Eventually, technology is going to make our very genes a matter of personal preference. It will be interesting to see which side the gay community comes down on then, since even if homosexuality really is a strictly hereditary phenomenon, there will truly be a choice. Of course, that will work both ways.
If you're making a veiled threat at lesbian porn there is going to be fucking hell to pay.
First up, you try to back up a claim by linking to a fluff piece interview with an WNBA basketball star. You then talk a bunch of other shit that is essentially just repeating the same assertion over and over again supported with variations of "becuase I said so." Then, you claim that we should make policy on something because you said so.
Your finaly gem is this bit about closeted self hating gays being a common phenomenon:
Ask yourself a simple question: if homosexuality were not a choice, why are the two most common insults directed at anyone who is against public promotion of homosexuality "well you must be in the closet" and "you must be afraid you'll try it and like it"? The mask slips just a tad too often, showing that the "it's not a choice" propaganda is pure lies.
You're saying that because it is a widely observed phenomenon that some of the most anti-gay people are actually gay themselves (Ted Haggard being one of the more recent and spectacular flameouts), this somehow supports your "being gay is a choice" assertion. Again, because you said so.
Look, I know you're not smart enough to understand whats happening here, so I'll spell it out for you:
When people suggest that homophobes are closeted self-loathing gays, it in no way implies that they think that inward sexual orientation is a choice, it means that they are saying that lots of people are gay but that they lie about it.
You know, lies. You might have heard of them. Hell, you're probably lying to yourself right now. About how much you like cock.
You aren't an atheist, you're afraid of religion. A true atheist wouldn't be afraid of it, they just wouldn't care.
An atheist wouldn't be afraid of God, which is quite a different thing to fear than religion. There are many legitimate reasons to fear religion, not the least of which is the way in which it warps the minds of the young.
Not to mention various religions (even today) give moral cover to rape, torture, and murder. Often it not only gives moral cover to these things, but actively encourages them to be perpetrated against the innocent and weak.
Pretty cool. Someday I'd like to see an entire movie done in machinima that uses different games depending on the scenes. Something with space battles filmed in EVE, ground battles in an RTS, and then some close up action and everything else using an FPS engine (source is pretty good for machinima). Would be neat.
OK, it's not a B-2, but they've got Mig-29s to provide escort, so they're not exactly "paper airplanes" either.
Sorry, with the amount of money that my country spends on defense, I'm sure they have some missiles or something sitting around that can shoot down anything and everything North Korea can put in the air, probably within minutes or even seconds of it being launched if they wanted to.
Not that I think that money is well spent, because I don't see North Korea as wanting to change the status quo any more than my government wants to lose a valuable boogeyman that helps them keep funneling tax money into worthless weapons projects.
Exactly my original point, and I was modded troll too, for whatever reason. I just don't see North Korea as a credible threat that is worth me getting worked up about. I'm more worried about real threats, like wide scale economic disruption caused by a greedy and myopic overclass than someone on the other side of the world. Though I guess we're supposed to ignore credible domestic threats in favor of scary looking people with different skin pigments on the other side of the world, thus the troll mods.
North Korean bombers, or as we call them "paper airplanes with vicious loogies on the tip."
Sorry, I just can't get worked up over this so-called threat. I grew up in the cold war and back then we had the soviets. After that, all this "terrorism" and "rogue state" shit is just yawn.
Wake me up when someone important starts launching real missiles.
Graphics in these games are already getting into the uncanny valley, getting further into it doesn't make for a better game. I'd rather have higher framerates during busy action sequences (like in Left4Dead) than have a slightly more realistic pimple on BJ's nose or whatever. If the gameplay is fun (TF2, Quakewars) the graphics don't have to be super awesome.
Hell, probably one of my favorite mindless action games of all time is Gain Ground for the Sega Genesis, and the graphics on that are... not so good (by today's standards of course). In fact, while looking for that link I found out that you can play this game on Wii's virtual console. Neat.
Interesting. Always nice to have an argument to work with.
I think your definition of religion is more broad than mine is, and that is causing some problems. Based on your last paragraph, your second point seems to indicate that you would group something like the unitarians under the heading "religion." I exclude those, and only include those memetic organisms that are replicating (they spread from host to host through some sort of infection vector), include dogmatic constructs that are based on fiction, and assert (either implicity or explicitly) that those fictions are true.
