I've spoken to a cop who was ordered to systematically search any Arabic persons and arrest any who didn't have proper ID in the months following 9/11. So yes, this was happening.
Yuhuh. And Jesse Macbeth supposedly took part in the murder and rape of entire Iraqi villages. Of course, upon actual review of his record, it turns out he got booted out of the military before even completing basic training. He wasn't the only one, either - there are multiple examples of people claiming to be soldiers in order to tell insane stories about all the horrible things they've done. Not only are there at least 3 examples I can name off the top of my head, but those 3 are just the ones who managed to get enough media attention for everyone to hear about them. There are tens of thousands of people doing similar things who don't make the news.
The moral of the story - don't believe everything you hear. Lots of people seek attention by pretending to be something they're not.
I'm originally from Europe too. You should care about that "capitalism vs. communism crap" since the debate/fight is still very much alive and the result could be very important to your future quality of life (and that of your children).
As for the moon landing... there's nothing wrong with doubting something, as long as your doubt is based on rational objections. Unfortunately, as you've clearly demonstrated, your doubt is entirely irrational. You have no evidence to substantiate the idea that the moon landing was faked. Instead you fall back on an argument from ignorance followed by an ad-hominem attack aimed at an entire nation. That speaks volumes about why you have "doubts". You need to have a good look at your ideological biases and then try to look at the evidence from an impartial perspective.
It's a lot simpler to understand - there are a lot of crazy people around, and even more ignorant people, and conspiracy theories pop up about every major event. Look at how many people believe the "alternate theories" about the JFK assassination.
It often times seems even the most educated there are also as dumb as rocks in that they will never allow other points of view to penetrate their enormous ideological pride.
I take it you've never had a conversation with someone who grew up behind the iron curtain, and didn't defect. I once had one such guy physically attack me because I kept shooting down all his theories about how the moon landing was faked. In his eyes, everything in recent history was either done by Russia, was stolen from the Russians, or is a big capitalist lie meant to malign the Russians. You want to talk about ideological blindness, I think Europe has the Yanks beat.
If you get sick because you can't afford a doctor visit, and you get other people sick, then it costs everyone more money.
Nobody catches communicable diseases because of an inability to visit a doctor. This line of argument is only a valid reason to provide free vaccinations - something which we already do.
Unfortunately there's been a large increase in recent years of people refusing to receive these life-saving injections. Of course, that's a different topic altogether, but it does rather nicely illustrate the point that even making things free doesn't guarantee that they'll reach your target audience.
Or, if you can't afford to go to the doctor and get sick enough to require hospitalization, well then you sure as shit can't afford that, which means the taxpayer ends up paying, and once again, it costs everyone more money.
So let me get this straight... you're complaining that it costs a lot for taxpayers to foot the bill for the small subset of patients who can't afford to pay... while simultaneously arguing that taxpayers should foot the bill for everyone?
Go on, pull the other one.
This is basic third grade math. Don't pretend you don't get it.
I think the problem here is that I didn't drop out after the third grade.
Well, by that logic, you could argue that giving everyone a free car is also the "morally right thing to do". That doesn't mean anyone should support such a scheme, though.
Besides which, I'm not sure that it IS morally right. I don't see how taking money from people in order to provide a "free" service is in any way moral. At best it's morally neutral (amoral), at worst it's immoral.
Now if you were to personally go and pay for a homeless man to have a checkup at the local clinic, you could certainly claim that your actions were moral and generous, and I would agree. I'd give you a medal, if I could. But if your only involvement in that persons treatment was to support a law which forces others to pay for it, then you haven't done anything which could be considered "morally right". Moral acts require deliberate decisions and personal sacrifice - what you're proposing is the exact opposite.
It is also much easier to convict people you purposefully set up.
No, actually, it's a hell of a lot harder because you have to hide the fact that you set them up. Otherwise they use the "entrapment" defense, and walk free.
In a truly free society it wouldn't make any sense but it makes perfect sense in today's world.
