but now read some of the posts here. look for a humours tone. none. you are talking about posters here, go ahead, read some posts, who *actually* believe the government killed this guy and made it look like a suicide. AND they spread the anthrax in the first place.
Given all the well established facts. That BushCo completely made up the justification for invading Iraq, that they had (PNAC documents) stated their plan to misuse an attack on America as a justification to invade Iraq were one to occur, their assaults on the constitution and their wholesale looting of the treasury, we already know that murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent people to make a buck is 100% perfectly aligned with their characters, what the fuck exactly is it that makes you find it in any way unlikely that they would have eagerly signed on to such a thing?
The idea that this government would be willing and eager to murder a person to cover up yet another crime is perfectly reasonable. They've already engaged in far more immoral actions, so the idea that they would care at all about the ethics of such a situation is laughable.
I'm not saying that is what happened. But it is absolutely and 100% true that it is a perfectly *reasonable* assumption given what we already know about the morals, ethics, and actions of the people you're defending from perfectly reasonable suggestions.
When somebody willingly, and intentionally murders thousands of innocent people, you make yourself a fool to claim that it's unreasonable to suggest they'd murder a few more to get away with their crimes.
Seriously, dude, if you don't know that there is a fair chance that BushCo were involved than you're just a sycophantic fool who hasn't paid one bit of attention to anything they've done or the manner in which they've done it since those same scum first came into power under Nixon.
Seriously, grow up, start dealing with the real world. There are evil people out there who will do anything to get power over others and our system is designed in such a way to select those people above ethical ones.
healthy distrust of your government is normal and helpful to the functioning of a vibrant society
however, rabid, paranoid schizophrenic musings on all evil in the world falling at the government's doorstep is not anywhere near the definition of "healthy distrust". more like pathological hobbling distrust
However, suspecting their involvement in actions which they are the only people to benefit *is* healthy distrust. Your position is that anything too out of the "ordinary" couldn't possibly happen which is a deadly attitude for a free society.
Perhaps you should go read up on "The Big Lie". Wolfowitz did. He got a PhD studying it.
When government is formed the citizens create a social contract, which limits individual freedoms for the good of the whole. If that's not the purpose of government, I don't know what is.
The purpose of government is so that those who run it can fuck everyone else with an air of legitimacy. The purpose of "representative government" is to give the rubes the illusion that they can meaningfully influence the process.
Now you do know what the purpose is. The big question is how did you possibly reach your current age without realizing something *that* simple. That's very seriously naive.
I'm afraid you subscribe to the common propaganda about the Church put forth by Protestants. Recent historical analysis of the Inquisition, for instance, shows that thousands of times more people were burned for witchcraft by Protestant communities than the Catholic Church.
One church another church. All you demonstrate is a simple proof that there is no all powerful god who ever wanted to communicate a clear message to humanity. Were there it never could have gotten so confused. Simple and absolute proof, yet you completely fail to grasp what you just said. Yes, the Catholic Church and the Protestant churches have always been bottom of the barrel scum with few, if any exceptions. You're not actually making any sort of a point here regardless of what you think.
Now, I am not trying to exonerate the Catholic Church; I detest many things about it myself. But your portrayal of them as being a force for suppressing rather than preserving, on the whole, knowledge throughout the Dark Ages simply does not stand up to what we know about history.
Actually, it does. Your rewriting of history to attempt to exonerate a baby raping, nazi supporting, organization who only in the 1920s gave up the official policy of torture for heretics does demonstrate much about your character and your disgust for ethical behavior, but just because you make ridiculous claims flying in the face of what we do know about history doesn't make them true.
And your claim that Muslims preserved more knowledge than the Church simply shows how biased and ridiculous your claims are.
Yes, you desperately want that fact to be incorrect so you demand that it must be. That's the defining quality of the religious.
Given how much farther advanced they were due to building off of the knowledge that they preserved, it's quite obvious. Again, your desperate delusional desires to believe that evil is good have no bearing whatsoever on reality.
You might consider providing proof for your insane babbling, rather than demand some from me which you will reject out of hand as it doesn't come from properly sterilized sources.
Once again, I would like to see proof that "a good portion" of officers rarely think and are abusive and incompetent.
Just think how it would be possible for it to be any other way. When half of our prison population is non violent drug offenders, and the prison population has doubled since 1980 and both of these facts are due to piss poor laws and the corruption that caused them to be put in place, then you can not possibly find a decent, ethical human being to be a cop. If they were decent or ethical, then they would refuse to enforce laws which have no possible positive effect on society and have proven to lead to nothing but more and more violent crime, the destruction of the 4th amendment and massive profits for the prison industry of which cops are a part.
Seriously, in a country as corrupt as ours with lawmakers and law enforcement so completely corrupted all the good people left in disgust a long fucking time ago.
It's really not that hard to figure out simple obvious things like that on your own. Maybe instead of asking everyone else for proof you should spend 5 minutes thinking realistically about the situation?
In short, the scientific debate was largely peripheral to the Galileo affair. What got Galileo in trouble is that he insisted on drawing theological conclusions from his scientific data.
Ahhh, so it's perfectly ok to use brutal thuggery to oppress opinions and free thinking provided it's in defense of idiotic fairy tales which are being used to keep people under the control of a sick group of monsters.
It's good to know that you're such a nice, rational, decent, ethical upstanding human being.
Oh, and who do you think preserved most of the pre-Dark Ages knowledge for us in the first place? Who copied and preserved the Greek philosophical texts?
