BS. Just like most idealogical movements, the way to judge it is by the way its members currently conduct themselves, not the core principles its founders started with.
Have you ever been to a TEA Party event? The people I have seen there have been nothing but nice, even to those that were there counter protest. The only people who were treated poorly were the ones who had signs that were in poor taste. I'm not sure if they were "astroturphers" (liberal plants there to make the TEA Partiers look bad) or just people who were bought into the Democrat talking points repeated as fact by the media. Either way, they were not welcome.
It's just like Christianity. If you listen to Jesus, he'd have you believe it's all about tolerance ("let he who has no sin throw the first stone"), love, and other hippy values. But modern-day Christianity isn't about that stuff at all, it's about bashing homosexuals, killing non-Christians, invading other countries to establish imperialism, etc.
Again, when was the last time you've been to church? Nearly all of the churches I've attended have been welcoming to all types, including gays. My church had protestors once. They were invited in to cool off when it got to hot, provided they didn't disrupt the service of course, and brought cold beverages if they decided to stay outside. Sure, there are those few churches that are a bit more intolerant, Reverend Wright's Church that was attended by Obama for 20 years and and Westboro Baptist in Kansas, but those are certainly not the norm. Claiming that they are the norm would be like claiming that Cindy Shehan is representative of the Democrat Party.
In other words, I'm calling BS to your BS. You have no idea what you are talking about.
I am glad to see someone else help pick up the long-term research slack.
NASA is on the top targets of the tea party mood under the misconception that is accounts for a large percentage of federal budget. Plus one president terminating the shuttle and the next president terminating its replacement.
Can you show me where TEA Party members are calling for NASA to be cut or are you just making shit up because the truth won't justify your hatred of the TEA Party?
Actually, about 30 seconds of research has revealed that you are lying your ass off:
The Save NASA, Stop Obama group was lead mainly by people who consider themselves Tea Party activists, even though many are well known as Republicans. Organizer Ken Clark, a county commissioner, said the effort was mostly grassroots from the Tea Party members in the area.
Wait a minute, how can DARPA get money to *invest*. Remember the reason Umurikans voted for Tea Party folks is to *cut cut cut* government spending. Shouldn't this really be carried out by a private business -- particularly those private businesses that don't worry just about quarterly profits and share prices--- now don't everybody rush for the opportunity --- line forms to the left for all those interested businesses ---.
The TEA Party supports cutting government funds that go to programs not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution. DARPA falls under the defense budget, which is Constitutional.
Maybe you should look up the term, "justice" and see what it's all about.
I will give you a hint, this is not about sending seals to kill a guy in the middle of the night. Justice implies presumption of innocence, trial and conviction, even for the Big Bad Guy.
OK. Let's presume Bin Laden had the presumption of innocence. Then we saw him on video admitting to giving the order to do the attacks on 9/11. Let's call that a confession, which would negate the need for a trial and conviction. The only thing missing is a judge giving out the sentence. Personally, I don't want to take the chance that some panty-waist judge would give a lighter sentence than a bullet to the head, so I'm OK with the outcome.
You neglect the most obvious question, if we knew how to get to Osama Bin Laden, why hadn't we done it already?
All we had was the name of the messenger boy who stayed close to Bin Laden. The break came not to long ago when this courier made a phone call to another known Al Qaueda member's phone line that we had tapped. Once we knew where the courier was, it was only a matter of time before we found where he was staying.
All the name did for us was let us know who to look for. It's not like he was listed in the phone book.
You really think I want to pay $4.00+ a gallon for gas? Sorry, but that is the wet dream of left wing wackos like yourself.
Thank you for proving that you are nothing more than an untalented troll, probably a third or fourth account. That makes me feel much better about myself.
So if I'm a troll for calling you a left wing wacko, wouldn't that make you troll for calling GGP a "right wing nutjob? We knew you can dish it out. I wasn't aware that you couldn't take it. Does being a hypocrite make you feel much better about yourself?
for information purposes. what is actually on wikileaks:
Abbottabad is mentioned 4 times on the site. twice as someones place of birth. once as somewhere where someone went to get his masters degree. once as somewhere someones family lived for a few months.
What is important is that they leaked the courier's name. In other words, "we know who that guy is who is next to you. We know that you send him out for messages and we know that he will return to where you are. We don't need to find you. All we need to do is find HIM! Oh and we know that his home town and family live in a place called Abbottobad."
If you were Osama Bin Laden, and you knew what I just mentioned, would you stick around Abbottobad? Would you continue to hang out with your courier? Or would you give your courier a cell phone and tell him to go east while you go west after you booby trap your compound?
Do you REALLY think that killing Osama changed anything?
Using that logic, do you REALLY think that tracking down rapists will change anything? Maybe you should look up the term, "justice" and see what it's all about.
Would killing the CEO of any large corporation make it fold and cease to exist?
If that corporation was Apple, you bet! I'm not saying that Osama had any real leadership in Al Qaeda, but again... look up what justice means. Would you have preferred we just let him go? "Oh, he killed 3000 Americans who didn't even know who he was, but he's not in charge of Al Qaeda any more. We should live and let live."
Well, you're true to your nickname. Only a right wing nutjob is getting what they want in this day and age.
Well, you've called me "right wing nutjob" many times, so I believe that makes me qualified to speak for all "right wing nutjobs".
