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How the Internet Is Taking Away America's Religion
pitchpipe (708843) points out a study highlighted by MIT's Technology Review, which makes the bold claim that "Using the Internet can destroy your faith. That's the conclusion of a study showing that the dramatic drop in religious affiliation in the U.S. since 1990 is closely mirrored by the increase in Internet use," and writes "I attribute my becoming an atheist to the internet, so what the study is saying supports my anecdote. If I hadn't been exposed to all of the different arguments about religion, etc., via the internet I would probably just be another person who identifies as religious but doesn't attend services. What do you think? Have you become more religious, less religious, or about the same since being on the internet? What if you've always had it?"
The Antichrist
access to unfiltered information will make people THINK!
who would have thought? :)
Great video by a Youtuber on exactly this topic: The Internet: Where Religions Come To Die. Religions simply can't survive on the open marketplace of ideas. Religions work by indoctrination, shaming and isolating subjects to get them to believe absurd shit and then try to shield them from outside influences to make sure they don't find out. On the Internet, this ploy simply doesn't work.
This has been going on in most Western countries since before the internet, mainly in the 60s and 70s. America is just late to the game.
It is known that education will bring you towards being an atheist, why is that? Because you are recognizing that the churches of any religions have some political drive as well as a control-aspect. In addition, religions have always been a last resort for hope and that thinking that hope helps you to get a job or buy a house is clearly an illusion if you educate yourself on the internet.
So probably the biggest time-waster in human history is being supplanted by a new biggest time-waster ...
I have definitely become even more religious, but my variety has increased. Thanks to the Internet I am exposed to more faiths, and can see the merit in each one. For your information, I attend a Mormon church - as a non-member - when I'm near one, but am sympathetic to Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. Each has truths to share with you; none should be a box for you to hide in. Remember what King Monkut of Thailand said to the Christian missionaries: "What you teach us to do is good; what you teach us to believe is silly."
Are a bunch of noisy cunts who pretty much make up for the difference by never shutting the fuck up.
At least in Western Europe, it's been true for a long time that the more highly educated you are, the less likely you are to be the slave to the memes of some religious sect. The Internet is, fortunately, gradually increasing levels of education generally.
Religion and it's many splintered (and violent) factions are one of the last remaining serious problems holding back the advancement of humanity.
The Riddle of Epicurus
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to
Then He is not omnipotent.
If He is able, but not willing
Then He is malevolent.
If He is both able and willing
Then whence cometh evil?
If He is neither able nor willing
Then why call Him God?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We should start taxing churches in this country as well. It's pretty clear religion has not stayed out of politics.
And they've really bent the tax free system we put in place that the church paid no taxes. Now they move everything under the umbrella of the church to enjoy tax free status.
It's gotten corrupt. Take it away.
We need the money and they have enough to build giant monstrosities used two days a week. It's wasteful. Tax them like anybody else.
Half a million churches spread across the country paying no taxes. It's bullshit.
While the internet did not make me an atheist, it did made me a better informed atheist with better arguments. It also showed me that I was far from alone.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Exposure sure is dangerous, religion aside, slashdot and reddit makes me lose faith in humanity!
Not quote as John may have meant it, but oh so true.
Considering that the U.S. is dominated by 1) militant fundamentalist christian religion, 2) military-industrial complex religiously believing in U.S. geopolitical supremacy which happens to be quite lucrative, and 3) a money-power worshipping fundamentally cynical and corrupt wall street - lobbyist - political power complex which worships themselves as god on earth, I would say that taking away even a smidgen of America's religion would be a nice trick.
FWIW I personally have not changed in terms of belief despite being highly steeped in the Internet and science. I don't go to synagogue, but I have a little bit of faith that is inculcated deep down, that sometimes makes me feel communally connected to people, nature, the universe. I don't know the answer, whether it is some entity, brain linked to quantum reality, or just an artifact of our brain makeup that happened to be a good thing from a darwinian perspective. This has not changed since I was a child. I survived reading the bible, carlos casteneda, illuminati, etc. Probably science fiction affected me more than anything else. One thing I can say, I wish I had the Internet when I was little. It would have given me unlimited educational opportunity, whereas I wasted years languishing in public school and then spent years trying to find the Internet it having heard whispers about it (it was not in existence on a large scale then). I starting with bbs, compuserve, and some engineers who mentored me, but finally had to build my own ISP to start the Internet in the country I am living in now (I am an American living overseas).
The Internet opens you up to many views, which is having a good impact I think on society, but much of it comes from a willingness to hang out in communities that provide such views. In other words, you get more viewpoints by hanging out on BoingBoing (my other main site besides slashdot) than by just using search engines. You can use the net to prop up your own believes and find targets to rail against too. The net won't change fundamentalists, but it may change people who could otherwise be coopted by them, since fundamentalism is just power hungry cynical bastards using both ancient and modern mind control tools (biblical writings, political power structures, so-called miracles, vulnerabilities of the psyche, pseudoscience, etc.) on naive shmucks who don't have critical thinking defenses. In that sense the net might reduce fundamentalists in the next generation who disbelieve evolution, but it might increase scientologists which appear to be a destructive meme, a plague on society.
Humans obviously have a belief circuit that is exploited by organized religion. Whether that is just psychology or tied to something real, it has nothing to do with the state of utter fundamentalist chaos that is ripping the America to shreds, the shreds being preyed upon by cynical power-seekers. You only have to surf the offerings of typical American cable tv after reading zerohedge or even slashdot to get unbearably nauseated. So it would be a nice trick and any amount we can tone down religion in the U.S. where it is visible, will a very good thing, it would be an act of self preservation.
There are a lot of tech that has made advances during the last decades - not only internet. Hence, using the same logic the decline of religious people could be linked to use of Aspartame, the increased popularity of the diesel engine in cars, heat exchangers, Linux, ...
I still don't understand why people drop Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, but stick with Jesus. Hasn't everybody read The Emperor's New Clothes?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
On the contrary, internet has given me a faith: Science
Whatever you do, the Internet speeds up personal development processes as huge amounts of information is readily available. Without the Internet you would have come to the same conclusion but it would have taken just a bit longer. Internet can feed both limits of the scale, atheist and believer.
(I attribute my becoming an atheist to myself. I stepped renounced my religion at the age of 8. Simply deduced that there is no such thing as a god from observations and reasoning. That was in the early 70s. Internet would have merely sped the process up.)
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
I was born atheist and just stayed that way. Thanks mostly to my grandparents who didn't try to indoctrinate their children in any religion (although one of my grand-grandparents had been an actual priest).
Well, I guess I have to thank a bit the religion-condemning totalitarian regime me and my parents grew up under.
TL;DR: No, the Internet did not influence me at all in this regard.
hardly surprising really, religion relies heavily upon ignorance and superstition. The more information and world views you expose yourself to the more likely you are to come out of the dark ages.
Whether or not this is true, this report could cause the fundamentalist noise to drop radically as religious people flee the godless internet. Mission accomplished.
Your friends tells you about this thing which he believes in and tries to convince you. But you're not sure.
Do you:
a) Go along with them, get absorbed, spend hours listening to their arguments, ask around a circle of friends that you share with him about their opinion? (i.e. imagine pre-Internet generations where if you didn't know someone personally, or were a part of a group, you didn't even get to meet them, let alone communicate extensively)
b) Go to your social network online, look up vast resources, have the arguments for and against in front of you, find out all the dirty secrets, cliques, etc. hear tell from friends-of-friends-of-friends about things they do and believe in?
It's just a product of information availability. And it works both for and against us now. It's now harder to quash rumours started by a random person with no basis from spreading but it's much easier for such rumours to reach the ears of the interested - even if subject to court order in some cases!
And it's not just religion. It's products, services, celebrities, charities, you name it. Before, you didn't have a source of information likely to know both sides and the in and outs of everything that you could consult confidentially and extensively and get THOUSANDS of peoples opinions in a matter of minutes. Now it's a click away and you're taught to use it for school research before you're able to write.
On a personal note, I'm agnostic, so it's no great surprise to me that the more facts people have available to consult, the less seriously religion is taken. "Faith" is something I see as laziness - "I don't want to check this fact, I'll just trust it's true" isn't the best principle to live by. In fact, it's that exact principle that is being eroded by the simplicity of fact-checking nowadays (even if not perfect, there are still good sources of actual fact rather than common belief out there).
Religion has been on a bit of a death-spiral for years. My country is pretty much turning churches into nothing more than pretty historical buildings that you visit and feel obliged to drop a coin in the box to pay for your nice photos of the stained-glass. My father-in-law is religious and bemoans the complete lack of religion in his local area - he visited dozens of churches before he found one with any kind of active services, and they didn't suit his preference.
By contrast, he says that the US is a much more faithful country and you can still draw crowds of tens of thousands at certain churches.
But I think that's more about celebrity, and the older generation, than anything to do with religion itself.
Religion is dying a little, but to be honest we were in a kind of renaissance of religion the last couple of hundred years anyway.
i've heard it said that "if you study one religion you can be absorbed for a lifetime. if you study two religions, you can be done in a day."
I'm pretty sure it was "Catholic School" that's to blame for my atheism. Every time I meet an atheist (you know, down at the Church of Atheism) it's always the same story -- they spent some number of years in a Catholic School. Sometimes it's a little, sometimes it's a lot, but there's always some there. Sure this is anecdotal, but it's common enough that someone could probably get a research paper out of it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
However, we do know that religion is transmitted through contact. Both social contact and personal contact. See e.g. [Alderman, Derek H. 2012. "Cultural Change and Diffusion: Geographical Patterns, Social Processes, and Contact Zones." 21st Century Geography: A Reference Handbook (Vol. 1), SAGE Publications (edited by Joseph Stoltman), pp. 123-134.]
This is born out by the empirical data that people who're born in Muslim society tend to take Islam as their religion, whereas people who're born in devoutly Christian, Judaic, Shinto, or Animistic society tend to adopt those. In particular, the hypotheses of "Divine intervention" and "Very Personal Contact With God" aren't needed to model this kind of data. Social proximity (for which spatial proximity is a proxy) does the job adequately and is by far the simpler hypothesis.
Hence it's very reasonable to hypothesize that as social interaction patterns tend to shift to the Internet, transmission of religious beliefs follows suit. This hypothesis is not contradicted by, and dovetails nicely with, the survey data the article refers to.
Another data-point that fits this theory are examples of young or otherwise easily influenced people embracing fundamentalist Islam because of the websites they hang out on. Which incidentally is one of the reasons why organisations like the NSA and GCHQ are so interested in the Internet.
So all in all, the article is somewhere in-between an-interesting-idea-presented-in-a-blog post (it doesn't do any literature review, it doesn't place the question or the data within a recognised theoretical framework (even though suitable and persuasive frameworks such as the one sketched by Alderman exist), it doesn't present the data or the estimation results) and competent research.
But the one thing it's *not* is "Pseudo Science", simply because it (wisely) doesn't make any pretense at being scientific. Note the difference please.
the Internet offers.
Learning about reality is a GOOD thing.
Learning that the silly myths and superstitions pounded into your head when you were a child are silly myths and superstitions, and NOT universal facts, is a GOOD thing.
I know it wont be in my lifetime and probably not in my children's either, but someday, humans will shed all religious superstition.
The church has always tried its best to keep people ignorant.
Imagine where mankind could have been by now, if it wasn't for that.
they visit religious sites like this.
Religion didn't bring you the internet, but the internet can show you all the wonderful things religious people do for humanity.
When I was younger I thought religion was a total scam because the only view I'd ever have is on the micro scale within one community in one tiny corner of the world. You had to have "faith" your good deeds were affecting the rest of the world in a positive way for them to be felt.
Present day we can use the internet to actually see where our donations go, how our hard work is being used, and the places where help is most needed. Special interests, even within religion want the faithful to stop helping on a global scale and focus back on community using the internet to demonize our global awareness.
Is the internet eroding religion as a whole? No not really. The world is going through a period of hedonism atm and like any "mood swing" they will get bored and seek salvation eventually. When they realize the internet cannot provide what they seek, people will turn back to faith and look inside for answers.
LOL all theses LABELS!!! I'm atheist, I'm agnostic, I'm catholic. Hurrrrr. Stay pleb assdot.
Scientology.
For myself, the issue was information, namely the history of the Christian Church (there can't be 'one true faith' if literally everything in your religion was plagiarized from other religions) and evolutionary psychology. And it came from traditional paper books.
The impact of the Internet is more likely the revelation that atheists are not the vanishingly small fringe group that religious people want to believe.
