Atheism and religion are flip sides of the same coin.
No, they are not. They are exact opposites. Atheism is not a religion, and never will be. The argument that it is was created by religious people who literally cannot imagine how someone can exist without belief.
Essentially this argument is a form of projection, where a religious individual views an atheism as a "religion", and then proceeds to impart many negative aspects of religion, which they will not consciously admit to themselves, onto atheism.
Religions are altogether invalid as logical arguments. Even in their best case scenario, with n distict religions in the world, at least n-1 of them have been completely fabricated out of nothing. They contain no divine revelations or truths. Any honest individual, when confronted with the argument, must admit that all religions are essentially baseless within their own framework. They call upon divine entities, but these entities are simply fabrications of human thought.
Atheists are simply stating the truth. Gods and godesses are fabrications of the human mind. They exist only as considerations in the minds of those considering them. That is the truth, but it is one which most people will never admit to themselves, and will bitterly reject in any way possible those who try to convince them of it.
Um, no not really. See, one thing that Evolution teaches is that men are just evolved creatures with no purpose. There is no higher morality.
Actually evolution does predict morality emerging as a consequenced of an iterated "prisoner's dilemma" type situation. Our morality is a much a product of evolution as is our speech or ability of abstraction.
Atheism is a religion and it has its own dogma, you know.
Yes, just as miserliness is charity, abstention is addiction, and pacifism is aggression. In other words, only in the minds of the mentally unsound.
Science can answer the "How?" questions but not the "Why?" questions. Why are we here? Big bang, evolution, yada yada yada. That tells us how, but not why.
So we have to make shit up instead? Then build on that shit, with more shit that has nothing to with the original shit we made up. Then modify and ammend that shit to make people believe in that shit to the extent that they live in terror of demons and hack off parts their childrens genitals?
Eventually what we get is a pile of shit so collossal that people begin to build bigger peaks on top of it then fight each other over the height of peaks and the consistency of the shit that makes them up. Some people will try to change the shit or move it about, or add more shit. Then others begin to fling the shit around at one another and anyone who happens by. Still more try to pull or shove innocent people into the shit. Children are saturated with the stink from birth so when people tell them in later life, "You shouldn't put up with all this shit.", they won't understand in the slightest what is being said to them.
I say no. I say the rest of us shouln't have to put up with all this shit. How about we make all these nutjob activities illegal? Frankly I don't see why the rest of us should have to suffer the effects of religion when we don't tolerate the effects of illegal substances? Freedom of religion. Where our freedom from religion?
And yet, they routinely got more qualified instructors -- people who were actual experts in their fields -- and graduated students who went on to be more successful. Why is this?
Because private schools can expel disruptive students.
Just never patronise an establishment that even requires you present ID in the first place. Stop buying controlled substances if you feel they aren't worth the cost to your dignity every time someone asks; "Your papers please". Stop subjecting yourself to searches and inspections by private security forces if you feel it isn't worth being treated like a criminal just to get into that place. Stop patronising places that ask for everything including your mother's second name for every petty transaction.
I know, it's a little bit "out there," but I really think this strategy could work.
Never! You can't reason with student protestors! All they want is a "fairer", "cleaner", "more just" society, and they'll stop at nothing to get there. Protests, leaflets, voting Democrat. Some of them don't even support the W.O.T.!! You can't save them! Best to bring out the tazers and zap 'em till they start smokin'.
But it requires a lot of confidence to march in and take control.
...Away from the officer, in the middle of a potentially hostile crowd. What do you think the average cop is going to do if he sees some college student trying to oust the good fear thing he's got going. Or worse, coming off as the voice of civility and reason while he's doing it.
My money's on the cop freaking and blowing off the heads of the intervener and anyone else who's not giving off a strong sheeplike scent.
Myself, I find it rather disturbing that three police officers were able to continue brutalising this chap for a full 6 minutes with dozens of people looking on, and the most that happened was someone piped up "Can I have your badge number?"
Whatever.