Without this supernatural aspect, you have something that is less a religion and more of a discussion club. I don't consider the local book of the month club a religion, but they have many of the trappings of one, including scheduled meetings and shared beliefs. If you would include them in your definition of religion, then yes I would concede that "religion" (by your definition) can do some good in the world. From my reading and experience, something like the unitarians is a lot closer to the book club and incredibly far from, say, a catholic mass.
Now, to get back to the definition of religion I'm using, it is my belief that any time you have a replicating memetic organism that is based partially in fiction and asserts that fiction as fact (usually "Truth" with the capital T), misery becomes a naturally emergent property of that system. This is largely due to the cognitive dissonance produced when trying to reconcile obvious lies with the need to pretend and act as if those lies were truth, all the while with the threat of social (and in many cases, physical) backlash for deviation from the fiction.
Of course, humanity has many flaws, religion is only one of them, and it is the work of many lifetimes to address and correct them all. I see the religion issue as something that can be largely mitigated within my lifetime, but to do so is going to take a considerable amount of work. Discussions like this one are a small part of that.
I'm working on building a computer model of religion as a memetic organism, based on ideas pulled from a multitude of fields (though largely centered around the object oriented concepts of computer programming and the systems thinking that is inherently tied to it). I think if I can get the model to show the same emergent behavior as we see from religion in the real world, I might be able to unravel a lot of the smoke and mirrors surrounding fiction worship and maybe get people to look to each other instead of invisible friends for solutions to problems.
No sir, you're the one suggesting a hypothesis ("God did it"), now you need to show how this is testable and suggest some mechanism by which "God did it." Of course, there is no such mechanism and there is nothing testable in your claim, because it is a lie. That you are credulous enough to believe such an obvious lie says a lot about you and nothing about science.
It's a bad thing when religion puts people in a position to be manipulated by others, sure, and that happens all too often. However, this isn't a problem restricted to religion; few of the problems people cite with reference to religion are limited to it, or even present in healthy examples of religious expression.
While the problem isn't restricted only to religion, religion is the purest expression of the problem. Religious claims, examined objectively, are all based on supernaturalism. While the practical mechanical aspects of some religious beliefs (not eating shellfish for example) have obvious historical roots, the problem is that taking these actions for religious reasons takes the adaptability out of the system. By making the argument based on "Do this or God will fuck your shit up," religon creates memetic structures that end up doing a lot of harm in the long term.
There is no truly healthy religion, because the entire idea behind it is to give up trying to figure things out and just do what you're told, persuaded not by any kind of logic, but by a supernatural explanation. This gives all the power to people who are simply making shit up as they go along, and who get it wrong more often than they get it right.
When I say that I have with your attitude, I mean this: your disdain doesn't promote critical thinking, it discourages it. That you're discouraging an idea that you disagree with at the same time is mostly irrelevant.
Maybe you're right, but there is only so much patience in the world. Watching people tell the same lies over and over again despite those lies having been debunked is incredibly tiresome. That people have set up this reinforcing feedback loop in order to perpetuate a bunch of bullshit myths, for no good reason other than to perpetuate a bunch of bullshit myths, is a tragedy. Especially when you start to understand that the people spreading the bullshit know they are liars, but can't face up to it and stop lying because everyone around them is also invested in the same set of lies.
It is a longstanding tradition for "don't rock the boat" types to criticize radical reformers and tell them, "Your message is too radical, it is driving people away from what you want them to do." This is, of course, an autoimmune reaction of the existing memetic structure and a pretty transparent one at that. How many reformers in history can you cite who found success by quietly writing their wishes into a journal? How many people made a postive change in the world by sitting in a dark room talking to their invisible friends?
No, you can attack me all you want. Call me arrogant, call me smug, whatever. The fact that you have to do that instead of responding to my arguments simply shows that when it comes down to it, the house of lies that you're defending rests on a foundation made of fairy tales and hot air.
The best you can do is ad hominem? You're either a religionist or one of the people who likes to lay down covering fire for religionists in order to enhance your herd position with people who you consider to be powerful.
Still, I'll take a swing at what little you'e given me to work with.
The difference between a smug athiest and a smug thiest is that the smug athiest is actually right. As far as athiests being more "in your face," you are either a liar or ignorant. Spend a few years living in Texas and talk to me about how "in your face" religion is as opposed to athiest. It is laughable that a memetic structure that sends people knocking door to door gets all in a crying fit when those who have some measure of immunity actually have the temerity to do something other than shut up and take it.
