lol. So when you inevitably die, your relatives can sue the government for failing to keep you alive? Awesome idea! As soon as you get that clarified in the laws, I'm SO getting a green card.
What's funniest is that the same Americans who are against taking money from all Americans to help offset health care costs for some other Americans often turn around and scream the loudest about how important it is to take money from all Americans to fund the military and kill innocent civilians half-way around the world.
Yep, every citizen I've ever talked to has explicitly told me that they're in favor of killing innocent civilians. They also want the government to go around curb-stomping puppies and raping nuns. Those yanks really are a bunch of evil bastard, eh?
Yet those same Americans will turn around seconds later, and complain about how other Americans have an "entitlement mentality" when these other people want such basic things as affordable (not even "free"!) health care, or even a slight degree of job security.
What differentiates between those ideas that it's okay to feel "entitled" to, versus those that lead to a "entitlement mentality"?
The fact that inalienable rights are things which nobody has to give you - the only reason we even talk about them is because others have tried to take them away. Whereas the "rights" you're talking about inherently depend on someone else. Health care isn't something you're born with, or something you'll find in the middle of a jungle - it's something that requires the labor of another person. You can not have a right which requires someone else to do things for you.
Heh. I think it's really funny that medicare is considered "mandatory spending", while defense - one of the few legitimate duties of government - is considered discretionary. It's also interesting that the FBI and the Department of Energy also fall under the "National Defense" label.
Unlike the parent poster, I'd much rather have a socialized space exploration program than socialized medicine. The medicare budget alone could fund NASA 20 times over. You could have had Americans walking on Mars by now, instead of paying for gang members to get stitched up after their weekly gunfight.
How much will this man-robot soul transfer process cost (i.e. how accessible will it be?), and what happens when the robot-men and the meat-men inevitably clash over resources?
Same thing as now, when meat-men and meat-men clash over resources. One side wins and one side loses.
I dunno why, but people seem to think that the human race should no longer be subject to any type of evolutionary pressure. Seems like a silly belief to me.
If the Bloods and the Crips are off of American soil, why get involved in their squabble, especially when our involvement causes all sorts of other problems?
Because we all live on the same planet. Why get involved when China starts "recycling" electronics by burning them? Why oppose Japanese whaling fleets? Why protest against French (or any) nuclear testing? Why boycott South Africa for being an apartheid state?
Like it or not, events taken halfway around the world can and do affect us. How we respond to various events is always open to debate, but just saying "it's not within our borders" and sticking your head in the sand is not an option. The US learned that the hard way in WW2 and they've been overcompensating ever since, but even that's better than the isolationist mentality.
And you implied you were Israeli in an earlier post (about a year ago); my bad.
I don't think I ever implied that, as I'm not in the habit of lying unnecessarily. Glad to clear up the misunderstanding, though.
The standard historical interpretation of the Business Plot these days is that there was something there, and some of those industrialists wanted to do what Butler accused them of organizing, but that they hadn't gotten anywhere near the point where they could actually pull it off.
Right! And if that's all that Butler-at-al were alleging, I wouldn't be calling them a bunch of lunatics. But they aren't. They've taken it to a whole new level of crazy.
An analogy, if I may - if someone wants to tell me that the Bush admin had relevant info prior to the 9/11 attacks which they chose to ignore, I'd say it's unlikely but at least plausible. I certainly wouldn't call the person crazy for suggesting it. But when the nutbags start telling me that the WTC was brought down by super-nano-quantum-thermate which has the property of both exploding and not, and that witnesses who saw an airplane hit the pentagon were right about it's flight-path but wrong about it being an airplane... well, that's when I get concerned about whether they've been taking the right medication.
I didn't side track, I responded to your point about people wanting to harm others, making the point that it's not just so called terrorists that want to harm.
Which, once again, has nothing to do with your original statement. I asked you why you think it's "arrogant" to want to protect yourself, and you answered "but we harm people too!". That's a complete non-sequitur. You may as well have said "I like apples!".
Perhaps we/I live (foolishly?) in hope of a better world?
I think that the actions of the US military are harmful to the US citizens, yes. Modern US military policy is most closely related to an autoimmune disorder.
You're entitled to your opinion. I'm just not sure where the "yes" came from, since I never asked for anyone's opinion about US military policy.
Of course, the whole reason there are that many anti-American Muslims in the first place is because we keep meddling in the affairs of people squabbling over a patch of dirt that they each think is sacred based on some ancient fairy tale. The Muslims are crazy, of course, but that's no reason to inflame them by meddling in this religious spat.
Yeah, I feel the same way about the Bloods and the Crips. Just let them conduct their business in peace, I say. Live and let live!
(And, yes, I know you're Israeli.)
