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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian

« on: September 29, 2007, 11:08:29 PM »

What would anyone possibly gain by knowing how a god works or why its plausible?

If it's faith, it's faith.  The principles are supposed to conform to our abstract thinking, a sort of government for each individual person.  Whomever said that morality was probably developed via natural selection was on the right track, though that's not necessarily how natural selection works.  Much like government, we develop abstract systems to work in our abstract world.  Our constructed world works much differently than "the real world" and so we must construct a rule system to go along with it, as the needs of this community are vastly different from any other community on the Earth.

Also, please stop scoffing at the word 'faith'.  Believe it or not, due to the philosophical definitions of science, TheRationalTheist is more correct in saying that you have faith that your chair will not collapse on you.  Its almost as if I can hear the collective elitist snorts in my mind.  You will never EVER prove causality, you will only ever try to prove something wrong and temporarily be unable to.  That is all.

Many of you are still trapped in the materialistic mindset of the western school of thought.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: It's official: religion is child abuse

« on: September 16, 2007, 08:22:36 AM »

Teaching science is telling them, this is what we have analytically proven and believe to be true. While religion on the other hand is saying this is true no matter what and you have to believe it or you will burn in hell forever.


Science isn't really taught as an indoctrination, stupid kids simply perceive it that way. I've never had a teacher in science say "This is absolutely true, there is no way to prove it wrong."

That's true, but that wasn't what I was talking about.  I'm talking about parents driving absolute truth into kids' heads.  They do it with all kinds of beliefs.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: It's official: religion is child abuse

« on: September 16, 2007, 07:53:45 AM »

Crystal Meph- you drew an equivalence between a child being indoctrinated "in a way we don't like" (e.g. Christian fundamentalism, Nazism...) and a child being taught science. Do I detect relativism?

I'm detecting relativism in you.  How is indoctrination only good sometimes and not others?  Since we dislike indoctrination in the instance of kids with religion because it essentially overturns their own search of interests, beliefs, and knowledge, then it shouldn't matter what the child is being indoctrinated with.  If it remains the same, then its BAD, and just because its science doesn't remove the whole "overturns their own search of interests, beliefs, and knowledge" part.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: God is Imaginary

« on: September 14, 2007, 02:04:40 PM »

Holicrap, did someone just take something I said seriously?  x.X

Doesn't change the fact that it's still horrible.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: It's official: religion is child abuse

« on: September 14, 2007, 02:04:09 PM »

Mephistopheles- is religion anything but culturally hereditary neurosis and delusion?

The rest of your post is really rather silly. You're indifferent to whether the next generation is indoctrinated with, say, Nazism or Aztec sun-worship?

Indifferent?  Where did I say I was indifferent?  And no, religion is merely a belief system.  People merely delude themselves into believing it, because "realistically" (scientifically realistically) speaking the supernatural is unreasonable.

Where you picked up indifference is where you stopped trying to see the difference between realizing the futility of admonishing parents for indoctrinating their children and simply not caring about it.  I clearly demonstrated the former.  Regardless if a child is a human being, it will be the parents' responsibility unless they are incapable of doing so.  This is not going to change any time soon.  If some parent indoctrinates his kid with nazism it is unfortunate, but unavoidable.  Trying to think otherwise is delusional in and of itself as you start to move into utopian ideals of child raising.  By that point you pretty much give up the parent system in favor of a government-mandated daycare system, so-to-speak with perhaps a mandatory family unit for development with no true bonds.

And we're going a little off topic with that.  I merely included that in my original post because I anticipated that someone would try to contest me with that point.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: God is Imaginary

« on: September 14, 2007, 11:54:15 AM »

If A=B=C=D, then A=D

A=God
B=Love
C=Blind
D=Stevie Wonder

God=Love=Blind=Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder is therefore God.

But as stated above, God cannot exist if nothing exists.  Therefore, Stevie Wonder does not exist.

Its not sound in any possible way, so that's a horrible example.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: It's official: religion is child abuse

« on: September 14, 2007, 11:50:56 AM »

How does religion cause this and not simply neurotic delusional people?

No one fucking put a bag over their heads and brought them to the church so they would happily sing about God hating the world.

I don't understand this whole paranoia of religion.  Does it make you, as a person, feel better to blame the faults and insecurities of man on a (voluntary) institution such as religion?  Maybe for Islam or some religions in Africa which would get you killed in some parts of the world, but not here.  Even if you're brought up under those beliefs, if you don't have the independence, morality, or intelligence to break away from such insane claims, then you belong there with the other people who can't break free of their own delusions.