That would be mostly to the credit of the Muslims. The Church did some positive things in that area, but nowhere near enough to outweigh their policy of destroying all knowledge that disagreed with their fairy tale.
There was some small amount of knowledge saved by the church, but their policy was to opposite, so you're taking an exception and trying to put it forward as the general case which is obviously nonsensical. Keep in mind that you're defending some of the most vile specimens that our species has ever produced. People who write at length about how important it was to baste heretics while roasting them alive so that they could suffer longer and that for the "crime" of disagreeing with the church on matters which they were quite obviously wrong even at the time.
Seriously, try and have a sense of perspective. A few accidental good deeds do not make up for a couple thousand years of the most disgusting, malicious, and willful atrocities in the name of oppressing sane, rational thought.
The one that violated a steady stream of UN sanctions, each of which called for consequences exactly like what happened? That one?
You keep pulling out idiotic arguments like this as if they were in any way relevant. The US violates UN orders. Israel is in violation of many as well. So, sorry, but you can not under any circumstances use violation of UN policies as an argument for US action and hope to be treated as if you were an honest, rational person. What you are engaging in right now is called "hypocrisy" and it's a disgusting habit.
Clearly, for some reason, you preferred to have Saddam slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people from outside of his Tikriti tribe, and are mysteriously glad that he refused to disclose what happened to the tons of VX gas he had stockpiled, and are amused that he kicked the UN inspectors out after never allowing them to freely operate as agreed. Clearly you're frustrated that the long range missles (which he agreed to stop building after he was kicked out of Kuwait) that he continued to buy from North Korea and work on, and deploy, right up through 2003, never got to be used on the people you actually hate (who is it you were hoping he'd use those on, anyway... Iran? Israel? Kuwait? The Saudis?).
This is also a disgustingly dishonest and contemptible bit of asshattery.
You do know that when Saddam gassed the Kurds he used our gas, right? Again, you do not get to claim any sort of moral high ground when the US was the primary supporter of Saddam and Saddam's genocidal tendencies. It makes you look like a joke and it's embarrassing to the citizens of this country that actually have ethics and care about their country. We put him in power, we used him as a tool to keep the region destabilized. You do not get to claim to be on the good side without addressing those issues in an honest and honorable manner. So again, your disgustingly dishonest hypocrisy is all you're demonstrating.
You do also know that just because somebody doesn't support murdering and/or displacing over a million people for the profit of the oil and weapons industries through a scam which was blatantly obvious and completely transparent from the start to anybody who actually pays attention doesn't mean that they support some other scumbag. That was a lie and you told it intentionally in order to deceive people. That's disgusting. I'm sorry that you don't even understand anything about ethics, but not everybody thinks it's sane to support some completely morally bankrupt group of scumbags just because they made you wet your panties in fear of the boogie man.
Saddam violated the sovereignty of his neighbor by sending huge colums of tanks and soldiers across the border, killing those trying to defend it, and staking a claim to that country as his own. When you iniate a conflict like that (as he did, to expand Iraq's territory by violently annexing Kuwait), you waive your own claim to sovreignty. Just as a murderer waives any claim to his own life.
OK, so according to you, the US has given up its sovereignty, and you yourself through your active support for murderers have given up your right to life. Or are you going to try and pull some idiotic nonsense like claiming that since we haven't annexed Iraq that it's completely different and that since we're magically always right we can't be held to the same standards as the rest of the world? You are a very slimy hypocritical monster if so, and you damn well know it.
Which obviously disappoints you, since you really loved the guy. It's a shame you can't find it in you to love the population of Iraq, who no longer have to worry about his sons' goon squads putting parents through industrial shredding machines in front of their children for daring to oppose Saddam politically.
Again, disagreeing with the terroristic traitors running this country doesn't mean that one supports other scumbags. Of course, we immediately started torturing Iraqis once we took over as well as i
I'm not saying the Republicans are angels by any stretch when it comes to campaign shenanigans - but then they aren't the ones trying to claim the moral high ground, generally.
Are you clinically insane, or just a delusional liar?
You do know that values and morals are what the Republicans constantly claim the moral high ground on even while proving themselves the worst at such things, right?
You do know that's about their entire routine, right?
If you do not know those things, then you are so out of touch with reality that it's not even the least bit funny. Please just don't say anything if you can only say things that are so incredibly insane and in direct conflict with reality in every particular.
Sure, everyone tries to claim the moral high ground, but nobody comes close to the modern Republican party in making blatantly false claims of morality while pissing in the face of ethical behavior at every opportunity.
Seriously, grow up, act like an adult and for the love of anything decent stop telling lies so stupid and obvious that you insult yourself more than anybody else by repeating that nonsense.
Many other services to the jail system are provided by the companies with the most ties to politicians or bureaucrats - maybe that's an Illinois thing, not sure.
While Illinois is certainly notable for its corruption, the private prison system is truly one of the worst threats we face. The prison industrial complex including private prisons, guard unions, police and other law enforcement etc is one of the largest lobbyists we have. Guess what their only real option for increasing profits through lobbying is?
Inventing more crimes, increasing penalties for existing crimes and encouraging recidivism. Remember those aren't human beings entitled to live their lives after paying their debt to society, they're a liability on the balance sheet and the prison industry is damn well *entitled* to profits at your expense regardless of human rights or the cost to society, don't you know?
It is reasonably rstablished that when everyone else is saying your wrong, you are generally the one who is wrong. If you have a hard time understanding that, then you have a severe disconnect with reality.
