Slashdot Mirror

How is this any different than politicians in the US pushing "Creationism" in US schools?

"In God We Trust" didn't appear on US currency until lincoln, for religious reasons. It was then required on all currency in the '50s because communists were godless bastards we had to oppose in all things.

Please - I'm far from a Christian fanatic, but it's a pretty common literary allusion. That phrase my have leeched into the common culture (who knows, maybe they're big Richard Matheson or Will Smith fans), but the use of the term "legion" to mean "many" is a Biblical allusion. Try to remember that up until probably the 1950s, most literary allusions in the States were Biblical - it was by far the most widely owned and read book in the country. Without a fairly detailed understanding of the Bible, it becomes quite difficult to really understand a lot of 19th century oratory - phrases that just seem odd to our ears were shorthand call outs to scripture.

While a lot of that Bible reading culture has now faded away, bits and pieces like "We are Legion" survive. (I laugh when people think that today's GOP is somehow the most "Christianist" in history - they'd be considered Godless libertines in the 1880s or 1930s.)

And the actual quote is "My name is Legion: for we are many." So "we" and "legion" is part of the real quote.

i notice you have a reagan signature. maybe you would enjoy his numerous speeches about the virtuous god-fearing mujahideen freedom fighters, and their battle against the godless communist aggressors in the 1980s? because there are a large number of such speeches. they are at the reagan archives, you can google them.

Myself, I like watching 1988's Rambo III where he goes to Afghanistan and helps the proto-Taliban kill Russians.

There was absolutely no possible way such an enlightened defense strategy could ever have had unexpected side effects.

i notice you have a reagan signature. maybe you would enjoy his numerous speeches about the virtuous god-fearing mujahideen freedom fighters, and their battle against the godless communist aggressors in the 1980s? because there are a large number of such speeches. they are at the reagan archives, you can google them.

The mujaheddin != the Taliban. Remember that there was a civil war raging in Afghanistan for decades before we went in. One side was the Taliban and their supporters. We supported the other side, those that were once the Mujaheddin.

i notice you have a reagan signature. maybe you would enjoy his numerous speeches about the virtuous god-fearing mujahideen freedom fighters, and their battle against the godless communist aggressors in the 1980s? because there are a large number of such speeches. they are at the reagan archives, you can google them.

Your post seems to be replying to its grandparent rather than its parent, so I'll assume you're saying that Reagan's speeches are incompatible with the former's statement about "Islam shaping up to be a modern day Nazi movement." The statement needs to distinguish between Islam and Islamism, true, but "this ideology is shaping up to be bad in general" does not contradict "these particular people who hold that ideology are good."

i notice you have a reagan signature. maybe you would enjoy his numerous speeches about the virtuous god-fearing mujahideen freedom fighters, and their battle against the godless communist aggressors in the 1980s? because there are a large number of such speeches. they are at the reagan archives, you can google them.

He will set the country on the path to freedom from religious persecution and return us to our rightful place in God's plan. Eliminate the government and all those who stand in the way of worship of our rightful, true Ruler. The crimes that are performed in the name of our current governmental system, including but not limited to murder of innocent children, forcing citizens to pay for products they don't want, driving our society into unrecoverable debt that our children (if they aren't aborted) will never be able to repay, placing women in harms' way and outside of the role evolution has trained them for as mother and caregiver, stifling business under the guise and heavy hand of global warming, raising taxes on those of us who are successful, teaching our precious children ridiculous theories that men were once apes and spontaneously changed into what we are today, and attempting to diverge from the Christian principles that our forefathers observed and that this country was founded upon. We need to return to His holy way, and remove the heathens from our path, if necessary, by force. It's time to stopping giving away our children's inheritance to lazy jobless people and Godless welfare cases. It's time we took back our economy and this country.

Who would have thought Noam Chomsky would one day post on Slashdot

He will set the country on the path to freedom from religious persecution and return us to our rightful place in God's plan. Eliminate the government and all those who stand in the way of worship of our rightful, true Ruler. The crimes that are performed in the name of our current governmental system, including but not limited to murder of innocent children, forcing citizens to pay for products they don't want, driving our society into unrecoverable debt that our children (if they aren't aborted) will never be able to repay, placing women in harms' way and outside of the role evolution has trained them for as mother and caregiver, stifling business under the guise and heavy hand of global warming, raising taxes on those of us who are successful, teaching our precious children ridiculous theories that men were once apes and spontaneously changed into what we are today, and attempting to diverge from the Christian principles that our forefathers observed and that this country was founded upon. We need to return to His holy way, and remove the heathens from our path, if necessary, by force. It's time to stopping giving away our children's inheritance to lazy jobless people and Godless welfare cases. It's time we took back our economy and this country.