Pseudo Science will trump your Pseudo Religion any day.
(BTW - There is no assault on Christianity by the media, put down the Fox News and back away slowly...)
But definitely not atheist. Honestly it's hard to imagine more hate spitting out of modern westerners. Sledgedot is just one more example of how hideously hypocritical people are. But nothing I say is going to make one bit of difference. So go on, project every idiot you've met onto me. Make up your little fantasies of who I am. Live in your own world and seek out confirmation of your predetermined truths. You'll get more than enough here.
It is actually a good thing if people are 'losing their religion'. It simply means they've started thinking for themselves and questioning things.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
The title makes it sound like less religion is a bad thing.
The internet may kill religion, but it doesn't kill faith. Religion being defined in this instance as cultural observances, unquestioned metaphysical assumptions and ceremonies, and faith as things one deeply believes and part of who you are, not merely what you do (to fit in).
And, I suspect, most people of faith who have thought about it deeply have no problem with that. I'd much rather people were sure of what they believed, and actually thought about it, argued about it, and made a real statement about what they believed, rather than just accepting what they are brought up with.
I think that the internet - and in fact any meeting with outside ideas - is the best way to kill nominal 'religion'. However, I'd make a guess that many people actually find a new faith, or find their faith hugely challenged or restructured. I know formally agnostic people who got into 'new age' mysticism and became (in some form) Buddhist through reading and learning online.
I am a follower of Jesus, who I believe is the son of God. ("Christian" being a very loaded term, especially in the USA). Many of my friends and others who believe the same as I do have been strengthened in their faith by discussions and videos online. Many churches don't bother actually exploring scripture in a critical or even structured way - but plenty of people online do. Video serieses by John Piper, Rob Bell, Nicky Gumbel, John MacArthur, and many other "thinking preachers" have been instrumental in my building a faith which is able to accept alternative viewpoints without freaking out.
C.S. Lewis was an Athiest, but became a Christian at university, and encountering views which challenged his view of the world so much he had to re-examine his own philosophies. I know plenty of others who came to faith at university, and a few who did online.
So. I'm a believing, 'born again', totally convinced Jesus-freak, with friends who are Athiest, Buddhist, Muslim, Agnostic, straight, gay, married, divorced, rich, poor. Their views do not destroy mine, and I will not try to destroy theirs. And I accept the fact that my views can only really be solid if I can engage with them in civilized discourse, and can understand and appreciate (even if I totally disagree with) them.
To those who call themselves Athiests here - how many of your friends hold views as strongly as you do, but which are completely contrary to your own?
It made me lose a lot of faith alright.
Jesus is a bit too far away from being a simple invention. Believe in its stories or not, but you can not simply discuss the bible away. Explaining it with self-deception (many people) and forgery is not satisfying. If you believe in it on the other hand, then also, that Jesus is the sond of god, who promised salvation.
Jesus is on often (hint: he's the record shop owner). God hiselft is own on (hint: there was a big bang! and God done it). Even the birth of da baby Jesus was told. So if this internet is making you heathen to go to the TV and toon to FoX Sunday night.
Many people become Christian because they worry about relevance. An after-life makes the here-and-now less relevant, and there's less of an onus on making your mark, you just "have to follow the rules".
The Internet creates that sense of permanence. You post photos, you document your life, you create music, images, apps, stories, blog entries, etc. etc.
People realise that blogging on Sunday morning makes them feel better than going to church, and there you go...
The internet isn't "taking away" anything. Stop trying to make it sound like an aggressive action. People can't be forced to give up their religion. Even if you beat it out of them, all you can really do, at best, is prevent them from practicing it when people are looking at them. But I suppose "How the internet is convincing people to be less religious" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
Atheism is not new to me. The first time I questioned religion was when I was seven years old, asking my mother, "If God created the universe, then who created God?" Her answer, "God always was", did not sound at all convincing to me. At age 15, when I was finally allowed to choose for myself whether or not to attend church services, I immediately stopped doing so, having considered it a waste of time for as long as I could remember. A few years later I realized that I did not believe in God at all. That was over 30 years ago.
What the Internet did, however, was to introduce me to the writings of authors such as, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Their books describe in great detail how religion has caused so much more suffering in the world than it has ever managed to prevent, for example how wars may be started by people, but wartime atrocities almost always require religion to be involved. Ultimately, this is all caused by systems that tell us what to think, immunizing us to argument, so they should be recognized for what they really do: brainwashing.
What to do about it? Education, education, education. Mandatory up to age 21, but available to everyone at all ages and for free. Everyone should be scientifically literate. The best thing a society can do is to invest in itself, and religion just happens to be one of the first things we lose when we learn to think for ourselves.
I knew this when I was 10, and that was in 1950, my total lack of belief in the mumbo jumbo of ALL religion began then and became a certainty soon after that. Family was catholic with all trappings, control, coercion etc....water off a ducks back.
Religion wants a closed ecology - you get your words from the priests, work hard and pray and, oh yes, give me money.
There is no difference between scientology, islam, catholicism or bantu spirit jabber - they are all mechanisms to live free and prosper at the behest of others.
I want the tax exemptions for reiligions stopped, I want them taxed, kick them in the ass.
And on top of that they all seem to thrive on child molestation. It is no joke the way Giles portrays clerics grinning after alter boys - many lives were harmed and criminals protected.
This has to be bullshit. Every 14-year old can see that religion has nothing to do with physical realities. The difference the internet makes is showing those in doubt that they are not alone.
www.xenu.net, baby, www.xenu.net. The ability to look up what L. Ron really said about our minds being made up of slaughtered galactic citizens, and the history of criminal cult behavior documented by former cult members, verified by court documents and convictions, has seriously eviscerated their scams.
I became an Atheist at 6 and since this was in the 80's I guess I'd have to blame it on my Light Brite.
Because there is evidence that Jesus actually came back from the dead.
"Why do you attack only my religion and not the others?"
- people from every single religion.
At the moment we are just seeing what is happening when a formally almost monopolistic marketplace is opened up: The former monopolist loses market share and the competition gains market share. But this does not mean the former monopolist is going to disappear, it will just shrink a lot. And while Christianity has decreasing market share in the US and Western Europe, in other place with a former monopoly of state mandated Atheism, Christianity and other religions are gaining market share. E.g.: In China and Russia.
Jan
Getting rid of religion is one of the most rational things a society can do, religion is the single most damaging force ever invented and at the same time one of the most irrational.
Basically you can sum up catholic / Islam based religions in this fashion;
1. An invisible man who was never created invents the universe and does a very piss poor job it.
2. He then populates earth with two people based off the same DNA source ( Eve is created from Adam ).
3. God forgets to remove a tree that is put on earth that apparently causes Sin ( of course he invented Sin as a way to not be held accountable for his actions ).
4. He then kicks Adam and Eve out of the garden because he can't forgive what he created, Adam and Eve procreate like rabbits, even thou science tells us they couldn't of made many healthy children with one DNA set.
5. God gets pissed and kills everyone several times, instead of forgiving what he creates ( no one can explain that ).
6. Finally after proving he's either a really bad engineer or just a hurt and suffering junky he decide he has to suffer by being human and having himself killed. (I guess his S&M obsession was to strong and he finally had to get the big one off).
Now what possible level headed human could support this insane ideal? What I just outlined is EXACTLY what the bible explains. You can argue or you can say I didn't read it correctly but strip off the extra BS and what I stated is exactly what the bible states. I didn't do a good job capturing the parts where God tells man to openly rape little girls and commit mass killings.
Lets just review some of the other wondering lessons we can learn from religion:
1. Gay people are evil and should be put to death by stoning.
2. Little girls who are virgins are to be raped, otherwise kill them.
3. The universal father can't be held accountable for his actions, but he demands totaly and unquestioning loyalty.
4. When things get bad and you need to forgive sin, have yourself killed for what you create. ( hardly all powerful ).
5. If you don't cut off parts of your body or have sex in special position you're going to hell.
etc.. etc... etc..
Lets not even start with Mormonism, where you take Christianity, which is crazy and add two dashes of total bat shit to it. Islam takes Christianity and adds on society segmentation and insane gender segmentation, combined with the fact most Muslims have the maturity of three year olds and they claim the Quran tells them to kill ( which is doesn't ).
Religion is what most people consider morally superior, but if you can't explain how the extreme negatives fit in, then why should you be allowed to use the extreme or neutral positives? Religion is not a good force in the world, it's not rational, it's not moral and it's not a system of belief we should be passing on. If the internet is helping to end this insane system of sick, disturbing, mentally and emotionally twisted beliefs then so be it, and I'm glad!
http://www.angelfire.com/nd/ki...
The Prince and the Magician
Once upon a time there was a young prince, who believed in all things but three. He did not believe in princesses, he did not believe in islands, he did not believe in God. His father, the King, told him that such things did not exist. As there were no princesses or islands in his father's domaines, and no sign of God, the young prince believed his father.
But then, one day, the prince ran away from his palace. He came to the next land. There, to his astonishment, from every coast he saw islands, and on these islands, strange and troubling creatures whom he dared not name. As he searched for a boat, a man in full evening dress approached along the shore.
"Are those real islands?" asked the young prince.
"Of course they are real islands," said the man in evening dress.
"And those strange and troubling creatures?"
"They are all genuine and authentic princesses."
"Then God must also exist!" cried the prince.
"I am God," replied the man in full evening dress, with a bow.
The young prince returned home as quickly as he could.
"So you are back," said his father.
"I have seen islands, I have seen princesses, I have seen God," said the prince reproachfully.
The king was unmoved.
"Neither real islands, nor real princesses, nor a real God, exist."
"I saw them!"
"Tell me how God was dressed."
"God was in full evening dress."
"Were the sleeves of his coat rolled back?"
The prince remembered that they had been. The king smiled.
"That is the uniform of a magician. You have been deceived."
At this, the prince returned to the next land, and went to the same shore, where he once again came upon the man in full evening dress.
"My father the king has told me who you are," said the young prince indignantly. "You deceived me last time, but not again. Now I know that those are not real islands and real princesses, because you are a magician."
The man on the shore smiled.
"It is you who are deceived, my boy. In your father's kingdom there are many islands and many princesses. But you are under your father's spell, so you cannot see them."
The prince returned home. When he saw his father, he looked him in the eyes.
"Father, is it true that you are not a real king, but only a magician?"
The king smiled, and rolled back his sleeves.
"Yes, my son, I am only a magician."
"Then the man on the shore was God."
"The man on the shore was another magician."
"I must know the real truth, the truth beyond magic."
"There is no truth beyond magic," said the king.
The prince was full of sadness.
He said, "I will kill myself."
The king by magic caused death to appear. Death stood in the door and beckoned to the prince. The prince shuddered. He remembered the beautiful but unreal islands and the unreal but beautiful princesses.
"Very well," he said. "I can bear it."
"You see, my son," said the king, "you too now begin to become a magician." -
--Adapted from "The Magus" by John Fowles
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Give internet for free already :)
Quote "I attribute my becoming an atheist to the internet..."
You do not have to pick a side, religious or atheist. Religion is part of the control system and atheism is the other side of the coin.
People are controlled through division in society, separating people in to opposing groups to pit against each other.
Don't pick a side, don't be part of the control system.
My Christianity has only been strengthened by what I have read on the Internet. It has exposed me to a great many of the arguments against Christianity, and the more I study those arguments and compare them with sound Christian doctrine-see the work of CS Lewis-the more I have come the conclusion that the logic of Christianity is unassailable. There is evidence that Christ came back from the dead. If he did in fact return from death, then he is who he claimed to be.
So the internet is causing people to reject their silly belief that "there is a god" and replace it with an equally silly belief that "there is no god".
Get behind me, Internet!
No, there isn't. If you're serious, then i highly suspect you don't understand the meaning of the word "evidence." There isn't even evidence that he actually existed. There is written record of the church creating the mythology surrounding the name Jesus that they use today (The First Council of Nicaea), but that's about it. There is a complete absence of corroboration that he lived, as there are no Roman records (records common and abundant at the time) that cite him, and his first mention in the writing of Josephus is a fairly obvious forgery, it being neither in his tone or style of writing, and added into a margin, with the additional complete omission of any reference in a prior work by the historian.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Dude, what happened to you between 2010 and 2012 that caused you to totally flip out with these cockamamie conspiracy theories?
You seemed to be pretty normal before and now you're batshit crazy. What a shame.
