Bicycling isn't high impact (though running is). Bicycling is a good cardiovascular workout, but there's pretty much zero impact since the motion is so smooth.
Yes indeed. My resting heart rate was and still is pretty low. Ice hockey as well is incredibly CV intensive. Go out and skate as hard as you can for a minute, then sit for a minute, then back out again as hard as you can go. The biking was probably what kept me from having a heart attack, since I was playing long after most people quit. The cool part was I played on the same team as my son, which doesn't happen all that often. I'd do it again in a second.
You think we're insulting the basement dwellers with all this exercise talk?
Geeks - worry not! I used to beat on the other jocks when they picked on y'all.
I am late to the sport of running (started 6 years ago, at age 36), but I recognized that many runners I had talked to in the past complained of injuries as a result of running.
Come back in 30 yers with 36 year old legs, and I'll belive all of that.
As much great fun as it is to blame people's physical ailments on what they did "wrong", just like aging, I suspct there is more in genetics than anything else.
I played and exercised hard compared to most people. It wore my lower body out. Some from repetitive stress injuries, some from general injuries, a lot from genetics. This is not really all that unusual. Old jocks often have a lot of leg problems, and the natural runners from long ago usually didn't make it to their 60's, so how do we know they were doing it right?
Do you feel like the running is what did leg damage? I have hypothesized this myself. When I am only cycling and not even walking long distances, my legs and feet feel great. But I always regret hiking or running too much.
Running had a lot to do with the knees. Ice hockey was nasty to the ankles and hips oddly enough.
I suspect also that some folks are more amenable to running than others. I don't think I was one of them.
Anyhow, cycling is still fine and hiking hiking still okay as long as I wear an articulated brace on the knees and good boots. It hurts, but so does aging, and the world is beautiful - so it's ibuprofen and tahellwidit.
And the constant background radiation of the universe itself.
And reading the story and links from it, I saw nowhere where there was a doctor's report regarding the child. I did see where she was disruptive at school. She sounds like a teenager to me. But the lack of a doctor's report in the whole story is troubling.
I think that there is enough evidence that we might just look at a depressed teenager, with a possibility - although remote - of a Munchausen by proxy situation.
Meanwhile, we are all being given EM radiation exposure every day, unless we live in a Faraday cage made of radioactively depleted materials.
I was thinking that, in the future, people are going to look back on us, much like we look back at old black and white films and realize that everyone pictured is now dead, and feel sorry for us because we lived before some major breakthrough was made that prolongs life extensively.
While interesting, the concept of becoming ageless comes with some severe baggage.
Consumption of everything will need to plummet, unless we somehow figure out how to make raw materials out of nothing.
Population will have to plummet, as will basic fertility rates. Every new human will be a permanent addition. The drive to procreate will need to be heavily suppressed.
As well, and a sort of undercurrent, there are people in the world who are chronically depressed even with treatment for whom the concept of living almost forever would have to be the 7th circle of hell. I have to imagine that with the very strict population controls, suicide for boredom would have to be acceptable. It might free up some space for another person to have an offspring, so we got that going for us.
Coupled with people. We live in a world where there are people who go out of their way to make a woman's vagina a clown car, or refuse normal medical treatment in favor of prayer. Gonna have to figure out what to do with them as well.
Regardless, I have some books from they early 80's like "Prolongevity" Always right around the corner, so don't hold your breath unless you want to pre-free up space for the brave new world where people live almost forever.
That would certainly be wonderful, and I'm sure it's theoretically possible at one point, but I wonder if it's a bit overoptimistic. I mean a lot overoptimistic.
If they are going to solve this problem in five years I don't need to worry at all about diet and exercise, right? What an excuse for not taking good care of myself....
Now that is a very interesting comment. I think it speaks to the odd puritanical streak in some folks, that somehow being healthy without sacrifice is bad. Certainly I'd like a way to not have to got to extremes for physical fitness. At my physical height, I bicycled 30 miles per day, ran 3 miles per day, and did weights every other day. Top it off with three Ice Hockey games a week.