I had to go and look at the flag on my uniform, just to make sure. It's red and white, with a maple-leaf in the middle, not blue and white with a star of david. So, I'm pretty sure you're wrong (3 out of 3!) but I'm open to changing my mind if you can present a strong enough case.
Yeah, I skipped over that part, so I was under the impression that he was actually a rational person. My bad. If I had realized that he's the type who can honestly believe that a Secret Army of a half-million soldiers was ramping up to take over the US... well, I'd probably have referred him to a psychiatrist instead.
At the risk of getting in to a pointless argument, I feel the U.S. invasion of several countries (illegally or otherwise) seems to be a sign of the U.S. wanting to harm people and as we've seen, all to often they have been civilians.
Well, yeah, it's going to be pointless if you insist on side-tracking it. What in the world does that have to do with your original comment?
War is bad period! No one has the 'right hands' to wield war machines IMHO.
I've never understood how grown men can make such childishly naive statements. So what if "no one has the right hands"? As long as the technology exists, it's going to be used. If you're going to live with the rest of us in the real world, you're going to have to wrap your mind around the idea that people are going to do things you don't like. Stomping your foot and screaming "BUT I DON'T LIKE IT!" isn't going to change anything.
You've got the right idea, but, really, you wouldn't even need "operators" per say. We have the technology to build drones capable of fully autonomous air-to-air combat. All you need is a trained monkey sitting in front of a screen, with a big red "go/no-go" switch to authorize weapons release.
Yea, a lot of people go a bit nutty in their old age. You may want to check out what else Butler said:
In November 1934, Butler told the committee that a group of businessmen, backed by a private army of 500,000 ex-soldiers and others, intended to establish a fascist dictatorship. Butler had been asked to lead it, he said, by Gerald P. MacGuire, a bond salesman with Grayson M-P Murphy & Co. The New York Times reported that Butler had told friends that General Hugh S. Johnson, a former official with the National Recovery Administration, was to be installed as dictator. Butler said MacGuire had told him the attempted coup was backed by three million dollars, and that the 500,000 men were probably to be assembled in Washington, D.C. the following year. All the parties alleged to be involved, including Johnson, said there was no truth in the story, calling it a joke and a fantasy.[43]
We don't need science and technology to live or be happy, yet we do need food, so that comparison doesn't hold water.
And science and technology aren't addictive, so neither does yours:) I figured if you wanted to make silly comparisons, I may as well play along.
Anyway, to answer the rest of your claims - you're comparing apples and oranges.
Religion is a generic term which encompasses thousands of different beliefs, and is interchangeable with non-religious beliefs. People can find comfort and support in numerous ways, some of which are religious, some of which are spiritual, and some of which are secular.
Science, on the other hand, doesn't have beliefs or dogmas; it's merely a methodological approach to data analysis, and is the only one of it's kind. We have no other reliable way of analyzing the world around us. What we do with the knowledge we gain has nothing to do with science. When a suicide bomber blows up a bunch of people, he's not doing it for science.
That's why I think your comparison is a bit silly. Science doesn't tell us what to do or what to believe, it's merely the process we use to gain knowledge. Religion, on the other hand, DOES tell us what to do and believe, including what to do with the knowledge that science has given us.
Finally, in true slashdot fashion, I'll close off with a car analogy:
You're effectively asking me what the difference is between a company that makes cars, and the lunatics next door who think that the All Mighty Engine sacrificed his spark-plugs so that those who believe in him can go to the Big Garage in the Sky. Even if we ignore their willingness to run-over anyone who disagrees with them, the difference is still pretty damn obvious.
You misunderstood. I wasn't advocating it, I was saying that would be the only way eradicate it, because I don't believe it would be possible or right to try to educate away somebody's religion.
Gotcha. I thought that might be the case, but figured I'd better clarify.
It's not a conclusion, it's a possibility. A lot of what religions teach is good, and societies are often built on a religious foundation - so without religion maybe societies would have lacked some of that social cohesion and been more fragmented.
If by "a lot" you mean < 1% of their teachings, then yeah, ok, there's "a lot" of good stuff there. On the other hand, the bad stuff far outweighs the good stuff. The very premise of Christianity (for example) is simply horrid. It's based on the idea that you are a horrible, slimy, shit-covered worm of a man, who deserves to be killed and to suffer forever just for the crime of being alive. It then goes on to teach that the only way for you to be forgiven for this crime... is for an innocent man to be executed in your place. ...
I couldn't invent a more horrible system of justice if I tried!
The way I see it, saying that religion has "good stuff" is rather like saying that the husband who beats his wife also "buys her nice things". Yipee. You're missing the forest for the trees.