Nonsense. First of all, it's not just "in today's world" - charges for conspiring or attempting to commit a crime have been with us for a long, long time. Secondly, it makes perfect sense to stop crimes before they occur. If you plan to kill your wife and I call the cops so they can stop you, should they just let you walk free because you haven't actually killed her yet?
Sure, we need some protection to stop these types of laws from being abused, but to argue that they shouldn't exist in the first place is just silly.
It costs about $10,000 a kilogram or more to lift anything into low earth orbit. That means that the entire manned space program is virtually useless : there's no point in learning how to put people into space and have them survive if no affordable way for a lot of people and supplies to go into space exists.
By the same logic - it costs hundreds of millions of dollars to build a modern nuclear reactor, so there's no point in trying to build them until we can figure out a cheaper way to do it.
Of course, you're ignoring the potential output of such a program. From asteroid mining to orbital solar collectors, the potential benefits are more than enough to make the expenditures worthwhile. Cost is relative.
Procreation. Not sure what that has to do with anything...
If the economy only has the purpose of remaking the aristocracy and serf conditions of long ago, then I am at a lose as to why the many should participate.
Once again, this has nothing to do with socialized healthcare. If you're going to respond to someone's comment it's generally considered good form to actually respond to it, instead of going off on a tangent.
So, why? Because people are more important than money.
Money isn't important at all - money is just a physical object which we use to represent human effort/action. And no, people are not more important than their actions. Human life has no intrinsic value except to the individual to whom it belongs - to society as a whole you provide value only when you actually do something.
I'm pointing to the flaws in their accuracy, logic, and how they are doing the very same damn things they hate religions for doing
Sorry, but I've yet to see that.
I do, however, want to thank you for showing us that the new testament is far from a beacon of morality. I had previously thought that most of the garbage was in the old testament - I now know better. Thanks!
Anyway, the reason I have no time for this is because you're clearly either:
a. A Christian pretending to be an atheist in a misguided attempt to garner some sort of legitimacy.
or
b. An atheist playing Christians-advocate in order to fulfill some twisted personal need for validation.
As such, I have no desire to hear anything else out of you. Unless you're going to show me more New Testament immorality, in which case have at 'er!
... you don't have to follow all the rules any more... you have to understand that in the christian religion, the old testament is there for context of the new testament.
The vast majority of American Christians seem to disagree with your analysis. Even the ones who voice "explanations" similar to yours generally don't really believe it. A typical conversation between such a person and myself will go like this:
Me: The Bible is full of hate and violence. CH: But that's the old testament, and it doesn't apply any more! The new testament is full of hugs and love and bunnies and stuff, and THAT is the one we believe! Me: Oh, so the 10 Commandments no longer apply? CH: Uhh.. no, they still apply. Me: But homosexuality is ok, then? CH: No, that's still a sin... Me: Abortion? CH: Sin. Me: Working on the Sabbath? CH: Yea, that's a no-no. Me: So if the old testament no longer applies, where are you getting this stuff from? CH: Uh. God said it!
And so on and so forth. So, please, stop pretending that the old testament no longer applies, when most of your coreligionist are still trying to shove iron-age morality down our throats. You're just throwing up a smoke-screen to try and eliminate some of the criticism being aimed at Christianity.
I just spent a brief time looking at it and I saw some serious flaws in it's logic already
Awesome. Now if you could just turn those critical thinking skills inwards, toward your own beliefs, you'd be an atheist in no time.
Actually, cancel my last - I just read your "analysis" of Mathew 18:19-20, and it's clear that you're just reinterpreting the bible rather than impartially analyzing what's actually written there. The rest of Matthew 18 doesn't add any context to that passage, and I'm not sure how you managed to turn "it shall be done for you" into "God will know about it". It's always a blast to watch theists engage in mental gymnastics, but I've seen much better displays from others. Either improve the quality of your efforts, or abandon the attempt.
Just gotta be more careful when selecting hardware if you plan to use Solaris.