Now whether or not that would make me live longer - which I doubt - it did give me some wicked CV stamina. Ruined my legs though. But in the end, and in retrospect. It was just about all I did for many years outside of work. That Calvanistic streak coupled with the idea that all we have to do is "take care of ourselves" simply ain't all that.
And even if you believe that everyone should be rational enough to not suffer from this shit (again, an unproven correlation, but likely), do you really hold a minor responsible? Her head isn't developed enough to legally drive without supervision or vote, how can you expect her to have deprogrammed herself of the pieces of society that tie into your body in ways we don't even fully understand yet?
Hand out magic crystals or have a priest bless her or a monk say her name under a fountain. I dunno.
I don't hold a minor responsible - now her mother? Maybe, maybe not. If she was just some poor deluded soul with an offspring with a problem, that's one thing. If she is somoene like the Christian Scientists - Newspeak or biggest irony ever - refusing treatments that would easily heal - then I have much blame to hand out.
Sounds good to me. This sounds a lot like taxation without representation. I don't have a say in it, I am not benefiting in it in any way, so therefor I am not being represented.
Ironically, it seems to be prevalent in states where God rules, and Taxes are considered a Democrat evil.
Well, define excessive. If the tickets for improper HOV lane usage were lower, I'd probably be that asshole who uses it with no passengers all the time. Risk has to be greater than reward for disobeying.
Not sure why you say that. We're reasonably certain that these so-called Wi-fi "allergies" are completely bogus. However, if they were real, the most likely cause would be a feedback loop of neurons amplifying a signal, in which the length of some portion of that loop was of the right length to tune a particular frequency. So if a Wi-Fi allergy could actually exist, then it almost certainly would be frequency-sensitive. But again, Wi-Fi allergy claims consistently fail to stand up to testing, making the discussion moot.
Oh - well then all you need is a necklace of amethyst crystals interlaced with polished hematite. Takes care of those 2.4 GHz feedback loops with the natural harmonic energies of the universe. Looks good too!
if you are willing to grant that radio waves can cause some effect, it's no leap at all to suppose that the effect would be frequency dependent.
It was a bad example he gave. But I am willing to grant whatever uyou want by a good description of the physical effect differnces between 800 MHz and 2.4 Ghz.
I gave one in another reply, show me the errors of my way, and also give a good reason why someone would have a devastating reaction to one but absolutely no reaction to the other? In other words, I'm looking for the proof that placing one's head in the near field of a smartphone has 0 effect, but in teh farfield of a wifi has an effect so great as to completely destroy the health of a person - to the extent they look at suicide as a proper solution.
I dunno, they seem different enough to any device created to distinguish them.
I have devices that distinguish less than 1 Hz difference. It doesn't make every frequency complately different from every other.
In general the region from 800 MHz to 2.4 GHZ acts farily similar. Propagation effects are more likely at the lower end, the higher end has higher path loss but they are both line of sight as far as reception is concerned, and for most purposes the same.
So unless there is some resonance effect going on at some specific frequency, it's almost the same.
NOte that as well, there is a huge difference between bing in th efar field of a wireless router and the near field of a wireless phone. This is exacerbated when in a marginal coverage area, because the phone increases it's output to compensate for the path loss. So if she was actually allergic, she would be getting a huge dose of EM radiation when she held the phone ot her ear.
IOW if the girl was actually allergic to UHF EM radiation, she should never have been anywhere near a cell phone. But really, she wasn't allergic. Just a rather odd thinking mother who is afraid of things she cannot see. As I noted before, someone should tell her that Thunderstorms generate Gamma Rays - they do. She'll freak.
Correct - but lots of (delusional) people who believe they have Wi-Fi or other Electromagnetic spectrum allergies have flocked there as a result, regardless of the real reason for it.
I have bad news for whackjob mommy. We're engulfed in the electromagnetic spectrum, even if we listen to whackjob mommy and turn every human based RF source off.
Sh/e might try suing mother nature, because what's more, some Gamma rays are created by Thunderstorms.
If they are symbolic bills, then all we'll get here is bullshit discussion about AGW or worse, politics. Must be a slow news day (well, other than the bigger-than-average daily shooting in San Bernardino)
Kind of like the gazillion attempts to eliminate Obamacare. Convince the nutcases that elected them that they are standing strong and resolute in the face of science and the Kenyan terror baby.