Not really. If you were talking about anything rational or anything that had evidence, then you might be close to making a valid point, but you're not.
Actually, you completely wrong there.
And then you go on to do nothing to demonstrate your ridiculous claim. Yes, there are mentions of actual historical *places* and *people*. Likewise most of Greek mythology is set in real places. None of that says anything about the truth of the magical fairy tale nonsense.
They could be but seeing how you can't test for it, you are in no position to make a statement one way or another. If you choose to, it will be nothing but your opinion which carries about as much weight as the person's who you are attempting to claim is wrong.
Which is likewise complete nonsense. Your insistence that such a ridiculous statement must be true just demonstrates the caustic affect of blind faith on basic reasoning skills. There is no evidence of any god or gods although there have been thousands proposed. Every mystical claim of any religion which admits to testing has proven false. So someone saying they believe in mystical fairies because they had it drummed into their head before their brain was developed enough to differentiate fantasy and reality is not in any way on the same level as the idea that such far out fantasies should require some sort of evidence.
When did changing from a geocentric orbit prove you to be right? Your attempting to ride on the coat tails of issues long resolved and they don't help your case much. No where in any of the bibles does it say everything revolves around the earth, that was solely a conscript of man. Yet here you are thinking that your "smart" by bringing it up as if it is supposed to show your sanity above anyone else's.
You claimed that if most people believe something, then somebody who doesn't think that must be wrong. Once upon a time most people believed in the heliocentric idea. Some people didn't agree and thought the sun was the center of the solar system. According to you, the heliocentric idea was correct until enough people started believing in the sol centric idea at which point reality changed to fit the popular view. That is a consequence of your statement. The idiocy inherent in your position is what I was illustrating.
I'm not sure if your abstract reality thinks that atheist are infallible or something, or if your just too fucking stupid to understand a simple sentence, Either way, you took something completely our of context and twisted it for your own purposes.
LOL, neither obviously. You merely failed to use written language to communicate a simple idea. You still haven't managed to do so effectively. Perhaps you should try more thinking and less believing? That's usually the cure.
OK. Stoning is required, citation from the New Testament please.
Typical idiotic nonsense from somebody who hasn't actually bothered to read the book.
I don't have to supply a citation from the new testament. You seem to know, by your deceptive attempt to redraw the map, that there are plenty of examples in the old testament, correct?
Not one letter of one word of any of those old laws were changed by Jesus according to him (or the writers who made him up, of course). So you can not under any circumstances claim to be a follower of Jesus and disregard word one of any of the atrocious, disgusting demands made in the bible.
See Matthew 5:17-18
Now, as to your examples all they do is demonstrate huge blatant contradictions in the bible and in the characterization of Jesus in particular. So, if you're really desperate to believe in some silly nonsense, then you can pick and choose bits and ignore others, but then you've done nothing but demonstrate that you know full well that the whole can't be taken seriously by a sane person.
Christianity is more about a personal faith in God;
Bullshit. If it was about anything of the sort, there would be no need for the Jesus myth. It's about faith certainly, but faith is an unmitigated evil. The belief in the ridiculous in the absence and often in the face of evidence. Nothing good comes out of that. Besides, if it were about personal faith, then the bible wouldn't be associated with it in any way. Believing in a book of ancient fairy tales isn't a personal faith, it's following a faith constructed for the purpose of forcing submission to those in power. Try picking up a history book and maybe thinking a little bit. Look around, notice the big historical trends that keep repeating based on the same tired old lies.
You seem like a smart guy but I think you have some dumb beliefs.
That's funny. You're the one defending fairy tales as if they were true. I'm merely pointing out facts. I don't have "beliefs" in the way you do.
When atheist are wrong, and many religions state that, it doesn't mean they are coming together, it means that there is a high likelihood that atheist are wrong.
OK, so you have proven yourself to be a total failure at basic reasoning skills and nothing more with that bit of lunacy.
There is zero evidence for any religion being true (or even sane). People who don't choose to believe idiotic nonsense "just because" aren't wrong. They're rational. That's outside right or wrong. People who do believe such things have a vanishingly small chance of being right, but given how unlikely it's zero for most intents and purposes. So they're most likely dead fucking wrong. Actually most of them absolutely have to be if one is right. They're definitely irrational though.
I'm still laughing at your point which is that "whatever a bunch of people think must be right". So when exactly did the earth stop being the center of the universe and move to its present location? You do know that if you assume what you said was sane, then you have to assume that that change did, in fact, happen.
After all Bush is Christian (not that anyone ever checked:-p), that proves they're all evil, right ?
No, thousands of years of history prove that.
By contrast pointing out that the founder of islam was a thieving (took things from people violently) paedophile (f*cked children below 9 years old) rapist (f*cked said child without her permission, using force, also others) is a fact (according to muslim sources), yet apparently here facts are not important, and have to be denied.
Who cares? People who pull such evil scams as inventing religions are always shitbags. So what.
Perhaps Jesus should have murdered some more women and children, and stolen more. Surely it seems that would have raised his standing on slashdot (and elsewhere) enormously.
No, the problem with that is that there actually was a Mohammed. There never was an actual Jesus.
Assuming your retelling to be truthful then these people were probably not Christians, you understand that right?
You do know that that sounds *exactly* like Christians. You know the evil motherfuckers, who used to specify that people were *basted* while being roasted alive for the atrocious crime of not believing idiotic nonsense so they'd suffer longer. You know those Christians with 2000 years history of atrocities? You do understand that, right?