As for societal cohesion, yes, religion is very good at binding people together and encouraging xenophobia. I'm not sure why you'd want that. The ONLY reason to encourage such cohesion is to survive in the competition against other groups which are organized in a similar fashion. In that sense, yes, religion probably was a survival strategy - groups which didn't bind together were much more likely to be conquered by those which did. That doesn't make it desirable, though. It also doesn't make it the only effective survival strategy. The Soviets did a pretty good job of holding their society together through political ideology instead of religion. Feudal Japan did it through a system of "honour" and "duty". North Korea does it through tyranny. There are plenty of ways to bind people together; the problem is that most of them suck. I'd much rather have a society that's a loose arrangement of individuals than a society that's composed of mindless automatons.
From your response I take it you don't see any good in religion, but do you have any evidence that a world without it would be a better place?
There are studies showing that, on average, religiosity amongst the citizens of a nation tends to be directly related to crime and inversely related to quality of life. However, so many factors play into those stats that I'd be hesitant to pin it solely on religion. On an individual level, the stats show similar trends. For instance, the most fundamentalist Christians have the highest divorce rates in America, while Atheists are amongst the lowest. You could also look at prison populations, which seem to have a significant dearth of atheists. Moreover, we can look at the policies which various religions encourage. It's no accident that the rise in Teen Pregnancy in America is directly correlated with "abstinence only" programs in schools. It's no accident that the HIV rate in Africa continues to rise, while missionaries make aid contingent on the rejection of condoms. It's no surprise that suicide bombers continue to kill for the glory of Allah, and it's no surprise that the question of the ownership of Jerusalem continues to ferment hate and animosity between the Abrahamic faiths.
Of course, there's no way to "prove" that a world which never had any religion in the first place would have been better. In the same vein, there's also no way to prove that a world without recreational drugs would have been any better. What we can do is show evidence that both religion and drugs are harmful and provide few if any benefits t
Oh, I got your point. I just think you've got it completely backwards. Ask a bunch of random Christians about the meaning of life or morality and you'll get wildly differing answers. Why are they so inconsistent if they're getting answers from the same source?
Their religion doesn't answer those questions for them - they answer them on their own, and then slap the "because god told me so" label on them. Do you honestly believe that people would be completely unable to answer those questions without religion? Where do you think religion came from in the first place? If there's one thing that the existence of religion can show us, it's that people are very good at making shit up. If some guys in the middle of a desert 2,000 years ago could invent a reason to keep living, don't you think people today can do the same damn thing - but better?
Moreover, how does this relate to the rest of the discussion? Yeah, people who are brainwashed to believe X have a strong conviction that X is right. So what?
You're essentially arguing that religion makes people feel good, and we're mostly in agreement on that. So what? How is that a dismissal of the cocaine analogy?
I'd like to be able to be as optimistic as you, but everything I've seen points to the opposite. Take away religion (let's just assume it's possible) and people will continue to kill and persecute each other, but in the name of something else.
Sure, that's possible, but:
1. At the very least you'll see a drop in such incidents. Look at Scandinavian countries if you need evidence of that. 2. You'll have one less thing to worry about.
Take away cocaine, take away all drugs until the only one left is coffee, and people will abuse coffee and kill over it in the same way they do over cocaine.
I dunno, I've yet to see any mass-killings at a Starbucks:)
The only way to get rid of the cause of the problem (us) would be to kill every person in every generation who shows any signs of religious or addictive behaviour.
Easy there, Stalin. My approach would be education. It's slow, but it works.
Apart from the problem of killing almost everyone on the planet, you would also be killing some of our most creative and useful members of society. Some of my favourite music and literature would not exist without drugs.
There's a difference between addiction and use. Even if we accept the idea that drug use is necessary for the production of creative works (something I would dispute) it's still quite possible for artists to engage in drug use without becoming addicted. That's dependent on the type of drug we're talking about, of course, as well as the personality and predisposition to addiction of the individual.
By the way, I'm actually in favor of legalizing all drugs. I have no interest in them myself, but I don't see any reason why the government should be regulating what people do to their own bodies. Likewise, though I'm an atheist, I abhor the idea of criminalizing religion. You can't force people to be rational - if you take away their irrational behavior by force, they'll only find another outlet.
And there is the strong possibility that without religion, people throughout the ages would have been MORE violent and oppressive to one other than they are with it.
How in the world did you come to that conclusion?
It's not going to be possible to rid everyone in the world of their relgious and addictive urges
Of course not. We can't rid the world of murderers or rapists, either. We can certainly work on reducing their numbers, though.
you are assuming (hoping) that without those outlets the urges will disappear or maybe be re-routed through something you think would be beneficial to society. I really doubt that.