I built my initial file-server using Ubuntu and ZFS Fuse. When I later switched over to Solaris, it wouldn't recognize my SATA controllers. And when I checked their HCL, I found only one compatible controller which didn't cost an arm and a leg. Once the whole thing was up and running, though, the performance was far superior to what I was seeing under Linux.
Start with the old testament, and work your way to the new. It gets progressively less hateful, but still makes Mein Kampf look like a love-story in comparison.
Or, if you have the attention span of a typical Christian, check out evilbible.com. It's a biased source, but includes direct quotations, and is easier to peruse than trying to wade through all the Christian holy books.
Just how DO you teach a (practically) stone-age tribesman to use a computer?
You teach his kids (or better yet, let them teach themselves), and let them help him out. Hell, that's the way it happened in North America for the most part. My parents are relatively computer-savvy, but not nearly as much as their children. And my grandparents can't even program an answering machine. When they need something technical, they seek help from the younger generations.
When I moved to Canada, my family didn't have much money and we lived in one of the worst areas in the city. We had plenty of neighbors of all sorts of races and religions, and it didn't bother me a bit - I was mainly worried about the daily robberies and assaults, the drug addicts in the stairwells, and dog-shit being left in the hallways. So as soon as we saved enough money to afford better accommodations, we moved.
We moved again, 3 more times in the following 10 years. During each move, our new area was less "diverse" than the last one. According to your world-view, that means we're horrible bigots who hate minorities. In reality it's just a case of us being able to accumulate wealth, and preferring to live in a cleaner, safer environment, surrounded by people who care about their neighborhood. I wouldn't give a damn if 90% of my neighbors were black as long as the quality of the people and the maintenance of the area remained the same. Race isn't the problem - crime, violence, and shitty attitudes are. If I lived in an all-white neighborhood where I had to worry about crime, violence, drug addicts in the stairwells and dog-shit in the the hallways, I'd move out of that area too. What would that make me - a Self-Hating-Caucasian?
And no, neither I nor the rest of my family is "rich" even now, but we are a hell of a lot better off than we were when we got here, and could certainly be considered rich when compared to the people who still inhabit our original neighborhood.
There is no free speech anywhere, just people that harp on that they have it and others dont.
When I was a kid I tried using that argument on my parents when they insisted that I clean my room. "There's no sch thing as a clean room, only different levels of messiness". They weren't terribly impressed with that approach, and now, reading your comment, I can see why.
Slashdot Mirror
And ... ??
WHAT concept? You didn't even try to make a point this time!
Yuhuh. And Jesse Macbeth supposedly took part in the murder and rape of entire Iraqi villages. Of course, upon actual review of his record, it turns out he got booted out of the military before even completing basic training. He wasn't the only one, either - there are multiple examples of people claiming to be soldiers in order to tell insane stories about all the horrible things they've done. Not only are there at least 3 examples I can name off the top of my head, but those 3 are just the ones who managed to get enough media attention for everyone to hear about them. There are tens of thousands of people doing similar things who don't make the news.
The moral of the story - don't believe everything you hear. Lots of people seek attention by pretending to be something they're not.
I'm originally from Europe too. You should care about that "capitalism vs. communism crap" since the debate/fight is still very much alive and the result could be very important to your future quality of life (and that of your children).
As for the moon landing ... there's nothing wrong with doubting something, as long as your doubt is based on rational objections. Unfortunately, as you've clearly demonstrated, your doubt is entirely irrational. You have no evidence to substantiate the idea that the moon landing was faked. Instead you fall back on an argument from ignorance followed by an ad-hominem attack aimed at an entire nation. That speaks volumes about why you have "doubts". You need to have a good look at your ideological biases and then try to look at the evidence from an impartial perspective.
It's a lot simpler to understand - there are a lot of crazy people around, and even more ignorant people, and conspiracy theories pop up about every major event. Look at how many people believe the "alternate theories" about the JFK assassination.