If you think that isn't what Christians are then you obviously don't know the first fucking thing about the religion. You do know that stoning heretics is still required, right? Maybe there aren't any actual Christians left. It looks like the Muslims are the only ones who actually believe their idiotic fairy tales. You sure as shit aren't a Christian as evidenced by that crap you spewed. Maybe you should consider reading the bible before opening your mouth and lying?
I always thought it was kind of neat that the Jewish passover celebration has been done for like 3500 years without fail.
Oh please. One Passover a friend of mine spilled the wine all over the unleavened bread *and* his grandmother. Sounds like a pretty epic fail to me. I'm sure that's not the only case in 3500 years.
The remaining three gospels pretty much have the usual resurrection stories in the usual places.
Yes, but Mark was the original. The others were later plagiarisms with additions by the "authors". So, If you were trying to pretend that any of them were in any way legitimate history as opposed to allegory and/or fairy tale then you have to reject the "usual" resurrection in the "usual" places since they were added much after the supposed time of the stories by unknown people who had no knowledge of any of the alleged "real people" in the story. Likewise, Mark was written by an unknown author, it's not even pretending to be an eyewitness account and it was written far after the alleged events (for which there is also no historical basis for believing).
So those later additions to the stories that were not part of the original parable are only "usual" because the various churches tortured and murdered anybody who spoke against it for heresy. It's no surprise Christianity had to be spread by the sword. It's way too far out, blatantly false, and completely idiotic for it to have spread any other way.
While I would agree with your conclusion that men control men using the Bible as a tool, my reading of the Bible has led me to the exact opposite conclusion, that it wasn't about men controlling men, it was about men controlling themselves through FAITH.
However all that faith does is gives power to those who decide what you are to have faith in which you then aren't allowed to question or you get murdered for heresy *as the bible absolutely demands*. Your "solution" is only the primary problem in the whole fairy tale.
Poor reasoning, and you've completely missed the point in your desperate need to believe that nonsense must magically be true because you want it to be.
So, if it was dated to 4 BCE (thats BC for you christians who havn't adopted the new format for dates)... how does it have the gospel of mark (which was written after christ?)
That doesn't make any sense. It's like saying the Harry Potter books were written after Harry Potter lived. Jesus was invented in the Gospel of Mark. Do try to keep up.
Obama has already gone back on a campaign promise before even being elected (voting for FISA
It's much worse than you portray it. He didn't merely "go back on a campaign promise". He directly violated the oath of the office he's running for. Assaulting the constitution is not upholding and defending it. It's the same thing for Bush and everyone who voted for this so Obama isn't alone in his treason, but he certainly doesn't get any points for being a bandwagon traitor.
Eventually, the rich would end up owning everyone else, because people would have no choice but to sell themselves into slavery. Without a government to balance the unbridled power of money in a free market, what would keep that from happening? I've already shown the 'invisible hand' is useless in stopping a determined rich person from oppressing a poor person, as he can always outbid the poor person. So what do you think would stop all this from happening? Wishful thinking? Good intentions? What?
This is true enough were we to instantly, completely replace the current crop of congress critters with hard core idealogue Libertarians. That, however, is not at all a realistic possibility. So as a counter to the current situation which is business and government actively colluding against the people for more or less the same goals, I vote libertarian. The Democrats are too nanny state for my tastes and they're not showing any signs of acting sane about the economic situation. The Republicans are *literally* the direct intellectual ( and in many cases the direct human descendants) of the Nazis who spend far more than even the Democrats.
So, while you do make good points, the points aren't really tied to the current reality. They are arguments against an ideologically pure Libertarian government assuming that all other parties magically blinked out of existence.
Given how bad, how out of touch with reality, and how completely sold out *both* parties are, adding in some people who's ideology involves reducing the government's ability to screw us for the benefit of those who bribe them the most is a greater advantage than a liability IMO.
Depressing situation isn't it? Conservatism made the Republican Party an actual party rather than the me-tooism of the 40s and 50s. They win the House and Senate for the first time in forty years while running on an unapologetically conservative platform. Bush wins while running as some weird bleeding heart conservative.
So what do we get?
Vast increase in federal spending! Vast increase in federal power!
Dude, you're thinking Reagan, not Bush. Bush is just Reagan 2. Same criminally treasonous policies, same disasterous results. There was more actual wealth in America to help cover that up. Now it's all been leeched off and now *your* chickens are coming home to roost. They've been running on an "appeal to religious loonies while claiming to be conservative" platform. Huge difference.
They won the house and senate on a campaign of "liberals are evil commie faggots" and "America is a Christian nation" rewriting of history even though the rejection of religious delusions as a basis of government is the primary defining characteristic of America.
"Conservatism" is what has destroyed the Republican party. The fact that they can only sell themselves to the bottom of the barrel of our society based on ignorance, hatred, and really stupid lies makes the delusional nonsense you wrote as unsurprising as it is disgusting.
I won't be voting for Obama or McCain but I don't see how I can support any of these crazies either.
I typically vote Libertarian, but I think I'm going to have to write in Stephen Colbert this year. At least the bottom of the barrel must be shiny clean now, right? What could possibly be left there.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a jug of stuff that my instruments tell me is ricin. Why don't you go ahead and verify that for me?
Is the jug painted hideously with a huge wing on the back?
Does it have the -MOMFG-REALLY-FAST flag set?
If you answered yes to either, than the stuff is ricin'. Otherwise, it's not.
but now read some of the posts here. look for a humours tone. none. you are talking about posters here, go ahead, read some posts, who *actually* believe the government killed this guy and made it look like a suicide. AND they spread the anthrax in the first place.