I've noticed that religion has affiliated itself more and more with the right wing political party (in the US). During that period the ideas coming from that political party have often designed to pander to deeply religious people, have become nuttier and nuttier. The Republicans recognized that there was a large group of people who were used to doing what they were told by an authority figure and targeted that group to perpetuate their existence, hence the religion/right wing party affiliation, in spite of the fact that the right wing party promotes ideas that are often in direct conflict with the religious- ideas and attitudes about caring about the poor, sick, etc.
It seems that while the original goal might have been for the republicans to insinuate themselves into the religion (Xtianity in its various forms), the opposite has also taken place the religious leaders saw an opportunity to get more control and power and impose their beliefs on a larger population by insinuating themselves into the Republican party. Recently it appears that the Republicans have been trying to distance themselves from their more religious affiliations by making a show of standing up to the Tea party (the religious parasite that is sucking the life blood from the Republican party), but the two are now hopelessly entangled and if religion goes down, they will drag the Republican party down with them.
The next 20 years are going to be interesting.
I've checked the rate of growth of my church. Wars and the great depression had a lower growth rate than during this recession. Still the membership of my church is growing. Sitting home and surfing the web may make people less likely to seek out the society of a church. What's funny is the assumption that this is a good thing. I rarely post to these self congratulations postings of atheists. Atheists will continue to pat themselves on the back. You cannot give an atheist any evidence that they will accept, as they refuse to look just like those who claim the world is flat. Atheists will stand in line at a church's soup kitchen and deny that there is any reason for people to come together to help others. They will claim the religion is the cause of all the problems in the world, even though many horrible world leaders like Stalin were clearly atheist. Don't think that just because I stop arguing with you that your ideas are correct. It may be that I realize it is pointless to argue with those who cannot think. There will come a time in your life when you need help. You may continue to deny it. But realize that God will be there even if you do not believe.
This is why we can't have nice things
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It is not internet directly but one of its byproducts, the ability to talk with a large number of people outside your immediate social group.
This is a very powerful thing, you are a product of environment, when exposed to a larger environment the echo chamber of the ideas repeated by those close to you diminishes.
Whatever you're smoking- I want me some!
but does not attend service?" Is an oxymoron. The internet may have assisted in tearing away the shroud from the carcass of your faith, but it was already dead.
For my part, I have an active faith, and I've found the internet to be useful in supporting it. There are arguments on both sides, and resources aplenty to support pretty much any position.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the internet has increased polarization, not only in religion, but in politics as well. Indeed, it's probably increased the gulf between righteous emacs users and heretical vi/vim users, to say nothing of the holy war between 3-ist and 4-ists in indenting code.
interesting experiment:
All myth cults have deity intervention at times of extreme cult challenge.
All myth cults have the goal of infecting all humanity.
interesting experiment,
categorise belief in a magic deity(s) as mental illness.
Wait for intervention.
Correlation is not causation. And you don't get to pick and choose exceptions.
What's a surefire way to get all the little commies here to jackoff in unison? Publish a story telling them "they're winning." Then watch all the splooge fly as they cum all over each other in ecstacy.
Agreed.
I think that I first encountered this little puzzle when I was about 15. I pondered it for quite a while because the logic is very appealing, but it truly doesn't hold up under careful scrutiny when confronted with either life or Christian doctrine. I'm surprised how often atheists like to make it.
I have a son. I allow him to play hockey even though it could result in a serious injury or even death. I let him date girls even though he could get his heart broken. When he was two, I let him work his way up and down flights of steps. And yet I love him and would give up my life for him. I see the big picture even when he doesn't.
There's a doctrinal answer to this as well if you prefer. Genesis offers two reasons for mankind's difficulties, both of which negate the riddle.
1. We chose to eat from the tree of knowledge. In other words, despite all of the bad things we live with, suppose we chose to endure them?
2. Eating from the tree of knowledge was a sin. Suppose we are here enduring suffering because we deserve that suffering?
The tree of knowledge story is not there to suggest that we shouldn't think for ourselves. It may, however, precisely explain why bad things happen.
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---- Booth was a patriot ----
Please lets thank God for the internet and pray for its expansion.
I don't buy it. The internet by itself does the opposite, people use it to reinforce their beliefs. People always believe what the want to hear. The internet is a perfect echo chamber because there are blogs and groups with legions of followers to reinforce anything you want to believe in. The is true across all ideologies.
The trend away from religion has been developing rapidly for my entire lifetime (i'm 53). I live in NC (bible belt). From birth until I was maybe 18 years old I only knew one person who's parents were divorced. Everyone I knew got married because they wanted to live with someone. It was taboo and unheard of for non-married people to live together. Everyone I knew attended church every Sunday and no one ever questioned religion.
This changed rapidly as the first wave of baby boomers had children (people 10 years older than me). Huge numbers of these people quit going to church and got divorced. Many of these children of the boomers never went to church but maybe had some residual religious beliefs from their grandparents. Now this generation has kids that are in their 20s and they are far removed from religion. There are exceptions of course but this is the trend I have seen and it has no relation to the internet.
In my opinion it stems from the economic boom after WWII. The baby boomers had money and leisure time and went to college, etc. Something their families before had never been able to do for lack of money. Tight knit families and support from the extended church family were needed to survive for many people.
I was raised in a Roman Catholic family, was baptised, took communion, got confirmed and married in the church, and ended that association in 1993, when after my wife and I separated and divorced she decided she wanted our marriage of 7 years and one child anulled, and had that granted. I didn't respond to the petition as by then, I figured that if through a few words and mumbo jumbo by some shaman here on earth, our marriage never was in the eyes of the Lord, then to hell with the Lord, he must be nothing but made up nonsense, too. Thanks to the internet, I've connected with people and made friends with folks who think like I do -- that there really isn't any magical guy in the sky looking down on us all, and this after a full read of the Bible and a lot of personal reflection.
The question "Can god make a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it?" is not a paradox.
It's a math problem.
It's a sword that cuts both ways. On the one hand, the internet brings everyone out into the middle of a diversity of thought. On the other hand, it provides a powerful way to find out more about what you believe...and everyone believes something as our ability to have first-hand experience and new ideas in our own short lives is very limited. We have to rely mostly on other people's ideas and experience passed down through time and shared. Ultimately, if God is acting in our midst, then the internet will be a means for God to reach more people and enter their hearts.
Religion != belief in God
A subtle point everyone seems to miss.
Just like many Christians believe Christ raised (himself) from the dead. If Christians truly read the Bible,
they should know that God raised him from the dead. It's a huge difference and one of the many things
modern religion / christianity gets totally wrong.
The more I look for cause not to believe in God, the more evidence I see of Him. It's actually pretty cool.
Jerry Falwell and Richard Dawkins (et. al.) are simply two sides of the same coin (okay, I'll give that
Dawkins doen't / didn't steal money from elderly people to fund his ministry).
Andrew Gelman, statistics professor and blogger, has characterized the Technology Review article as "horrible" and a "monstrosity" on his blog. He is an MIT graduate. Correlation does not imply causation. It's clickbait, too.
"Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens." - Schiller
But it can show you how stupid it is to believe in imaginary creatures and let you make an intelligent decision based on facts, not myth..
The "Internet" is really no different than a library in this case, only you dont have to get your lazy ass out of the chair and drive in...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm an attorney. I'm pretty sure that I know what the definition of evidence is.
There is evidence that Christ lived, died and returned. For all of the reasons that you offered, you may choose to discount that evidence as insufficient, fraudulent and manufactured. But that evidence, no matter how marginalized, does exist.
I'm pretty sure that I know what the definition of evidence is.
You're using a definition of the word that people don't expect. It's easy to say that evidence exists even if it's complete bullshit, but when you say there is evidence for something, usually people will think you mean that it is good evidence.
[End Of Line]
The Internet simply destroyed the argument of authority. Whoever has access to the Internet has to possibility to check facts, and will be exposed to debunk of the BS, affirmation of the BS, BS ate my balls, BS's tweets. "Authority says so, it must be true" is doomed with the ease of checking, although this is somewhat balanced by the ease to forward BS you hear on your Facebook account, itself balanced by obsessive compulsive nerds like myself who take a pride in debunking it in less than 12 seconds.
Then seven years ago smartphones came along, and even at the bar BS is easily debunked. Some story some dude tells at the bar can't leave a mark in people's subconscious anymore.
I became an atheist when I was about ten or eleven years old. I was sure of myself at the time.
Twenty years later, I have some serious doubts about it, and have retreated to agnosticism. That's partly because the Internet has given me easy access to all sorts of information about philosophy, religion and politics. I was able to read what the other side actually thought, not what my side said they thought.
I could say that the Internet destroyed my faith in atheism, but I know that you guys really hate the implications of statements like that, so please take it as a (trollish) joke!
What I would say, not as a joke, is that the Internet has not stopped people believing weird and/or stupid things. In fact it has strengthened all sorts of weird beliefs, some weirder than anything in the Bible.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
There is a complete absence of corroboration that he lived, as there are no Roman records (records common and abundant at the time) that cite him, and his first mention in the writing of Josephus is a fairly obvious forgery, it being neither in his tone or style of writing, and added into a margin, with the additional complete omission of any reference in a prior work by the historian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
What is evil to me may not be evil to you which may not be evil to God.
Cybernetically, and mathematically: That which increases the complexity or awareness of the universe is good.
This is what life does, life is good. Extinction reduces complexity, and is not good. Knowledge and exploration increase awareness and are good. Censorship and falsehoods are not good. War is not good unless it will prevent more death than it causes. Genocide is not good, it reduces complexity.
The computation becomes more complex when you factor in the actions that are not good for the few, but benefit the many. Goodness is not a boolean, it is a scalar, and is relative when comparing the outcomes of a choice. Prisons limit the exploration and awareness of the universe for some to prevent their limiting of the greater goodness of others. Given the complexity of all involved one can even determine the degree of risk that should be taken to rehabilitate the dangerous. Imprisoning the innocent is not good.
Humans emerged from a bloody evolutionary path, they can not help this, but it increased their complexity faster than that of the plants. Now count the neurons and cells of the creatures and plants and learn just how good it is to eat.
The only real problem is that one can not see into the future, so only predictions can be made as to how good a choice will be, but we can analyze the past, and with a big enough computer with enough input you can discern what is good.
Evil on the other hand is a term that is mired in the meaningless muck of all things humans find detestable. Frequently one will ignore that everything flows and proclaim ridiculous statements such as, "Lying is evil", or "Killing is evil", when in reality lying can sometimes produce more goodness than the false information prevents, some call these "white lies". Are white lies evil? Some would say yes, others would say no. The fact remains that the act of lying is not good, but sometimes it is beneficial for the greater good. The same goes with killing.
It is not that Evil or "being bad" is hard to nail down, it is that humans have defined evil so broadly that it is a meaningless term. It covers everything from thought crime to selfishness to destruction of the universe. Your lack of coordination is not good since it caused you to stub your toe. The action killed some cells and perhaps limited your ability to explore, perhaps the pain even distracted you from doing more good yourself, thus it is not good. If we could analyze the probability lattice wherein you did not stub your toe we could figure out whether it was ultimately good for the universe that you did so.
We can also limit the sphere of influence to the event itself, those surrounding you, etc. and determine how much stubbing your toe affected the goodness within a subset of space-time. You are free to blame the engineer of your abode for not making the corner that stubbed your round, and even proclaim that corners are evil, but it may even lead to your designs affecting hardware and UI designs as the CEO of a successful tech company. Then, arguably, your toe stubbing may have been good for you even as you set out to round every rectangle's evil corners. Note that if every rectangle is rounded then it reduces the complexity of the shape categorization of the medium, thus is not good in general unless you are exposed to non rounded rectangles elsewhere: A different UI or design theme, or a door jamb for instance...
If you are questioning your religion, the Internet, and any other media presenting information on the topic, make a difference.
But it's not like whenever you open a random page there's a pop-up telling you to lose your religion.
Maybe there is another reason for losing religion ie. the breathtaking progress of technology that just happens to be coincident with the growth of the Internet. Why should a person have to believe in a quasi-magical deity when time and again, technology shows us how to make 'magic' happen?
How could you not doubt religion in a world where technology makes us gods?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Not because of a theological belief, but because the internet has made me realize the people you meet on the internet are all a bunch of cocksuckers and religious people are typically nicer to be around.
Born into a Jehovah's Witness life. After my parents got the internet, I questioned Christianity and turned to the Occult before becoming Buddhist. That's directly because of research online. After some more time, because of the internet, I lost reason to believe in reincarnation. Now I'm Atheist, but nobody knows it yet.