I think we both know this, but lets get it out in the open. People like the one you replied to perfectly understand that the arguments they are making are bullshit. They are aware of this. Now, their conscious mind might inhibit thinking about this as much as possible, but their overall consensus mind knows the truth.
In order to defy this voice in their head that is whispering, "This is a bunch of horse shit," these people feel compelled to perform acts demonstrating their faith. This helps bolster their internal argument, and also helps with their herd status. This is common behavior in any herd and most of us do something similar, though in the case of religious beliefs it often leads people to do irrational things like give money to child molesters or have unprotected sex.
Yes, it is idiotic. Yes, they know better, but part of the problem is that they think that they're defective. They think they're different, that everyone else beleives truly and deeply (after all, you can tell everyone else believes because look at how virtuous they are) and they think that their lack of belief, their doubting voice, is an abberation. Of course, they often also know that this is not true, but there is never a way to prove it, and they fear the backlash of the tribe.
So what do you do if you're a cloest athiest, suspect everyone else is a cloest athiest, but everyone you know is really good at pretending and part of you is convinced that they all believe and that you're defective, and all of you is worried that if you come out and say, "You know, this is bullshit," that all your friends and family will shun you? You perform public acts of faith. The more shakey your belief system and the more insecure you are, the more radical your actions will be. This is why you see the people like all those Republican Senators who talk about family values and then cheat on their wives (sometimes doing so in extreme circumstances, like having homosexual trysts in airport bathrooms). This is also why you see votes like this. It is all a big smoke and mirrors act to desperately try and convince everyone (including the possibly watching and angry superbeing in the sky) that hey, they really are faithful!
As for the people who are harmed by this demonstration of faith... well, fuck those guys. Relieving the stress of fear is more important.
Some people relieve that stress in less showy ways, by doing things like coming to slashdot and copypasting tired discredited arguments from places like the discovery institute.
I guess the really sad part is, for a lot of these people their fears are justified. If they came out as athiests or even talked about their doubts, they would be socially shunned and attacked by those they care the most about, all because for their friends and family maintaining the illusion of faith and going through the motions of being a faithful person is more important than the happiness of the people they claim to love.
As a funny side note, all of this happens because the human brain was never designed to try and do the things we ask of it. It wasn't "designed" at all. It does perform many functions that serve the purpose of helping create conditions where sperms and eggs can meet and then the resulting life form can survive to breeding age though. Social things. Like going to church.
Thats right kids. God exists so that people will fuck.
Are you being intentionally dense or do you really not understand what you're talking about? Do you really think elementary school students, in general, have the mental deveolopment and intellectual context to perform a rigorous scientific debate? Yes, kids are more clever than many people give them credit for but no, this does not mean that we can turn the Tevatron over to a bunch of 3rd graders.
Explaining the scientific method to these kids is the right thing to do. Letting their teachers stand at the front of the room and use rhetorical tricks honed over years by propagandists to brainwash those children is morally repugnant and puts the lie to everything these relgious people claim to believe in.
If you have to lie and decieve to spread the "gospel" of your religion, then it ISN'T THE RIGHT RELIGION. No omnipotent, omniescient being needs a bunch of sychophantic simpering weasels to slip pamphlets about its awesomeness into the lunch boxes of little kids. If it does, then it doesn't deserve to be worshipped.
I agree but having a litmus test to see who is qualified to talk about what subject isn't a good idea. While I think the evangelical movement is disturbing I don't think their views should be silenced. It is by argumentation and refutation that the public's understanding of scientific and philosophical matters is expanded.
This isn't about discussion between rational adults. This is about what we teach children. Children will believe something if the teacher says it, to the point where if one of the other students attempts to correct the teacher when they are wrong, the other children will shout that person down. I'm sure many of you have seen or experienced this directly.
This is a primary vector that allows mythology memes like Christianity to survive: indoctrinating children.
The religious memes wish to use the school vectors that they see having such massive effectiveness to spread themselves. Of course, I'm anthromorphizing a bit, but please allow me some poetic license, the metaphor holds.
These conflicts are entirely about preventing the government from indoctrinating children with false beliefs while at the same time creating mental structures that make them resistant to being educated with actual facts and reality based thought constructs.