You really think I want to pay $4.00+ a gallon for gas? Sorry, but that is the wet dream of left wing wackos like yourself.
Manning is a patriot, Assange is a useful idiot. However instead of being useful to the power elite, he is useful to all of us.
Patriot? Possibly allowing bin Laden to escape would be "patriotic". I'm sorry. That's just idiotic.
Why do left wingers always say that "dissent is patriotic". That's literally an oxymoron. That's like saying "Beating your wife supportive." "Disagreeing is encouraging." "Stealing is giving."
Sorry, but giving away your countries secrets without so much as reading them is NOT PATRIOTIC.
Please state your country and city of residence, your age, whether you have lived in the US for an extended period of time if you are not American, and how exactly you arrive your assessment that those words have no meaning here. And please hold all incoherent rants about the TSA, Gitmo, and black helicopters to yourself.
Indeed, it would be better to live in perpetual ignorance. We can trust the Government and Corporations to rule us fairly.
Slippery slope fallacy. Not everything is black or white. Sometimes, there's gray. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
Also, the claim that the PFC released the documents because they contained things we should know, I call bullshit. He obviously did not read all 10,000 documents so there is no way he could judge what we truly needed to know.
You either don't understand appeal to authority or you fail to understand my point. Let me input the data for you. Appeal to authority is: 1) Source A says that p is true. 2) Source A is authoritative. 3) Therefore, p is true.
I'm not saying that God exists because Aristotle believes so. I'm saying that you are not qualified to ridicule Aristotle. After all, Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. (Wikipedia) What gives you the right to ridicule him? What makes you qualified to "ridicule" the thought process of "the father of western logic"? That would be like an elementary school science fair runner up ridiculing Einstein, and then trying to argue that he is right to do so. Obviously, he has no idea what he's talking about, just as you have no clue.
Of course, if I were to say "Aristotle believes in god so you should to", that would be appeal to authority. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that someone who doesn't understand the most basic of logical fallacies has no standing to ridicule the father of modern logic, much less his teacher, Plato.
Again, believe what you want, but when you ridicule, you just come across as pretentious.
Also, I get the relationship between instinct and programing. In that sense, you are correct. A cockroach is a biological machine. It has no freedom of choice. It neither knows nor cares who or what it is. It lives to eat, poop, and reproduce. It is not capable of disobeying what its instincts says it should do.
But when you talk about man, that's where your machine argument. People are more than instinct. I can choose to ignore my instincts, as powerful as they may urge me to action. I am faithful to my wife, for example, even though instinct tells me to bang the coffee girl at Starbucks. There is no evolutionary advantage to fidelity, yet I am faithful to my wife. That's the difference between a machine and the human soul. A machine would tear that coffee girl up. An faithful man will not. A machine is not capable of overriding its programing. A man is.
I do! Everything I know about myself (and everyone else) makes the most sense when I consider myself (and everyone else) a biochemical machine. Do you have experiences that are inconsistent with that explanation?
Yes. Every waking moment of every day, I know that I am not a machine. I find it fascinating that you believe that you are.
BTW, nice subtle "atheists are in favor of child molestation" jab there. I bet that kind of emotional manipulation goes over well with the kind of people you usually talk to about religion
That was not my intent. I was asking, "If you are a machine, how can you be held responsible for your actions?" In your fire example, we put a fire out. We don't punish it for its actions. We do not try to rehabilitate a fire. Why would we assign human rights to a fire? For that matter, what are human rights if "human" is nothing more that a complex set of chemical reactions?
This is not the case. All it means is that my self awareness has a physical substrate (which is to be expected, since all other known phenomena have physical substrates), and that my self control is bound by the laws of physics. If you doubt that, I encourage you to violate f=ma with your free will.
But I can violate f=ma in my head. It's quite easy actually. I can do it because my soul is not limited by the laws of physics. My body, however is. That's my whole point. My mind is not limited a series of chemical reactions. My soul is not a physical thing that may be proven. Did you have a dream last night? Was it real? Of course not. But do you believe that you had a dream? Can you prove it? Assuming you believed you had a dream and assuming that may not prove its content, do you find yourself worthy of ridicule?
And I have no problem using that word. Belief in god is as ridiculous as belief in Santa Claus. It's not OK for an educated adult to engage in such silliness.
I was wrong. You didn't sound like a pretentious prick because of what you wrote. You sounded like a pretentious prick because you are a pretentious prick. I'm sorry, but ignorance does qualify you to ridicule that which you don't understand.
pretentiousness - the quality of being pretentious (behaving or speaking in such a manner as to create a false appearance of great importance or worth). Yeah. Any loser on slashdot that would call Aristotle, Plato silly is by definition pretentious. I guess I can throw in Descartes as well. I'm surprised that someone with your self importance didn't recognize "I think, therefor I am" as an argument for the soul. Do you honestly believe that you are intellectually superior to the greatest philosophers in history? Yeah. Pretentious.
My only problem with your original post is the word "ridicule". You are free to not believe, as that is what faith is all about. If there were proof, it really wouldn't be faith, but fact. I completely understand that you have a hard time understanding how someone can believe in something that is not fact. But you shouldn't ridicule that which you obviously don't understand. It makes you come off as pretentious prick. You would have probably been better served in your original post by saying, "Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby."
