remdi95 niyad

Here's an idea, we could get all the Chinese Tiger Moms to battle with the French Politeness Moms in a monster truck arena.

For round two, we could have all the book publishers trying to get rich selling books to neurotic American Parents about how Chinese Tiger Moms are better, battle it out with all the book publishers trying to get rich selling books to neurotic American Parents about how French Politeness Moms are better, in a monster truck arena.



"Sunday Sunday SUNDAY, We're Turning the Rosemont Horizon into a Giant MUDDDD PITTTT!"

without stupid generalizations about people of a certain nationality.




...

you wouldn't make blanket statements like that.

I think it's likely that life is commonplace, but most of it is probably as life existed on Earth for all except the last 400 million yrs or so- simple bacteria, existing in mats or colonies as the most complex and 'advanced' forms.

A smaller percentage will be multicellular (or whatever) complex life forms such as came after that.

An even smaller percentage will reach the level of intelligence, civilization, and what-have-you.

But this idea that "intelligent civilizations destroy themselves, or often destroy themselves, or invariably come to a place where they nearly destroy themselves"; it's a made-up sort of hypothesis based upon zero data points; we've had one intelligent civilization (or at least, one intelligent civilization building) species on this planet and it hasn't destroyed itself yet.

Even the "we may destroy ourselves" fear/notion is predicated not just on the idea that we would destroy ourselves, but that we could. And who is to say the survivors, if there were any, wouldn't rebuild and even go further than we have to date?

There HAVE been species killing, extinction-level planetwide events in Earth's history; like the meteor at Chixiclub. But, again, this idea that "intelligent civilizations destroy themselves", while I get that it is a possibility among several possibilities- I don't buy that it's some inherent defect in intelligent civilizations or intelligence-attaining life forms that needs to be extrapolated out to every other intelligent civilization we look for or imagine we may encounter.

We are survivors, we've survived -or at least, survived long enough to reproduce- for billions of years. The will to survive is very, VERY strong.

An oldie, but a goodie.

http://www.geocities.ws/preconceivedbabies/index-2.html


And yes, it's satire.

there was probably a cancer granny smoking a joint in her back yard.



...What- you want your tax dollars to just sit there?

It was probably 2006 or so, after having extensive run-ins with one of these "entities" (who, for all I know, may be the same being stirring up trouble right now. It's totally possible) when another long-time DU member pointed some stuff out to me; once I noticed, and started seeing the connections.

Man. Like a bad acid trip.

It's certainly simpler to just take everything at face value, but that allows the manipulators and game players to do... well, honestly, I don't know what they're trying to do. But I decided a while back that I was going to at least argue for as much transparency as possible.

Obviously people put forth different aspects of themselves online. I'm self-aware enough to know that the contours of my personality shift, to a degree, in relation to context or whichever discussion is at hand. I'm sure when I'm debating an anti-choice creationist or supporter of mandatory school prayer here, I'm much more of a fire-breathing Atheist than the Zen or Tao minded individual I am at other times.

But I'm aware of it, I do at least *aim* for genuineness in my interactions, and most importantly, there's only one of me here. I think that's something, at least.


And yeah, I saw that movie, too. I actually thought of DU when I was watching it. Weird and creepy and thought-provoking and all the rest.

I mean, he's got all the things they want- he's completely batshittery winguttitized on the socio-religio-veggietales-culture war Jesusbagger issues, he's still on his first wife, he's the right race, gender, and religion, and did I mention that he's completely batshittery winguttitized on the socio-religio-veggietales-culture war Jesusbagger issues?

Plus, he's an idiot. He's their fucking dream date, which speaks awfully ill of him that even the pinheaded cranio-rectal inverts of the GOP base were desperately hunting for something- anything- else to take home from the right wing nut bar, before settling for the Santorum.



It's like he's too lame even for them. Which is pretty lame.

Seriously. I don't have ill will towards people of faith. Honest.

I don't think they should get special dispensation to have their beliefs universally exempted from logical analysis and discussion involving evidence-based critical thought, and likewise, I understand- nay, even expect!- that people will do the same with any and all assertions *I* make. That said, I do get that Life, The Universe and Everything is a mysterious nut to crack under the best of circumstances, and that existence puts us out, in the words of the late Jim Morrison, "like a dog without a bone, an actor out on loan".. I respect that everyone works it out for themselves, and we don't all NEED to come up with the same answer.

Still, I value science, I value evidence, I value the process of objectively looking at claims and weighing their apparent validity. I like figuring things out, and if there IS a "God" (whatever that word means) then one of the coolest things "he" gave us is a brain. To think. To challenge. To question.

Nothing should be off limits from questioning, and no assertion should get special treatment or dispensation to remove it from being looked at logically.

Enjoy your dinner.

For one, tell me where I "point out" that anyone's beliefs are "fucking bullshit".

I want the specific quote, so we can address this.

Oh, I see, it's "pointing out that another person's deeply held spiritual belief lacks proof".. Well, I'm sorry Mr. Special Pleading-man, one does not get an automatic exemption from logical analysis and factual objective reasoning for your 'deeply held spiritual beliefs' when one brings them up in a setting full of thoughtful people who may not agree, especially when one brings them up in the context of "The Flying Spaghetti Monster", a thought experiment/joke with the exact purpose of pointing out the ludicrousness of treating "deeply held spiritual beliefs" as something that should be taught in public schools as having any scientific basis in reality.

You'll note, though, that

A) what I did was NOT the same thing as saying "your beliefs are bullshit" and also

B) my point about people conflating being 'forced to hear' what they may consider uncomfortable yet unassailable facts like "there is no objective evidence for the existence of god" with "bigotry and Christian-bashing" IS part of the problem we seem to have, here.


I thought the whole point of faith was that it doesn't need objective evidence. Which is fine. But you don't get to demand that everyone else suspend logical analysis, critical thinking, or even basic observation, because something is your "deeply held spiritual belief". If you want that, stay in an exclusive community of like-minded believers. If you want to discuss these things among people who may not all agree with you, many of whom are science-minded, you need to expect to hear, sometimes, things like "there is no objective evidence for a higher power", especially if you're trying to make some point about "The Flying Spaghetti Monster".

To expect otherwise is, again, special pleading.