I take it you've never had a conversation with someone who grew up behind the iron curtain, and didn't defect. I once had one such guy physically attack me because I kept shooting down all his theories about how the moon landing was faked. In his eyes, everything in recent history was either done by Russia, was stolen from the Russians, or is a big capitalist lie meant to malign the Russians. You want to talk about ideological blindness, I think Europe has the Yanks beat.
Nobody catches communicable diseases because of an inability to visit a doctor. This line of argument is only a valid reason to provide free vaccinations - something which we already do.
Unfortunately there's been a large increase in recent years of people refusing to receive these life-saving injections. Of course, that's a different topic altogether, but it does rather nicely illustrate the point that even making things free doesn't guarantee that they'll reach your target audience.
So let me get this straight ... you're complaining that it costs a lot for taxpayers to foot the bill for the small subset of patients who can't afford to pay ... while simultaneously arguing that taxpayers should foot the bill for everyone?
Go on, pull the other one.
I think the problem here is that I didn't drop out after the third grade.
If you're only meeting women in step 3.5, what the hell kind of porn were you making in step 3???
Well, by that logic, you could argue that giving everyone a free car is also the "morally right thing to do". That doesn't mean anyone should support such a scheme, though.
Besides which, I'm not sure that it IS morally right. I don't see how taking money from people in order to provide a "free" service is in any way moral. At best it's morally neutral (amoral), at worst it's immoral.
Now if you were to personally go and pay for a homeless man to have a checkup at the local clinic, you could certainly claim that your actions were moral and generous, and I would agree. I'd give you a medal, if I could. But if your only involvement in that persons treatment was to support a law which forces others to pay for it, then you haven't done anything which could be considered "morally right". Moral acts require deliberate decisions and personal sacrifice - what you're proposing is the exact opposite.
No, actually, it's a hell of a lot harder because you have to hide the fact that you set them up. Otherwise they use the "entrapment" defense, and walk free.
Nonsense. First of all, it's not just "in today's world" - charges for conspiring or attempting to commit a crime have been with us for a long, long time. Secondly, it makes perfect sense to stop crimes before they occur. If you plan to kill your wife and I call the cops so they can stop you, should they just let you walk free because you haven't actually killed her yet?
Sure, we need some protection to stop these types of laws from being abused, but to argue that they shouldn't exist in the first place is just silly.
Even the trolls get to be moderators, sometimes.
By the same logic - it costs hundreds of millions of dollars to build a modern nuclear reactor, so there's no point in trying to build them until we can figure out a cheaper way to do it.
Of course, you're ignoring the potential output of such a program. From asteroid mining to orbital solar collectors, the potential benefits are more than enough to make the expenditures worthwhile. Cost is relative.
Procreation. Not sure what that has to do with anything ...
Once again, this has nothing to do with socialized healthcare. If you're going to respond to someone's comment it's generally considered good form to actually respond to it, instead of going off on a tangent.
Money isn't important at all - money is just a physical object which we use to represent human effort/action. And no, people are not more important than their actions. Human life has no intrinsic value except to the individual to whom it belongs - to society as a whole you provide value only when you actually do something.
Why?
Sorry, but I've yet to see that.
I do, however, want to thank you for showing us that the new testament is far from a beacon of morality. I had previously thought that most of the garbage was in the old testament - I now know better. Thanks!
Anyway, the reason I have no time for this is because you're clearly either:
a. A Christian pretending to be an atheist in a misguided attempt to garner some sort of legitimacy.
or
b. An atheist playing Christians-advocate in order to fulfill some twisted personal need for validation.
As such, I have no desire to hear anything else out of you. Unless you're going to show me more New Testament immorality, in which case have at 'er!
So you're just looking for attention, then, rather than voicing your own views.
You've got issues, bro. And I don't have time for this.
The vast majority of American Christians seem to disagree with your analysis. Even the ones who voice "explanations" similar to yours generally don't really believe it. A typical conversation between such a person and myself will go like this:
Me: The Bible is full of hate and violence. .. no, they still apply. ...
