will.
Brit Humus is the moron who said, "I think I'll buy"(stock in military manufacturing corporations) after the George Bu**sh** whitehouse started beating the war drums for invasion.
Note the OP's location, Kentucky. He's a landlubber. Most people today live inland, it's not like 100 years ago when there were no planes and few or no cars, where ships were the most efficient way to travel.
Most boat travel today is on ferries over short distances, not cross-ocean travel.
The train. I like being able to look at the landscape, and having the room to walk around in the cars if I like. The trains here in Taiwan are great, and railroad travel in Canada has always been national, not regional. Plus, trains don't have to stop for crossing traffic or red lights as cars and buses do.
As for the others, buses are filthy and I doubt any of them have ever had their seats steam cleaned. The idea of sitting for more than an hour in a cramped space next to stinking, open-mouth-chewing individual is abhorrent.
And I'm a white knuckler when it comes to flying. I know it's safe, that less than 5% of all airplane crashes happen on "first world" airlines (e.g. Canada, US, Europe, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Australia) but that doesn't make it any more comforting. And no, I don't believe in fairy tales and prayer.
Personally, I think air travel is dead. It's only a matter of time before oil prices make it impractical and rail becomes the dominant means of travel across land. In 20 years, air travel will be limited to cross-ocean destinations.
Life is short. There are too many people in the world to bother wasting more time on dishonest people. I'd rather spend my time making new friends or relationships with people that haven't betrayed my trust.
My rule of thumb on people is nobody is a one-time wrong-doer. Either they'll never break your trust, or they'll do it repeatedly. See also: "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me".
You picked the right word for it - views - because there aren't any facts to be found. It's as much nonsense as the abrahamic religions or any other "belief".
"Spirituality" is a soup of the deity religion, pun intended.
It's like salad bar religion: people pick and choose what they want to put in, what they want to believe. They want there to be something supernatural, but they want to cook up their own religion with their own ingredients instead eating one of the pre-made, store-bought versions.
Personally, I prefer naturally existing ingredients, washed and raw. At least I know they're real and not made up, and not some concoction unwittingly laced with strychnine (which the religious have mistaken for salt) that will kill me or someone else.
Unfortunately, the more dishonest of the religious will pretend that preventing the religious from imposing religion is the same as preventing the religious from having religion.
K_rational Forum Posts (257)
RE: Corporate States of America
In the US, corporations now have all the rights of people, and few of the responsibilities. The US is a democracy, but now it's one dollar, one vote.This is what happens when a country has only two political parties. In democracies which have at least three major parties, lobbying is neutralized by minority governments. The ruling party has to listen to smaller parties, instead of lobbyists, to stay alive politically.
It doesn't surprise me at all to see this come to pass.