I'm not assuming anything. I'm quite aware that people adopt all sorts of irrational beliefs, regardless of whether they're religious or not. That's one of the reasons why I'd never argue for the forced abolition of religion - it wouldn't do any good. What I am advocating is that we make an effort to educate people on topics like logic, reason, and science-based skepticism. You don't cure an addict by taking away his cocaine and putting him in a room full of heroin - you do it by educating him and giving him the information and support that he needs in order to help himself. After that, all you can do is stand by and hope for the best.
You can't just remove religion and cocaine and then expect irrational beliefs and addictive behaviour to go away. You are taking away the symptoms and expecting the causes to disappear.
Yes, that's a debate that I've been going over in my head for quite a while. The thing is, I think it's a feedback loop. The symptoms become the causes, which become the symptoms, and so on. Taking away the symptoms might not necessarily remove all the causes, but at least it can break the loop and give people a chance to try and help themselves.
Anyway, the point is, given how deeply intertwined religion is with those things which weigh most heavily on the human mind (or "soul", if you believe there is one), I don't think the cocaine analogy, nor the implied addiction model of religious belief, even come close to explaining why people adhere so steadfastly to religion.
You're going to have to do a better job of explaining why. I get your "unanswerable questions" argument, but - no offence - it's shit. Theism doesn't answer any of those questions. It barely even tries. It simply asserts commandments based on an Ultimate Authority - an immortal Mafia Don who promises to break our legs if we don't don't pay homage and follow his orders.
The actual meaning of life, the question of morality... those questions remain unanswered on any broad level. That's because we as individual human beings get to define what those things are, and no external orders can ever solve those dilemmas for us. Nobody can tell you what the purpose of your life is, and nobody can dictate a moral code to you. I find religion particularly offensive because it pretends to do both. I get one life to live to the best of my ability - a mere 80-ish years on this Earth, if I'm lucky - and some jackass in a funny hat thinks he has the right to dictate how I live it based on orders from his magical sky daddy. Well fuck that. Even if there were a "god" to tell me how to live my life, I'd tell him to get fucked too - I don't give a damn how he intended me to live it because it's purpose is mine to determine. He could have some input on it (if he'd speak the fuck up) but the final decisions would still be mine to make. As long as you allow for free will, no religion can ever give you an answer to what the purpose of life is.
Religion answers the question "What is the meaning of life" to the same extent that cocaine does - it's all about the next fix. We can come up with much better answers than that. Even Douglas Adams' tongue-in-cheek answer was more meaningful and less harmful than the ones provided by most religions.
"whacked-out conspiracy nut who basically just pulled them out of his ass"...is logical fallacy called an ad hominem argument.
No, it's a statement of fact.
You attack me with insults, and you never address the statement I made.
I wasn't referring to you - I was referring to the originator of that argument, who really IS a whacked-out conspiracy nut. I had assumed that you were simply misguided, although I'm starting to change my mind.
The police recordings of the broadcasts coming from the motorcycles around the motorcade in Dealy Plaza can be analyzed just like any recording can be analyzed for the sounds of gunshots. There were sounds of more than 3 gunshots in those Dallas police broadcast recording.
That's complete garbage, of course, although thanks to you I've now learned about yet another piece of Conspiracy Theory lore. D.B. Thomas' "paper" was thoroughly trounced by O'Dell, and has been dismissed by anyone who isn't already a CT nut. Subsequent research has further decimated those claims. You're grasping at straws. Please don't respond any more, if you intend to continue to lie.
Watch a Christian complete phase out and stop processing info when you point out the the many similarities between Jesus and many other similar shepherd gods in other cultures of that same region of the Eastern Med.
I'm not religious, but I "phase out" at that, too. The problem is that these "similarities" are an invention of a whacked-out conspiracy nut who basically just pulled them out of his ass. Non-religious people who buy into it are simply swallowing another form of dogma.
Watch a so-called science-focus skeptic phase out the same way when you point out that a recording of Dallas police broadcast has scientifically proven there were more than 3 shots fired in Dealey Plaza.
If you think that a recording of police broadcasts can "scientifically prove" anything, then you don't really understand what that phrase means.
As far as I can tell, the only thing that your two examples have in common is that they're based on ignorance. Anyone capable of doing basic research and applying simple logic should reject both claims.
Slashdot Mirror
Your entitlements:
1. Life
2. Liberty
3. Pursuit of happiness.
Health care fall under number 1.
lol. So when you inevitably die, your relatives can sue the government for failing to keep you alive? Awesome idea! As soon as you get that clarified in the laws, I'm SO getting a green card.
What's funniest is that the same Americans who are against taking money from all Americans to help offset health care costs for some other Americans often turn around and scream the loudest about how important it is to take money from all Americans to fund the military and kill innocent civilians half-way around the world.
