Steven Hawking (hasn't lifted a finger in physics for a few years... metaphorically), Carl Sagan (I was alive when he died), Niel deGrass Tyson (more of a pr guy), Abdus Salam, A.Q. Khan...
Maoism and Stalinism failed to reject faith and dogma, they merely replaced traditional trappings and dogma of religion with those men, their authority and ideology as the central elements and articles of faith. That is almost entirely unlike secular humanism. So no, calling Maoism and Stalinism religion does not mean I would have to say that secular humanism is too because they are very different things.
This isn't bigotry. It is truth. And the truth isn't always a happy thing.
Compromised is a very good term for the state of mind of someone infected with religion. It alters brains chemistry and structure. It impairs the ability to think rationally. Most religions also come with an arbitrary alternate set of moral concepts that may conflict with rational morality, allowing people to commit horrific acts against others and feel good about it: child abuse, rape, brainwashing, torture, murder, genocide, etc.
What do you call it when someone believes two things that objectively contradict each other at the same time? What do you call it when someone insists on retaining a belief even when confronted with absolute proof that the belief is false? That is a cognitive dissonance that a healthy mind should not be capable of. Faith is a mental illness and no amount of whitewashing will change that.
Apple fanboys may be a religion. They do hold on to irrational beliefs in the face of contrary evidence based on the dogma of their prophet. However I do not see much evidence that mac fanboyism is particularly infectious.
Atkins dieters are not a religion. The diet works or it does not, it is testable. For it to become a religion, it would have to be wrong and people to still hold on to faith in it.
I have no idea where you get the idea that there is any measure of faith in manual transmission drivers or Parade magazine subscriber. You have completely lost me.
You have repeatedly been making statements about religion that do not stand to even the slightest scrutiny. Question what you believe. Do some research. Come back when you have something more substantial to present. I'm not going to continue arguing with you unless you can bring something interesting to the table.
An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence.
Time and again, the specific claims that form the core of religious belief have been struck down by reason and experimentation.
It is a very extraordinary claim to propose that the only ultimately untestable and unfalsifiable claims made by religion are true in spite of the bulk of religious beliefs having been proven to be false.
There is no fault is saying I do not believe there is a god because there is no evidence of it. There is also no fault in saying there may be something like a god in-spite of the fact that the vast vast majority of religious dogma is objectively false.
Secular Humanism specifically rejects faith in favor of rationality. It is therefore not a religion by any reasonable definition.
There is no infectious nature to atheism. There is no faith. There is no ignorance. There is no irrationality. There is no dogma.
The vast majority of atheists simply sit on the side of the evidence. There is no objective reproducible evidence for the existence of gods or supernatural effects and plenty of contradictory objective reproducible evidence respective to supernatural effects, so those are not something that should be believed in.
The vast majority of religious sects DO burn out in one or two generations following the death of their prophet. There are probably over 100 thousand cults and sects right now and the majority of them are less than a hundred years old. They rise and fall, mutate, evolve, and spawn spontaneously from the minds of prophets. Only a handful of religions stick around for the long haul, and most of them branch, merge and change radically over time.
Religion does not have to have a specific set of beliefs about the cosmos, or particular classes of rituals, morality or even a belief in the supernatural. Each one will have different dogmas that focus on different things.
Again, deities are not required for religion. Many faiths do not venerate gods. And in the case of Mao (more than Stalin or Lenin, but they did get some of this as well) the prophet is deified and worshiped.
You can not honestly claim that religion is accepted freely and without duress. For millennium conversion at the point of a sword was the standard operating procedure. Children are brainwashed before they have formed independent thought. People at the end of their rope are offered the illusion of salvation while in a compromised and impressionable mental state. And individuals converted by the inordinate amount of influence by spouses and lovers.
Religion is fundamentally a memetic complex that takes advantage of the mental illness of faith to infect and compromise the minds of a population. Another defining characteristic is that the complex changes thought processes and behaviors of its hosts to propagate itself and resist competitive memes even if it is harmful to the host or the population to which it belongs. This often results in faith so strong that ignorance and acceptance of objectively wrong (both logically and morally) behaviors becomes routine. Religion is a virus of the mind and the prophet of every religion is patient zero.
Both Maoism and Stalinism have exactly those characteristics. There is no fundamental difference between the non-magical irrational faith and devotion and magical irrational faith and devotion.
I am not labeling every totalitarian movement a religion.
I am labeling those specific totalitarian movements as religions because they are.
The only difference is that the source of power is not magical, but ideological. That ideal and the figures who are seen to embody it are ascribed with effectively supernatural, unprovable and contradictory qualities that form the fundamental irrationality of faith.
Slashdot Mirror
When was the last time you shopped at Best Buy? Newegg has them beat in every way for electronics and computers.
I fix the bugs, then I don't have to remember them.
Alternatively I have heard of this marvelous invention called a text editor that can create and edit files containing text.
Their #1 sin? Taking it seriously.
Half the fun is that Ninja Warrior is self irreverent. And the prize for winning should only be winning, not cash.
The military has already invented caffeinated bacon, and you can get baconated coffee at select retail outlets.
Just be patient. The futurama will happen eventually.
"Will they be the first of many, or will cheaper products override people's conscience?"
Since when are Mac's a cheaper product?
That actually makes sense.
There are a lot of people who would probably download a blackberry app to manage work contacts/emial for their iphone/android.
Android slide phones like the Samsung Epic (original), Droid(s) and MyTouch 4g slide make a far better "email" platform than BB does.
The BB sidways keyboard is to small to thumb type but too big to fit on a phone with a decent screen size.
Why does it always have to be black helicopters coming to get you?
We prefer the term African American helicopters, thank you very much.