I am unable to prove the existence of God. I can, however, provide logical reasons for my beliefs. Rather than doing that, think of what it means to say that there is no god. Think of what it says about us.
To claim that there is no god is to claim that we are nothing more than a series of chemical reactions, formed by completely random process influenced by other completely random processes. Death is nothing more than those chemical reactions shifting to a different set of chemical reactions. There is nothing in that explanation that adequately explains why I am me and you are you. Chemical reactions don't have free will, yet I want beef for dinner and I prefer Rush to Van Halen. Chemical reactions don't explain why my personality is not transferred to the compost that I will eventually become. If we are nothing more than biological machines, identical twins in identical situations will respond exactly the same way 100% of the time. Strangely, they don't.
By claiming we are merely chemical, biological reactions, you are denying that you are self aware or have any control over your actions. Why would I put a man in prison for raping a child when he is nothing more than a series of chemicals interacting with each other? Why does the child matter as she is nothing more than chemical reactions is a different container. Punishing one isolated set of chemical reactions for actions on another independent set of chemical reactions would be like punishing a rock that broke another rock.
But we don't think that way. You have free will. You are responsible for your actions. If we are nothing more than reactions to our environment, why would you find religion to be worthy of ridicule? How can chemicals even understand what ridicule is? What is it about you that makes look down upon those who believe something they can not prove? How could chemicals even form that opinion? Why would opinion even matter? Why would you bother to take the time to argue your point against mine if we are both just results of chemistry?
Brilliant philosophers have argued both sides of the issue and both sides have made perfectly logically, well reasoned arguments. If you want to debate it further, please look up the arguments both sides have made throughout history as this conversation has happened many times before. There is no point in repeating it. But rather than do that, ask yourself if you feel like chemicals. Think about what it is that makes you unique. If you find anything there, that is what we call a soul. Do you believe in it? Can you feel it? Better yet, can you prove it?
You're not doing well in advancing the case that religious people are not deserving of ridicule. With logic and reading comprehension skills like that, it's no wonder you believe in God.
You criticize my reading comprehension skills, yet you completely failed to comprehend my points. Here, let me enumerate them for your benefit.
(1) Many of the most widely held and supported "beliefs" in science are not provable. How do you go about proving the big bang? How do you go about proving that the universe is shaped like a Pringles potato chip? How might scientists prove that there are more than three spacial dimensions? Sure, there is good evidence and perfectly logical arguments to support these theories, but can every single scientific theory be proven? (As a side note, all these theories may be disproven some day. Isn't it that much more ridiculous to believe in that which may be disproven?) (2) If religious people are worthy of being ridiculed for their beliefs, are you ridiculing Plato, Aristotle and Pasteur? I could list others as there are literally thousands of noted scientists and philosophers who "believe(d) in the unprovable". Are you personally ridiculing the intelligence of these men for believing in what they can not prove?
They deserve to be ridiculed because no one should believe in things that cannot be proven.
Is everything you believe "proven"? Has the Big Bang been proven? Has Global Warming been proven? Has evolution been proven? No matter how much you want to say they have, none of the examples listed here have been proven. They are all theories with ample direct evidence to back them up, but by the very definition of the word "theory", they have not been proven.
Have you personally "proven" to yourself everything you believe or do you take it on faith? Are you sure the earth is spherical? I believe it is because that is what I've been told and I've seen pictures and other evidence, but I have not personally traveled to an altitude where I can see it for myself, nor have I personally performed the experiments to show the curvature of the earth. I take it on faith that what I have been told about the shape of the earth to be true. Every respected scientist believes with all their heart that the earth is spherical, yet not every respected scientist has seen direct proof of this. Are you claiming that science is worthy of ridicule because scientists believe in things that have not been proven or that they have not proven personally?
Do you think you are worthy to ridicule the intelligence of Louis Pasteur? Pasteur said, "Science brings men nearer to God.". Do you feel that you are so smart that you may openly ridicule Plato, and Aristotle? Both used the "First Cause" argument to logically argue for the existence of a god.
Evidently you are not only more enlightened than the greatest philosophers and scientist throughout history, your intellect is so much higher than these simpletons that you openly mock their findings as "worthy of ridicule". Who knew that the smartest man of all time posts on slashdot. I'm am honored that someone with the intelligence that eclipses all of man has taken the time to respond to my little post.
I get the joke. You are claiming ridiculous religion as an attempt to show that all religions are equally ridiculous. However, you point to a man-made substance and claim that it is somehow divine, yet there is no real correlation to any modern religion. You are unable to point to any example of where a respected religion has claimed that something man made, like a processed food in this case, is divine. Sure, there may be symbols of the divine, such as the cross or menorah, but no respected religion takes something created by man and claims it to be God Himself. In this way, your argument that religion is ridiculous fails. You can’t come up with any argument to show how ridiculous you think religion to be, so you make one up and try to use it as an example. What you have created is a classic example of the strawman fallacy. Since you can’t argue the points made, you create a false argument that is easily rejected in an attempt to show that ALL religion is equally easy to disprove. What you fail to see is that by having to resort to such a ridiculous tactic, you are admitting that you are incapable creating a counter point to anything I have said and proved my point.
Except for the part about where it's not. Who is being programmed by John Stewart?