...and further, those horsemen of the apocolypse, the destroyers of the natural evolution of popular music in the Western world... of course I am refering to those motherless, godless sons of bitches, The Beatles. Without the Beatles, there is no Stone Roses, Mighty Mighty Lemondrops, Oasis, Blur, Verve, nor Radiohead.

Ha ha ha! Brilliant! I've been trying to say exactly that for years and never been able to come up with anything as accurate.

Clearly a huge chunk of rock/pop is three-chord-trick blues-derivative in 4-4, but even if that's 95%, the remaining 5% is significant.

Thanks for making my point and countering your own. Can we reduce or describe classical compositions in the same manner? Probably not. Classical compositions reach a complexity that is simply not describable nor reducible the way modern pop/rock is.

I don't really want to single out Hendrix, except as an *example* of someone using more complex chordal structures than yer Bachs and Mozarts

You are deluding yourself. Hendrix's chordal structures are no different than any other blues artists' chordal structures. Blues is merely a simplification of Jazz. His structures are NOT complex by any stretch of the imagination... (root, 3rd, 5th, or root, minor 3rd, 5th... a diminshed 7th now and again... and precious little else).ÂThe man played blues guitar, maybe a some of his work could be described as fusion (Major chords using a jazz progression, rather than Major7, minor7 jazz chords). A six string guitar is a very simple instrument, compared to, say, a piano or an orchestra. The guitar is actually quite limited... because of its construction, most songs will be composed in the major keys of G, D, E, or A, or their relative minors. ÂWhere Hendrix excelled is NOT in the progressions or the chords he used... but in the discovering of original pop melodies and the characteristically live expression of his music, his performance, his pentatonic improvisation. To suggest that Hendrix's music is more complex or richer than Bach's is patently ridiculous, on its face.

And (in your followup) you don't know a single rock/pop song that's not in 4/4 you've simply not looked. *Loads* in 12/8, quite a few in 3/4. Rock songs in 5/4 are rare, but they do exist (easiest example: "Money" by Pink Floyd).

12/8? I don't think so. Perhaps I exaggerated a bit... but a counter-example doesn't make your point. So the majority is 4/4, with a minimum of songs in 3/4, and 5/4. And that's it. 3 signatures. But my point is made once you agreed that the vast majority is 4/4. Being that there are some counter-examples of pop songs in the other two signatures does not support the argument that modern pop/rock is richer or more musically complex than classical.Â

Further, your infatuation with Radiohead likely has more to do with production than composition... Personally, I feel I can reduce Radiohead to its core: what makes Radiohead original is the drummer. And even moreso... the drummers obsession with constantly banging the cymbals. Take away Radiohead's drummer, and you no longer have a stadium band, but a lounge act. Most don't realize that in modern pop/rock music, you don't need a good singer, or a technically superior guitarist to get national. But if your drummer (and bassist, as part of the rhythm section) sucks, you're going no where... ever. Radiohead has a fine rhythm section, and a producer that has no fear of high end frequencies. From my perspective, IMHO, Radiohead's "sound" is merely the evolution or resurgence of the popularity of the "sound" of Liverpool/Manchester movements, like Oasis and Blur... and further, those horsemen of the apocolypse, the destroyers of the natural evolution of popular music in the Western world... of course I am refering to those motherless, godless sons of bitches, The Beatles. Without the Beatles, there is no Stone Roses, Mighty Mighty Lemondrops, Oasis, Blur, Verve, nor Radiohead.

yeah, and? so now they ride around in a benz while shooting them and monitoring their communications. that helps, yeah?

and not because the oil enabled them -- smearing oil and sand together does not an economy make -- but because "we" are buying it... you know, godless europeans, americans, russians, chinese. that makes them hypocritical dumb fucks who are pissing over their prophet every time they mention his name, and us accomplices in their exploits. that was my incoherent "point" if you will.

Read the TFA:

Once mounted, a new drive letter appears in Windows Explorer that represents the virtual CD/DVD ROM

Your command line won't do that... and Aunty May isn't going to want to do su; cd /; mkdir A: B: C: D: ...etc. and then write a script to find the next free letter (and fail gracefully if they all got used when she connected to the company network). Even though lots of Linux distros have a click-n-drool mechanism for mounting ISOs I bet none of them will create a new drive letter for the volume!

Linux will never take off until all the godless commie nerds writing it forget about the temptations of the Unix file system and implement proper drive letters like every professional operating system since CP/M. Honest god-fearin' People need to know the difference between a device and a directory - or we'll all be doomed. I mean, look at the disgusting terminology: "mount point" for pity's sake! Its the work of the Devil!!!