The fact that people feel the need to lie, repeatedly and often, shows that they know, deep down, that their mythology is not true. If they truly believed their supernatural being of choice was omnipotent and all knowing, they would not feel the need to lie to further the belief and worship of it.
But of course, the whole point of evangelism for most (if not all) of these people, and the whole point of public proclamations of faith, is to desperately prove to one self that one really, truly believes.
Of course, the sad part is that the only ones who really, truly believe are the mentally damaged and insane. The rest of them are all faking it, because they know that if they stop the people who are still faking it will shun them from the herd. The cycle continues until enough people loudly proclaim their disbelief. This is why athiests are considered enemy number one to all religions.
Maybe we'll get lucky. Maybe athiests will finally reach critical mass and blow this mind cancer/meme virus out of the minds of humanity once and for all.
Looking at the sheer number of infected, though, I often doubt it.
Its sad. Humans could be something really special.
Re:Islamic groups are pushing censorship worldwide
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The problem is that a 9 year old, as opposed even to a 15 year old, simply does not have enough life experience and context to give consent. I think some 15 year olds can give consent, and this should be a bit more of a case by case basis, but I'm totally comfortable setting the line at 9, and I'd comfortably bump it up to 13 before you'd have some discretion on determining consent. Someone who hasn't even gone through puberty lacks even the basic biological structures to give them any context at all from which to make their choices.
Of course, I don't really think the death penalty is moral, because there simply can not be 100% proof of anything, and its better to spend a little extra keeping the guilty alive so that we don't murder an innocent person. Life in prison with no parole is totally acceptable, and morally I think if there were some way to have 100% proof of something it would be totally acceptable to just put a bullet in the head of a person who is, to bring it back to the topic at hand, raping 9 year old children.
Re:Islamic groups are pushing censorship worldwide
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UN Attacks Free Speech
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As a side note to my above comment, cultural relativism actually ISN'T all well and good.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you hate Mormons so much?
Eventually, technology is going to make our very genes a matter of personal preference. It will be interesting to see which side the gay community comes down on then, since even if homosexuality really is a strictly hereditary phenomenon, there will truly be a choice. Of course, that will work both ways.
If you're making a veiled threat at lesbian porn there is going to be fucking hell to pay.
Lets just take it from the top.
First up, you try to back up a claim by linking to a fluff piece interview with an WNBA basketball star. You then talk a bunch of other shit that is essentially just repeating the same assertion over and over again supported with variations of "becuase I said so." Then, you claim that we should make policy on something because you said so.
Your finaly gem is this bit about closeted self hating gays being a common phenomenon:
Ask yourself a simple question: if homosexuality were not a choice, why are the two most common insults directed at anyone who is against public promotion of homosexuality "well you must be in the closet" and "you must be afraid you'll try it and like it"? The mask slips just a tad too often, showing that the "it's not a choice" propaganda is pure lies.
You're saying that because it is a widely observed phenomenon that some of the most anti-gay people are actually gay themselves (Ted Haggard being one of the more recent and spectacular flameouts), this somehow supports your "being gay is a choice" assertion. Again, because you said so.
Look, I know you're not smart enough to understand whats happening here, so I'll spell it out for you:
When people suggest that homophobes are closeted self-loathing gays, it in no way implies that they think that inward sexual orientation is a choice, it means that they are saying that lots of people are gay but that they lie about it.
You know, lies. You might have heard of them. Hell, you're probably lying to yourself right now. About how much you like cock.
Does your public library have a prominent gay porn section? Mine doesn't seem to, but maybe things are different where you are.
No, but my private library...
Fool! Don't you know that if you don't know how to cook and someone bakes you a shit pie you HAVE TO EAT IT!
An atheist wouldn't be afraid of God, which is quite a different thing to fear than religion. There are many legitimate reasons to fear religion, not the least of which is the way in which it warps the minds of the young.
Not to mention various religions (even today) give moral cover to rape, torture, and murder. Often it not only gives moral cover to these things, but actively encourages them to be perpetrated against the innocent and weak.
Religion is a lie.
I don't know, the only reason I don't play EVE is the tedious boredom of traveling.
Imagine living in L.A. or San Francisco with no electricity for a week.
I think if you really want to motivate the people with enough power to matter, you have to put it in personal terms that they can understand:
Imagine living in L.A. or San Fransisco with no Blackberry for a week.
There, that should get things fixed in short order.