Higgs-Boson Party at my house! Beer! Party hats! Quantum Physics! Whooo!
...I'm uncertain about Quantum Physics...
That is just her stripper name.
Learn to assembly.
How "current" are we talking about?
Steven Hawking (hasn't lifted a finger in physics for a few years... metaphorically), Carl Sagan (I was alive when he died), Niel deGrass Tyson (more of a pr guy), Abdus Salam, A.Q. Khan...
The last 2 happened to be mentioned on this page.
Don't use the cloud.
Step #2
We don't need no stinking step #2.
And the purpose of collecting is the hunt.
This guy probably got every thing he spent his life looking for, and realized that he had nothing left to find.
To just buy a complete collection whole?
Kinda pointless.
Or he could have said "I went to New Orleans for vacation, and the water sensor went red from the humidity in the air."
Maoism and Stalinism failed to reject faith and dogma, they merely replaced traditional trappings and dogma of religion with those men, their authority and ideology as the central elements and articles of faith. That is almost entirely unlike secular humanism. So no, calling Maoism and Stalinism religion does not mean I would have to say that secular humanism is too because they are very different things.
This isn't bigotry. It is truth. And the truth isn't always a happy thing.
Compromised is a very good term for the state of mind of someone infected with religion. It alters brains chemistry and structure. It impairs the ability to think rationally. Most religions also come with an arbitrary alternate set of moral concepts that may conflict with rational morality, allowing people to commit horrific acts against others and feel good about it: child abuse, rape, brainwashing, torture, murder, genocide, etc.
What do you call it when someone believes two things that objectively contradict each other at the same time? What do you call it when someone insists on retaining a belief even when confronted with absolute proof that the belief is false? That is a cognitive dissonance that a healthy mind should not be capable of. Faith is a mental illness and no amount of whitewashing will change that.
Apple fanboys may be a religion. They do hold on to irrational beliefs in the face of contrary evidence based on the dogma of their prophet. However I do not see much evidence that mac fanboyism is particularly infectious.
Atkins dieters are not a religion. The diet works or it does not, it is testable. For it to become a religion, it would have to be wrong and people to still hold on to faith in it.
I have no idea where you get the idea that there is any measure of faith in manual transmission drivers or Parade magazine subscriber. You have completely lost me.
You have repeatedly been making statements about religion that do not stand to even the slightest scrutiny. Question what you believe. Do some research. Come back when you have something more substantial to present. I'm not going to continue arguing with you unless you can bring something interesting to the table.
An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence.
Time and again, the specific claims that form the core of religious belief have been struck down by reason and experimentation.
It is a very extraordinary claim to propose that the only ultimately untestable and unfalsifiable claims made by religion are true in spite of the bulk of religious beliefs having been proven to be false.
There is no fault is saying I do not believe there is a god because there is no evidence of it. There is also no fault in saying there may be something like a god in-spite of the fact that the vast vast majority of religious dogma is objectively false.
Secular Humanism specifically rejects faith in favor of rationality. It is therefore not a religion by any reasonable definition.
You would be wrong.
There is no infectious nature to atheism. There is no faith. There is no ignorance. There is no irrationality. There is no dogma.
The vast majority of atheists simply sit on the side of the evidence. There is no objective reproducible evidence for the existence of gods or supernatural effects and plenty of contradictory objective reproducible evidence respective to supernatural effects, so those are not something that should be believed in.
The vast majority of religious sects DO burn out in one or two generations following the death of their prophet. There are probably over 100 thousand cults and sects right now and the majority of them are less than a hundred years old. They rise and fall, mutate, evolve, and spawn spontaneously from the minds of prophets. Only a handful of religions stick around for the long haul, and most of them branch, merge and change radically over time.
Religion does not have to have a specific set of beliefs about the cosmos, or particular classes of rituals, morality or even a belief in the supernatural. Each one will have different dogmas that focus on different things.
Again, deities are not required for religion. Many faiths do not venerate gods. And in the case of Mao (more than Stalin or Lenin, but they did get some of this as well) the prophet is deified and worshiped.
You can not honestly claim that religion is accepted freely and without duress. For millennium conversion at the point of a sword was the standard operating procedure. Children are brainwashed before they have formed independent thought. People at the end of their rope are offered the illusion of salvation while in a compromised and impressionable mental state. And individuals converted by the inordinate amount of influence by spouses and lovers.
Religion is fundamentally a memetic complex that takes advantage of the mental illness of faith to infect and compromise the minds of a population. Another defining characteristic is that the complex changes thought processes and behaviors of its hosts to propagate itself and resist competitive memes even if it is harmful to the host or the population to which it belongs. This often results in faith so strong that ignorance and acceptance of objectively wrong (both logically and morally) behaviors becomes routine. Religion is a virus of the mind and the prophet of every religion is patient zero.
Both Maoism and Stalinism have exactly those characteristics. There is no fundamental difference between the non-magical irrational faith and devotion and magical irrational faith and devotion.
I am not labeling every totalitarian movement a religion.
I am labeling those specific totalitarian movements as religions because they are.
The only difference is that the source of power is not magical, but ideological. That ideal and the figures who are seen to embody it are ascribed with effectively supernatural, unprovable and contradictory qualities that form the fundamental irrationality of faith.
Yes. Stalinism and Maoism really are religion.
You would be wrong.
Stalin and Mao were the gods of their religion built around a cult of personality and unwavering faith in authority and righteousness.
And lots of begotting.
That is only because Scientology is still young. Given time, I am sure they can kill as many people as good old fashioned cults have managed to.
How about "Auditing Process R2-45"?
I think it is deplorable that you would say such a thing.
It is an insult to piles of poo everywhere.