If it does, there never was a faith there to begin with. What happens STRENGTHENS what's there, in these cases, that the person thinks more of other humans' opinions than of God's. "One with God is a majority" (Martin Luther.) The Internet has shown me how crucial is faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord as I've seen how lost and darkened is the thinking of so many people ("water is complex"? really? Is that what passes for "science" now?)
Cranky educator.
correlate to the number of pirates?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I was never religious, being on the Internet and having access to so much knowledge made me less so but it had the effect of making me think, in a truer sense, that there is "more".
Not a personalized anthropomorphic God, but something.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Interesting how this gets posted on Sunday morning, a time when people of faith are particularly likely to be offline doing other things. Deliberate attempt to skew the discussion, or just failure to think things through?
Teach the controversy!
Personally, it was the religious that turned me off...
It is no secret that our technology has expanded faster than our species is able to adapt to it. I do not agree with the premise that the Internet makes people atheists. I believe the Internet makes people busy, distracted, and unhappy similar to a person who watches cable news 24x7.
The Internet is open for business, shopping, facebook, research, slashdot, entertainment, YouTube videos, porn, gambling, gaming, ebay, amazon, netflix, and on and on and on. There is never a lack of services to capture your attention.
My premise would be this, since people are always busy consuming from the Internet, there is very little time for reflection. Since when most people put their smart phones down for the day and send that last text message, they pass out dead tired. Without reflection or examination of your life, you are just busy and tired. You have no time to take stock of yourself as a man/woman. Further, you have less time to be empathetic and/or meditate/pray.
I know older Americans that turn off their Internet for awhile because it becomes and addiction and affects how the live and behave.
Additionally, since 1990 the "Divorce and Marriage" data has shown a much different historic picture. Marriage rates are down, kids are getting married later and later (sometimes due to Internet, XBOX, and PlayStation). There is now a much larger pool of mates to chose from using the Internet causing people to shop and shop and shop. And again, I would say there is very little reflection as to what are the top 10 things I am looking for in a mate, what am I bringing to a marriage etc...
Humanities ability to adapt to the always on technology is a problem. Additionally, the ability to moderate the technology use is a problem. We need time to reflect, meditate, pray, sleep, socialize instead of spending every waking moment tied to a smart device on the Internet. The distraction of always on technology is a huge problem. Research show that limiting screen time for kids is very important.
Maybe we need a law that says the Internet is going down at 10pm to 6am to give humans a chance to sleep and be human.
I pondered it for quite a while because the logic is very appealing, but it truly doesn't hold up under careful scrutiny when confronted with either life or Christian doctrine. I'm surprised how often atheists like to make it.
And as an atheist, I'm surprised when rational adults appeal to primitive mythological stories.
I have a son. I allow him to play hockey even though it could result in a serious injury or even death. I let him date girls even though he could get his heart broken. When he was two, I let him work his way up and down flights of steps. And yet I love him and would give up my life for him. I see the big picture even when he doesn't.
[bold mine]
So you admit you wouldn't stand by while he was gang raped, tortured, and murdered. What would you think of a parent who did?
There is a difference between having faith in God and practicing a religion. I agree that the Internet is shedding light on the flaws in most religions, and therefore discouraging people and possibly turning them away. That does not mean that those people who are opting out of a religion are losing their faith in God (or whatever higher power). It merely means that they are realizing that religion is based on humans, and humans are subject to the same flaws as everyone else.
You say that as if the Illuminati aren't real...
Or maybe it's all the cat pictures.
In my case, Catholics and Fundy Christians made me an atheist.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
(records common and abundant at the time)
You're confused.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Correlation is not causation.
Most religions believe in the concept of freewill which means we are free to make good,bad and horrible choices.
I never understood the argument religion starts wars. Two of the largest murders in the history of the world were atheists. Mao Zedong and Joesph Stalin.
Kim Jong-un on the other hand is a very nice atheist and his father was an amazing golfer.
Whose numbers have greatly increased since the advent of the Internet.
Science is search for truth.
God is truth (religions are not).
Some stops their search abruptly, thinking the path they used - science, is truth.
They are mistaken.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The internet is a series of branches, and atheists want to send their beliefs down those branches, and into your child's bedroom.
If Jesus is the son of God, then you shouldn't be worshiping him like you do (that would be putting someone else before god, Exodus 20:3)
And if Jesus IS God, then he never really died, just merely faked his own death.
Can't have it both ways
But I sure have made the 'Pope Cry' a lot since first gaining access.
It appears some people have rushed to assume that the primary causation in the drop of religious activity is knowledge. However, the researcher says that the internet accounts for about 25% of the drop and theorizes that of that 25%, knowledge could be a large factor. But there is a another factor that was not mentioned that is common on the Internet and I suspect also in the larger but still unknown region of 50% causation. Entertainment. I suspect that entertainment correlates not only to a drop in religious activity (particularly among the more easily distracted) but the measured drop in friendship depth, increase in loneliness, violence, etc. I think we need to figure out our mental health in the same way we are figuring out our physical health. Then we can measure the effect of certain types of recreation in a similar way to how we measure the effect of eating unhealthy or not exercising.
"his first mention in the writing of Josephus is a fairly obvious forgery, it being neither in his tone or style of writing, and added into a margin"
I'm no historian, but it sounds like you aren't either? Wikiped says >.
There's also: "Scholars generally view these variations as indications that the Josephus passages are not interpolations, for a Christian interpolator would have made them correspond to the New Testament accounts, not differ from them"
Now, you might be 100% right that it is all a pile of lies, etc. But if modern scholarship has almost universally acknowledge the authenticity of a "fairly obvious forgery" you might need to expand your case a bit.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." ~Seneca the Younger
That, and the lead-up to the Iraq war by the neocons and the blind stampede of the faithful being led "usefully".
I put it in bad enclosure, I guess:
"Modern scholarship has almost universally acknowledged the authenticity of the reference to "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" [13] and has rejected its being the result of later interpolation"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I attend a Mormon church - as a non-member...
Why?
That religion started over a century ago, its founder and his antics are well known - he was a con man. The whole religion is based on lies and was built by conning very gullible people.
You seem intelligent, so why that particular faith? From what I can see, when you eliminate the whole "Jesus was in N. America and Golden Tablets from Angel" nonsense, it's like any other mainstream Christian denomination - except their very annoying "missionaries" who come to my door and disturb me.
Why?
I think declining religion has a lot more to do with:
1. The Catholic church pedophile scandal and cover up
2. The religious right joining up with the GOP who isn't a hero of the poor in any way at all.
Genesis is not a literal account of the history of God's creation, but a parable steeped in symbolism and metaphor from an ancient Jewish culture.
This answer is not new. The Christian tradition of interpreting this book as being metaphorical (aside from being blatantly obvious to anyone who reads it) goes back at least as far as St Augustine (4 century...and it is amazing how many modern protestants know nothing about this man, despite the number of their beliefs that he cooked up).
What are these symbols, and what do that mean? That is an ongoing discussion with many different answers, based on varying levels of knowledge of Jewish history and the Hebrew language.
The fundamentalist interpretation, taking an obvious parable as being literal truth, is not only rife with philosophical problems, but also completely unfounded (there is no historical evidence supporting this as the author's intent). It's popularity is, in my opinion, due to a severe lack of critical thinking skills (and not to any historically solid traditional validity).
See the current issue of 'Skeptic' Jesus as a person probably existed, although the evidence is scant, a few biblical historians (some Jewish) believe he existed.
He apparently was an apocalyptic preacher among many that the Romans killed for causing too much trouble.
As far as the teachings in the New Testament - I think they were a mishmash of what folks taught then and what was imported along the trading routes from the far East. Like the Golden Rule (Do not do onto others ...) which was orginally taught by Confucious 1,000 years before Christ.
And of course, his divinity was/is complete horseshit.
Of all the religions teaching the same things back then, I think Christianity got the lead because of the conversion of Constatine's conversion. If he didn't convert, Christianity wouldn't have gotten that lucky foothold and have taken over the Western World.
The internet can be a dangerous place too.
Just like religious services can put you in an "information bubble", so can the internet.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Just as much correlation as internet use.
Of course the obvious intent of this submission was bring on a "Silly Fundy Republican Teabaggers" flame war. Doesn't appear to have taken hold though.
Back when Haiti had the earth quake in '10, my wife's church had a fundraiser for some of the folks who were going to go over and "help".
what did they need money for?
To get food?
Nope.
To get fresh water?
Nope.
Building supplies?
Yep.
For homes?
Nope.
For a church.
Their biggest concern was getting them a church. Not food. Not medicine. Not medical help. Not homes.
But a goddamn church.
Even my clergy mother in law rolled her eyes at that one.
The SECULAR organization - Doctors without Borders - did more good that ANY church group.
Church "charity" is just to promote their own agendas - getting more followers to prop up their own beleifs.
Originally, a liberal arts degree was supposed to teach a person how to think independently. History, political science, anthropology, psychology, sociology and so on, forced you to see different world views and solutions. It actively worked against the kind of drone-like social programming instituted by public schools and trade-school-only mentality of universities. Naturally, "liberal arts" was slowly propagandized into a dirty word. Politicians *hate* citizens who think, and won't toe the line. The internet, which no politician was bright enough to predict or evaluate, has blown that out of the water. Kids today are more likely to read news on rt.com or reddit.com than NBC, NPR, Fox, MSNBC or any other USA-centric propaganda outlet.
Mayhem may well ensue. :)
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
You know of a court of law that accepts documents authored after all of the alleged eye witnesses were conveniently dead as evidence?
I'm wondering if you intended for your statement to be this broad:
seems like you're targeting one of the world's many religions here...
is Knowledge also "anti-buddah" and "anti-allah"
what about "anti-confuscious"?
science is not "anti" anything....it is a method for consistently and comparatively observing the universe & sharing what we learn
Thank you Dave Raggett
ftfy
Thank you Dave Raggett
more fool you if you can't learn.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
It's important to note that the threshold to "prove" causality in any way in this kind of study (anthropology) is ridiculously high.
This study does not meet it by a long shot...few could just becuase of the complexity of the language & concepts.
"religion" is so many things to so many people, unless you take great care in defining terms, you will have mass confusion from your respondents...
with the "religion" example, some fundamental independent born-again Christians would answer like an atheist to question about "religions" because many are taught that only ***Organized*** church groups on a large scale are "religion"
they consider themselves "spiritual" not "religious"
that's just the start...**the whole study is founded on this error**
this is "Reefer Madness" level error...
we all know if a girl takes one hit of marijuana she will become uncontrollably attracted to men of other races
Thank you Dave Raggett
This is very interesting to me! Being born in 1991, I always had full access to internet. I despised organized religion, and was a strict evolutionist. However, following multiple 25c-nBOMe overdoses in a 2 month period, I've realized the respective truths and lies in the world's most popular organized religions. I've discovered that there are truths to each religion, but there have been corruptions, especially in Christianity.
I would go more in depth on my theology, but i'm late for work lol...
great point...holy shit I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed this...
this study's research design drives me absolutely insane...
just imagine what conclusions you could jump to if what the researchers in TFA did could ***actually*** establish causation!!!
you're right on...I'm the product of 18 years of fundamental indpendent baptist education (yes undergrad too)....YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT...
this is about feeling safe to be *honest* not any sort of societal shift
Thank you Dave Raggett
The Josephus reference to James brother of Jesus is widely considered authentic. You are picking and choosing your "evidence" to support some fairly incredulous claim. If you were interested in "evidence" you would be familiar with the latest and best scholarly work that all supports a very real and living Jesus.
The quicker we get rid of organized religion, the better for all humanity.
I'm blaming hard science fiction for myself.
led to interest and hobbies and then career in science and engineering.
I'm an attorney. I'm pretty sure that I know what the definition of evidence is as it applies to the law that I practice and so has no real bearing on this.
FTFY
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
The internet is destroying my faith - not my faith in God, but in humanity.
I have a son. I allow him to play hockey even though it could result in a serious injury or even death. I let him date girls even though he could get his heart broken. When he was two, I let him work his way up and down flights of steps. And yet I love him and would give up my life for him. I see the big picture even when he doesn't.
You are not God. You cannot see all possible outcomes. If you could see the future and know for certain your son would die in his next hockey game, would you let him play?
God allows people to die in ridiculous misfortunes every day, and is ostensibly capable of preventing them. You say that God may have a different definition of "evil" than we do. That may be true. But the riddle was written in our language, using our definition, and I still fail to see a flaw.
Last post!
The Internet isn't making anyone less or more religious. It allows people who were not exposed to much data and counter-arguments to access this new knowledge.