John Stewart is well known for taking stuff out of context and using it as a punch line. In a way, it's OK because it's not meant to be news, it's a joke. Unfortunately, his audience takes what they see at face value. Yes, but people are stupid. I've actually had someone tell me that Steven Colbert was a conservative and his program was meant to be a counterpoint to John Stewart. Yes, he actually believed that Colbert, an obvious parody of Bill O'Reilly was serious. Likewise, people will not take the time out of their day to actually look into the material that John Stewart uses to form his jokes.
FFS, he makes fun of the "liberal" media as much or more than he does of Fox News. No doubt he's a liberal, but it's hardly the same desk-pounding rhetoric and righteous indignation that flows forth from Beck and Rush.
If he made fun of the liberals in the media as much as he did Fox News, you wouldn't think he is a liberal. Remember, Fox News is just one major news outlet of five, yet they make up much more than 20% of Stewart's ridicule.
MSNBC is a little bit closer, but nobody watches them, so it's a moot point.
Granted, but the only difference between MSNBC and the rest of the media is that MSNBC is more open about their bias. Watch Katie Couric as she announces something that is considered good news for conservatives and compare it to how she reports liberal good news. The words coming from her mouth may not be openly biased, but the delivery is radically different. She reported Bush's reelection win with a scowl, but appeared bouncy and elated as she announced Obama's victory. Look at how the "main stream" media reported the poor economy that ushered in a Democrat congressional takeover in 2006 (unemployment was at 4.6%) and compare it to the "amazing recovery" of today (unemployment around 10%). Compare the wording of how stories are told and the rhetoric used. Bush wanted to cut the income tax rates for the "richest of Americans" where Obama is willing to extend those very same tax cuts as to not hurt the middle class. High oil prices just a few years ago were due Bush's unwillingness to act due to his closeness to big oil companies. Even higher oil prices today are due to market instability and disruptions in supply. Compare any headline during Bush's term to the headline for an equivalent story today and you will see a huge difference in the way they are reported.
Sorry, but FSM is easily disproved. Any god has to transcend time itself, or they can’t really be God. Pasta, the stuff that spaghetti is made of is a human invention and did not exist a few thousand years ago. Therefor, no god may be composed of spaghetti and your analogy fails.
But you want proof of a god? Many philosophers who are much smarter than the both of us have argued this for ages. One of my favorites is the "First Cause Argument for God". Allow me to put it in my own words:
Matter is merely a form of energy. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Yet, energy and matter exist. How can something exist that can never be created? Either the first law of thermodynamics is wrong or something/someone created energy/matter before the first law of thermodynamics ever existed. Of course, you would claim ignorance and leave it at that, but some refuse to accept ignorance as an answer. For that matter, claiming ignorance is not exactly what science is all about. If you don't know, make a theory, right? In order for the universe exist at all, it would be a miracle in itself, but it doesn't just exist. It exists in a way that allows for matter to exist, stars to form and not collapse in on themselves or explode immediately after forming. The odds of it the universe existing as it does are beyond astronomical. For everything to to exist as we understand it requires a design. If the universe were designed, it had to have been designed by a consciousness. Any consciousness that predates time, energy and matter would be, according to many, a god.
Once you realize that those who hold faith might actually have valid, logical reasons for doing so, you might understand that religion is more than simply the crutch of the ignorant. For that matter, it is science that claims ignorance. Not religion.
An AC responded with "Reading comprehension fail." I'll take it a bit further and claim "Writing comprehension fail." By that I mean that you answered your own question before you even asked it.
Yes, you *cannot* disprove God.
Yet, there are people who ridicule those who believe in God because they *cannot* prove His existence. As atheists, fail to realize that they are guilty of the same thing they are ridiculing because, and I use your quote again, you *cannot* disprove God.
Damn right. The pundits screaming Obama is a socialist, communist, nazi, islamic, athiest who wasn't born in the US on the Faux news network, the idea that the media would then subsequently blame the internet for this is laughable and pathetic.
Wasn't it Dan Rather of Fox News that released that document about George Bush that was an obvious fake? Even after it was proven beyond any reasonable doubt that it was a fake, didn't he insist that it was authentic? I remember the contempt he held for those that dared to question him. He even tried to discredit them by claiming that they sat around in their pajamas, challenging the work of "real" jounalists?
All of that is true, except Dan Rather never worked for Fox News. And Fox News wasn't the ones pushing the "birther" thing. It headlined MSNBC every single night for weeks. The pundits at Fox News were calling birthers a joke. Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and even Glenn Beck called it a waste of time and every single one of them said Obama was born in HI well before the certificate was ever released.
Don't let the facts get in the way of your hatred of Fox News. I'm sorry the truth in the real world doesn't match the fantasies you've dreamed up in your head. I guess if the people you hate are not evil enough to justify your hatred, you have to make stuff up to fill the void. The sad part is that you have managed to convince yourself of something that doesn't match reality.
Slashdot Mirror
BS. Just like most idealogical movements, the way to judge it is by the way its members currently conduct themselves, not the core principles its founders started with.
Have you ever been to a TEA Party event? The people I have seen there have been nothing but nice, even to those that were there counter protest. The only people who were treated poorly were the ones who had signs that were in poor taste. I'm not sure if they were "astroturphers" (liberal plants there to make the TEA Partiers look bad) or just people who were bought into the Democrat talking points repeated as fact by the media. Either way, they were not welcome.