Yep, every citizen I've ever talked to has explicitly told me that they're in favor of killing innocent civilians. They also want the government to go around curb-stomping puppies and raping nuns. Those yanks really are a bunch of evil bastard, eh?
Yet those same Americans will turn around seconds later, and complain about how other Americans have an "entitlement mentality" when these other people want such basic things as affordable (not even "free"!) health care, or even a slight degree of job security.
What differentiates between those ideas that it's okay to feel "entitled" to, versus those that lead to a "entitlement mentality"?
The fact that inalienable rights are things which nobody has to give you - the only reason we even talk about them is because others have tried to take them away. Whereas the "rights" you're talking about inherently depend on someone else. Health care isn't something you're born with, or something you'll find in the middle of a jungle - it's something that requires the labor of another person. You can not have a right which requires someone else to do things for you.
Heh. I think it's really funny that medicare is considered "mandatory spending", while defense - one of the few legitimate duties of government - is considered discretionary. It's also interesting that the FBI and the Department of Energy also fall under the "National Defense" label.
Unlike the parent poster, I'd much rather have a socialized space exploration program than socialized medicine. The medicare budget alone could fund NASA 20 times over. You could have had Americans walking on Mars by now, instead of paying for gang members to get stitched up after their weekly gunfight.
How much will this man-robot soul transfer process cost (i.e. how accessible will it be?), and what happens when the robot-men and the meat-men inevitably clash over resources?
Same thing as now, when meat-men and meat-men clash over resources. One side wins and one side loses.
I dunno why, but people seem to think that the human race should no longer be subject to any type of evolutionary pressure. Seems like a silly belief to me.
If the Bloods and the Crips are off of American soil, why get involved in their squabble, especially when our involvement causes all sorts of other problems?
Because we all live on the same planet. Why get involved when China starts "recycling" electronics by burning them? Why oppose Japanese whaling fleets? Why protest against French (or any) nuclear testing? Why boycott South Africa for being an apartheid state?
Like it or not, events taken halfway around the world can and do affect us. How we respond to various events is always open to debate, but just saying "it's not within our borders" and sticking your head in the sand is not an option. The US learned that the hard way in WW2 and they've been overcompensating ever since, but even that's better than the isolationist mentality.
And you implied you were Israeli in an earlier post (about a year ago); my bad.
I don't think I ever implied that, as I'm not in the habit of lying unnecessarily. Glad to clear up the misunderstanding, though.
The standard historical interpretation of the Business Plot these days is that there was something there, and some of those industrialists wanted to do what Butler accused them of organizing, but that they hadn't gotten anywhere near the point where they could actually pull it off.
Right! And if that's all that Butler-at-al were alleging, I wouldn't be calling them a bunch of lunatics. But they aren't. They've taken it to a whole new level of crazy.
An analogy, if I may - if someone wants to tell me that the Bush admin had relevant info prior to the 9/11 attacks which they chose to ignore, I'd say it's unlikely but at least plausible. I certainly wouldn't call the person crazy for suggesting it. But when the nutbags start telling me that the WTC was brought down by super-nano-quantum-thermate which has the property of both exploding and not, and that witnesses who saw an airplane hit the pentagon were right about it's flight-path but wrong about it being an airplane ... well, that's when I get concerned about whether they've been taking the right medication.
I didn't side track, I responded to your point about people wanting to harm others, making the point that it's not just so called terrorists that want to harm.
Which, once again, has nothing to do with your original statement. I asked you why you think it's "arrogant" to want to protect yourself, and you answered "but we harm people too!". That's a complete non-sequitur. You may as well have said "I like apples!".
Perhaps we/I live (foolishly?) in hope of a better world?
Hoping for it is fine - ignoring reality is not.
Good point! Maybe I'm a deluded idealist...
It's a curable condition :)
I think that the actions of the US military are harmful to the US citizens, yes. Modern US military policy is most closely related to an autoimmune disorder.
You're entitled to your opinion. I'm just not sure where the "yes" came from, since I never asked for anyone's opinion about US military policy.
Of course, the whole reason there are that many anti-American Muslims in the first place is because we keep meddling in the affairs of people squabbling over a patch of dirt that they each think is sacred based on some ancient fairy tale. The Muslims are crazy, of course, but that's no reason to inflame them by meddling in this religious spat.
Yeah, I feel the same way about the Bloods and the Crips. Just let them conduct their business in peace, I say. Live and let live!
(And, yes, I know you're Israeli.)
I had to go and look at the flag on my uniform, just to make sure. It's red and white, with a maple-leaf in the middle, not blue and white with a star of david. So, I'm pretty sure you're wrong (3 out of 3!) but I'm open to changing my mind if you can present a strong enough case.