1.The atheism of a person who has never heard of god is clearly not a belief system or even a religion.
2. But the atheism of someone who has heard of God and writes angry books on why believing in god is evil and why all kinds of theism should be destroyed, that can be a belief system and awfully close to a dogmatic religion.
So an opinion becomes a religion. Was the unabomber manifesto a religion?
Some people people say atheism is not a religion, just like not collecting stamps is not a hobby. However, there is no club of the american non-stamp collectors, there are no people that write books about the dangers of stamp collecting, etc.
So the International Order of Oddfellows is now a religion? Any group of people that is organized has suddenly become a religion.
Especially in the US most people that do not believe in god, do not call themself atheists. This is because most of the time, when someone calls himself an atheist, he is the "religious" kind of atheist, not just the kind that does not care about god or thinks that god is not necessary.
People who are atheists who do not declare are just dealing with the George Bush Sr type Presidents of the USA who have stated that atheists are neither patriotic, nor can be citizens. Some times, just like we used to do with other groups, it is much safer to know your place, don't make waves, and submit.
And of course, many have had to perjure themselves in order to hold public office due to religious tests.
For your entertainment:
Arkansas - No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court.” (Constitution, Article 19, Section 1)
Maryland: “[N]o religious test ought ever to be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this State, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God.” (Bill of Rights, Article 37). *Still on the books, but overturned.
Mississippi: “No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state.” (Article 14, Section 265)
North Carolina: “The following persons shall be disqualified for office. First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.” (Constitution, Article 6, Section 8)
Pennsylvania: “No person who acknowledges the being of a God and a future state of rewards and punishments shall, on account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified to hold any office or place of trust or profit under this Commonwealth.” (Declaration of Rights, Article 1, Section 4)
South Carolina: “No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution. (Constitution, Article 17, Section 4). *Still on the books, but overturned.
Tennessee: “No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state.” (Bill of Rights, Article 9, Section 2)
Texas: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.” (Bill of Rights, Article 1, Section 4)
Looking forward to your list of states that only allow atheists to hold public office.
So if you're an atheist in modern society and you're being quized on why you're an atheist then you probably did something to bring it on yourself. So don't boo hoo about it because, frankly, it's gotten old. Atheism is easier to "hide" from society than vegetarianism is and I've had no problems leading a fulfilling life while not shoving my dietary preference in anyone's face.
So, are any folks saying that vegetarians can't be elected to political office because they are immoral? There are quite a few states that require a religious test to run for office.
A fairly typical statement by former president George Bush Sr:
"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
So your solution is for atheists to lie when asked? Or just shut up, perjure themselves and be allowed to partake in civic matters? Or better yet, leave the governance to the proper folks.
So spare me your equivalence between vegetarians and atheists. Anyone question your patriotism based on what you eat? Anyone want to strip you of your citizenship because of what you eat?
It is not a lack of belief. It is a belief that there is no god. It's as much a dogma as those who do believe in a god. It is certainly a belief system.
So a person who has never heard of god, thinks about not having heard of god? They believe that something they never think about doesn't exist?
This whole atheism is a religion business is lust an inability to comprehend. The only time I ever think about "godness" - I suppose you would call it, is when I'm having fun discussing it with people.
You've cracked the conspiracy! In the atheist world domination conspiracy, atheists:
get together in a building every week in (nowhere) on the atheist sabbath day (none) as prescribed in the book of (nothing) to pray to (no one) in order to (not) save their (non) eternal souls.
What you are doing is confusing the anger of some atheists as they are slowly being released from under the heels of the religious. And in getting confused, the religious - say for example the woman in Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses to gays - consider that an attack on them, rather than extension of basic rights to others.
The biggest problem in religious belief is unconditional acceptance of dogma and a tendency not to question what one is told. Modern atheists often have their own dogmas, and all the same problems.
Is this a clever rephrasing of the old "Atheism is a religion" chestnut?