It's just like Christianity. If you listen to Jesus, he'd have you believe it's all about tolerance ("let he who has no sin throw the first stone"), love, and other hippy values. But modern-day Christianity isn't about that stuff at all, it's about bashing homosexuals, killing non-Christians, invading other countries to establish imperialism, etc.
Again, when was the last time you've been to church? Nearly all of the churches I've attended have been welcoming to all types, including gays. My church had protestors once. They were invited in to cool off when it got to hot, provided they didn't disrupt the service of course, and brought cold beverages if they decided to stay outside. Sure, there are those few churches that are a bit more intolerant, Reverend Wright's Church that was attended by Obama for 20 years and and Westboro Baptist in Kansas, but those are certainly not the norm. Claiming that they are the norm would be like claiming that Cindy Shehan is representative of the Democrat Party.
In other words, I'm calling BS to your BS. You have no idea what you are talking about.
Let me simplify it for you.
If you want the TEA Party platform, read the 10th Amendment.
I am glad to see someone else help pick up the long-term research slack.
NASA is on the top targets of the tea party mood under the misconception that is accounts for a large percentage of federal budget. Plus one president terminating the shuttle and the next president terminating its replacement.
Can you show me where TEA Party members are calling for NASA to be cut or are you just making shit up because the truth won't justify your hatred of the TEA Party?
Actually, about 30 seconds of research has revealed that you are lying your ass off:
The Save NASA, Stop Obama group was lead mainly by people who consider themselves Tea Party activists, even though many are well known as Republicans. Organizer Ken Clark, a county commissioner, said the effort was mostly grassroots from the Tea Party members in the area.
Wait a minute, how can DARPA get money to *invest*. Remember the reason Umurikans voted for Tea Party folks is to *cut cut cut* government spending. Shouldn't this really be carried out by a private business -- particularly those private businesses that don't worry just about quarterly profits and share prices--- now don't everybody rush for the opportunity --- line forms to the left for all those interested businesses --- .
The TEA Party supports cutting government funds that go to programs not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution. DARPA falls under the defense budget, which is Constitutional.
Read the 10'th Amendment for more information.
Maybe you should look up the term, "justice" and see what it's all about.
I will give you a hint, this is not about sending seals to kill a guy in the middle of the night. Justice implies presumption of innocence, trial and conviction, even for the Big Bad Guy.
OK. Let's presume Bin Laden had the presumption of innocence. Then we saw him on video admitting to giving the order to do the attacks on 9/11. Let's call that a confession, which would negate the need for a trial and conviction. The only thing missing is a judge giving out the sentence. Personally, I don't want to take the chance that some panty-waist judge would give a lighter sentence than a bullet to the head, so I'm OK with the outcome.
You neglect the most obvious question, if we knew how to get to Osama Bin Laden, why hadn't we done it already?
All we had was the name of the messenger boy who stayed close to Bin Laden. The break came not to long ago when this courier made a phone call to another known Al Qaueda member's phone line that we had tapped. Once we knew where the courier was, it was only a matter of time before we found where he was staying.
All the name did for us was let us know who to look for. It's not like he was listed in the phone book.
You really think I want to pay $4.00+ a gallon for gas? Sorry, but that is the wet dream of left wing wackos like yourself.
Thank you for proving that you are nothing more than an untalented troll, probably a third or fourth account. That makes me feel much better about myself.
So if I'm a troll for calling you a left wing wacko, wouldn't that make you troll for calling GGP a "right wing nutjob? We knew you can dish it out. I wasn't aware that you couldn't take it. Does being a hypocrite make you feel much better about yourself?
for information purposes.
what is actually on wikileaks:
Abbottabad is mentioned 4 times on the site.
twice as someones place of birth.
once as somewhere where someone went to get his masters degree.
once as somewhere someones family lived for a few months.
What is important is that they leaked the courier's name. In other words, "we know who that guy is who is next to you. We know that you send him out for messages and we know that he will return to where you are. We don't need to find you. All we need to do is find HIM! Oh and we know that his home town and family live in a place called Abbottobad."
If you were Osama Bin Laden, and you knew what I just mentioned, would you stick around Abbottobad? Would you continue to hang out with your courier? Or would you give your courier a cell phone and tell him to go east while you go west after you booby trap your compound?
Do you REALLY think that killing Osama changed anything?
Using that logic, do you REALLY think that tracking down rapists will change anything? Maybe you should look up the term, "justice" and see what it's all about.
Would killing the CEO of any large corporation make it fold and cease to exist?
If that corporation was Apple, you bet! I'm not saying that Osama had any real leadership in Al Qaeda, but again... look up what justice means. Would you have preferred we just let him go? "Oh, he killed 3000 Americans who didn't even know who he was, but he's not in charge of Al Qaeda any more. We should live and let live."
Nothing to brag about really. Rome had a democracy (the Senate) for 500 years, and yet still succumbed to a tyrant (Julius Caesar and his offspring).
Gee. I was told that Rome succumbed to the Huns who basically just moved in and had no loyalty to Rome. Rome lacked border security.
Well, you're true to your nickname. Only a right wing nutjob is getting what they want in this day and age.