Given all the well established facts. That BushCo completely made up the justification for invading Iraq, that they had (PNAC documents) stated their plan to misuse an attack on America as a justification to invade Iraq were one to occur, their assaults on the constitution and their wholesale looting of the treasury, we already know that murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent people to make a buck is 100% perfectly aligned with their characters, what the fuck exactly is it that makes you find it in any way unlikely that they would have eagerly signed on to such a thing?
The idea that this government would be willing and eager to murder a person to cover up yet another crime is perfectly reasonable. They've already engaged in far more immoral actions, so the idea that they would care at all about the ethics of such a situation is laughable.
I'm not saying that is what happened. But it is absolutely and 100% true that it is a perfectly *reasonable* assumption given what we already know about the morals, ethics, and actions of the people you're defending from perfectly reasonable suggestions.
When somebody willingly, and intentionally murders thousands of innocent people, you make yourself a fool to claim that it's unreasonable to suggest they'd murder a few more to get away with their crimes.
Seriously, dude, if you don't know that there is a fair chance that BushCo were involved than you're just a sycophantic fool who hasn't paid one bit of attention to anything they've done or the manner in which they've done it since those same scum first came into power under Nixon.
Seriously, grow up, start dealing with the real world. There are evil people out there who will do anything to get power over others and our system is designed in such a way to select those people above ethical ones.
healthy distrust of your government is normal and helpful to the functioning of a vibrant society
however, rabid, paranoid schizophrenic musings on all evil in the world falling at the government's doorstep is not anywhere near the definition of "healthy distrust". more like pathological hobbling distrust
However, suspecting their involvement in actions which they are the only people to benefit *is* healthy distrust.
Your position is that anything too out of the "ordinary" couldn't possibly happen which is a deadly attitude for a free society.
Perhaps you should go read up on "The Big Lie". Wolfowitz did. He got a PhD studying it.
It relies on fools like you for it to succeed.
When government is formed the citizens create a social contract, which limits individual freedoms for the good of the whole. If that's not the purpose of government, I don't know what is.
The purpose of government is so that those who run it can fuck everyone else with an air of legitimacy.
The purpose of "representative government" is to give the rubes the illusion that they can meaningfully influence the process.
Now you do know what the purpose is. The big question is how did you possibly reach your current age without realizing something *that* simple. That's very seriously naive.
I'm afraid you subscribe to the common propaganda about the Church put forth by Protestants. Recent historical analysis of the Inquisition, for instance, shows that thousands of times more people were burned for witchcraft by Protestant communities than the Catholic Church.
One church another church. All you demonstrate is a simple proof that there is no all powerful god who ever wanted to communicate a clear message to humanity. Were there it never could have gotten so confused. Simple and absolute proof, yet you completely fail to grasp what you just said.
Yes, the Catholic Church and the Protestant churches have always been bottom of the barrel scum with few, if any exceptions. You're not actually making any sort of a point here regardless of what you think.
Now, I am not trying to exonerate the Catholic Church; I detest many things about it myself. But your portrayal of them as being a force for suppressing rather than preserving, on the whole, knowledge throughout the Dark Ages simply does not stand up to what we know about history.
Actually, it does. Your rewriting of history to attempt to exonerate a baby raping, nazi supporting, organization who only in the 1920s gave up the official policy of torture for heretics does demonstrate much about your character and your disgust for ethical behavior, but just because you make ridiculous claims flying in the face of what we do know about history doesn't make them true.
And your claim that Muslims preserved more knowledge than the Church simply shows how biased and ridiculous your claims are.
Yes, you desperately want that fact to be incorrect so you demand that it must be. That's the defining quality of the religious.
Given how much farther advanced they were due to building off of the knowledge that they preserved, it's quite obvious.
Again, your desperate delusional desires to believe that evil is good have no bearing whatsoever on reality.
You might consider providing proof for your insane babbling, rather than demand some from me which you will reject out of hand as it doesn't come from properly sterilized sources.
Once again, I would like to see proof that "a good portion" of officers rarely think and are abusive and incompetent.
Just think how it would be possible for it to be any other way.
When half of our prison population is non violent drug offenders, and the prison population has doubled since 1980 and both of these facts are due to piss poor laws and the corruption that caused them to be put in place, then you can not possibly find a decent, ethical human being to be a cop. If they were decent or ethical, then they would refuse to enforce laws which have no possible positive effect on society and have proven to lead to nothing but more and more violent crime, the destruction of the 4th amendment and massive profits for the prison industry of which cops are a part.
Seriously, in a country as corrupt as ours with lawmakers and law enforcement so completely corrupted all the good people left in disgust a long fucking time ago.
It's really not that hard to figure out simple obvious things like that on your own. Maybe instead of asking everyone else for proof you should spend 5 minutes thinking realistically about the situation?
In short, the scientific debate was largely peripheral to the Galileo affair. What got Galileo in trouble is that he insisted on drawing theological conclusions from his scientific data.
Ahhh, so it's perfectly ok to use brutal thuggery to oppress opinions and free thinking provided it's in defense of idiotic fairy tales which are being used to keep people under the control of a sick group of monsters.
It's good to know that you're such a nice, rational, decent, ethical upstanding human being.
Oh, and who do you think preserved most of the pre-Dark Ages knowledge for us in the first place? Who copied and preserved the Greek philosophical texts?