Brilliant, thanks.
Pretty cool. Someday I'd like to see an entire movie done in machinima that uses different games depending on the scenes. Something with space battles filmed in EVE, ground battles in an RTS, and then some close up action and everything else using an FPS engine (source is pretty good for machinima). Would be neat.
OK, it's not a B-2, but they've got Mig-29s to provide escort, so they're not exactly "paper airplanes" either.
Sorry, with the amount of money that my country spends on defense, I'm sure they have some missiles or something sitting around that can shoot down anything and everything North Korea can put in the air, probably within minutes or even seconds of it being launched if they wanted to.
Not that I think that money is well spent, because I don't see North Korea as wanting to change the status quo any more than my government wants to lose a valuable boogeyman that helps them keep funneling tax money into worthless weapons projects.
Exactly my original point, and I was modded troll too, for whatever reason. I just don't see North Korea as a credible threat that is worth me getting worked up about. I'm more worried about real threats, like wide scale economic disruption caused by a greedy and myopic overclass than someone on the other side of the world. Though I guess we're supposed to ignore credible domestic threats in favor of scary looking people with different skin pigments on the other side of the world, thus the troll mods.
Oh, he's alive alright. They just haven't finished perfecting the giant transforming robotic suit that he had them implant his brain into yet.
North Korean bombers, or as we call them "paper airplanes with vicious loogies on the tip."
Sorry, I just can't get worked up over this so-called threat. I grew up in the cold war and back then we had the soviets. After that, all this "terrorism" and "rogue state" shit is just yawn.
Wake me up when someone important starts launching real missiles.
Graphics in these games are already getting into the uncanny valley, getting further into it doesn't make for a better game. I'd rather have higher framerates during busy action sequences (like in Left4Dead) than have a slightly more realistic pimple on BJ's nose or whatever. If the gameplay is fun (TF2, Quakewars) the graphics don't have to be super awesome.
Hell, probably one of my favorite mindless action games of all time is Gain Ground for the Sega Genesis, and the graphics on that are... not so good (by today's standards of course). In fact, while looking for that link I found out that you can play this game on Wii's virtual console. Neat.
140 Characters? You can copyright 140 characters? Maybe. Can you copy this post?
Go on, sue me!
Interesting. Always nice to have an argument to work with.
I think your definition of religion is more broad than mine is, and that is causing some problems. Based on your last paragraph, your second point seems to indicate that you would group something like the unitarians under the heading "religion." I exclude those, and only include those memetic organisms that are replicating (they spread from host to host through some sort of infection vector), include dogmatic constructs that are based on fiction, and assert (either implicity or explicitly) that those fictions are true.
Without this supernatural aspect, you have something that is less a religion and more of a discussion club. I don't consider the local book of the month club a religion, but they have many of the trappings of one, including scheduled meetings and shared beliefs. If you would include them in your definition of religion, then yes I would concede that "religion" (by your definition) can do some good in the world. From my reading and experience, something like the unitarians is a lot closer to the book club and incredibly far from, say, a catholic mass.
Now, to get back to the definition of religion I'm using, it is my belief that any time you have a replicating memetic organism that is based partially in fiction and asserts that fiction as fact (usually "Truth" with the capital T), misery becomes a naturally emergent property of that system. This is largely due to the cognitive dissonance produced when trying to reconcile obvious lies with the need to pretend and act as if those lies were truth, all the while with the threat of social (and in many cases, physical) backlash for deviation from the fiction.
Of course, humanity has many flaws, religion is only one of them, and it is the work of many lifetimes to address and correct them all. I see the religion issue as something that can be largely mitigated within my lifetime, but to do so is going to take a considerable amount of work. Discussions like this one are a small part of that.
I'm working on building a computer model of religion as a memetic organism, based on ideas pulled from a multitude of fields (though largely centered around the object oriented concepts of computer programming and the systems thinking that is inherently tied to it). I think if I can get the model to show the same emergent behavior as we see from religion in the real world, I might be able to unravel a lot of the smoke and mirrors surrounding fiction worship and maybe get people to look to each other instead of invisible friends for solutions to problems.
No sir, you're the one suggesting a hypothesis ("God did it"), now you need to show how this is testable and suggest some mechanism by which "God did it." Of course, there is no such mechanism and there is nothing testable in your claim, because it is a lie. That you are credulous enough to believe such an obvious lie says a lot about you and nothing about science.