Scientists who have any grain of self-awareness get this too: is there any sillier proposition than, "everything originated in a Bang?"
While the "Big Bang" theory is what it it, I've never heard an actual scientist refer to it as everything started in a Bang". Indeed many of them are busy working on what came before the event, so no beginning yet even found.
Or this one: "space was made and is perpetuated by quantum entanglement." Once you get this, you realize what a vast difference there is between nonsense and bullshit.
I've been searching all over for your quotes - I mean they must be referenced somewhere..
But while everyone is subject to some amount of belief in bullshit, there is a difference.
While we can accumulate evidence that our universe came about through an event long ago, we can't prove that a huge flood happened that covered the entire earth and one family and all the animals on earth hopped in a ship of a specific size and rode it out. We can do the calculations to show that that event was as improbable as an event could be. My calculations were that given the amount of rain necessary to raise sea level to cover the highest mountains in 960 hours would make a submarine a better choice than an ark, because it would be a solid wall of falling water.
But there are a lot of people who believe that it happened, and it happened just like it was written down.
And then there is quantum theory. Proven effects and their weirdness, would seem to fit in with your concept of scientists believing statements on the same caliber as the flood story.
String theory on the other hand, while interesting, is largely unprovable, more a thought experiment than science.
They show electrical ACTIVITY in the brain. They completely disregard basic anatomy known to ancient Greece about the physical differences between a male and female brain.
I have to admit, I've been pretty accurate at determining gender for a long time, and not once did it involve looking at a person's brain.
Slashdot Mirror
Bicycling isn't high impact (though running is). Bicycling is a good cardiovascular workout, but there's pretty much zero impact since the motion is so smooth.
Yes indeed. My resting heart rate was and still is pretty low. Ice hockey as well is incredibly CV intensive. Go out and skate as hard as you can for a minute, then sit for a minute, then back out again as hard as you can go. The biking was probably what kept me from having a heart attack, since I was playing long after most people quit. The cool part was I played on the same team as my son, which doesn't happen all that often. I'd do it again in a second.
You think we're insulting the basement dwellers with all this exercise talk?
Geeks - worry not! I used to beat on the other jocks when they picked on y'all.
I was here to say exactly this.
I am late to the sport of running (started 6 years ago, at age 36), but I recognized that many runners I had talked to in the past complained of injuries as a result of running.
Come back in 30 yers with 36 year old legs, and I'll belive all of that.
As much great fun as it is to blame people's physical ailments on what they did "wrong", just like aging, I suspct there is more in genetics than anything else.
I played and exercised hard compared to most people. It wore my lower body out. Some from repetitive stress injuries, some from general injuries, a lot from genetics. This is not really all that unusual. Old jocks often have a lot of leg problems, and the natural runners from long ago usually didn't make it to their 60's, so how do we know they were doing it right?
Do you feel like the running is what did leg damage? I have hypothesized this myself. When I am only cycling and not even walking long distances, my legs and feet feel great. But I always regret hiking or running too much.
Running had a lot to do with the knees. Ice hockey was nasty to the ankles and hips oddly enough.
I suspect also that some folks are more amenable to running than others. I don't think I was one of them.
Anyhow, cycling is still fine and hiking hiking still okay as long as I wear an articulated brace on the knees and good boots. It hurts, but so does aging, and the world is beautiful - so it's ibuprofen and tahellwidit.
And the constant background radiation of the universe itself .
And reading the story and links from it, I saw nowhere where there was a doctor's report regarding the child. I did see where she was disruptive at school. She sounds like a teenager to me. But the lack of a doctor's report in the whole story is troubling.
I think that there is enough evidence that we might just look at a depressed teenager, with a possibility - although remote - of a Munchausen by proxy situation.
Meanwhile, we are all being given EM radiation exposure every day, unless we live in a Faraday cage made of radioactively depleted materials.
I was thinking that, in the future, people are going to look back on us, much like we look back at old black and white films and realize that everyone pictured is now dead, and feel sorry for us because we lived before some major breakthrough was made that prolongs life extensively.
While interesting, the concept of becoming ageless comes with some severe baggage.
Consumption of everything will need to plummet, unless we somehow figure out how to make raw materials out of nothing.