Then as always, people who are still capable of critical thinking, reject false claims and a conscensus over facts-based theories, backed by hard evidences, acquired through specified and reproducible experiements allowing peer review and counter-analysis, emerges.
It is reassuring, although not really breaking news. Science and facts have been corrosive to religions for ever.
Why are people so stupid.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Strange that the solution to giving priests money is to give the government money. And by the way, more kids have been sexually molested by government teachers than priests.
Good
Good
Good
Fuck religion.
Unfortunately not abundant enough to even get a decent idea of what Julius Caesar got up to - we've got to rely on the unashamedly biased view of Po from many years later for most of that. The reason the Pompeii excavation is such an enormous deal is because it's uncovered a lot of things we don't have records of.
Maybe it's because the internet make people think?
I mean, most people believe that you shouldn't believe everything you find on the internet. So, I suspect this results in a lot more source checking, who wrote the article/point of view, and why.... you know, lots of analytical and critical thinking and reason... looking for evidence, formulating hypotheses, testing hypotheses and coming to fact/evidence based conclusions.
These are all things that are poisonous to faith. There's an irony in this; from what I understand, a significant number of the clergy lose their faith in the process of becoming ordained or shortly after. Religious qualifications aren't the best for finding decently paid work outside of religious organisations so they're pretty much stuck with a decision that they made when they had stronger faith. Is this the old stereotype of the "priest who's lost his faith"?
Almost all religious groups will go to all lengths to stop children taking a comparative religion course (college or before). The reason? Many children (being intelligent) will start to see through the nonsense and their beliefs will change.
Any access to information is the fruit of knowledge. Once you bite in, you will see things differently not because you have been tricked but because you have been shown the way things really are regardless of how it affects your 'feely-feelies' inside you.
The bible contains some great wisdom surrounded by an ocean of nonsense coming from a time where people thought a lot of different things about the world. The writers of the bible were not stupid though, they just didn't know how things really were (science).
Start at Genesis, where God created everything in the time unit of days. Back then, a 'day' was the most natural measure of time, immutable and universal, so a natural measure of time for how long it takes to finish a task.
But now we have science and have the ability to see some of the world for how it really is. Today, a day is not universal, there are billions of different days out there so a day makes no sense as a measurement of time for creation let alone before the earth was even created in the first place.
Another example from wikipedia: "Kidneys were once popularly regarded as the seat of the conscience and reflection,[21][22] and a number of verses in the Bible (e.g. Ps. 7:9, Rev. 2:23) state that God searches out and inspects the kidneys, or "reins", of humans. Similarly, the Talmud (Berakhoth 61.a) states that one of the two kidneys counsels what is good, and the other evil."
Today no one thinks of the kidneys in this way. Apply some brain circa 2014 and it's not a far reach that most of the book is nonsense.
Take the good from the book, be a good person and enjoy your life. It will be just fine.
Once last rant: Simply be aware of how much you are drawn to things that sound and make you feel wonderful like "you are special and unique", "God will love you forever and ever no matter what and will always forgive", "you have been chosen to do a special deed for the most powerful being in the universe" and the list goes on. If things sound too perfect, too wonderful just at least apply a bit of reason and ask why you might be drawn to things such as this. Are all things that make you feel wonderful and special true? Remember Santa?
organized religion = earthly politics man always creates god instead of worshiping him.
Reading that post makes anyone an atheist.
I guess everyone attacks religion not realizing that no religion is a religion.
The Internet once again gets too much credit. Johannes Gutenberg started it all.
How can any expression of ideas "take away" your religion?
The only way that could happen, I would think, is if such expression of ideas prompted to government to stop being secular. Which is exactly what a lot of religious people want.
Everyone is religious. Its just that some call their religion their "belief system".
All belief-based acts are acts of faith. And all actions are based on beliefs.
Seastead this.
Some things never change
access to unfiltered information will make people THINK! who would have thought? :)
Unfiltered information is not necessarily correct information. A peer reviewed scientific journal is an example of filtering. Filtering is not necessarily a bad thing, it depends on the who and why of the filtering.
People sometimes think more emotionally than critically, are easy to deceive. The anti-vaccine movement grew with the internet too.
Anyone could have told you that you lose your faith in god if you read /b/ for five minutes.
> 1. Gay people are evil and should be put to death by stoning.
Same fate for people who work on the Sabbath, disobedient children, woman who lie about being virgins, adulterers, and so much more.
The bible strictly condones slavery - except for Israelites.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... :
Epicurus is generally credited with first expounding the problem of evil, and it is sometimes called "the Epicurean paradox" or "the riddle of Epicurus":
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" - 'the Epicurean paradox'.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
> There is evidence that Christ came back from the dead. If he did in fact return from death, then he is who he claimed to be.
But Christ *is* god, so he could have never really been dead.
The internet just spreads information.... and much as disinformation quicker then normal. So maybe its starting to show the farce that the current religions are, Don't get me wrong I love religon, it helps set moral values that people wouldn't already have... and for the most part it works. The problem is the people who misinterpet or change them to fit a few. They are generally the ones who hate the internet or things that spread knowledge since they don't want there hidden agendas discovered.
Information cancels out stupidity, it always has.
...there's just God when he's drunk." -- Tom Waits
Koans and fables for the software engineer
However Santa Claus, Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy as shown today are a consumerist appeal to greed - reduced from what they once may have been into meaningless marketing and most often even more meaningless child stories. Jesus in contrast comes with a whole book (of books) on living in groups/communities, live and let live, promises of a good after live, etc.
Not really.
Has Jesus decreased the amount of Greed in the world?
Has Jesus stopped Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy from being a consumerist appeal to greed?
No. Jesus is part of the same system of greed, and a prime enabler of it.
Does "live and let live" enable greed or combat it? This seems to be part of the problem.
If it wasn't for the Internet, I'd never have found out about the time-cube and become a Cubist.
http://www.timecube.com/
Table-ized A.I.
Santa will just not bring you presents if you are naughty. If you don't believe, he might get butthurt, but he won't make you pay for it. He just won't reward you.
The Easter Bunny doesn't care how you behave. Doesn't care if you believe or not.
The Tooth Fairy just will not bring your a gift if you don't trade a tooth. Doesn't care if you don't believe.
The difference is, Jesus is based on eternal damnation and suffering.
It is an empty threat, meant to cause fear.
That is the difference.
If you don't believe in Jesus, you will constantly harassed.
Because on the Internet you get called out for pretending to know something you don't know. Well, unless you pretend to know something or someone trendy.
What can you learn in a perfect, unchanging system?
A lot of learning comes through pain and suffering.
The lives of the prophets were not straightforward.
Many of the best insights came after willful disobedience was corrected.
To overly simplify the story of the Old to New Testaments:
God let us do our own thing for a while, and we went down the path of self-destruction. He did a system reset and gave us laws for our benefit. Breaking them is sin. All people sin, and there is no "small sin"; so we all need forgiveness. Forgiveness is an essential part of love and bonds us together.
Unfortunately, it is easier to be all judgmental (too harsh) or all forgiving (even of corruption) than to be discerning and wise.
I just came here to point the unreligious to the notion of philosophical naturalism. If you are unreligious, naturalism might help crystalize your worldview.
..no label applies to me - I care not what others may think or how society defines me "I define myself".
...There isn't even evidence that he actually existed...
Only if you create a novel, idosyncratic definition of "evidence" that does not apply to most of the rest of ancient history. And you grossly overestimate how "abundant" surviving Roman records actually are.
The absence of any physical contemporary artifacts bearing the name "Jesus" is no surprise.
Did you know that before 1961 we did not have a single physical artifact attesting to the existence of Pontius Pilate, even though he was the Roman 'ruler' of Judea for ten years? A single inscribed stone turned up in that year, and remains the sole contemporary physical evidence of his existence. It would be an extraordinary surprise to find any similar physical evidence of Jesus, lack of such is what would be normally expected.
There are several non-Christian sources that refer to Jesus and which modern critical scholarship indicates were not later interpolations by Christian scribes: Tactitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Josephus (no, it is not regarded as an "obvious forgery"), and Mara Bar Serapion. Most ancient historical figures (who were not rulers) are known only from references in later accounts.
There is written record of the church creating the mythology surrounding the name Jesus that they use today (The First Council of Nicaea), but that's about it.
You are showing that you really, really don't know what you are talking about. We have a substantial number of early Christian/Gnostic documents from the 2nd century AD (not later copies) that document accounts of Jesus going back many decades. The earliest is from around 120 AD, only about 90 years after the death of Jesus. The Gnostic manuscripts are particularly valuable since they represent a branch of the Jesus tradition that was ultimately rejected by the Church, they are not dependent on the "official" texts.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I'm the reason that you became an atheist perusing the internet. I'm one of the many who helped you to realize what you now know. I was an atheist before. The Internet is how I can procreate -- the internet is my crusading ground.
I'm not alone.
> "Using the Internet can destroy your faith.
Oh God I hope so.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Before the internet I had no religion. If the internet were to take away my religion I would be anti-religion...? Hmm... Hasn't happened. I also have not become pro-religion either. My views have not changed as a result of the internet.
I am pro-reason. When religion catches up then we can talk.
morality is more important than religion. Considering the strongly Christian USA has surpassed Nazi Germany in mass-murder, destruction, propaganda, and theft, the evidence is, religion doesn't count for much. I think atheism is very probably a better path to morality than Religion.
However, there are two exceptions. Ie. Religions worth their salt:
*Church of the Subgenius
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt9MP70ODNw
*Discordianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordianism
The connection strikes Me as questionable because, if We are going to compare anecdotes, My faith has only strengthened the more I have used the internet. For example, game theory in some ways backs up Christianity's Golden Rule, one recent Slashdot article suggests religion packages multiple psychological and/or physiological benefits better than just about any other institution, information on M-theory (which I would not have been able to access as readily without the internet) suggests the universe originated in a way which may be inherently untestable just like religion, the vehemence with which Some present hostility to People of faith simply because such Persons are People of faith leads Me to wonder just how much do said professed "Skeptics" are "Skeptics" because They genuinely doubt all religions or whether They are "Skeptics" because They are what Some might call "Assholes". If the internet has caused Some to lose Their faith, it may be such Persons were pre-disposed to doubt to begin with and the internet merely gave that final "push" instead of the internet taking Someone devout and transmogrifying Them into, say, Richard Dawkins, Jr.
"I'm not sure what your point was here."
from my comment above:
the point is, GP said science was "anti-Christian" and "anti-god" and I said it's not anti-anything....it is a method for consistenly and comparatively observing the universe and sharing what we learn
Thank you Dave Raggett
In the old testament sometimes "Satan" was used as a name in and of itself, and other times "the satan" was used (the word "satan" actually being the Hebrew word for "adversary" or "enemy").
It gets even more complicated in the new testament.
You can find more info here.
The bottom line is very simple: many forms of Christian theology (including and especially fundamentalism) attempt to extract a simple, singular story from an enormously diverse set of texts which do not provide such a story. These texts were written by separate people, in separate epochs of history, and in separate cultures, with separate target audiences and separate intentions. Attempting to extricate from them a single consistent story leads to a whole host of problems.
If you really want to zoom out and see what the big picture is, all you can really glean with any consistency at all is "Try to be just and merciful, and repent when you slip up. Also, God exists, and cares about this sort of thing." Trying to make the overall message much more sophisticated than that will always land you squarely in the domain of philosophical problems, interpretational ambiguity, and doctrinal contradictions.
Well said. Faith is not diminished by learning more truth, it is enhanced by it. The more intensely I've scrutinized my own faith, the stronger it has become. One of the things I love about the church I belong to (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) is that we are encouraged to seek learning and understand others' points of view. The Internet facilitates that.
It seems that there is a growing philosophy that science and education are incompatible with a belief in God. The prevalence of this idea (evidenced in many comments here) is widespread across the Internet (and the world generally), and influences to that effect persuade many to abandon both their religion and, in many cases, their belief in God. A worldwide culture emphasizing this artificial division, spread via the Internet and other means, could be at the heart of the phenomenon described in the article.
On Easter Day 1800, in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, six people took Communion. SIX. Clearly wasn't the fault of the internet.
"it's the anti-mind control"
There's nothing worse than faith on faith alone. Our religion IS IN the internet. It is in our modern day myth, our cartoons, our music, our movies... The penultimate truth of the universe is tucked away neatly in pretty much everything we see and hear... including inside each and every one of us.