God creates raptors. God wipes out all life on earth to eliminate raptors. God creates man, man kills god. Man creates raptors. Raptors destroy universe.

I thought Jurassic Park was more of a cautionary tale that raptors are godless killing machines.

Your definition of cause seems very broad. The Korean war can just as easily be explained as another iteration of the Sino-Japanese wars which had been fought over Korea 1894-95, 1937-45 combined with the revolutionary zeal shown by communist revolution (see also Soviet-Polish war 1920). Or as a hegemonic war by China. That the Chinese were "godless" and the UN "godly" was a rhetorical distinction made after the beginning of the war and not a cause.

In God we trust was first added to US currency during the American Civil War, it was adopted as the official motto in 1956. The Korean War ran 1950-1953 (although a peace treaty has not been signed to date). Given this, the idea that the Korean War was motivated by religion is absurd.

Now, if you want to make the case that the American Civil War was between the defenders of the True Faith and those Godless Rebels, I'd love to watch the flame war.

As for Korea and Vietnam? Did you miss the bit where the US was getting so worked up about the "godless commies" that they changed their national motto to "in god we trust".

As far as that goes, the U.S. made it long-term strategy to hedge in and put a stop to Russian hegemony. At the time the USSR was the one entity with a viable shot at challenging U.S. power and world-wide interests. Korea and Vietnam (and later Afghanistan in the 1980's) were essentially power plays aimed at stopping the expansion of Russia. Sure, some rhetoric will invoke religion and such, but it's aimed at whipping up the masses to support the strategy, not the reason for the strategy in the first place.

Throughout history, religion has much more been an enabler of national strategy than a cause of it. See also: nationalism, patriotism, propaganda, and fear-mongering.

Would it make sense for somebody to say "Yes, I am very religious - I'm an atheist", or would people find that odd?

Yes, perfect sense. The atheist exhibits the essence of the true believer in every regard: He is perfectly certain about the claims he makes. "Though ours is a godless world," says Hoffer, "it is anything but irreligious." Indeed.

religion -noun 6. something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience

The strident atheist shares a kinship with the very people he seeks to discredit.

I take strong offense to your characterization of Atheists. As an atheist, I don't try to force my (lack of) religious belief on anyone else. I may not share the beliefs of those who follow various religions, but I respect them as human beings who have the prerogative to hold such beliefs

WW1 and WW2 were religious?

You may have missed the bit in WW2 where Jews and Gypsies were being rounded up and burned in big ovens and the fact that the Nazi leader followed a mix of Christianity and pan-german mysticism and came to power partly because a group of well connected secret society/cultist types thought he was their prophesized leader. Oh, you might have missed the symbol that Nazi Germany used for its flag.

You may have also missed the bit from WW1 where Archduke Ferdinand was killed by a Serbian Orthodox Christian and that one of their chief complaints against the Austro-Hungarian empire. Then there's the whole bit with the Ottoman Empire.

Religion was not the only factor in these wars, clearly, but neither did it play no role. As for Korea and Vietnam? Did you miss the bit where the US was getting so worked up about the "godless commies" that they changed their national motto to "in god we trust". Iraq 1 was heavily based in fallout from the religious war between Iraq and Iran. In Iraq 2, the born-again Christian of the United States, who claimed to have mystical powers and to receive direct instruction from his god, referred to the war as a crusade. It was also frequently justified on the basis of the Sept 11th terrorist attacks, which had a firm basis in religion, and, when people pointed out that Iraq had nothing to do with those, the alternative reason given was that Saddam Hussein had brutally gassed Kurds to death in a religiously motivated civil war.

You're a bloody ignorant idiot. [rant omitted]

You completely ignored what he meant because you got offended.

He didn't say that atheists are immoral or incapable of spirituality. He said there is no moral component to atheism -- and there isn't. All "atheism" implies is the lack of belief in deities. There is no sort of moral prescription in there, either overt or implied. You are certainly capable of determining your own moral code, but you could do that regardless of your religion. You could just as easily be an atheist who believes that your country's laws decide what is right or wrong, or you could follow a godless spiritual philosophy that declares you have to behave in a particular way in order to eventually reach enlightenment.

I'd go so far as to say that most people determine their own moral code, even if they attribute it to their religious teachings -- have you ever noticed how most highly religious people never say that they disagree with their holy text's moral code? Nobody ever says, "I don't care about homosexuality and think it's great, but my bible says it's evil, so I have to persecute you anyway." Strangely, their holy text always agrees with their personal opinions.