Yeah, I skipped over that part, so I was under the impression that he was actually a rational person. My bad. If I had realized that he's the type who can honestly believe that a Secret Army of a half-million soldiers was ramping up to take over the US ... well, I'd probably have referred him to a psychiatrist instead.
At the risk of getting in to a pointless argument, I feel the U.S. invasion of several countries (illegally or otherwise) seems to be a sign of the U.S. wanting to harm people and as we've seen, all to often they have been civilians.
Well, yeah, it's going to be pointless if you insist on side-tracking it. What in the world does that have to do with your original comment?
War is bad period! No one has the 'right hands' to wield war machines IMHO.
I've never understood how grown men can make such childishly naive statements. So what if "no one has the right hands"? As long as the technology exists, it's going to be used. If you're going to live with the rest of us in the real world, you're going to have to wrap your mind around the idea that people are going to do things you don't like. Stomping your foot and screaming "BUT I DON'T LIKE IT!" isn't going to change anything.
You've got the right idea, but, really, you wouldn't even need "operators" per say. We have the technology to build drones capable of fully autonomous air-to-air combat. All you need is a trained monkey sitting in front of a screen, with a big red "go/no-go" switch to authorize weapons release.
The U.S. are worried this technology will get into the wrong hands! What makes them think they have the right ones? Such arrogance!
It's arrogant to be concerned about high-tech weapons falling into the hands of people who want to harm you?
Are you off your meds, again?
Yea, a lot of people go a bit nutty in their old age. You may want to check out what else Butler said:
In November 1934, Butler told the committee that a group of businessmen, backed by a private army of 500,000 ex-soldiers and others, intended to establish a fascist dictatorship. Butler had been asked to lead it, he said, by Gerald P. MacGuire, a bond salesman with Grayson M-P Murphy & Co. The New York Times reported that Butler had told friends that General Hugh S. Johnson, a former official with the National Recovery Administration, was to be installed as dictator. Butler said MacGuire had told him the attempted coup was backed by three million dollars, and that the 500,000 men were probably to be assembled in Washington, D.C. the following year. All the parties alleged to be involved, including Johnson, said there was no truth in the story, calling it a joke and a fantasy.[43]
Do file sizes under 4096K still exist?
win+r
cmd
echo Yes > file_size_under_4096k.txt
Tada!
Unless you have been shown their existance. Once you have seen an elephant it is quite impossible to believe that elephants don't exist.
I hear it's much the same with bigfoot.
We don't need science and technology to live or be happy, yet we do need food, so that comparison doesn't hold water.
And science and technology aren't addictive, so neither does yours :) I figured if you wanted to make silly comparisons, I may as well play along.
Anyway, to answer the rest of your claims - you're comparing apples and oranges.
Religion is a generic term which encompasses thousands of different beliefs, and is interchangeable with non-religious beliefs. People can find comfort and support in numerous ways, some of which are religious, some of which are spiritual, and some of which are secular.
Science, on the other hand, doesn't have beliefs or dogmas; it's merely a methodological approach to data analysis, and is the only one of it's kind. We have no other reliable way of analyzing the world around us. What we do with the knowledge we gain has nothing to do with science. When a suicide bomber blows up a bunch of people, he's not doing it for science.
That's why I think your comparison is a bit silly. Science doesn't tell us what to do or what to believe, it's merely the process we use to gain knowledge. Religion, on the other hand, DOES tell us what to do and believe, including what to do with the knowledge that science has given us.
Finally, in true slashdot fashion, I'll close off with a car analogy:
You're effectively asking me what the difference is between a company that makes cars, and the lunatics next door who think that the All Mighty Engine sacrificed his spark-plugs so that those who believe in him can go to the Big Garage in the Sky. Even if we ignore their willingness to run-over anyone who disagrees with them, the difference is still pretty damn obvious.
Can't the same thing be said about science and technology?
In the same sense that the same thing can be said about food.
Science and technology improve our lives and allow us to better understand the universe in which we reside. Religion does none of the above.
You misunderstood. I wasn't advocating it, I was saying that would be the only way eradicate it, because I don't believe it would be possible or right to try to educate away somebody's religion.
Gotcha. I thought that might be the case, but figured I'd better clarify.
It's not a conclusion, it's a possibility. A lot of what religions teach is good, and societies are often built on a religious foundation - so without religion maybe societies would have lacked some of that social cohesion and been more fragmented.
If by "a lot" you mean < 1% of their teachings, then yeah, ok, there's "a lot" of good stuff there. On the other hand, the bad stuff far outweighs the good stuff. The very premise of Christianity (for example) is simply horrid. It's based on the idea that you are a horrible, slimy, shit-covered worm of a man, who deserves to be killed and to suffer forever just for the crime of being alive. It then goes on to teach that the only way for you to be forgiven for this crime ... is for an innocent man to be executed in your place.