Population will have to plummet, as will basic fertility rates. Every new human will be a permanent addition. The drive to procreate will need to be heavily suppressed.
As well, and a sort of undercurrent, there are people in the world who are chronically depressed even with treatment for whom the concept of living almost forever would have to be the 7th circle of hell. I have to imagine that with the very strict population controls, suicide for boredom would have to be acceptable. It might free up some space for another person to have an offspring, so we got that going for us.
Coupled with people. We live in a world where there are people who go out of their way to make a woman's vagina a clown car, or refuse normal medical treatment in favor of prayer. Gonna have to figure out what to do with them as well.
Regardless, I have some books from they early 80's like "Prolongevity" Always right around the corner, so don't hold your breath unless you want to pre-free up space for the brave new world where people live almost forever.
That would certainly be wonderful, and I'm sure it's theoretically possible at one point, but I wonder if it's a bit overoptimistic. I mean a lot overoptimistic.
If they are going to solve this problem in five years I don't need to worry at all about diet and exercise, right? What an excuse for not taking good care of myself....
Now that is a very interesting comment. I think it speaks to the odd puritanical streak in some folks, that somehow being healthy without sacrifice is bad. Certainly I'd like a way to not have to got to extremes for physical fitness. At my physical height, I bicycled 30 miles per day, ran 3 miles per day, and did weights every other day. Top it off with three Ice Hockey games a week.
Now whether or not that would make me live longer - which I doubt - it did give me some wicked CV stamina. Ruined my legs though. But in the end, and in retrospect. It was just about all I did for many years outside of work. That Calvanistic streak coupled with the idea that all we have to do is "take care of ourselves" simply ain't all that.
With the difference being that unlike nuclear fusion and HURD, a lot of old, rich people have a vested interest in a cure for aging.
Fine with me - as long as I get my frickin' flying car.
And even if you believe that everyone should be rational enough to not suffer from this shit (again, an unproven correlation, but likely), do you really hold a minor responsible? Her head isn't developed enough to legally drive without supervision or vote, how can you expect her to have deprogrammed herself of the pieces of society that tie into your body in ways we don't even fully understand yet?
Hand out magic crystals or have a priest bless her or a monk say her name under a fountain. I dunno.
I don't hold a minor responsible - now her mother? Maybe, maybe not. If she was just some poor deluded soul with an offspring with a problem, that's one thing. If she is somoene like the Christian Scientists - Newspeak or biggest irony ever - refusing treatments that would easily heal - then I have much blame to hand out.
Sounds good to me. This sounds a lot like taxation without representation. I don't have a say in it, I am not benefiting in it in any way, so therefor I am not being represented.
Ironically, it seems to be prevalent in states where God rules, and Taxes are considered a Democrat evil.
Well, define excessive. If the tickets for improper HOV lane usage were lower, I'd probably be that asshole who uses it with no passengers all the time. Risk has to be greater than reward for disobeying.
Snipers?
Not sure why you say that. We're reasonably certain that these so-called Wi-fi "allergies" are completely bogus. However, if they were real, the most likely cause would be a feedback loop of neurons amplifying a signal, in which the length of some portion of that loop was of the right length to tune a particular frequency. So if a Wi-Fi allergy could actually exist, then it almost certainly would be frequency-sensitive. But again, Wi-Fi allergy claims consistently fail to stand up to testing, making the discussion moot.
Oh - well then all you need is a necklace of amethyst crystals interlaced with polished hematite. Takes care of those 2.4 GHz feedback loops with the natural harmonic energies of the universe. Looks good too!
if you are willing to grant that radio waves can cause some effect, it's no leap at all to suppose that the effect would be frequency dependent.
It was a bad example he gave. But I am willing to grant whatever uyou want by a good description of the physical effect differnces between 800 MHz and 2.4 Ghz.
I gave one in another reply, show me the errors of my way, and also give a good reason why someone would have a devastating reaction to one but absolutely no reaction to the other? In other words, I'm looking for the proof that placing one's head in the near field of a smartphone has 0 effect, but in teh farfield of a wifi has an effect so great as to completely destroy the health of a person - to the extent they look at suicide as a proper solution.