And don't give me shit about parents indoctrinating kids.  We're all indoctrinated in someway or another.  Just because they're indoctrinated in a way we dislike doesn't make it any worse than a parent indoctrinating a son to believe solely in science, regardless of if its better off or not.  We look at shit like this, and we take it.  We definitely do not need to recognize these people, specifically, as some form of valid religious institution.  They're a religious order like a trailer park is a neighborhood.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: God is Imaginary

« on: September 14, 2007, 11:11:46 AM »

Until you can tell me that if I drop a ball it will fall back to the ground with absolute certainty, I can validly believe in whatever God I so damn well choose.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Invisible Pink Unicorn

« on: September 09, 2007, 05:33:07 PM »

I see nothing but an endless abyss in which money and toil pours into.

 

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Where is the proof?

« on: September 08, 2007, 03:19:56 PM »

What the hell does it matter when it was made?  If it hasn't been contested, it hasn't been contested.  Either prove something wrong or find a book that proves something wrong; don't make the print date an issue.

Baloney! Current references are required for a reasonable debate. TomB has demonstrated the he lies about his references and misquotes them regularly. Do you remember "South Sea Voyages"? If we can't verify what he says that we have to assume that he's lying again.

Who the hell is currently debating the Earth's shape in modern literature?

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Where is the proof?

« on: September 08, 2007, 03:13:30 PM »

What the hell does it matter when it was made?  If it hasn't been contested, it hasn't been contested.  Either prove something wrong or find a book that proves something wrong; don't make the print date an issue.

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The Lounge / Re: Hangover prevention/remedies

« on: September 08, 2007, 03:03:27 PM »

When you are burning for all eternity I'm sure you hardly notice the headache.

Thanks for posting 

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The Lounge / Re: Hangover prevention/remedies

« on: September 08, 2007, 02:56:26 PM »

Bump this thread everytime you have a hangover

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: God is Imaginary

« on: September 08, 2007, 02:42:57 PM »

But when someone dies, the common response is that it was part of God's plan.  This makes it seem as though God caused things to happen or has planned for something to happen such as you sinning.

First of all, I don't and will never believe that the common man's word has any bearing on what religion is saying or trying to convey, nor do I believe that the common man knows what the fuck he's talking about, because often he doesn't.  This is an unfortunate side-effect of something being all-inclusive:  explanations have to be dumbed down, philosophical concepts in parables removed, etc.  So I would appreciate we keep the "common response" out because I'm pretty sure the consensus on this forum is that the common religious response is completely stupid.

That said, God's plan is usually referred to by religious people as a sort of fate.  By this, we can assume it means existance, everything that "happens".

If you mean by a conscious plan of a deity for existance, I believe that that would be counter-intuitive.  A god would have no need of a plan; everything exists because of it, there's no need to plan it out.  It's already happened.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are Catholics Cannibals?

« on: September 08, 2007, 02:33:32 PM »

Wrong. The standpoint of the Catholic church is that the wine/bread, once eaten, actually becomes the body and blood of Christ. Nothing symbolic about it. The Pope says it happens.

It's the Protestant churches who view the act as symbolism.

Read my damn post.

What I'm saying is that it *IS* symbolic regardless of current Catholic teachings.  It didn't have to be "eating" or "digesting".  It really, REALLY doesn't matter so long as the concept of an intimacy of divinity remains.  It was simply there because it was the best symbol of the divinity between mortal and immortal at the time.

I'm sure if Jesus were here today, he wouldn't be saying that we're supposed to eat his flesh and drink his blood.  The connotation is much different today.

Cliff notes don't work on my posts.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Religion Is Bad

« on: September 08, 2007, 02:30:08 PM »

I don't hate Christianity or it's practicers.  I simply think that it isn't hard to prove religion is incredibly stupid, so there should be more atheists.

You may think faith is stupid, but its proven in even mental health cases that we all need to be deluded in our daily lives.  Many believe that depressed and paranoid people, though we think of them crazy / delusional, may infact simply be more realistic; viewing the world in stark realism.

A religion is something that merely allows many of us to view the world as a potentially better place than it is.  Its not necessary for one to do this, but it certainly helps.  And unless religion is used to simply further political agenda or as an attempt for conquest (current-day extremist Islam, former Christianity), there's no reason to condemn religion completely.

So really, who are you to judge how people should delude themselves?  We all do it someway or another; otherwise, what's the point of not killing ourselves when we wake up every morning?

Because of religion most of the world is ignorant.