CH: But that's the old testament, and it doesn't apply any more! The new testament is full of hugs and love and bunnies and stuff, and THAT is the one we believe!
Me: Oh, so the 10 Commandments no longer apply?
CH: Uhh
Me: But homosexuality is ok, then?
CH: No, that's still a sin
Me: Abortion?
CH: Sin.
Me: Working on the Sabbath?
CH: Yea, that's a no-no.
Me: So if the old testament no longer applies, where are you getting this stuff from?
CH: Uh. God said it!
And so on and so forth. So, please, stop pretending that the old testament no longer applies, when most of your coreligionist are still trying to shove iron-age morality down our throats. You're just throwing up a smoke-screen to try and eliminate some of the criticism being aimed at Christianity.
Awesome. Now if you could just turn those critical thinking skills inwards, toward your own beliefs, you'd be an atheist in no time.
Actually, cancel my last - I just read your "analysis" of Mathew 18:19-20, and it's clear that you're just reinterpreting the bible rather than impartially analyzing what's actually written there. The rest of Matthew 18 doesn't add any context to that passage, and I'm not sure how you managed to turn "it shall be done for you" into "God will know about it". It's always a blast to watch theists engage in mental gymnastics, but I've seen much better displays from others. Either improve the quality of your efforts, or abandon the attempt.
Oh, yeah, a $7,000 backup machine for a home user with a $1,500 computer. How could anyone turn down that kind of deal?
You may have noticed that he asked for reasonable ideas.
Just gotta be more careful when selecting hardware if you plan to use Solaris.
I built my initial file-server using Ubuntu and ZFS Fuse. When I later switched over to Solaris, it wouldn't recognize my SATA controllers. And when I checked their HCL, I found only one compatible controller which didn't cost an arm and a leg. Once the whole thing was up and running, though, the performance was far superior to what I was seeing under Linux.
Whoosh.
Except that they ARE tolerated in the US.
Start with the old testament, and work your way to the new. It gets progressively less hateful, but still makes Mein Kampf look like a love-story in comparison.
Or, if you have the attention span of a typical Christian, check out evilbible.com. It's a biased source, but includes direct quotations, and is easier to peruse than trying to wade through all the Christian holy books.
You teach his kids (or better yet, let them teach themselves), and let them help him out. Hell, that's the way it happened in North America for the most part. My parents are relatively computer-savvy, but not nearly as much as their children. And my grandparents can't even program an answering machine. When they need something technical, they seek help from the younger generations.
Relatively rich.
When I moved to Canada, my family didn't have much money and we lived in one of the worst areas in the city. We had plenty of neighbors of all sorts of races and religions, and it didn't bother me a bit - I was mainly worried about the daily robberies and assaults, the drug addicts in the stairwells, and dog-shit being left in the hallways. So as soon as we saved enough money to afford better accommodations, we moved.
We moved again, 3 more times in the following 10 years. During each move, our new area was less "diverse" than the last one. According to your world-view, that means we're horrible bigots who hate minorities. In reality it's just a case of us being able to accumulate wealth, and preferring to live in a cleaner, safer environment, surrounded by people who care about their neighborhood. I wouldn't give a damn if 90% of my neighbors were black as long as the quality of the people and the maintenance of the area remained the same. Race isn't the problem - crime, violence, and shitty attitudes are. If I lived in an all-white neighborhood where I had to worry about crime, violence, drug addicts in the stairwells and dog-shit in the the hallways, I'd move out of that area too. What would that make me - a Self-Hating-Caucasian?
And no, neither I nor the rest of my family is "rich" even now, but we are a hell of a lot better off than we were when we got here, and could certainly be considered rich when compared to the people who still inhabit our original neighborhood.
Got any actual examples?
They may not preach hate from the pulpit, but they offer it in written form.
When I was a kid I tried using that argument on my parents when they insisted that I clean my room. "There's no sch thing as a clean room, only different levels of messiness". They weren't terribly impressed with that approach, and now, reading your comment, I can see why.