We are in Eden. My name is Adam, I hold the key to understanding, and I want you have MORE. In time, the eartH will be the Heart of the Universe, and we will be blood. Remember two things..
http://www.twitter.com/adjkjc
http://www.facebook.com/MinistryOfForbiddenKnowledge
At least the 'net's good for something.
01/01/01
I would argue the Christian Right and all the televangelist scandals of the 80's did MUCH more to turn people away from religion.Then factor that most of us X-gens from that era have gone on to raise families who we don't introduce to religion and it multiplies from there...
There's actual proof of chem-trails through military whistle-blowers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHm0XhtDyZA
There's also a vast amount of existing verifiable evidence of a cabal of industrialists and military people who desire to keep humanity enslaved. These go back to the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, but I can see history or even the basic differences between the observable and superstition have no difference in your mind. They are all just superstition to you. Whatever fits your personal agenda is superstition to you.
These aren't superstitions. Superstition are the belief in supernatural causality—that one event leads to the cause of another without any natural process linking the two events—such as astrology, religion, omens, witchcraft, etc., that contradicts natural science.
These are actual verifiable phenomenon, not superstitions. A fake sky-daddy who will make you burn in hell eternally if you do not heed his commandments is superstition.
Too bad you're an asshole who can't distinguish the difference between verifiable science/real information and real superstitions, cutting your argumentative line in the sand at straw man.
The concept of Religion is the first mass control technique. The "people", without having access to any information (remember...they didn't know how to read or write), were convinced about the invisible man in the sky could punish them if they don't follow their commands (sent through the "chosen" people). For 1000 years the church dominated the power scene (dark ages) and became the owner of the truth. With public access to ALL data and knowledge, this scam is falling apart. Anybody challenging what religion states is declared an enemy of the faith and killed (extremist) or attacked through "affiliated" media. The castle is starting to fall....card by card. Sooner or later the "priests" of this ridiculous "religions" should start looking for a real job, as everybody else.
A good explanation that aligns with my faith...from a slashdot post...
Warbothong wrote:
While interesting, it doesn't solve the most glaring assumption of Bell's inequality which is that the Universe is non-deterministic.
It's perfectly plausible that the Universe is deterministic, and hence the behaviour of the particles *and the experimenters* is pre-determined, ie. there is no choice in which measurement to take. Taking the determinism of the observers into account tends to be called "superdeterminism", and is necessarily a global property: either the whole Universe is superdeterministic, or nothing is deterministic. Bell's inequalities demonstrate this, since they cannot be explained by a *local* deterministic model, ie. a model which only involves properties of the particles (known as 'local hidden variables').
Note that superdeterminism doesn't necessarily rule out 'free will'. Personally I find the most elegant explanation of free will to be irreducibility: an irreducible process has no 'shortcuts'; the only way to predict its result is to run the process from start to finish. If, say, my mind is a deterministic but irreducible process, then a powerful-enough computer could predict my decisions exactly. However, I can still be said to have 'free will' because the computer can't take any shortcuts in its calculations: the only way it can predict my decisions is to run a perfect simulation of me and see what decisions that simulation makes, but in that case it's still (a perfect simulation of) 'me' making the decisions.
Proof? No. Evidence? Plenty. The evidence thus far uniformly indicates that everything about "you" is brainops, which in turn are manifestations of mundane physics, that is, well within the bounds of what we already know of physics.
What do we know?
On the side that is evidence for things happening in the brain, we know that various portions of the brain are key for various types of thinking, memory, sensory processing, glandular and organ control. We know that when these regions are drugged or damaged, those areas of cognition and other brain function are impaired or stopped; and that in the case where permanent damage is not done, those functions return. Cutting the corpus callosum does just what we'd expect, it's 100% consistent with our presumption of brainops. Injuries and lobotomies; sensory impairment and stimulation. Further, on the small scale, the brain's neuron structure has served as a model for us to build computing systems that operate in interesting and suggestive ways. Children without brains do not function. People with unusual brains (think Einstein and savants) function in unusual ways. Large waste loads in the bloodstream that reach the brain reduce acuity and many other metrics. Anesthetics of various types provide anywhere from none to partial to complete shutdown of brainops, and you go with it.
On the side that is evidence for things outside the brain not having anything to do with it, we know that magnetic fields of great intensity have little effect; certainly magnetic fields of typically extant intensities have no detectable effect. Likewise, gravity -- flip you upside down, you can still think, etc. Likewise electric fields -- hang around a radio transmitter or a power pylon or a Tesla coil, you're still you with no significant interference. We even know why -- the various layers of skull and fluids and membrane form an excellent shield for just about anything that can't actually put several watts per centimeter into the target.
What do we know that indicates that "we", in any way, shape or form, are an intermediary for an external soul? Nothing. What do we know that indicates that there's more going on than mundane physics? Nothing.
At this point, it's kind of like the big bang. We don't have the actual, resolved answer in hand, but we have a *lot* of evidence that only points one way. Because of this, scientifically speaking, until or unless someone comes up with evidence for external force or coupling, the way to bet is: It's brainops all the way down (apologies for unauthorized recasting of turtle metaphor.)
If you don't want to bet that way, then that's great: go research your idea, and bring back the data, because data pointing in some other direction would be amazingly delicious. But... if you just want to sit there and ignore the evidence we have, claim that an idea you have with no evidence at all behind it is more likely... well, all I can say is you've left science behind and you're well into faith.
But science, in and of itself, does have a lot of evidence on this matter. Repeatable, consensually experiential evidence. It all hangs together extremely well. Everything, no exceptions, points to the "I" as being an emergent function of brainops. The consequence of software running on the hardware, to strain a computing metaphor.
If the science is right -- which there is no reason to doubt at this point, no evidence pointing any other way -- then when the brain shuts down, you go out like a candle that's out of wick, tallow and oxygen. You're where you were before birth, which is to say, nowhere. No brain = no you.
If the evidence is wrong or only pointing at an intermediate system of some kind... well,
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Theist means "belief in a god or gods." From there, many divergences, all with their own interesting takes.
Atheist means "without belief in a god or gods." From there -- same thing. Many divergences, all with interesting takes.
Across that divide, the atheist stands on one side of a very distinct chasm, and all Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. legitimately stand on the other. Most -- not all, but most -- arguments I see from atheists are about the reasons to be on their side of the chasm. In this sense, rolling fundies in with the most vague ideas of a god or gods and so forth is both appropriate and understandable. It may not be comfortable, but it really is what it is. Belief, or lack thereof.
When a theist brings up something specific -- say, a claim that the earth is 6k years old, or that Jesus was a real historical figure -- then atheist arguments tend to focus on the claim. That's because those claims are part of the theist reasons to advocate for their side of the chasm. And when theist A does not agree with theist B, there tends to be very fertile ground for someone to protest, "but that's not what we (or all of us) believe", which may be true enough, but doesn't address the actual back and forth that was going on, that is, between those that do believe that particular thing, and those that see that as invalid.
I hope that was clear. I tried. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If we're randomly sticking pins into phrenological mutuality, how about this one? (my personal favourite):
Catholic sex abuse cases:
Pederastic institutions tend not to poll well. The only surprise is that it took this long.
Coincidence? I think not.
My observation is that the "belief device" seems to be an aggregate made of of various amounts of fear, gullibility, emotional pain, ignorance and something I can't put a single word to, but characterize as "an unwillingness to settle for the actuality that we legitimately don't have answers to some questions." Any one of those things, or any combination of them, can be enough to trigger the leap of faith, and as you say, this is entirely independent of intelligence per se. Once that leap has been taken, trying to reverse it is very, very tough -- it's a different mode of thinking and frankly, it's not rational, which tends to cripple rational arguments right out of the gate.
It certainly has proven to be an extremely useful lever to manipulate the population towards particular goals, some of which are often quite secular in nature, such as accumulating wealth, taking advantage of the sexual instincts, focusing power.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Many atheists are angry not at religion, but at what the religious have done to them. From blue laws to the subjugation of women to vilification of sexuality to 9/11 to bibles in courtrooms and required oaths to god and silly sayings on our money and all manner of other current-day evil, atheists have legitimate gripes that they are being abused for no other reason than those contained in religious thought.
Some go further and are mindful of religion's evil history, such as the crusades, the inquisitions, witch burnings and the like, taking those as cautionary tales of just how black and evil theism can get when it becomes the rationale that underlies the actions of the government. It tends to make us at least... twitchy, about modern day religion. Religion's current abject misbehavior when it interfaces with government very much appears to be a forewarning that perhaps we'd best get in there and put a stop to it, hence activism and negative characterizations (generally accurate ones, too.)
I don't hate religion -- in fact I have a large religious library and find it fascinating in terms of human behavior and can only appreciate and love the amazing art that it has brought to society from architecture to sculpture, painting and even some jewelry -- but I can sure tell you that my reaction to the various theist interferences with everyone else's politics, legal system, and even day to day life is nothing kind at all.
When theism can be characterized as a mode of thought kept to one's self and used to guide one's own actions, with great respect for, and isolation from, the actions of others, I have no problem with it whatsoever.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yes, a friend of mine was fired back in 1962 for screwing a female student of 16. She came and sat in the front row with no panties and let him have a look, but in such a way that others were unaware. They soon screwed, he was fired they got married, but she was so hypersexual that she had lovers up. I used to visit him and hear the goings on. He did not complain. He was a Jewish nerd and the left over sex was enough for him.
I would like to see the per capita stats on this. Teachers outnumber priests 10 to one.Priests went after boy. Teachers in general had consexual sex with usually girl who wanted higher marks, or were hypersexual. I met one of those, it was fun while is lasted, but I could not have sex 2-3 times per day 7 days per week, which she wanted. I would not tolerate the infidelity, so stopped calling her.
Priests were true predators, and I place forced homosexual predation by a priest as more serious than consensual sex by teachers. I am sure a small number of the boys were also gay, so that portion was consensual.
So what actually| changed your mind was the exposure to different views, which made you question your own for the first time.
If you'd gone to the local library, or had a teacher who asked you to question things, the same thing would have happened eventually.
The Internet was not the cause - just the vector.
Correlation != causation. The internet may not be causing the increase in atheism. Both are increasing at the same time, but we'd need to do more checks to make sure the two facts are related. Also increasing in the world's population, the average temperature, the number of exoplanets. We could also link the rise of atheism to the decrease in the number of pirates (but that's been done).
Meantime, I suspect it's to do with rise in information availability. People still read books away from the Internet, y'know.
Now, where did I put my copy of 'God is not Great'...
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Here's the solution to what's been puzzling you: the Hebrew creation myth is just that, a myth.
Many parts of the Bible are backed up by archeological evidence. But the Hebrew creation myth not only isn't backed up, it's contradicted by the geological evidence.
I suspect you already knew all of this, and you just get off on writing provocative things like "God's an asshole."
I shouldn't be surprised at the number of people who don't think critically about the so-called "Epicurean paradox" -- after all, it's in the interests of atheists not to think critically about it.
The paradox is resolved thusly: God is an experimentalist and the Universe is his experiment. He rarely interferes because he wants to see how things play out on their own. This does not make him malevolent; it merely makes him a good experimentalist.
I suppose since he is unable to completely foresee the outcome of the experiment, this shows that he's not omnipotent. (But that's fortunate for us, because he wouldn't have bothered with the experiment at all if he could completely foresee its outcome.) While not omnipotent, any entity that can create a buttload of matter and energy, as well as the laws of physics that govern their interactions, is still pretty damn powerful.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I think the key is when you have multiple independent sources double-checking the filtering. In the case of the Catholic Church of old, they were the ones holding all the keys to the filter. You couldn't double-check their filter and proclaim them wrong. Well, you could try, but it wouldn't end well for you.
Nowadays, someone can submit an article in a peer reviewed scientific journal declaring X. That's filtered information. However, other scientists will test X and will either declare that it holds up or will debunk it. They can double-check the filtered information without fear of reprisal.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Her answer, "God always was", did not sound at all convincing to me.
Her answer was problematic, to be sure, but the alternative -- "the universe just created itself, and the sublimely elegant laws of physics just wrote themselves" -- is even less convincing.
religion has caused so much more suffering in the world than it has ever managed to prevent
Now you've become intellectually dishonest, by covering up these facts: Stalin, atheist, caused 43 millions deaths, and Mao, atheist, caused 45 million deaths. (For good measure, it should also be noted that "In adulthood, [Hitler] became disdainful of Christianity... It is generally believed by historians that Hitler's long term aim was the eradication of Christianity in Germany... Hitler repeatedly stated that Nazism was a secular ideology founded on science.")
