People also like to dodge the question by going, "oh, I'm an agnostic". Yeah, I'm agnostic on a LOT of things for which there's no objective evidence; leprechauns, unicorns, the tooth fairy. As far as I'm concerned, the jury's still out, in a sense. Evidence could come along at some point to tell me that, yes, there is an invisible 500 foot tall orangutan living on my roof.

Even the question, "Do you believe in God", frames a duality pertaining to a singular, objective, mutually agreed upon and at least generally defined entity where none such general consensus exists. Or to put it another way, which "God"? How about you define the friggin' thing before you expect people to say whether they "believe" in it or not?

Is it "very stupid" to say you don't believe in the Greek Gods? The Roman Gods? Quetzlcoatl? Pan? Eris? Ra? Osiris?

I'd like to see the actual Sagan quote, along with context, please.

Let me give you a brief recap of some of the events that have come to light in the past month or so, all oddly focused around that group and the 'drama' that has played itself out there.

(Please note that the only "members" I am naming names of have all been BANNED from this site or DU2, so I am not bad-mouthing any legitimate active members of this forum)

"Survivoreesta" was banned as a repeat disruptor both on DU2 and DU3. According to Skinner, this was actually a MALE troll, pretending to be a "woman" with serious mental issues.

"Sera_Bellum" and "Feldspar" were BOTH banned after making bigoted transphobic statements, diligent research on the part of attention-paying members revealed that this entity or entities (either one woman, two partnered women conveniently sharing an IP address, or maybe again, a male troll pretending to be both) had previously shown up under the names "Sargasso_Sea", "Evolve_Already", "Ittakesavillage_people", "TAPat" and who knows how many more.

Now, this is my favorite one: After several weeks of vociferously complaining that people were accusing her of not being what "she" was pretending to be, it turns out that "Remember Me" was our old friend "Eloriel" ("remember her"- get it?) who was also "Morgana LaFey" and who knows how many other incarnations.

Beyond the mind-boggling confusion of what may be a male troll with several identities pretending to be a feminist woman who makes bigoted transphobic comments, of all things ( ) I think maybe the element you're missing to all this is that for whatever reason there have been some serious weirdos with multiple identity issues who have fixated on that particular group. Maybe what admin wants, or at least the current host wants, is some co-hosts who actually are what they claim to be, so some of the attendant bullshit around that forum can be allowed to wither away.

Repeatedly Insist That The ONLY Solution to Crack Problem is Endless Supply of Cheap Crack, No Other Solution To Crack Problem Can Possibly Be Imagined.

YEEE HAAAW!!!!

they know it's a loser, but they also can't go "We don't want to overturn Griswold, we acknowledge that people have a right to use contraception" (in other words, they have a "license to do things in the sexual realm that make God mad" or whatever it was Sticky Ricky said) ... they can't do that because THE INSANE BELIEF that ONE OF THESE DAYS they'll be able to throw all the 'sluts' who use the pill in prison (while telling the rest to put an aspirin between their knees) has been the secret fantasy that has kept all these repressed fetus fetishists priapic for all these years, probably ever since 1974 when everyone else was getting laid and they were sitting at home with Pat Boone on the 8 track.

In case anyone doubts that this has been what it's been about from the get-go, remember that the HLA has been a central part of the GOP Plank for decades. Here's what the big 'pro life' orgs have to say on the HLA, contraception, etc:

http://www.all.org/article/index/id/MjM4NQ

Spin, Spin, Spin. However grudgingly they may acknowledge that "The American People are still apparently favorable to contraception" (cue the heavy siiiiigh ) it's pretty clear that the plan is to go after the bad pills once the abortion drs are out of the way:



http://prolifeaction.org/faq/stand.php#abc

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/11/01/358658/personhood-usa-confirms-that-mississippi-abortion-ban-would-outlaw-birth-control-pills/




anyway, if these Jesusbagger a-holes are so sure they're right, they should be ECSTATIC that their godly keep-your-legs-crossed-young-lady agenda is getting so much airtime. I mean, I thought the "values voter" was all-powerful, and all that noise about a pro-choice majority was just librul socialist godless agit-prop.

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.