That would be mostly to the credit of the Muslims. The Church did some positive things in that area, but nowhere near enough to outweigh their policy of destroying all knowledge that disagreed with their fairy tale.
There was some small amount of knowledge saved by the church, but their policy was to opposite, so you're taking an exception and trying to put it forward as the general case which is obviously nonsensical.
Keep in mind that you're defending some of the most vile specimens that our species has ever produced. People who write at length about how important it was to baste heretics while roasting them alive so that they could suffer longer and that for the "crime" of disagreeing with the church on matters which they were quite obviously wrong even at the time.
Seriously, try and have a sense of perspective. A few accidental good deeds do not make up for a couple thousand years of the most disgusting, malicious, and willful atrocities in the name of oppressing sane, rational thought.
The one that violated a steady stream of UN sanctions, each of which called for consequences exactly like what happened? That one?
You keep pulling out idiotic arguments like this as if they were in any way relevant. The US violates UN orders. Israel is in violation of many as well. So, sorry, but you can not under any circumstances use violation of UN policies as an argument for US action and hope to be treated as if you were an honest, rational person. What you are engaging in right now is called "hypocrisy" and it's a disgusting habit.
Clearly, for some reason, you preferred to have Saddam slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people from outside of his Tikriti tribe, and are mysteriously glad that he refused to disclose what happened to the tons of VX gas he had stockpiled, and are amused that he kicked the UN inspectors out after never allowing them to freely operate as agreed. Clearly you're frustrated that the long range missles (which he agreed to stop building after he was kicked out of Kuwait) that he continued to buy from North Korea and work on, and deploy, right up through 2003, never got to be used on the people you actually hate (who is it you were hoping he'd use those on, anyway... Iran? Israel? Kuwait? The Saudis?).
This is also a disgustingly dishonest and contemptible bit of asshattery.
You do know that when Saddam gassed the Kurds he used our gas, right? Again, you do not get to claim any sort of moral high ground when the US was the primary supporter of Saddam and Saddam's genocidal tendencies. It makes you look like a joke and it's embarrassing to the citizens of this country that actually have ethics and care about their country.
We put him in power, we used him as a tool to keep the region destabilized. You do not get to claim to be on the good side without addressing those issues in an honest and honorable manner. So again, your disgustingly dishonest hypocrisy is all you're demonstrating.
You do also know that just because somebody doesn't support murdering and/or displacing over a million people for the profit of the oil and weapons industries through a scam which was blatantly obvious and completely transparent from the start to anybody who actually pays attention doesn't mean that they support some other scumbag. That was a lie and you told it intentionally in order to deceive people. That's disgusting.
I'm sorry that you don't even understand anything about ethics, but not everybody thinks it's sane to support some completely morally bankrupt group of scumbags just because they made you wet your panties in fear of the boogie man.
Saddam violated the sovereignty of his neighbor by sending huge colums of tanks and soldiers across the border, killing those trying to defend it, and staking a claim to that country as his own. When you iniate a conflict like that (as he did, to expand Iraq's territory by violently annexing Kuwait), you waive your own claim to sovreignty. Just as a murderer waives any claim to his own life.
OK, so according to you, the US has given up its sovereignty, and you yourself through your active support for murderers have given up your right to life. Or are you going to try and pull some idiotic nonsense like claiming that since we haven't annexed Iraq that it's completely different and that since we're magically always right we can't be held to the same standards as the rest of the world? You are a very slimy hypocritical monster if so, and you damn well know it.
Which obviously disappoints you, since you really loved the guy. It's a shame you can't find it in you to love the population of Iraq, who no longer have to worry about his sons' goon squads putting parents through industrial shredding machines in front of their children for daring to oppose Saddam politically.
Again, disagreeing with the terroristic traitors running this country doesn't mean that one supports other scumbags. Of course, we immediately started torturing Iraqis once we took over as well as i
I'm not saying the Republicans are angels by any stretch when it comes to campaign shenanigans - but then they aren't the ones trying to claim the moral high ground, generally.
Are you clinically insane, or just a delusional liar?
You do know that values and morals are what the Republicans constantly claim the moral high ground on even while proving themselves the worst at such things, right?
You do know that's about their entire routine, right?
If you do not know those things, then you are so out of touch with reality that it's not even the least bit funny. Please just don't say anything if you can only say things that are so incredibly insane and in direct conflict with reality in every particular.
Sure, everyone tries to claim the moral high ground, but nobody comes close to the modern Republican party in making blatantly false claims of morality while pissing in the face of ethical behavior at every opportunity.
Seriously, grow up, act like an adult and for the love of anything decent stop telling lies so stupid and obvious that you insult yourself more than anybody else by repeating that nonsense.
Many other services to the jail system are provided by the companies with the most ties to politicians or bureaucrats - maybe that's an Illinois thing, not sure.
While Illinois is certainly notable for its corruption, the private prison system is truly one of the worst threats we face.
The prison industrial complex including private prisons, guard unions, police and other law enforcement etc is one of the largest lobbyists we have. Guess what their only real option for increasing profits through lobbying is?
Inventing more crimes, increasing penalties for existing crimes and encouraging recidivism. Remember those aren't human beings entitled to live their lives after paying their debt to society, they're a liability on the balance sheet and the prison industry is damn well *entitled* to profits at your expense regardless of human rights or the cost to society, don't you know?
Go fuck yourself. That 'humor' is irresponsible, reprehensible, and, above all, unfunny.
Don't you think you should pick a nick without "Punk" in it if you're just going to be a whiny little bitch with a sandy vagina?