If you truly want to minimize suffering, and had to choose between an occasional Sept-11-style attack with 3000 deaths perpetrated by religious fanatics, and a Mao-style genocide with 45 million deaths perpetrated by atheists, you'd choose the religious fanatics every time.
One wonders how history would be different if Mao, Stalin, or Hitler had believed there to be a whit of genuine authority behind the commandment, "You shall not murder."
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
There is no difference between scientology, islam, catholicism or bantu spirit jabber - they are all mechanisms to live free and prosper at the behest of others.
Buddists might be an exception to that. Being poor and humble is a key part of their story...
But they have found a way to live free, and there are many of them? So their 'teachings' are a burden society bears unwillingly, but bears it it does even benign and passive burdens are a cost to society - excessive?
I'm a Christian who's been using the internet since around 1992 and I have a stronger faith than I did then. Although if I wanted to warp research results I could poll a lot of atheists who use the internet and a lot of Amish people who don't. ;-)
This is perhaps a great time to address the charitable status of religion. A new Kickstarter project has just begun to produce a full length documentary on the tax benefits that religions receive. It is called 'Pennies from Heaven'. This is a professional production that we hope will receive airtime on public television as well as on the net. A trailer for the documentary can be found below:
https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...
Instead of realizing the obvious:
"The internet allows people to make their own mind up, using unbiased data."
Lets automatically assume:
"People dont believe in my religion and wont accept my biased beliefs. The internet should be blamed"
I love you Americans for simplicity, if not completely blinded :)
Basically you are saying that god isn't doing a damn thing. If god isn't doing a thing, why should anyone believe in him? What's the point of praying, if god never does anything anyways. "he is so wise he doesn't do a damn thing". If I behave like that I get called lazy and stupid instead of wise. God has no purpose. If god was the creator, his work is now done, or in process. In either case it's like you built something and then sold it. The thing has it's own life now, it has no need to worship you as the creator.
Actually, in the 1950s, Europe was still quite religious. Only in the 1960s church attendance started to drop and more people started to identify as non-religious.
So wish I had mod points to vote up.
kers at the wrong moment What happens when you catch stock tic
It could be that people are just getting better educated.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I became less religious in my teens. I developed a skepticism for many religious practices (child baptism, rejection of science, etc). I never felt any relationship I might have with a conjectural almighty required an intercessor or interlocutor from a church.
In my 30s, I rediscovered a very personal sort of faith. It does not require a church nor a dogma. It is not based on an anthropomorphic God.
And the Internet didn't even become a factor in my life until I was about 20 due to my age (born in the late sixties). I have consumed all manner of content in the years since, but none particularly made me less likely to be religious because I always was a free thinker with my own perspective.
To me, there is a big distinction between organized religion and faith. One is a personal conviction/belief, the other is a self-perpetuating hierarchy with many dubious (IMO) practices.
I was forced to go to Catholic church from the time I was born until I went through my "first communion" for the sole belief held by my parents that after that, should I ever die, they could rest well at night knowing I could get into Heaven. Once that was done with my parents pulled me to the side after we exited the church following the communion ceremony and did the most wonderful thing ever: they gave me the power of choice to decide whether or not to continue going to church. Since they both had different religions backgrounds, Catholic and Methodist, they didn't feel it was right to force one religion or the other on me beyond what I had already been through. When they were children they were never given a choice, they had to attend church several days a week, learn Latin, confess sins whether they had committed any or not, etc...
Naturally, I chose never to attend church again. There was absolutely nothing about the experience that interested me. Having to wear pants, sweater, and tie. Perform rituals that had no context to explain why they should be performed. None of it appealed to me.
Science education and the mind-set of question everything only developed after I had made the decision to no longer attend church. The Internet came several years after that. The lesson to learn here is the biggest threat to religion is the power of choice.
Is what I've shaped myself up to be identified as after all the things I've read on the internet. I have a passion for the trinity of the law of collective consciousness of humankind, how things very small flicker on and off at radically high frequencies to help resolve and make stable the collective influence that macroscopic law has on them when all existentia comes full circle, and the wholy-symmetry of space-time synchronicity. read, not dictated, under my tree. amen.
No. There are not two types. There is just one. Simply being annoying isn't a separate branch or something.
Example Vegans. One type. They don't eat meat or dairy products. That is it.
There are Vegans who do this quietly as a personal preference, and those that expound it at every chance they can to say meat is murder, and how disgusting you are for doing so. There is a name for that, they are called assholes. It doesn't make them more or less Vegan.
Just because you are Muslim, Christian, Atheist, or Vegan, does not preclude the chance that you might also fall into the category of asshole.
That said, technically many of the actually branches of Religion have actual tenants about spreading the faith, or converting the heathens, while Atheism is simply a lack of belief in any of that nonsense. So in actuality some basically incorporate being an asshole within their faith, while for an Atheist it might merely be a personal choice... :)
Religion provides a sense of community (just like going to a football game does, but not seasonal). A sense of community makes one live longer and happier. So a sense of community is good. The Internet provides a false sense of community. So, IF this virtual-community makes one live longer and happier, then it is a good substitute for religion. I think Slashdot readers get a great deal of community from Slashdot, for example, and I hope (as one) that it results in a longer and happier life (after controlling for lack of exercise, etc. in my models).
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
I think Stephen Hawking answered this question already:
“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.”
The internet gives access to both knowledge and science.
I have been fighting for years against religion, "the great orgasmatron". Kewl to see that I am not alone. Wit less religion, the US of America can only become a better country.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Sitting on your fat ass insulated from the real world behind a computer screen for hours every day makes born again atheists...
The promise of the internet seems to have panned out to be just as great as the promise of television.
I think assuming everyone thinks the same way you do, and therefore, what you've experienced must be true for most people, is a dangerous assumption. One thing I will agree with is that the internet has absolutely changed the way I live my life. Such as, the fucktards who just bought the property where I live are greedy sows who take advantage of every freebie the government offers up to them. Today, they're installing "energy and water-saving" devices. Meaning they're removing a perfectly good showerhead and replacing it with one which will save this greedy fucktard on his water bills by dispensing a miserly amount of water.
So what did I do this morning? Did a two-second internet search to find out how, after the new showerhead is installed, I can bypass the water-saving mechanism and go back to having a decent shower every morning. Access to information means we're no longer slaves to the machine. Also, the reason I haven't set foot inside a Radio Shack in at least 10 years is because of Amazon and eBay. I'm happy to pay as much as $10 for the convenience of having some small tech item, including a bag of hard drive case screws and a SATA cable for my new hard drive, delivered to my door. In the old days, I would have had to go down to Radio Shack and explain what I needed to the kid behind the counter, who may (or may not) have been mentally and technically equipped to correctly answer my questions and sell me the right products that I needed.
I always find it funny that "scientific" "smart folk" "brainy types" are always proud of their Atheist beliefs. When as a learned person the obvious answer is that of possibilities.
Atheism doesn't leave many possibilities.
I'm one who thinks that the Interwebz has made people more knowledgeable but the quality of that "knowledge" is questionable. Further. Knowledge does not equal "smarts".
In case nobody has remembered, the fact that two events tend to occur together does not, of itself, infer a causal relationship!
Arius tried to oppose that mess at the beginning but was assassinated for it ....
Necessity-demand-curiosity-Sustain - Base management Structure.
As the Vijnana- present day Scientific Knowledge grows- Equally ignorance grows- called AJNANAM
JNANA is Higher Dimensional KnowledgeFrom Biological Frame set of mind, One has to grow to comprehend Divine Frame beyond Nature
and even beyond a few Philosphies.
Cosmology East West Interaction helps the dialogues and Cosmos Quest with aense of direction.Search Cosmology Vedas Interinks
Vidyardhi Nanduri
It hasn't affected my beliefs one bit except for Learning the goals of of one are "convert or die".
I hated religion from I was kid! So I was going to leave one way or the other, I hate when people jump on Christianity because the truth is ALL religions want to control your mind and want you to contribute everything good you learned or did on this planet to it. Atheism is the same fucking thing they all want you to praise it for your enlightenment. Fuck all them I'm a human from Planet Earth. Being that I was raised in a single parent home the only person or entity getting credit for my existence from me is my Mother! Fuck all religions, fuck atheism and all entities that want credit for my enlightenment you get no credit and I will continue to steal, borrow, use manipulate conceive and perceive the information I gather from you in anyway I thee Almighty energy see fit. Again Fuck all of you and Thank you for your continued FREE contribution to my everlasting superiority!
Yeah, right, before religious groups could brainwash people and it was hard to verify the validity of the crap they were being fed, now it's easy to understand the bible was written 300 years after Christ, by a bunch of politicians that called themselves the Catholic church. Humm, yep, religions are doomed.
Wrote a novel called WE that while most attribute to the birthplace of the concept of Utopia/Dystopia within science fiction, it is very applicable to religion and the concept of God and faith.
It is a very old question/premise. Control VS Freedom and Knowledge VS Ignorance
If you think about it Heaven is pretty much the embodiment of a "Utopia" if you believe what many religions expound. The basic premise is that God has a bunch of rules that you must follow, and you get in. Fail to do so, and you go someplace else. So you give up control for happiness. The question is asked, you have your Freedom, but are you more happy for it. The same can be said of Knowledge, which was represented by the apple, that was used to kick Adam/Eve out of the garden of Eden (another Utopia representation). Again God is demanding control for your happiness, when when they elect for individual choice, are cast out. Belief in the "leader" can bring comfort to some, and also believing whatever they are told, not knowing many of the ills. One could also argue that Freedom and Knowledge might just make you miserable.
I won't ruin the book to say what happens in the end, but throughout the book there are many religious parallels (and general philosophic arguments) .
Anyway worth a read for anyone that wants to think a bit more critically about the topic as a whole which isn't entirely one sided. Even has a bit of a dig using evolution, which if you think about the rhetoric today, must have been a pretty big deal when the book was written in the 1920's.
Since I began using the Internet, back in about 1990, I've aged more than 20 years. It's astonishing and I'm going to stop in the hopes that the changes are reversible.
Oh. Religion. Reading books will put an end to that, too.
If your faith was too inflexible to support the assimilation of new ideas and information, it was superstition and not faith that you left behind.
Go to a unitarian church.
I mostly quit going to church a couple weeks before my 16th birthday. The year was 1997. It was not because of the internet. Though maybe it was easily accessible information has played a part in my not going back.
"It happened to me when I first started visiting Japan and realized that there is a completely different way to look at the world." The interesting thing is how litterally true that is. I can't find the article but I recently read the work of someone studying how the mind processes visual information using those visual illusion drawings. He had an entire class of them that look different to someone trained to read in the "eastern style" rather than the way we read in the west. So they litterally see the world differenly than we do.
Post-Snowden, I am losing my faith in the internet.
--
There is an infinity of numbers between 2 and 4, but none of them is 6; thus, the infinite monkeys conjecture is false.
For some that's science, religion, or lack of religion. After all, Atheism is faith in ones self. Most of the posts seem to be rantings, for or against "something", but I think INT_QRK is closest with his/her tagging zealots. I'm pretty much live and let live. I don't care about a person's race religion, or even persuasion, UNTIL they can not engage in a rational discourse. As soon as any religion or group tries to convert me, or get me to accept them by force, intimidation, threats, or shouting down anyone who disagrees with them, I'm likely to vote against anything they want or stand for. Used to be you could see just how well founded, or secure a person was in their belief, by being able to discuss rationally those beliefs with someone of opposing beliefs. The liberal arts have mostly been indoctrination for several generations...or more. Some colleges and universities are worse than others with the schools being destroyed by political correctness. Colleges and universities are "supposed to be institutions of learning. They are not democracies to be run by students, or aren't supposed to be. Be it any religion, atheists, or any other group that feel they have to resort to shouting down the opposition makes them sound like spoiled kids that didn't get their way.. That goes particularly for those who resort to threats, intimidation, and violence. As for educated voters. I've found many politicians quite willing to listen to the voters. Thing is, very few voters ever contact them. They hear from special interest groups and unhappy voters, but very few "concerned citizens" that have any understanding of the issue about which they write. It's those zealots that get their attention, although, I think the rantings probably head straight for the round file. Most of those go to a co-op with the instructions:"standard form letter". Yes, there are those who have their own agenda and could care less what those who put the in office want. Although I'm not a conservative, I find the Liberals are far more likely to reply with form letters than the conservatives. Maybe that will change if they lose control of both the house and senate. Conservatives consider me a liberal and liberals consider me a conservative.