Most people are trained from birth to kow-tow to the orders of men in police uniforms. Most people are also pretty racist. Most people also know fuck all about the effects of tasers. So if you were in the crowd, you'd probably just have stuck around and watched the show. Tabatabainejad was more likely to have recieved intervention from the campus pidgeon community than he was from his fellow students.
They're just a police force who's cars say "UCI Police" or "UCLA Police" (Instead of "Irvine Police", "LAPD", or "CHP"), and their area of operation is limited to the UC campuses.
What you're decribing here sounds a lot like just regular plain old campus security. We could all do with some clarification here.
Are these guys just plain old campus security, masquerading as cops with a "Campus Police(TM)" logo? Or do they in fact have powers of detention, arrest, jurisdiction etc, etc on the campus itself. Most importantly, are they a branch of the state police force, or are they some kind of corporate private security force, albiet with undue poers over the citizenry?
Has anyone else noticed that at every turn corporations again and again attempt to subvert the powers of the state and twist both public opinion and the law to their own benefit. In many cases, large corporations behave like small, independant countries or baronies, accountable to no one but themselves and largely immune from reprecussion. Only the state can realistically challenge their authority, and even then only with considerable effort and expense.
The situation in many ways resembles the old medieval baronies, who quarralled and feuded amoung themselves, and methaphoricall and literally stamped on the faces of the general population. The state/king had only limited ability to exercise control and essentially each barony was a virtual state within a state. In many cases, different parts of a country could be at war with one another, or with the monarchy.
In case anyone thinks this is a bit far fetched, consider this. What if MegaCorp(TM), drove up to your house one day and towed away your car on some flimsy legal pretense? Barons and Lords did this kind of thing all the time. What can you do? It's getting to the point that the police will not even dare to investigate large corporations with their armies of lawyers. Your ability to conclude a successful suit before you grow old and die is also ever decreasing.
You get a lot of SciFi where in the furture, corporations rule everything. Is this really so far fetched? If they have more de facto power and influence than the nation states in which they reside, then what is to stop them, like the old barons before them, from simply all but forming states of their own? Maybe Richelieu's reforms will be rolled back, just in a different form.
For instance, if I published a full-page ad in your local paper calling you a pedophile, I would have the full legal right to do so. If you could demonstrate that I caused you financial losses from such a thing, and damages, then I could be sued for libel.
And how's he supposed to do that after the local lynch mob tears him apart?
Any good monopolist knows that when the competition begins to usurp your position, you can't beat a nice fat lobbying campaign. Craigslist undercutting your newspaper ads. Make it illegal. Online distributors selling songs "for a song". Make it illegal. VOIP undercutting your long distance cash cow. Make it illegal.
Never forget the Golden Rule. He who has the gold, makes the rules.
Heavy user moderation - seems to work overall, look at/.
It never ceases to amaze me how in over 4 years of reading Slashdot, I've never seen a spam message. Well, excluding Slashvertisements and Beatles-Beatles type stuff. This is one of the tops sites on the internet, with full anonymous posting supported. By all rights, this site should be inundated with all kinds of spambot messages.
Perhaps the spammers fear the retaliation of the collective Slashmind?
Slashdot Mirror
Essentially this argument is a form of projection, where a religious individual views an atheism as a "religion", and then proceeds to impart many negative aspects of religion, which they will not consciously admit to themselves, onto atheism.
Religions are altogether invalid as logical arguments. Even in their best case scenario, with n distict religions in the world, at least n-1 of them have been completely fabricated out of nothing. They contain no divine revelations or truths. Any honest individual, when confronted with the argument, must admit that all religions are essentially baseless within their own framework. They call upon divine entities, but these entities are simply fabrications of human thought.
Atheists are simply stating the truth. Gods and godesses are fabrications of the human mind. They exist only as considerations in the minds of those considering them. That is the truth, but it is one which most people will never admit to themselves, and will bitterly reject in any way possible those who try to convince them of it.
