Then do you hold the religious to the same standard?
When the religious attempt to impose religion on others through the law, schools, and government, then the religious do have an obligation to demonstrate proof. If the religious can't prove there's a "god", then any laws based on their beliefs are oppression of those who don't.
If the religious keep it at home and in their church, no problem.
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.
And remember: A secular state is not an atheist state, no matter how many times people falsely claim otherwise.
"9/11 shows that religion doesn't move mountains. It levels buildings." - Atheist slogan, circa 2001 CE
Gee. Nine democrats and one republican whose corruption could not be ignored.
"Judicial watch" is a mouthpiece of Richard Scaife, billionaire and funder of numerous rightwing "astroturfing movements". When their lips move, it's Scaife talking. JW is so corrupt that its own founder, Larry Klayman, stole money from the organization.
Using JW as a "source" shows corruption in those quoting it, not in the people listed.
But therein lies the rationalization, or just the lies: "WE can proselytize to you, but you can't proselytize to us because our 'god' says so!" If their arguments had any validity, they wouldn't need a double standard.
And just for fun, here's an Australian who went to Utah to proselytize to mormons because he got sick of them banging on his door. It's old, but it's still a laugh:
Suppose you have US$1,000,000 in the bank and you get 5% interest annually.
If you live off of $50,000 per year and live only off the interest, the money will last forever.
If you live off of $75,000 per year and live off $25,000 of the principal, the money will run out in 25 years.
If you live off of $100,000 per year, twice what the original interest was, the money will run out in 16 years.
The Earth and its resources are a lot like a bank account, it constantly generates interest of the principal it has. Trees clean the air, algae cleans the water, the food chain replenishes itself, etc.
The problem is, humans are not spending only the interest, we are idiotically spending principal as well. Worse still, not only are there more and more people (increasing population) but more and more people are using more and more resources (increasing industrialization). In my economic analogy, we've gone from spending $50,000 to spending $250,000 per year. Guess how long the analagous bank account will last as that rate? Six years.
No, I'm not saying the Earth will run out of clean air and water before 2020, but I am saying we're increasingly consuming more than the Earth can replenish. Even if there is zero population growth and no increase in oil consumption, we're likely to run out of gasoline and food by 2050. For those who don't know, most commercial fertilizers are made from petroleum products.
We've already hit peak oil and prices will continue to rise. For those with pathetically short memories, today's price of US$77 per barrel is more than what it was in December 2007.
I remember as a kid that around 1980, the estimates were only 10% of the oil had been used then. We've used 40% in 30 years, yet some people think it will last forever; there are even idiots forwarding the term, "abiotic oil", suggesting that the Earth produces oil naturally like our bones produce our blood.
If people don't start cutting back now, both population and consumption, we're likely to see world wars and mass famines (tens of millions dead annually) in the decades to come. I'll consider myself lucky to probably be dead by then and have not had any kids who were forced to live through it.
There's one major failing in my bank account analogy: If we **** up the Earth and use up all the resources, we can't borrow from someone else and use debt to get out of the mess. Yet somehow, people think we can borrow, or perhaps there will be a "second coming" to save us.
Anyone who says "There's no such thing as 'unbearable pain'" or other such stupidity should try this: Have a tooth in their mouths cracked to allow the nerve to be exposed and cause excruciating pain. Then, not go to a dentist for a month.
Such people would quickly change their tune.
Myself, I'm ambivalent about signing up for euthanasia if I were in pain; I'm still too gutless to sign an organ donor card (with visions of Monty Python in my head).
However, I'm not going to stand in the way of people who are in pain and nothing can be done to improve their quality of life. The individual suffering should be the one making the decision, not anyone else, as long as the person is capable of making it.
The most interesting thing about the euthanasia debate is that those on the right who argue endlessly about "government interference in people's lives" and "individual freedom of choice" will hypocritically change their tune on certain topics like this one.