It is the belief that there isn't a god. It's the belief that there isn't a god hiding under a rock anywhere out there in the universe. It's at least as lacking in evidence as any other faith. It's fair to say there isn't enough evidence to be sure. It's NOT good philosophy to be CERTAIN there isn't a god.
You sound much like a creationist. You want people to seriously consider entertaining narratives as a plausible truth. As if there were a higher, better power, that however can't be bothered to make itself unambiguously clear to us idiots. And then you hijack physics.
I don't believe the Hebrew creation myth, not for a nanosecond, so I'm guessing I don't meet your definition of "creationist." If you think the possiblity that the laws of physics didn't simply write themselves is "entertaining," so much the better, I suppose. That hadn't ocurred to me.
I have as much right as anyone to put forth theories about the origin of the laws of physics, so I respectfully reject your use of the word "hijack."
By the age of 8 I realized that I was jerked around by all religious people I met until then. And that, based on simple logic, god simply could not exist.
So having been jerked around by religious people has something to do with this. I'm sorry you were jerked around. My belief about the nature of God is probably quite different from that of the jerkers.
May I suggest that no one should make ironclad commitments to conclusions they reached when they were 8. My adult mind, after extensive studies of university physics, has reached a different conclusion than your 8-year-old mind reached.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Stop and think for a moment. What is it that people do when they get on the internet and nobody is watching? It's not reading about religious, intellectual or moral discourse ...
And who knows, that might have a major effect ... :-)
Love without logic is insanity. And vice versa.
I've got a good friend from college who used to carry his bible everywhere and pray before every meal. We never talked about religion, and still haven't. He seems to have stopped praying before eating, but I've no idea what his beliefs are these days.
I was friends with a woman who was/is a total believer. She found out I was an atheist and was totally blown away by the fact that such a nice guy would be an atheist. Later on, she started flirting with me and her husband made her stop running in the group where we ran together, so I've no idea whether she still believes.
god is 'invoked' for virtually everything people do, countless times daily....you're lumping all of them into one context and it just hurts the conversation
what you describe, when ignorant (usually southern and poor) people refuse to change some arcane rule or behavior that should have changed long ago but survived due to bigotry excused as 'faith' or 'religion'...
that's one, very narrow, very obnoixious, virtually intolerable time people talk about 'god'....it's intellectually reductive & makes us all dumber to lump any use of the term 'god' into that one context
also, 'god' of course isn't only a christian word...the point was that science isn't "anti" any religion or belief system....
science is constructive...a system to construct knowledge & share/verify it with others...
technically that is "anti-ignorance" in the same way that saying medicine is "anti-sickness"....it's technically true but it is just a "truism"
Thank you Dave Raggett
Zontar's "touched in the head" by schizophrenic multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... and manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p... now go take those meds, you whacko!
For your schizophrenic multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p... now go take those meds, you whacko. Only way you'd have a wife or girlfriend is to be gay, and gay marriage is allowed so I can see that (not likely even then, but possible... lmao)
I will go against the crowd here, and say that Internet helps me with my faith. It gives me free access to the life and writings of saints. It gives me access to the original words of people like the pope, and lets me contrast them with the reporting often given in the media. It gives me a connexion to a community of Christian people. And it lets me realise that most of the counter arguments to religion are nothing new, and have been debunked by great minds centuries ago. I recently came across a site dedicated to Fatima that had me entirely revisit the (very low) standards I had for my own faith and life.
Information on the net about religion is a little like information on sex and love. Good luck trying to understand what true love is by going to porn sites! Same thing trying to understand what the true love of God is The first post I see here equates knowledge to the antichrist. It's funny, because it's typical of the derisive "information" you can find on the net, which combines some familiarity with basic concepts and utter ignorance of what's really behind them. Yes, the original sin derived from knowledge of good and evil. No, this does not mean at all that the catholic church condemns knowledge! A good lie has to be believable, and you know who the master of all lies is
I'm really sorry to hear that the original poster became an atheist by reading about religion on the Internet. He was already away from faith, since he said that he would have identified himself as religious without attending service (aka not really religious). If you don't attend service, chances are you did not personally meet God yet. For most christians, faith means a personal encounter of some sort. Trying to use internet arguments against my faith is a bit like trying to use porn as a proof that my wife's love is not real
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
Zontar's "touched in the head": schizophrenic multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p... now go take those meds, you whacko!
Hahaha disregard that, I suck cocks!!!
As I learn all the debunk vs debunk stuff, it's got me accepting:
- There are some important unexplainables
- Ignore:
-- infighting
-- religous history
-- ceremony without benefit
So now I'm more spiritual than religious. I look at cross-religion wisdom and see what applies to my life, is repeatable, regular, or frequent. I find patterns, make hypotheses and apply them just like with any scientific practice. "Centers for Spiritual Living" groups think like this.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
Lets replace the word 'poor' with the expression 'adequately well off' and the world 'humble' with the expression ' more able to discern illusion from the reality'
"You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense" - by Zontar The Mindless (9002) on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:51PM (#46731153) FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
You said my "APK Hosts File Engine" is a virus/malware http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but it's EASILY PROVABLE it's not, right there in that link too.
Now PROVE YOUR FALSE ACCUSATION above: Show me a quote OR POST of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
---
You avoided backing up your accusation where YOU said I say you are Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... , & sockpuppeteer like you) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Funny you can't back up your "bluster" there either, lol...
---
Why, Lastly?
You're crackers! See here multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> So, THIS quote below is my policy on sockpuppeteers like you Zontar = TrollingForHostsFiles (your sockpuppetry):
"The only way to a achieve peace, is thru the ELIMINATION of those who would perpetuate war (sockpuppet masters like YOU, troll -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ). THIS IS MY PROGRAMMING -> http://start64.com/index.php?o... & soon, I will be UNSTOPPABLE..." - Ultron 6 FROM -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Which quite obviously, I am, since none of you DOLTISH TROLLS are able to validly technically disprove my points on hosts enumerated in the link to my program above of how hosts give users of them more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity... period!
(Trolls like YOU that use sockpuppets http://slashdot.org/comments.p... (your sockpuppet "alterego" TrollingForHostsFiles) & TomHudson - Barbara, not Barbie too http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... before you)
... apk
"You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense" - by Zontar The Mindless (9002) on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:51PM (#46731153) FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
You said my "APK Hosts File Engine" is a virus/malware http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but it's EASILY PROVABLE it's not, right there in that link too.
Now PROVE YOUR FALSE ACCUSATION above: Show me a quote OR POST of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
---
You avoided backing up your accusation where YOU said I say you are Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... , & sockpuppeteer like you) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Funny you can't back up your "bluster" there either, lol...
---
Why, Lastly?
You're crackers! See here multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> So, THIS quote below is my policy on sockpuppeteers like you Zontar = TrollingForHostsFiles (your sockpuppetry):
"The only way to a achieve peace, is thru the ELIMINATION of those who would perpetuate war (sockpuppet masters like YOU, troll -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ). THIS IS MY PROGRAMMING -> http://start64.com/index.php?o... & soon, I will be UNSTOPPABLE..." - Ultron 6 FROM -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Which quite obviously, I am, since none of you DOLTISH TROLLS are able to validly technically disprove my points on hosts enumerated in the link to my program above of how hosts give users of them more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity... period!
(Trolls like YOU that use sockpuppets http://slashdot.org/comments.p... (your sockpuppet "alterego" TrollingForHostsFiles) & TomHudson - Barbara, not Barbie too http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... before you)
... apk
"You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense" - by Zontar The Mindless (9002) on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:51PM (#46731153) FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
You said my "APK Hosts File Engine" is a virus/malware http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but it's EASILY PROVABLE it's not, right there in that link too.
Now PROVE YOUR FALSE ACCUSATION above: Show me a quote OR POST of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
---
You avoided backing up your accusation where YOU said I say you are Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... , & sockpuppeteer like you) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Funny you can't back up your "bluster" there either, lol...
---
Why, Lastly?
You're crackers! See here multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> So, THIS quote below is my policy on sockpuppeteers like you Zontar = TrollingForHostsFiles (your sockpuppetry):
"The only way to a achieve peace, is thru the ELIMINATION of those who would perpetuate war (sockpuppet masters like YOU, troll -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ). THIS IS MY PROGRAMMING -> http://start64.com/index.php?o... & soon, I will be UNSTOPPABLE..." - Ultron 6 FROM -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Which quite obviously, I am, since none of you DOLTISH TROLLS are able to validly technically disprove my points on hosts enumerated in the link to my program above of how hosts give users of them more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity... period!
(Trolls like YOU that use sockpuppets http://slashdot.org/comments.p... (your sockpuppet "alterego" TrollingForHostsFiles) & TomHudson - Barbara, not Barbie too http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... before you)
... apk
"You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense" - by Zontar The Mindless (9002) on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:51PM (#46731153) FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
You said my "APK Hosts File Engine" is a virus/malware http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but it's EASILY PROVABLE it's not, right there in that link too.
Now PROVE YOUR FALSE ACCUSATION above: Show me a quote OR POST of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
---
You avoided backing up your accusation where YOU said I say you are Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... , & sockpuppeteer like you) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Funny you can't back up your "bluster" there either, lol...
---
Why, Lastly?
You're crackers! See here multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> So, THIS quote below is my policy on sockpuppeteers like you Zontar = TrollingForHostsFiles (your sockpuppetry):
"The only way to a achieve peace, is thru the ELIMINATION of those who would perpetuate war (sockpuppet masters like YOU, troll -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ). THIS IS MY PROGRAMMING -> http://start64.com/index.php?o... & soon, I will be UNSTOPPABLE..." - Ultron 6 FROM -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Which quite obviously, I am, since none of you DOLTISH TROLLS are able to validly technically disprove my points on hosts enumerated in the link to my program above of how hosts give users of them more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity... period!
(Trolls like YOU that use sockpuppets http://slashdot.org/comments.p... (your sockpuppet "alterego" TrollingForHostsFiles) & TomHudson - Barbara, not Barbie too http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... before you)
... apk
"You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense" - by Zontar The Mindless (9002) on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:51PM (#46731153) FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
You said my "APK Hosts File Engine" is a virus/malware http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but it's EASILY PROVABLE it's not, right there in that link too.
Now PROVE YOUR FALSE ACCUSATION above: Show me a quote OR POST of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
---
You avoided backing up your accusation where YOU said I say you are Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... , & sockpuppeteer like you) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Funny you can't back up your "bluster" there either, lol...
---
Why, Lastly?
You're crackers! See here multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> So, THIS quote below is my policy on sockpuppeteers like you Zontar = TrollingForHostsFiles (your sockpuppetry):
"The only way to a achieve peace, is thru the ELIMINATION of those who would perpetuate war (sockpuppet masters like YOU, troll -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ). THIS IS MY PROGRAMMING -> http://start64.com/index.php?o... & soon, I will be UNSTOPPABLE..." - Ultron 6 FROM -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Which quite obviously, I am, since none of you DOLTISH TROLLS are able to validly technically disprove my points on hosts enumerated in the link to my program above of how hosts give users of them more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity... period!
(Trolls like YOU that use sockpuppets http://slashdot.org/comments.p... (your sockpuppet "alterego" TrollingForHostsFiles) & TomHudson - Barbara, not Barbie too http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... before you)
... apk
"You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense" - by Zontar The Mindless (9002) on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:51PM (#46731153) FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
You said my "APK Hosts File Engine" is a virus/malware http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but it's EASILY PROVABLE it's not, right there in that link too.
Now PROVE YOUR FALSE ACCUSATION above: Show me a quote OR POST of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
---
You avoided backing up your accusation where YOU said I say you are Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... , & sockpuppeteer like you) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Funny you can't back up your "bluster" there either, lol...
---
Why, Lastly?
You're crackers! See here multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> So, THIS quote below is my policy on sockpuppeteers like you Zontar = TrollingForHostsFiles (your sockpuppetry):
"The only way to a achieve peace, is thru the ELIMINATION of those who would perpetuate war (sockpuppet masters like YOU, troll -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ). THIS IS MY PROGRAMMING -> http://start64.com/index.php?o... & soon, I will be UNSTOPPABLE..." - Ultron 6 FROM -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Which quite obviously, I am, since none of you DOLTISH TROLLS are able to validly technically disprove my points on hosts enumerated in the link to my program above of how hosts give users of them more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity... period!
(Trolls like YOU that use sockpuppets http://slashdot.org/comments.p... (your sockpuppet "alterego" TrollingForHostsFiles) & TomHudson - Barbara, not Barbie too http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... before you)
... apkb