So we have to make shit up instead? Then build on that shit, with more shit that has nothing to with the original shit we made up. Then modify and ammend that shit to make people believe in that shit to the extent that they live in terror of demons and hack off parts their childrens genitals?
Eventually what we get is a pile of shit so collossal that people begin to build bigger peaks on top of it then fight each other over the height of peaks and the consistency of the shit that makes them up. Some people will try to change the shit or move it about, or add more shit. Then others begin to fling the shit around at one another and anyone who happens by. Still more try to pull or shove innocent people into the shit. Children are saturated with the stink from birth so when people tell them in later life, "You shouldn't put up with all this shit.", they won't understand in the slightest what is being said to them.
I say no. I say the rest of us shouln't have to put up with all this shit. How about we make all these nutjob activities illegal? Frankly I don't see why the rest of us should have to suffer the effects of religion when we don't tolerate the effects of illegal substances? Freedom of religion. Where our freedom from religion?
Just never patronise an establishment that even requires you present ID in the first place. Stop buying controlled substances if you feel they aren't worth the cost to your dignity every time someone asks; "Your papers please". Stop subjecting yourself to searches and inspections by private security forces if you feel it isn't worth being treated like a criminal just to get into that place. Stop patronising places that ask for everything including your mother's second name for every petty transaction.
And yet, we all use the same mathematics. Digits, structure and symbols.
My money's on the cop freaking and blowing off the heads of the intervener and anyone else who's not giving off a strong sheeplike scent.
Most people are trained from birth to kow-tow to the orders of men in police uniforms. Most people are also pretty racist. Most people also know fuck all about the effects of tasers. So if you were in the crowd, you'd probably just have stuck around and watched the show. Tabatabainejad was more likely to have recieved intervention from the campus pidgeon community than he was from his fellow students.
Moral of the story is: don't go to the US.
Are these guys just plain old campus security, masquerading as cops with a "Campus Police(TM)" logo? Or do they in fact have powers of detention, arrest, jurisdiction etc, etc on the campus itself. Most importantly, are they a branch of the state police force, or are they some kind of corporate private security force, albiet with undue poers over the citizenry?
Has anyone else noticed that at every turn corporations again and again attempt to subvert the powers of the state and twist both public opinion and the law to their own benefit. In many cases, large corporations behave like small, independant countries or baronies, accountable to no one but themselves and largely immune from reprecussion. Only the state can realistically challenge their authority, and even then only with considerable effort and expense.
The situation in many ways resembles the old medieval baronies, who quarralled and feuded amoung themselves, and methaphoricall and literally stamped on the faces of the general population. The state/king had only limited ability to exercise control and essentially each barony was a virtual state within a state. In many cases, different parts of a country could be at war with one another, or with the monarchy.
In case anyone thinks this is a bit far fetched, consider this. What if MegaCorp(TM), drove up to your house one day and towed away your car on some flimsy legal pretense? Barons and Lords did this kind of thing all the time. What can you do? It's getting to the point that the police will not even dare to investigate large corporations with their armies of lawyers. Your ability to conclude a successful suit before you grow old and die is also ever decreasing.
You get a lot of SciFi where in the furture, corporations rule everything. Is this really so far fetched? If they have more de facto power and influence than the nation states in which they reside, then what is to stop them, like the old barons before them, from simply all but forming states of their own? Maybe Richelieu's reforms will be rolled back, just in a different form.
Except for mathematical logic. Those guys leave all semblance of logic at the door.
Alas for Slashdot.
AJAX in Flash, with a Web 2.0 hype engine. May god have mercy on us all.
Any good monopolist knows that when the competition begins to usurp your position, you can't beat a nice fat lobbying campaign. Craigslist undercutting your newspaper ads. Make it illegal. Online distributors selling songs "for a song". Make it illegal. VOIP undercutting your long distance cash cow. Make it illegal.
Never forget the Golden Rule. He who has the gold, makes the rules.
Perhaps the spammers fear the retaliation of the collective Slashmind?