It's also interesting how the people involved change the attitudes of the meddlers. When Terri Schiavo was the hot topic, the meddlers wanted to force her husband to keep life support on despite Schiavo's living will (and the fact that she was brain dead, as determined by doctors before and after). Meanwhile, in Texas, doctors cut off the life support for a baby, Sun Hudson, causing his death against his mother's wishes. Where were the politicians then? Oh, that's right: Schiavo had a life insurance policy, Sun Hudson's mother was poor.
In all likelihood, if Terri Schiavo's parents had won custody of her, they would have cut off her life support and pocketed the money, not spent it on her care as Michael Schiavo did.
Why are you shouting? It makes you sound like a loon, and that's without mention of the content of your words.
"Conspiracy theories" are not theories, they are opinions (and I'm being generous in calling them that). A theory is an argument that accounts for all of the evidence - not some, not most, but all.
The "loose change" types (loose screws is more like it) deny and ignore evidence which disagrees with preconceived opinions because they don't want something to be true. Deluding oneself does not change reality.
If you want to start talking about "truth", provide a demonstration. Come with me to a hospital, find a dead body (say, someone killed in a car accident three days ago) and you or your "god" bring them back to life as per the buybull.
Do that or some other magic trick from some "holy" book, and you can start talking about truth. Until then, yours is just opinion, not "truth".
In any other sphere, making claims without the evidence to back them up and expecting them to be accepted is called lying (or the argument of a child), yet the religious think they deserve a free pass. Sorry, you don't get one.
Demonstrate, don't remonstrate. Prove it or admit you can't.
And for the record, evil is an adjective, not a noun.
If the majority here were Arabic speakers or in a different country, it would be a different story. But then again, if people born learning different languages and living in different countries, they would have different religions.
Don't confuse or (try to) misconstrue a segmented population as being an obsession. If you were living in India, you'd see a constant daily confrontation between Sikhs and Hindus; if you were in Burma or Thailand, you'd see how buddhists think of and treat muslims. And I lived in South Korea for a few years and saw constant confrontation between christians and buddhists...well, the christians were confrontational, but the buddhists were pacifist as their temples were being vandalized.
When religious views are practiced by the majority of a population, they often try to eradicate competing religions and force conversions. It happens and has happened everywhere.
This "christmas" thing is meaningless, so I treat people the same on December 25th as I do every other day of the year: with the same level of courtesy and respect that I would want in return. If someone needs a special day and a reason to be civilized, that person is in need of either a dose of honesty or serious mental help.
People should either be nice to others everyday, or don't bother at all. Acting better for one day isn't going to impress anyone, especially if it builds false hopes and false impressions. Year round honesty would be much more impressive and appreciated by those around you.
And if I want a group with a lot of sax, I'll listen to John Anthony Helliwell and Supertramp - "Fool's Overture", "Hide In Your Shell", "It's Raining Again", "The Logical Song", plus many others.
Is there any reason you left out the real cause of the season, the Earth's apogee in relation to the Sun? When we're far away, it gets cold.
All religions are borrowed from previous ones and attempt to erase others from history. Mithras of Persia was born about 2540 years ago, three days after the winter solstice (or December 25th, in simpler terms). And that's without mention of hannukah.
Time to go to bed, I guess. I'll be getting up in a few hours and going to work today. It's great living in Taiwan where buddhists and daoists are a 90+% majority and none of them proselytize.
Close, but no cigar. "Prince Of Darkness" is the better Carpenter horror film. I don't believe christian mythology one iota and don't flinch at many horror movies (most are inane), but this one makes me cringe.
I also like Carpenter's "In the Mouth of Madness" which is one of the few truly watchable "Cthulhu" horror movies (*), but that one's more about finding out where the evil comes from, the inevitable result was always going to be insanity and murder. It's more "Howdunit" that "Whodunit".
(* My favourite of which is "Cast A Deadly Spell":
"You see a 19-year-old boy driving your Escalade, and you know that he's is sleeping in your bed, with your wife...I totally understand OJ. I get it." - Hulk Hogan, April 2009
With an attitude and an inferred threat like that, can you blame her?
Then again, there's probably enough blame for both of them.
Oh - and "pro wrestling" sucks. It's soap opera for little boys...including 45 year old little boys.