...
I couldn't invent a more horrible system of justice if I tried!
The way I see it, saying that religion has "good stuff" is rather like saying that the husband who beats his wife also "buys her nice things". Yipee. You're missing the forest for the trees.
As for societal cohesion, yes, religion is very good at binding people together and encouraging xenophobia. I'm not sure why you'd want that. The ONLY reason to encourage such cohesion is to survive in the competition against other groups which are organized in a similar fashion. In that sense, yes, religion probably was a survival strategy - groups which didn't bind together were much more likely to be conquered by those which did. That doesn't make it desirable, though. It also doesn't make it the only effective survival strategy. The Soviets did a pretty good job of holding their society together through political ideology instead of religion. Feudal Japan did it through a system of "honour" and "duty". North Korea does it through tyranny. There are plenty of ways to bind people together; the problem is that most of them suck. I'd much rather have a society that's a loose arrangement of individuals than a society that's composed of mindless automatons.
From your response I take it you don't see any good in religion, but do you have any evidence that a world without it would be a better place?
There are studies showing that, on average, religiosity amongst the citizens of a nation tends to be directly related to crime and inversely related to quality of life. However, so many factors play into those stats that I'd be hesitant to pin it solely on religion. On an individual level, the stats show similar trends. For instance, the most fundamentalist Christians have the highest divorce rates in America, while Atheists are amongst the lowest. You could also look at prison populations, which seem to have a significant dearth of atheists. Moreover, we can look at the policies which various religions encourage. It's no accident that the rise in Teen Pregnancy in America is directly correlated with "abstinence only" programs in schools. It's no accident that the HIV rate in Africa continues to rise, while missionaries make aid contingent on the rejection of condoms. It's no surprise that suicide bombers continue to kill for the glory of Allah, and it's no surprise that the question of the ownership of Jerusalem continues to ferment hate and animosity between the Abrahamic faiths.
Of course, there's no way to "prove" that a world which never had any religion in the first place would have been better. In the same vein, there's also no way to prove that a world without recreational drugs would have been any better. What we can do is show evidence that both religion and drugs are harmful and provide few if any benefits t
Oh, I got your point. I just think you've got it completely backwards. Ask a bunch of random Christians about the meaning of life or morality and you'll get wildly differing answers. Why are they so inconsistent if they're getting answers from the same source?
Their religion doesn't answer those questions for them - they answer them on their own, and then slap the "because god told me so" label on them. Do you honestly believe that people would be completely unable to answer those questions without religion? Where do you think religion came from in the first place? If there's one thing that the existence of religion can show us, it's that people are very good at making shit up. If some guys in the middle of a desert 2,000 years ago could invent a reason to keep living, don't you think people today can do the same damn thing - but better?
Moreover, how does this relate to the rest of the discussion? Yeah, people who are brainwashed to believe X have a strong conviction that X is right. So what?
You're essentially arguing that religion makes people feel good, and we're mostly in agreement on that. So what? How is that a dismissal of the cocaine analogy?
I'd like to be able to be as optimistic as you, but everything I've seen points to the opposite. Take away religion (let's just assume it's possible) and people will continue to kill and persecute each other, but in the name of something else.
Sure, that's possible, but:
1. At the very least you'll see a drop in such incidents. Look at Scandinavian countries if you need evidence of that.
2. You'll have one less thing to worry about.
Take away cocaine, take away all drugs until the only one left is coffee, and people will abuse coffee and kill over it in the same way they do over cocaine.
I dunno, I've yet to see any mass-killings at a Starbucks :)
The only way to get rid of the cause of the problem (us) would be to kill every person in every generation who shows any signs of religious or addictive behaviour.
Easy there, Stalin. My approach would be education. It's slow, but it works.
Apart from the problem of killing almost everyone on the planet, you would also be killing some of our most creative and useful members of society. Some of my favourite music and literature would not exist without drugs.
There's a difference between addiction and use. Even if we accept the idea that drug use is necessary for the production of creative works (something I would dispute) it's still quite possible for artists to engage in drug use without becoming addicted. That's dependent on the type of drug we're talking about, of course, as well as the personality and predisposition to addiction of the individual.
By the way, I'm actually in favor of legalizing all drugs. I have no interest in them myself, but I don't see any reason why the government should be regulating what people do to their own bodies. Likewise, though I'm an atheist, I abhor the idea of criminalizing religion. You can't force people to be rational - if you take away their irrational behavior by force, they'll only find another outlet.