Seriously.
It is reasonably rstablished that when everyone else is saying your wrong, you are generally the one who is wrong. If you have a hard time understanding that, then you have a severe disconnect with reality.
Not really. If you were talking about anything rational or anything that had evidence, then you might be close to making a valid point, but you're not.
Actually, you completely wrong there.
And then you go on to do nothing to demonstrate your ridiculous claim. Yes, there are mentions of actual historical *places* and *people*. Likewise most of Greek mythology is set in real places. None of that says anything about the truth of the magical fairy tale nonsense.
They could be but seeing how you can't test for it, you are in no position to make a statement one way or another. If you choose to, it will be nothing but your opinion which carries about as much weight as the person's who you are attempting to claim is wrong.
Which is likewise complete nonsense. Your insistence that such a ridiculous statement must be true just demonstrates the caustic affect of blind faith on basic reasoning skills. There is no evidence of any god or gods although there have been thousands proposed. Every mystical claim of any religion which admits to testing has proven false. So someone saying they believe in mystical fairies because they had it drummed into their head before their brain was developed enough to differentiate fantasy and reality is not in any way on the same level as the idea that such far out fantasies should require some sort of evidence.
When did changing from a geocentric orbit prove you to be right? Your attempting to ride on the coat tails of issues long resolved and they don't help your case much. No where in any of the bibles does it say everything revolves around the earth, that was solely a conscript of man. Yet here you are thinking that your "smart" by bringing it up as if it is supposed to show your sanity above anyone else's.
You claimed that if most people believe something, then somebody who doesn't think that must be wrong. Once upon a time most people believed in the heliocentric idea. Some people didn't agree and thought the sun was the center of the solar system.
According to you, the heliocentric idea was correct until enough people started believing in the sol centric idea at which point reality changed to fit the popular view.
That is a consequence of your statement. The idiocy inherent in your position is what I was illustrating.
I'm not sure if your abstract reality thinks that atheist are infallible or something, or if your just too fucking stupid to understand a simple sentence, Either way, you took something completely our of context and twisted it for your own purposes.
LOL, neither obviously. You merely failed to use written language to communicate a simple idea. You still haven't managed to do so effectively. Perhaps you should try more thinking and less believing? That's usually the cure.
OK. Stoning is required, citation from the New Testament please.
Typical idiotic nonsense from somebody who hasn't actually bothered to read the book.
I don't have to supply a citation from the new testament. You seem to know, by your deceptive attempt to redraw the map, that there are plenty of examples in the old testament, correct?
Not one letter of one word of any of those old laws were changed by Jesus according to him (or the writers who made him up, of course).
So you can not under any circumstances claim to be a follower of Jesus and disregard word one of any of the atrocious, disgusting demands made in the bible.
See Matthew 5:17-18
Now, as to your examples all they do is demonstrate huge blatant contradictions in the bible and in the characterization of Jesus in particular.
So, if you're really desperate to believe in some silly nonsense, then you can pick and choose bits and ignore others, but then you've done nothing but demonstrate that you know full well that the whole can't be taken seriously by a sane person.
Christianity is more about a personal faith in God;
Bullshit. If it was about anything of the sort, there would be no need for the Jesus myth. It's about faith certainly, but faith is an unmitigated evil. The belief in the ridiculous in the absence and often in the face of evidence. Nothing good comes out of that.
Besides, if it were about personal faith, then the bible wouldn't be associated with it in any way. Believing in a book of ancient fairy tales isn't a personal faith, it's following a faith constructed for the purpose of forcing submission to those in power. Try picking up a history book and maybe thinking a little bit. Look around, notice the big historical trends that keep repeating based on the same tired old lies.
You seem like a smart guy but I think you have some dumb beliefs.
That's funny. You're the one defending fairy tales as if they were true. I'm merely pointing out facts. I don't have "beliefs" in the way you do.
Not that kind of fail. That's a retarded use of the word anyway ;)
I really hope that you understand that that was an attempt (arguably poor) at humor.
When atheist are wrong, and many religions state that, it doesn't mean they are coming together, it means that there is a high likelihood that atheist are wrong.
OK, so you have proven yourself to be a total failure at basic reasoning skills and nothing more with that bit of lunacy.
There is zero evidence for any religion being true (or even sane).
People who don't choose to believe idiotic nonsense "just because" aren't wrong. They're rational. That's outside right or wrong. People who do believe such things have a vanishingly small chance of being right, but given how unlikely it's zero for most intents and purposes. So they're most likely dead fucking wrong. Actually most of them absolutely have to be if one is right. They're definitely irrational though.
I'm still laughing at your point which is that "whatever a bunch of people think must be right". So when exactly did the earth stop being the center of the universe and move to its present location? You do know that if you assume what you said was sane, then you have to assume that that change did, in fact, happen.
What a nutter.
After all Bush is Christian (not that anyone ever checked :-p), that proves they're all evil, right ?
No, thousands of years of history prove that.
By contrast pointing out that the founder of islam was a thieving (took things from people violently) paedophile (f*cked children below 9 years old) rapist (f*cked said child without her permission, using force, also others) is a fact (according to muslim sources), yet apparently here facts are not important, and have to be denied.
Who cares? People who pull such evil scams as inventing religions are always shitbags. So what.
Perhaps Jesus should have murdered some more women and children, and stolen more. Surely it seems that would have raised his standing on slashdot (and elsewhere) enormously.
No, the problem with that is that there actually was a Mohammed. There never was an actual Jesus.