Same "god", different prophet. (See also "Same ****, different day.")
For muslims to start targeting westerners (christian or not) is no different than the idiotic "10/40 window" mentality. Look it up if you've not heard of it.
"Rule number one: In my van, it's Rush. All Rush, all the time. No exceptions. ... Rush IS variety!" - Hutch, from the movie, "Fanboys"
Okay, I'm not that bad, but with 19 studio albums in 35 years, and a new one coming in 2010 or 2011, there's a lot of good repeat and future listening.
You can add in a large amount of jazz, industrial (when I'm in a bad mood), Kraftwerk, and other old favourites.
So called "easy listening" is pablum and I have no patience for it. If I actually believed in religious myths, I'd swear that Kenny G, Zamfir and Richard Clayderman are spawn of "satan".
"Smeg, it's like all the worst people in history have been brought together in one place. My God, there's James Last. I recognize him from Rimmer's record collection." - Dave Lister, of "Red Dwarf"
Stereotypes aren't the issue. The mentality that believes them is.
Stereotypes are borne of ignorance and prejudice. Those who know well the people being stereotyped don't do it and don't buy into it. And those not guilty of believing absolutist dogma also don't.
Education will stop prejudice better than the PC Police.
In Canada and the US where tap water is purified and safe, buying bottled water is a waste of money and idiocy. Watch Penn & Teller's "Bullsh**!" about bottled water, how they tricked people into talking about tap water as being cleaner and tastier than tap water simply by claiming it was bottled.
In other countries, tap water is "grey water" and should not be drunk. In Daegu, South Korea, several people died of cholera in the water, in a supposedly industrialized, first world country. (That happened a year before the subway fire in Daegu that killed 200 people. Small wonder people forget the three deaths.)
Here in Taiwan, a water purifier in the home is a necessity, or you buy it from distributors. Only the poor will drink tap water, even though it's supposed to be safe. For a long time, it wasn't.
I've also lived in the Philippines for a few months and it's the same story: only the poor drink from taps. I've encountered "bottled water" - produced by companies - that had mosquito larvae in it.
I am seriously thinking of investing in one or two "Lifesaver bottles" for emergencies. I won't include a link since plugging products isn't allowed, but you can easily search for and find it yourself.
"Googled"? I learned that sort of stuff in high school and college, and read non-fiction books for enjoyment.
The circulation of winds (heating up at the equator, moving north and south before cooling and sinking) is what causes the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean currents, and it causes the jet stream.
Hmmm...I won't say the town (not city, but town) where I used to live in the Rockies of western Canada, but Januaries were -40 (celsius OR fahrenheit!) with over a metre of snow (40 inches). Most years the snow stayed from the week of Hallowe'en to mid-May, and the only month it never snowed in that city was July.
I am never living there again.
Oh, lovely, wet snow: it warms enough to fall, gets moist and then freezes to everything and becomes impossible to remove from the ground all winter. The yard turns into a skating rink.
Two words: land mass. The bigger the land mass, the higher the air pressure that can be generated, while oceans cause low pressure and moderate climate. High air pressure means clear skies but brutally cold winds and winters. It shouldn't surprise (anyone who knows the science about it) that the coldest inhabited places are in north-central Asia and the northern central parts of Canada.
I suspect that people who voted for European capitals, especially Reykjavik, are forgetting about the south-to-north Atlantic current that moderates climate. It does the same on the west coast of North America. Vancouver is further north than New York and Boston but has a warmer mean annual temperature because of the Pacific current.
K_rational Forum Posts (257)
RE: I am an Atheist
Then do you hold the religious to the same standard?When the religious attempt to impose religion on others through the law, schools, and government, then the religious do have an obligation to demonstrate proof. If the religious can't prove there's a "god", then any laws based on their beliefs are oppression of those who don't.
If the religious keep it at home and in their church, no problem.
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.
And remember: A secular state is not an atheist state, no matter how many times people falsely claim otherwise.
"9/11 shows that religion doesn't move mountains. It levels buildings."
- Atheist slogan, circa 2001 CE