It's a bad thing when religion puts people in a position to be manipulated by others, sure, and that happens all too often. However, this isn't a problem restricted to religion; few of the problems people cite with reference to religion are limited to it, or even present in healthy examples of religious expression.
While the problem isn't restricted only to religion, religion is the purest expression of the problem. Religious claims, examined objectively, are all based on supernaturalism. While the practical mechanical aspects of some religious beliefs (not eating shellfish for example) have obvious historical roots, the problem is that taking these actions for religious reasons takes the adaptability out of the system. By making the argument based on "Do this or God will fuck your shit up," religon creates memetic structures that end up doing a lot of harm in the long term.
There is no truly healthy religion, because the entire idea behind it is to give up trying to figure things out and just do what you're told, persuaded not by any kind of logic, but by a supernatural explanation. This gives all the power to people who are simply making shit up as they go along, and who get it wrong more often than they get it right.
When I say that I have with your attitude, I mean this: your disdain doesn't promote critical thinking, it discourages it. That you're discouraging an idea that you disagree with at the same time is mostly irrelevant.
Maybe you're right, but there is only so much patience in the world. Watching people tell the same lies over and over again despite those lies having been debunked is incredibly tiresome. That people have set up this reinforcing feedback loop in order to perpetuate a bunch of bullshit myths, for no good reason other than to perpetuate a bunch of bullshit myths, is a tragedy. Especially when you start to understand that the people spreading the bullshit know they are liars, but can't face up to it and stop lying because everyone around them is also invested in the same set of lies.
It is a longstanding tradition for "don't rock the boat" types to criticize radical reformers and tell them, "Your message is too radical, it is driving people away from what you want them to do." This is, of course, an autoimmune reaction of the existing memetic structure and a pretty transparent one at that. How many reformers in history can you cite who found success by quietly writing their wishes into a journal? How many people made a postive change in the world by sitting in a dark room talking to their invisible friends?
No, you can attack me all you want. Call me arrogant, call me smug, whatever. The fact that you have to do that instead of responding to my arguments simply shows that when it comes down to it, the house of lies that you're defending rests on a foundation made of fairy tales and hot air.
The best you can do is ad hominem? You're either a religionist or one of the people who likes to lay down covering fire for religionists in order to enhance your herd position with people who you consider to be powerful.
Still, I'll take a swing at what little you'e given me to work with.
The difference between a smug athiest and a smug thiest is that the smug athiest is actually right. As far as athiests being more "in your face," you are either a liar or ignorant. Spend a few years living in Texas and talk to me about how "in your face" religion is as opposed to athiest. It is laughable that a memetic structure that sends people knocking door to door gets all in a crying fit when those who have some measure of immunity actually have the temerity to do something other than shut up and take it.
I think we both know this, but lets get it out in the open. People like the one you replied to perfectly understand that the arguments they are making are bullshit. They are aware of this. Now, their conscious mind might inhibit thinking about this as much as possible, but their overall consensus mind knows the truth.
In order to defy this voice in their head that is whispering, "This is a bunch of horse shit," these people feel compelled to perform acts demonstrating their faith. This helps bolster their internal argument, and also helps with their herd status. This is common behavior in any herd and most of us do something similar, though in the case of religious beliefs it often leads people to do irrational things like give money to child molesters or have unprotected sex.
Yes, it is idiotic. Yes, they know better, but part of the problem is that they think that they're defective. They think they're different, that everyone else beleives truly and deeply (after all, you can tell everyone else believes because look at how virtuous they are) and they think that their lack of belief, their doubting voice, is an abberation. Of course, they often also know that this is not true, but there is never a way to prove it, and they fear the backlash of the tribe.
So what do you do if you're a cloest athiest, suspect everyone else is a cloest athiest, but everyone you know is really good at pretending and part of you is convinced that they all believe and that you're defective, and all of you is worried that if you come out and say, "You know, this is bullshit," that all your friends and family will shun you? You perform public acts of faith. The more shakey your belief system and the more insecure you are, the more radical your actions will be. This is why you see the people like all those Republican Senators who talk about family values and then cheat on their wives (sometimes doing so in extreme circumstances, like having homosexual trysts in airport bathrooms). This is also why you see votes like this. It is all a big smoke and mirrors act to desperately try and convince everyone (including the possibly watching and angry superbeing in the sky) that hey, they really are faithful!