Well, you've called me "right wing nutjob" many times, so I believe that makes me qualified to speak for all "right wing nutjobs".
You really think I want to pay $4.00+ a gallon for gas? Sorry, but that is the wet dream of left wing wackos like yourself.
Manning is a patriot, Assange is a useful idiot. However instead of being useful to the power elite, he is useful to all of us.
Patriot? Possibly allowing bin Laden to escape would be "patriotic". I'm sorry. That's just idiotic.
Why do left wingers always say that "dissent is patriotic". That's literally an oxymoron. That's like saying "Beating your wife supportive." "Disagreeing is encouraging." "Stealing is giving."
Sorry, but giving away your countries secrets without so much as reading them is NOT PATRIOTIC.
Please state your country and city of residence, your age, whether you have lived in the US for an extended period of time if you are not American, and how exactly you arrive your assessment that those words have no meaning here. And please hold all incoherent rants about the TSA, Gitmo, and black helicopters to yourself.
Kansas City, KS, USA
39 years old
Born in The USA
THE USA is a Corporatism State
And you are a "Rightwing" nutjob
Spoken as a true Anonymous Coward.
But then spits on you with commercials.
They are not spitting on your back. They are faking an orgasm.
Indeed, it would be better to live in perpetual ignorance. We can trust the Government and Corporations to rule us fairly.
Slippery slope fallacy. Not everything is black or white. Sometimes, there's gray. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
Also, the claim that the PFC released the documents because they contained things we should know, I call bullshit. He obviously did not read all 10,000 documents so there is no way he could judge what we truly needed to know.
You either don't understand appeal to authority or you fail to understand my point. Let me input the data for you. Appeal to authority is:
1) Source A says that p is true.
2) Source A is authoritative.
3) Therefore, p is true.
I'm not saying that God exists because Aristotle believes so. I'm saying that you are not qualified to ridicule Aristotle. After all, Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. (Wikipedia) What gives you the right to ridicule him? What makes you qualified to "ridicule" the thought process of "the father of western logic"? That would be like an elementary school science fair runner up ridiculing Einstein, and then trying to argue that he is right to do so. Obviously, he has no idea what he's talking about, just as you have no clue.
Of course, if I were to say "Aristotle believes in god so you should to", that would be appeal to authority. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that someone who doesn't understand the most basic of logical fallacies has no standing to ridicule the father of modern logic, much less his teacher, Plato.
Again, believe what you want, but when you ridicule, you just come across as pretentious.
Also, I get the relationship between instinct and programing. In that sense, you are correct. A cockroach is a biological machine. It has no freedom of choice. It neither knows nor cares who or what it is. It lives to eat, poop, and reproduce. It is not capable of disobeying what its instincts says it should do.
But when you talk about man, that's where your machine argument. People are more than instinct. I can choose to ignore my instincts, as powerful as they may urge me to action. I am faithful to my wife, for example, even though instinct tells me to bang the coffee girl at Starbucks. There is no evolutionary advantage to fidelity, yet I am faithful to my wife. That's the difference between a machine and the human soul. A machine would tear that coffee girl up. An faithful man will not. A machine is not capable of overriding its programing. A man is.
I do! Everything I know about myself (and everyone else) makes the most sense when I consider myself (and everyone else) a biochemical machine. Do you have experiences that are inconsistent with that explanation?
Yes. Every waking moment of every day, I know that I am not a machine. I find it fascinating that you believe that you are.
BTW, nice subtle "atheists are in favor of child molestation" jab there. I bet that kind of emotional manipulation goes over well with the kind of people you usually talk to about religion
That was not my intent. I was asking, "If you are a machine, how can you be held responsible for your actions?" In your fire example, we put a fire out. We don't punish it for its actions. We do not try to rehabilitate a fire. Why would we assign human rights to a fire? For that matter, what are human rights if "human" is nothing more that a complex set of chemical reactions?
This is not the case. All it means is that my self awareness has a physical substrate (which is to be expected, since all other known phenomena have physical substrates), and that my self control is bound by the laws of physics. If you doubt that, I encourage you to violate f=ma with your free will.
But I can violate f=ma in my head. It's quite easy actually. I can do it because my soul is not limited by the laws of physics. My body, however is. That's my whole point. My mind is not limited a series of chemical reactions. My soul is not a physical thing that may be proven. Did you have a dream last night? Was it real? Of course not. But do you believe that you had a dream? Can you prove it? Assuming you believed you had a dream and assuming that may not prove its content, do you find yourself worthy of ridicule?
And I have no problem using that word. Belief in god is as ridiculous as belief in Santa Claus. It's not OK for an educated adult to engage in such silliness.
I was wrong. You didn't sound like a pretentious prick because of what you wrote. You sounded like a pretentious prick because you are a pretentious prick. I'm sorry, but ignorance does qualify you to ridicule that which you don't understand.
pretentiousness - the quality of being pretentious (behaving or speaking in such a manner as to create a false appearance of great importance or worth). Yeah. Any loser on slashdot that would call Aristotle, Plato silly is by definition pretentious. I guess I can throw in Descartes as well. I'm surprised that someone with your self importance didn't recognize "I think, therefor I am" as an argument for the soul. Do you honestly believe that you are intellectually superior to the greatest philosophers in history? Yeah. Pretentious.