And there is the strong possibility that without religion, people throughout the ages would have been MORE violent and oppressive to one other than they are with it.
How in the world did you come to that conclusion?
It's not going to be possible to rid everyone in the world of their relgious and addictive urges
Of course not. We can't rid the world of murderers or rapists, either. We can certainly work on reducing their numbers, though.
you are assuming (hoping) that without those outlets the urges will disappear or maybe be re-routed through something you think would be beneficial to society. I really doubt that.
I'm not assuming anything. I'm quite aware that people adopt all sorts of irrational beliefs, regardless of whether they're religious or not. That's one of the reasons why I'd never argue for the forced abolition of religion - it wouldn't do any good. What I am advocating is that we make an effort to educate people on topics like logic, reason, and science-based skepticism. You don't cure an addict by taking away his cocaine and putting him in a room full of heroin - you do it by educating him and giving him the information and support that he needs in order to help himself. After that, all you can do is stand by and hope for the best.
You can't just remove religion and cocaine and then expect irrational beliefs and addictive behaviour to go away. You are taking away the symptoms and expecting the causes to disappear.
Yes, that's a debate that I've been going over in my head for quite a while. The thing is, I think it's a feedback loop. The symptoms become the causes, which become the symptoms, and so on. Taking away the symptoms might not necessarily remove all the causes, but at least it can break the loop and give people a chance to try and help themselves.
Anyway, the point is, given how deeply intertwined religion is with those things which weigh most heavily on the human mind (or "soul", if you believe there is one), I don't think the cocaine analogy, nor the implied addiction model of religious belief, even come close to explaining why people adhere so steadfastly to religion.
You're going to have to do a better job of explaining why. I get your "unanswerable questions" argument, but - no offence - it's shit. Theism doesn't answer any of those questions. It barely even tries. It simply asserts commandments based on an Ultimate Authority - an immortal Mafia Don who promises to break our legs if we don't don't pay homage and follow his orders.
The actual meaning of life, the question of morality ... those questions remain unanswered on any broad level. That's because we as individual human beings get to define what those things are, and no external orders can ever solve those dilemmas for us. Nobody can tell you what the purpose of your life is, and nobody can dictate a moral code to you. I find religion particularly offensive because it pretends to do both. I get one life to live to the best of my ability - a mere 80-ish years on this Earth, if I'm lucky - and some jackass in a funny hat thinks he has the right to dictate how I live it based on orders from his magical sky daddy. Well fuck that. Even if there were a "god" to tell me how to live my life, I'd tell him to get fucked too - I don't give a damn how he intended me to live it because it's purpose is mine to determine. He could have some input on it (if he'd speak the fuck up) but the final decisions would still be mine to make. As long as you allow for free will, no religion can ever give you an answer to what the purpose of life is.
Religion answers the question "What is the meaning of life" to the same extent that cocaine does - it's all about the next fix. We can come up with much better answers than that. Even Douglas Adams' tongue-in-cheek answer was more meaningful and less harmful than the ones provided by most religions.
This...
"whacked-out conspiracy nut who basically just pulled them out of his ass" ...is logical fallacy called an ad hominem argument.
No, it's a statement of fact.
You attack me with insults, and you never address the statement I made.
I wasn't referring to you - I was referring to the originator of that argument, who really IS a whacked-out conspiracy nut. I had assumed that you were simply misguided, although I'm starting to change my mind.
The police recordings of the broadcasts coming from the motorcycles around the motorcade in Dealy Plaza can be analyzed just like any recording can be analyzed for the sounds of gunshots. There were sounds of more than 3 gunshots in those Dallas police broadcast recording.
That's complete garbage, of course, although thanks to you I've now learned about yet another piece of Conspiracy Theory lore. D.B. Thomas' "paper" was thoroughly trounced by O'Dell, and has been dismissed by anyone who isn't already a CT nut. Subsequent research has further decimated those claims. You're grasping at straws. Please don't respond any more, if you intend to continue to lie.
Watch a Christian complete phase out and stop processing info when you point out the the many similarities between Jesus and many other similar shepherd gods in other cultures of that same region of the Eastern Med.
I'm not religious, but I "phase out" at that, too. The problem is that these "similarities" are an invention of a whacked-out conspiracy nut who basically just pulled them out of his ass. Non-religious people who buy into it are simply swallowing another form of dogma.
Watch a so-called science-focus skeptic phase out the same way when you point out that a recording of Dallas police broadcast has scientifically proven there were more than 3 shots fired in Dealey Plaza.
If you think that a recording of police broadcasts can "scientifically prove" anything, then you don't really understand what that phrase means.
As far as I can tell, the only thing that your two examples have in common is that they're based on ignorance. Anyone capable of doing basic research and applying simple logic should reject both claims.