I dunno, they seem different enough to any device created to distinguish them.
I have devices that distinguish less than 1 Hz difference. It doesn't make every frequency complately different from every other.
In general the region from 800 MHz to 2.4 GHZ acts farily similar. Propagation effects are more likely at the lower end, the higher end has higher path loss but they are both line of sight as far as reception is concerned, and for most purposes the same.
So unless there is some resonance effect going on at some specific frequency, it's almost the same.
NOte that as well, there is a huge difference between bing in th efar field of a wireless router and the near field of a wireless phone. This is exacerbated when in a marginal coverage area, because the phone increases it's output to compensate for the path loss. So if she was actually allergic, she would be getting a huge dose of EM radiation when she held the phone ot her ear. IOW if the girl was actually allergic to UHF EM radiation, she should never have been anywhere near a cell phone. But really, she wasn't allergic. Just a rather odd thinking mother who is afraid of things she cannot see. As I noted before, someone should tell her that Thunderstorms generate Gamma Rays - they do. She'll freak.
Correct - but lots of (delusional) people who believe they have Wi-Fi or other Electromagnetic spectrum allergies have flocked there as a result, regardless of the real reason for it.
I have bad news for whackjob mommy. We're engulfed in the electromagnetic spectrum, even if we listen to whackjob mommy and turn every human based RF source off.
Sh/e might try suing mother nature, because what's more, some Gamma rays are created by Thunderstorms.
http://science.nasa.gov/scienc...
And those might be of a little more concern than the ridiculously small levels of RF form the far-field of a wifi router.
If they are symbolic bills, then all we'll get here is bullshit discussion about AGW or worse, politics. Must be a slow news day (well, other than the bigger-than-average daily shooting in San Bernardino)
Kind of like the gazillion attempts to eliminate Obamacare. Convince the nutcases that elected them that they are standing strong and resolute in the face of science and the Kenyan terror baby.
Political Correctness ruins good Everything.
Fixed that for you.
If someone has never heard of a god, and doesn't care, that isn't being an atheist. That's being agnostic.
Atheism is a specific position that there is no god. A person who has never considered the possibility of a deity is not an atheist.
So a person is an atheist regarding the thousands of other gods?
And agnostic about every God they haven't heard of even if they are an athiest about one or more particular god?
We are getting very close to turtles all the way down.
There is some truth to both sides of this debate:
1 .The atheism of a person who has never heard of god is clearly not a belief system or even a religion.
2. But the atheism of someone who has heard of God and writes angry books on why believing in god is evil and why all kinds of theism should be destroyed, that can be a belief system and awfully close to a dogmatic religion.
So an opinion becomes a religion. Was the unabomber manifesto a religion?
Some people people say atheism is not a religion, just like not collecting stamps is not a hobby. However, there is no club of the american non-stamp collectors, there are no people that write books about the dangers of stamp collecting, etc.
So the International Order of Oddfellows is now a religion? Any group of people that is organized has suddenly become a religion.
Especially in the US most people that do not believe in god, do not call themself atheists. This is because most of the time, when someone calls himself an atheist, he is the "religious" kind of atheist, not just the kind that does not care about god or thinks that god is not necessary.
People who are atheists who do not declare are just dealing with the George Bush Sr type Presidents of the USA who have stated that atheists are neither patriotic, nor can be citizens. Some times, just like we used to do with other groups, it is much safer to know your place, don't make waves, and submit.
And of course, many have had to perjure themselves in order to hold public office due to religious tests.
For your entertainment: Arkansas - No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court.” (Constitution, Article 19, Section 1)
Maryland: “[N]o religious test ought ever to be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this State, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God.” (Bill of Rights, Article 37). *Still on the books, but overturned.
Mississippi: “No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state.” (Article 14, Section 265)
North Carolina: “The following persons shall be disqualified for office. First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.” (Constitution, Article 6, Section 8)
Pennsylvania: “No person who acknowledges the being of a God and a future state of rewards and punishments shall, on account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified to hold any office or place of trust or profit under this Commonwealth.” (Declaration of Rights, Article 1, Section 4)
South Carolina: “No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution. (Constitution, Article 17, Section 4). *Still on the books, but overturned.