I just want to see the blooper reel from some of the videos he released to see if it was anything like the SNL skits I've seen.
My only problem with your original post is the word "ridicule". You are free to not believe, as that is what faith is all about. If there were proof, it really wouldn't be faith, but fact. I completely understand that you have a hard time understanding how someone can believe in something that is not fact. But you shouldn't ridicule that which you obviously don't understand. It makes you come off as pretentious prick. You would have probably been better served in your original post by saying, "Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby."
I am unable to prove the existence of God. I can, however, provide logical reasons for my beliefs. Rather than doing that, think of what it means to say that there is no god. Think of what it says about us.
To claim that there is no god is to claim that we are nothing more than a series of chemical reactions, formed by completely random process influenced by other completely random processes. Death is nothing more than those chemical reactions shifting to a different set of chemical reactions. There is nothing in that explanation that adequately explains why I am me and you are you. Chemical reactions don't have free will, yet I want beef for dinner and I prefer Rush to Van Halen. Chemical reactions don't explain why my personality is not transferred to the compost that I will eventually become. If we are nothing more than biological machines, identical twins in identical situations will respond exactly the same way 100% of the time. Strangely, they don't.
By claiming we are merely chemical, biological reactions, you are denying that you are self aware or have any control over your actions. Why would I put a man in prison for raping a child when he is nothing more than a series of chemicals interacting with each other? Why does the child matter as she is nothing more than chemical reactions is a different container. Punishing one isolated set of chemical reactions for actions on another independent set of chemical reactions would be like punishing a rock that broke another rock.
But we don't think that way. You have free will. You are responsible for your actions. If we are nothing more than reactions to our environment, why would you find religion to be worthy of ridicule? How can chemicals even understand what ridicule is? What is it about you that makes look down upon those who believe something they can not prove? How could chemicals even form that opinion? Why would opinion even matter? Why would you bother to take the time to argue your point against mine if we are both just results of chemistry?
Brilliant philosophers have argued both sides of the issue and both sides have made perfectly logically, well reasoned arguments. If you want to debate it further, please look up the arguments both sides have made throughout history as this conversation has happened many times before. There is no point in repeating it. But rather than do that, ask yourself if you feel like chemicals. Think about what it is that makes you unique. If you find anything there, that is what we call a soul. Do you believe in it? Can you feel it? Better yet, can you prove it?
You're not doing well in advancing the case that religious people are not deserving of ridicule. With logic and reading comprehension skills like that, it's no wonder you believe in God.
You criticize my reading comprehension skills, yet you completely failed to comprehend my points. Here, let me enumerate them for your benefit.
(1) Many of the most widely held and supported "beliefs" in science are not provable. How do you go about proving the big bang? How do you go about proving that the universe is shaped like a Pringles potato chip? How might scientists prove that there are more than three spacial dimensions? Sure, there is good evidence and perfectly logical arguments to support these theories, but can every single scientific theory be proven? (As a side note, all these theories may be disproven some day. Isn't it that much more ridiculous to believe in that which may be disproven?)
(2) If religious people are worthy of being ridiculed for their beliefs, are you ridiculing Plato, Aristotle and Pasteur? I could list others as there are literally thousands of noted scientists and philosophers who "believe(d) in the unprovable". Are you personally ridiculing the intelligence of these men for believing in what they can not prove?
They deserve to be ridiculed because no one should believe in things that cannot be proven.
Is everything you believe "proven"? Has the Big Bang been proven? Has Global Warming been proven? Has evolution been proven? No matter how much you want to say they have, none of the examples listed here have been proven. They are all theories with ample direct evidence to back them up, but by the very definition of the word "theory", they have not been proven.
Have you personally "proven" to yourself everything you believe or do you take it on faith? Are you sure the earth is spherical? I believe it is because that is what I've been told and I've seen pictures and other evidence, but I have not personally traveled to an altitude where I can see it for myself, nor have I personally performed the experiments to show the curvature of the earth. I take it on faith that what I have been told about the shape of the earth to be true. Every respected scientist believes with all their heart that the earth is spherical, yet not every respected scientist has seen direct proof of this. Are you claiming that science is worthy of ridicule because scientists believe in things that have not been proven or that they have not proven personally?
Do you think you are worthy to ridicule the intelligence of Louis Pasteur? Pasteur said, "Science brings men nearer to God.". Do you feel that you are so smart that you may openly ridicule Plato, and Aristotle? Both used the "First Cause" argument to logically argue for the existence of a god.
Evidently you are not only more enlightened than the greatest philosophers and scientist throughout history, your intellect is so much higher than these simpletons that you openly mock their findings as "worthy of ridicule". Who knew that the smartest man of all time posts on slashdot. I'm am honored that someone with the intelligence that eclipses all of man has taken the time to respond to my little post.
I get the joke. You are claiming ridiculous religion as an attempt to show that all religions are equally ridiculous. However, you point to a man-made substance and claim that it is somehow divine, yet there is no real correlation to any modern religion. You are unable to point to any example of where a respected religion has claimed that something man made, like a processed food in this case, is divine. Sure, there may be symbols of the divine, such as the cross or menorah, but no respected religion takes something created by man and claims it to be God Himself.
In this way, your argument that religion is ridiculous fails. You can’t come up with any argument to show how ridiculous you think religion to be, so you make one up and try to use it as an example.