I got kidnapped by Christianity and somehow they forced me to unwillingly believe in faith and forced me to reject reason and logic.  My life was ruined by religion.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Invisible Pink Unicorn

« on: September 08, 2007, 11:25:47 AM »

I can't see pink.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: God is Imaginary

« on: September 08, 2007, 11:24:37 AM »

FOR HARDCORE CHRISTIANS:
If God knew you before you were born, why does he plan certain people to go to Hell?

Before and plan are words that have no relative meaning when discussing the predestination regarding God.

Every event has already happened, is happening, and will happen.  Petey is going to hell because he made the choices to do so.  He has committed the sins or crimes necessary to damn himself to hell under his own free will.  He's doing it, he has already done it, and he will do it.

Likewise, God/Jesus, whatever is commonly believed, will try to save him, is trying to save him, and has tried to save him.  In every event, it never works.  Therefore, Petey will go to hell, is in hell, and has been in hell at every single point in his life under his own free will.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Religion Is Bad

« on: September 08, 2007, 11:12:39 AM »

Religion is a human construct.  We are responsible for religion.  So basically, if religion causes wars and is evil, its because we cause wars and are evil.

You can't possibly prove to me if religion were to simply take a vacation tommorow that we wouldn't come up with something else to fight about or perhaps strengthen other biases we have towards other people.

I'm afraid I have a hard time swallowing that something we create is evil which we are completely innocent of.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Are Catholics Cannibals?

« on: September 08, 2007, 11:03:06 AM »

Bah, you're not serious.

Eating is not really a specific connotation of consuming communion.  More likely, it could have been anything so that you would be having a "divinity" deeply intimately inside you.  Eating simply is the means for this, a symbolic action.  Consuming God, God giving itself up for your own nourishment, a humble and selfless God...etc.

Jesus's fables and stories always involved current events / mundane actions.  The mundane symbol of eating bread and wine granting something as mystical as divinity simply follows his pattern.  The mindset of a normal person in those days basically was cause and effect.  In many cases, the regular person didn't know why something happened, just that something did happen.  This, then, made it easier to accept the notion of eating a god's flesh and blood (symbolized by bread and wine in this case) which would grant, in the example of Christianity, divinity.  Because bread and wine were so dissimilar to flesh and blood, and the whole belief in Jesus as God, fancying the idea of cannibalism was probably not something widespread at all.

Also, since traditional bible lore points to humans being of the Earth, this could be considered cannibalism as much as eating an apple would be.

In any case, you're just being nit-picky about this.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: What is this forum about?

« on: September 08, 2007, 10:40:22 AM »

Beast and Cadmium moderating the philosophy section?

How long have I been away?

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The Lounge / Mine is the only vote that counts.

« on: February 09, 2007, 01:41:11 PM »

No, our votes count all the same.  There is still a value attached to each vote despite any attempts for your logic to override them.  The only thing that matters, however, is the value given to each vote for a given topic.

Our votes may not have the correct value to actually participate, but they are still votes which still count; toward what is not established.

Under this logic, your second poll option is meaningless and there is only one option.  Your poll is essentially flawed.

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The Lounge / Motivational Posters

« on: February 09, 2007, 06:46:50 AM »

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The Lounge / Motivational Posters

« on: February 08, 2007, 01:20:55 PM »

That anime futurama pic is awesome! where'd you get it?

Some guy sent it to me.

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The Lounge / Motivational Posters

« on: February 08, 2007, 06:19:07 AM »

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The Lounge / Motivational Posters

« on: February 08, 2007, 05:58:08 AM »

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The Lounge / An Argument for Creationism

« on: February 08, 2007, 05:51:16 AM »

Also, God CAN be proven, it just ISN'T. Big difference there. But of course he can't be disproven. That doesn't make any sense.

Come now, you know better than that.  Its hardly different from the conspiracy.  You may prove God right, but you cannot prove him false.  The only way to prove him false is if he were to exist in the first place, which would prove him true.

That makes plenty of sense.

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Arts & Entertainment / So...Musical Preferences?

« on: February 05, 2007, 06:56:05 AM »

Industrial is DAMN complex.

Its basically a heavy metal version of electronica.  Of course, it might often be too heavy for most people.

I suggest:  The Fragile by NIN, Pig, Schwein.

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The Lounge / Anyone seen this ad?

« on: February 04, 2007, 11:20:43 AM »

That's a very nice find.

Good job.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Re: Why stop at flat?

« on: February 04, 2007, 11:16:42 AM »

Oh, my.... are you that stupid, or pretending, I sure hope it's the 2nd of the 2. He's saying that if you're going to make the earth a shape it's not, get creative, more creative than flat, come on!!

It was funny by the way.

Saying that a bad joke is funny doesn't make it less bad and unfunny.