As for the people who are harmed by this demonstration of faith... well, fuck those guys. Relieving the stress of fear is more important.
Some people relieve that stress in less showy ways, by doing things like coming to slashdot and copypasting tired discredited arguments from places like the discovery institute.
I guess the really sad part is, for a lot of these people their fears are justified. If they came out as athiests or even talked about their doubts, they would be socially shunned and attacked by those they care the most about, all because for their friends and family maintaining the illusion of faith and going through the motions of being a faithful person is more important than the happiness of the people they claim to love.
As a funny side note, all of this happens because the human brain was never designed to try and do the things we ask of it. It wasn't "designed" at all. It does perform many functions that serve the purpose of helping create conditions where sperms and eggs can meet and then the resulting life form can survive to breeding age though. Social things. Like going to church.
Thats right kids. God exists so that people will fuck.
Are you being intentionally dense or do you really not understand what you're talking about? Do you really think elementary school students, in general, have the mental deveolopment and intellectual context to perform a rigorous scientific debate? Yes, kids are more clever than many people give them credit for but no, this does not mean that we can turn the Tevatron over to a bunch of 3rd graders.
Explaining the scientific method to these kids is the right thing to do. Letting their teachers stand at the front of the room and use rhetorical tricks honed over years by propagandists to brainwash those children is morally repugnant and puts the lie to everything these relgious people claim to believe in.
If you have to lie and decieve to spread the "gospel" of your religion, then it ISN'T THE RIGHT RELIGION. No omnipotent, omniescient being needs a bunch of sychophantic simpering weasels to slip pamphlets about its awesomeness into the lunch boxes of little kids. If it does, then it doesn't deserve to be worshipped.
I agree but having a litmus test to see who is qualified to talk about what subject isn't a good idea. While I think the evangelical movement is disturbing I don't think their views should be silenced. It is by argumentation and refutation that the public's understanding of scientific and philosophical matters is expanded.
This isn't about discussion between rational adults. This is about what we teach children. Children will believe something if the teacher says it, to the point where if one of the other students attempts to correct the teacher when they are wrong, the other children will shout that person down. I'm sure many of you have seen or experienced this directly.
This is a primary vector that allows mythology memes like Christianity to survive: indoctrinating children.
The religious memes wish to use the school vectors that they see having such massive effectiveness to spread themselves. Of course, I'm anthromorphizing a bit, but please allow me some poetic license, the metaphor holds.
These conflicts are entirely about preventing the government from indoctrinating children with false beliefs while at the same time creating mental structures that make them resistant to being educated with actual facts and reality based thought constructs.
The fact that people feel the need to lie, repeatedly and often, shows that they know, deep down, that their mythology is not true. If they truly believed their supernatural being of choice was omnipotent and all knowing, they would not feel the need to lie to further the belief and worship of it.
But of course, the whole point of evangelism for most (if not all) of these people, and the whole point of public proclamations of faith, is to desperately prove to one self that one really, truly believes.
Of course, the sad part is that the only ones who really, truly believe are the mentally damaged and insane. The rest of them are all faking it, because they know that if they stop the people who are still faking it will shun them from the herd. The cycle continues until enough people loudly proclaim their disbelief. This is why athiests are considered enemy number one to all religions.
Maybe we'll get lucky. Maybe athiests will finally reach critical mass and blow this mind cancer/meme virus out of the minds of humanity once and for all.
Looking at the sheer number of infected, though, I often doubt it.
Its sad. Humans could be something really special.
The problem is that a 9 year old, as opposed even to a 15 year old, simply does not have enough life experience and context to give consent. I think some 15 year olds can give consent, and this should be a bit more of a case by case basis, but I'm totally comfortable setting the line at 9, and I'd comfortably bump it up to 13 before you'd have some discretion on determining consent. Someone who hasn't even gone through puberty lacks even the basic biological structures to give them any context at all from which to make their choices.
Of course, I don't really think the death penalty is moral, because there simply can not be 100% proof of anything, and its better to spend a little extra keeping the guilty alive so that we don't murder an innocent person. Life in prison with no parole is totally acceptable, and morally I think if there were some way to have 100% proof of something it would be totally acceptable to just put a bullet in the head of a person who is, to bring it back to the topic at hand, raping 9 year old children.
As a side note to my above comment, cultural relativism actually ISN'T all well and good.