What you have created is a classic example of the strawman fallacy. Since you can’t argue the points made, you create a false argument that is easily rejected in an attempt to show that ALL religion is equally easy to disprove. What you fail to see is that by having to resort to such a ridiculous tactic, you are admitting that you are incapable creating a counter point to anything I have said and proved my point.
Except for the part about where it's not. Who is being programmed by John Stewart?
John Stewart is well known for taking stuff out of context and using it as a punch line. In a way, it's OK because it's not meant to be news, it's a joke. Unfortunately, his audience takes what they see at face value. Yes, but people are stupid. I've actually had someone tell me that Steven Colbert was a conservative and his program was meant to be a counterpoint to John Stewart. Yes, he actually believed that Colbert, an obvious parody of Bill O'Reilly was serious. Likewise, people will not take the time out of their day to actually look into the material that John Stewart uses to form his jokes.
FFS, he makes fun of the "liberal" media as much or more than he does of Fox News. No doubt he's a liberal, but it's hardly the same desk-pounding rhetoric and righteous indignation that flows forth from Beck and Rush.
If he made fun of the liberals in the media as much as he did Fox News, you wouldn't think he is a liberal. Remember, Fox News is just one major news outlet of five, yet they make up much more than 20% of Stewart's ridicule.
MSNBC is a little bit closer, but nobody watches them, so it's a moot point.
Granted, but the only difference between MSNBC and the rest of the media is that MSNBC is more open about their bias. Watch Katie Couric as she announces something that is considered good news for conservatives and compare it to how she reports liberal good news. The words coming from her mouth may not be openly biased, but the delivery is radically different. She reported Bush's reelection win with a scowl, but appeared bouncy and elated as she announced Obama's victory. Look at how the "main stream" media reported the poor economy that ushered in a Democrat congressional takeover in 2006 (unemployment was at 4.6%) and compare it to the "amazing recovery" of today (unemployment around 10%). Compare the wording of how stories are told and the rhetoric used. Bush wanted to cut the income tax rates for the "richest of Americans" where Obama is willing to extend those very same tax cuts as to not hurt the middle class. High oil prices just a few years ago were due Bush's unwillingness to act due to his closeness to big oil companies. Even higher oil prices today are due to market instability and disruptions in supply. Compare any headline during Bush's term to the headline for an equivalent story today and you will see a huge difference in the way they are reported.
Sorry, but FSM is easily disproved. Any god has to transcend time itself, or they can’t really be God. Pasta, the stuff that spaghetti is made of is a human invention and did not exist a few thousand years ago. Therefor, no god may be composed of spaghetti and your analogy fails.
But you want proof of a god? Many philosophers who are much smarter than the both of us have argued this for ages. One of my favorites is the "First Cause Argument for God". Allow me to put it in my own words:
Matter is merely a form of energy. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Yet, energy and matter exist. How can something exist that can never be created? Either the first law of thermodynamics is wrong or something/someone created energy/matter before the first law of thermodynamics ever existed. Of course, you would claim ignorance and leave it at that, but some refuse to accept ignorance as an answer. For that matter, claiming ignorance is not exactly what science is all about. If you don't know, make a theory, right? In order for the universe exist at all, it would be a miracle in itself, but it doesn't just exist. It exists in a way that allows for matter to exist, stars to form and not collapse in on themselves or explode immediately after forming. The odds of it the universe existing as it does are beyond astronomical. For everything to to exist as we understand it requires a design. If the universe were designed, it had to have been designed by a consciousness. Any consciousness that predates time, energy and matter would be, according to many, a god.
Once you realize that those who hold faith might actually have valid, logical reasons for doing so, you might understand that religion is more than simply the crutch of the ignorant. For that matter, it is science that claims ignorance. Not religion.
An AC responded with "Reading comprehension fail." I'll take it a bit further and claim "Writing comprehension fail." By that I mean that you answered your own question before you even asked it.
Yes, you *cannot* disprove God.
Yet, there are people who ridicule those who believe in God because they *cannot* prove His existence. As atheists, fail to realize that they are guilty of the same thing they are ridiculing because, and I use your quote again, you *cannot* disprove God.
Damn right. The pundits screaming Obama is a socialist, communist, nazi, islamic, athiest who wasn't born in the US on the Faux news network, the idea that the media would then subsequently blame the internet for this is laughable and pathetic.
Wasn't it Dan Rather of Fox News that released that document about George Bush that was an obvious fake? Even after it was proven beyond any reasonable doubt that it was a fake, didn't he insist that it was authentic? I remember the contempt he held for those that dared to question him. He even tried to discredit them by claiming that they sat around in their pajamas, challenging the work of "real" jounalists?
All of that is true, except Dan Rather never worked for Fox News. And Fox News wasn't the ones pushing the "birther" thing. It headlined MSNBC every single night for weeks. The pundits at Fox News were calling birthers a joke. Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and even Glenn Beck called it a waste of time and every single one of them said Obama was born in HI well before the certificate was ever released.
Don't let the facts get in the way of your hatred of Fox News. I'm sorry the truth in the real world doesn't match the fantasies you've dreamed up in your head. I guess if the people you hate are not evil enough to justify your hatred, you have to make stuff up to fill the void. The sad part is that you have managed to convince yourself of something that doesn't match reality.