Assuming your retelling to be truthful then these people were probably not Christians, you understand that right?
You do know that that sounds *exactly* like Christians. You know the evil motherfuckers, who used to specify that people were *basted* while being roasted alive for the atrocious crime of not believing idiotic nonsense so they'd suffer longer. You know those Christians with 2000 years history of atrocities? You do understand that, right?
If you think that isn't what Christians are then you obviously don't know the first fucking thing about the religion.
You do know that stoning heretics is still required, right? Maybe there aren't any actual Christians left. It looks like the Muslims are the only ones who actually believe their idiotic fairy tales. You sure as shit aren't a Christian as evidenced by that crap you spewed.
Maybe you should consider reading the bible before opening your mouth and lying?
I always thought it was kind of neat that the Jewish passover celebration has been done for like 3500 years without fail.
Oh please. One Passover a friend of mine spilled the wine all over the unleavened bread *and* his grandmother. Sounds like a pretty epic fail to me.
I'm sure that's not the only case in 3500 years.
The remaining three gospels pretty much have the usual resurrection stories in the usual places.
Yes, but Mark was the original. The others were later plagiarisms with additions by the "authors". So, If you were trying to pretend that any of them were in any way legitimate history as opposed to allegory and/or fairy tale then you have to reject the "usual" resurrection in the "usual" places since they were added much after the supposed time of the stories by unknown people who had no knowledge of any of the alleged "real people" in the story. Likewise, Mark was written by an unknown author, it's not even pretending to be an eyewitness account and it was written far after the alleged events (for which there is also no historical basis for believing).
So those later additions to the stories that were not part of the original parable are only "usual" because the various churches tortured and murdered anybody who spoke against it for heresy. It's no surprise Christianity had to be spread by the sword. It's way too far out, blatantly false, and completely idiotic for it to have spread any other way.
While I would agree with your conclusion that men control men using the Bible as a tool, my reading of the Bible has led me to the exact opposite conclusion, that it wasn't about men controlling men, it was about men controlling themselves through FAITH.
However all that faith does is gives power to those who decide what you are to have faith in which you then aren't allowed to question or you get murdered for heresy *as the bible absolutely demands*. Your "solution" is only the primary problem in the whole fairy tale.
Poor reasoning, and you've completely missed the point in your desperate need to believe that nonsense must magically be true because you want it to be.
So, if it was dated to 4 BCE (thats BC for you christians who havn't adopted the new format for dates)
That doesn't make any sense. It's like saying the Harry Potter books were written after Harry Potter lived.
Jesus was invented in the Gospel of Mark. Do try to keep up.
Obama has already gone back on a campaign promise before even being elected (voting for FISA
It's much worse than you portray it. He didn't merely "go back on a campaign promise". He directly violated the oath of the office he's running for.
Assaulting the constitution is not upholding and defending it.
It's the same thing for Bush and everyone who voted for this so Obama isn't alone in his treason, but he certainly doesn't get any points for being a bandwagon traitor.
Eventually, the rich would end up owning everyone else, because people would have no choice but to sell themselves into slavery. Without a government to balance the unbridled power of money in a free market, what would keep that from happening? I've already shown the 'invisible hand' is useless in stopping a determined rich person from oppressing a poor person, as he can always outbid the poor person. So what do you think would stop all this from happening? Wishful thinking? Good intentions? What?
This is true enough were we to instantly, completely replace the current crop of congress critters with hard core idealogue Libertarians.
That, however, is not at all a realistic possibility. So as a counter to the current situation which is business and government actively colluding against the people for more or less the same goals, I vote libertarian.
The Democrats are too nanny state for my tastes and they're not showing any signs of acting sane about the economic situation. The Republicans are *literally* the direct intellectual ( and in many cases the direct human descendants) of the Nazis who spend far more than even the Democrats.
So, while you do make good points, the points aren't really tied to the current reality. They are arguments against an ideologically pure Libertarian government assuming that all other parties magically blinked out of existence.
Given how bad, how out of touch with reality, and how completely sold out *both* parties are, adding in some people who's ideology involves reducing the government's ability to screw us for the benefit of those who bribe them the most is a greater advantage than a liability IMO.
Depressing situation isn't it? Conservatism made the Republican Party an actual party rather than the me-tooism of the 40s and 50s. They win the House and Senate for the first time in forty years while running on an unapologetically conservative platform. Bush wins while running as some weird bleeding heart conservative.
So what do we get?
Vast increase in federal spending!
Vast increase in federal power!
Dude, you're thinking Reagan, not Bush. Bush is just Reagan 2. Same criminally treasonous policies, same disasterous results. There was more actual wealth in America to help cover that up. Now it's all been leeched off and now *your* chickens are coming home to roost.
They've been running on an "appeal to religious loonies while claiming to be conservative" platform. Huge difference.
They won the house and senate on a campaign of "liberals are evil commie faggots" and "America is a Christian nation" rewriting of history even though the rejection of religious delusions as a basis of government is the primary defining characteristic of America.
"Conservatism" is what has destroyed the Republican party. The fact that they can only sell themselves to the bottom of the barrel of our society based on ignorance, hatred, and really stupid lies makes the delusional nonsense you wrote as unsurprising as it is disgusting.
I won't be voting for Obama or McCain but I don't see how I can support any of these crazies either.
I typically vote Libertarian, but I think I'm going to have to write in Stephen Colbert this year.
At least the bottom of the barrel must be shiny clean now, right? What could possibly be left there.