Tennessee: “No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state.” (Bill of Rights, Article 9, Section 2)
Texas: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.” (Bill of Rights, Article 1, Section 4)
Looking forward to your list of states that only allow atheists to hold public office.
or should I shut the fuck up and know my place?
So if you're an atheist in modern society and you're being quized on why you're an atheist then you probably did something to bring it on yourself. So don't boo hoo about it because, frankly, it's gotten old. Atheism is easier to "hide" from society than vegetarianism is and I've had no problems leading a fulfilling life while not shoving my dietary preference in anyone's face.
So, are any folks saying that vegetarians can't be elected to political office because they are immoral? There are quite a few states that require a religious test to run for office.
http://americanhumanist.org/hn...
Just keep our mouths shut and know our place, eh?
A fairly typical statement by former president George Bush Sr:
"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
So your solution is for atheists to lie when asked? Or just shut up, perjure themselves and be allowed to partake in civic matters? Or better yet, leave the governance to the proper folks.
So spare me your equivalence between vegetarians and atheists. Anyone question your patriotism based on what you eat? Anyone want to strip you of your citizenship because of what you eat?
It is not a lack of belief. It is a belief that there is no god. It's as much a dogma as those who do believe in a god. It is certainly a belief system.
So a person who has never heard of god, thinks about not having heard of god? They believe that something they never think about doesn't exist?
This whole atheism is a religion business is lust an inability to comprehend. The only time I ever think about "godness" - I suppose you would call it, is when I'm having fun discussing it with people.
Atheism seems to have it's own type of religion.
And abstinence is a sexual position.
A cult with an agenda.
You've cracked the conspiracy! In the atheist world domination conspiracy, atheists:
get together in a building every week in (nowhere) on the atheist sabbath day (none) as prescribed in the book of (nothing) to pray to (no one) in order to (not) save their (non) eternal souls.
What you are doing is confusing the anger of some atheists as they are slowly being released from under the heels of the religious. And in getting confused, the religious - say for example the woman in Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses to gays - consider that an attack on them, rather than extension of basic rights to others.
The biggest problem in religious belief is unconditional acceptance of dogma and a tendency not to question what one is told. Modern atheists often have their own dogmas, and all the same problems.
Is this a clever rephrasing of the old "Atheism is a religion" chestnut?
Scientists who have any grain of self-awareness get this too: is there any sillier proposition than, "everything originated in a Bang?"
While the "Big Bang" theory is what it it, I've never heard an actual scientist refer to it as everything started in a Bang". Indeed many of them are busy working on what came before the event, so no beginning yet even found.
Or this one: "space was made and is perpetuated by quantum entanglement." Once you get this, you realize what a vast difference there is between nonsense and bullshit.
I've been searching all over for your quotes - I mean they must be referenced somewhere..
But while everyone is subject to some amount of belief in bullshit, there is a difference.
While we can accumulate evidence that our universe came about through an event long ago, we can't prove that a huge flood happened that covered the entire earth and one family and all the animals on earth hopped in a ship of a specific size and rode it out. We can do the calculations to show that that event was as improbable as an event could be. My calculations were that given the amount of rain necessary to raise sea level to cover the highest mountains in 960 hours would make a submarine a better choice than an ark, because it would be a solid wall of falling water.
But there are a lot of people who believe that it happened, and it happened just like it was written down.
And then there is quantum theory. Proven effects and their weirdness, would seem to fit in with your concept of scientists believing statements on the same caliber as the flood story.
String theory on the other hand, while interesting, is largely unprovable, more a thought experiment than science.
Not even that.
I repeat. Not. Even. That.
They show electrical ACTIVITY in the brain. They completely disregard basic anatomy known to ancient Greece about the physical differences between a male and female brain.
I have to admit, I've been pretty accurate at determining gender for a long time, and not once did it involve looking at a person's brain.
Maybe this is where slashdotters go wrong.
All that other stuff is okay - but playing the bassoon is simply unforgivable.