Bush to Blame

[White_Savage]

Bronk:
Irrational none-the-less. Really, you guys are walking on thin ice trying to diss rationality, because what else do we humans have to help us make choices in the real world? If you were trying to convert me to Evangelical Christianity, what would you use? Why, a rational argument of course!

(And I would give counterargument ad nauseum, and you'd end up saying something like "Well, I believe what I believe", before it was over, unless you decided to attack some of the crazy things I believe, and I might end up challenging you to a holmganga, and ultimately it would demonstrate why RATIONALLY speaking, if I want to keep friends, I'm better off talking about sports and hunting, rather than religion and politics

)

 

[Bronk]

Remember that science once came up with the theory of spontaneous regeneration to explain why maggots seemed to arise magically out of rotted meat. Then came the realization that flies laid eggs in the meat that became maggots. Science takes sharp turns that can jar you, so buckle your belt least you discover that there is a genetic component to talking science and religon!

 

[jaxvid]

Remember that science once came up with the theory of spontaneous regeneration to explain why maggots seemed to arise magically out of rotted meat. Then came the realization that flies laid eggs in the meat that became maggots. Science takes sharp turns that can jar you, so buckle your belt least you discover that there is a genetic component to talking science and religon!

That's the point. Science will correct itself when better information becomes available. And it subjects itself to rigid methodology to ensure that it does. (actually I would not call it science in your first example as the scientific method was not used as we understand it today).

 

[jaxvid]

Thus the Bible-thumper and the die-hard Atheist are both ignoring evidence or fibbing to a certain degree.

The rational atheist however will believe that any problem with an existing theory can be corrected by further evidence. A bible thumper will ignore to his grave the obvious contradiction.

 

[White_Savage]

Oh, by the way, Marx was a racist who saw blacks as backward and "prehistoric"

Even a broken clock is right twice a day...

 

[White Shogun]

You guys are arguing quite well for "mental infants."

 

[Southern Knight]

How can it be "irrational" to assert the non-existance of an
unprovable? That is precisely why rational thinking exists. To dismiss
fantasies that are unprovable. By the very nature of being unprovable
something is irrational.





As I was reading through this thread and mentally preparing my
response, I encountered jaxvid's post, which is point-for-point
identical to what I would wrote. It bears a repeat posting:



(Courtesy of jaxvid): "I don't understand how ATHEISM can be considered a religion. You
hear this all the time. But those things that typically make up a
religion are not found in atheistic thinking. How can it be considered
a religion?





What demonstrates that mankind needs religion? I can see no reason to believe that is true.





As for SK's comments on why there are religions, he is being very
cynical. People use religion to answer their unanswerable questions
which were at one time simple things like: Why does it rain? Why is
there a change of seasons? and How do we get sick? Science has answered
many of these questions so that religions now exists to answer
questions like: Why are we here? Why do we suffer misfortune and pain?
And what happens after we die?"



I will agree that the ancient pagan mythologies primarily explained
natural phenomena (i.e. Appollo = sun, Neptune = sea, Zeus = thunder
& lightning, etc.) but these were not "religions," as we understand
that term today. Nobody demanded a mandatory 10% tithing of the
Norse, as payment of tribute to Odin, Thor, Woden, and the other Norse
gods and goddesses.



Christianity was invented by the Romans as a means to unify their
racially and ethnically heterogenous population. Just as in
America today, the Romans introduced various non-Whites into their
midst by the shiploads, and those disparate groups didn't get
along. So they invented the Jesus myth (borrowing heavily from
paganism and other lesser known religions), to create a "universal"
religion that preaches peace, and harmony, and "turning the other
cheek."



Christianity also has as a central tenet the idea of an afterlife,
where the least of God's creatures will enjoy paradise for all
eternity. What a joke: One can imagine the emperor's staff
enjoying a righteous laugh at the peons who gladly endured their poor
treatment because they believed in a heaven beyond the grave.



Paganism as a part of Christianity: Where is the word Easter in the
Bible? It isn't. That's because Easter was the Roman church's way
of incorporating the pagan festival of "Ester" or "Oester," which was a
springtime fertility rite that predates Christianity by hundreds of
years. Ester's symbols were the rabbit ("Easter bunny") and the
egg (fertility symbols).

 

[Colonel_Reb]

If science is so superior to everything else, why does it constantly correct itself? Because it has flaws. Ex.-Evolution

 

[Colonel_Reb]

Oh yeah, why can't Christians be called something more accurate than Bible-thumpers on this board? I've been a Christian for 22 years and I don't recall ever having thumped my Bible once!

 

[GWTJ]

The most important thing, IMHO, is to make the distinction between religion and spirituality. Religion is a man made creation. Maybe the greatest con of all time. Believe what we believe or you will burn in a lake of fire forever. If you're not one of us you must be working for the devil and you should be cast out, or worse.


Spirituality, on the other hand, seems like a very healthy, positive part of life. It can carry people through tough times and relax them through stressful times. It also is a very personal thing, not to bedisplayed on TV with someone claiming to be the voice of God as they pass around the collection plate.

 

[Don Wassall]

If you're not one of us you must be working for the devil and you should be cast out, or worse.

That reminds me of the slogan of the sorry ass neo-con administration in D.C. -- "You're either with us or you're against us."

 

[GWTJ]

All too true, Don.


Here's something interesting. If you have used Google then you know it has a feature called "I'm feeling lucky". Once you have typed in what you are looking for you click on this button and it takes you to the most popular website for that search. It basically skips the page with the search results. Try this, go to Google and type in the word failure and hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button.

 

[White Shogun]

Try this, go to Google and type in the word failure and hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button.

Googlebombing 'failure'

9/16/2005 12:54:00 PM
Posted by Marissa Mayer, Director of Consumer Web Products

If you do a Google search on the word [failure] or the phrase [miserable failure], the top result is currently the White House's official biographical page for President Bush. We've received some complaints recently from users who assume that this reflects a political bias on our part. I'd like to explain how these results come up in order to allay these concerns.

Google's search results are generated by computer programs that rank web pages in large part by examining the number and relative popularity of the sites that link to them. By using a practice called googlebombing, however, determined pranksters can occasionally produce odd results. In this case, a number of webmasters use the phrases [failure] and [miserable failure] to describe and link to President Bush's website, thus pushing it to the top of searches for those phrases. We don't condone the practice of googlebombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results, but we're also reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from showing up. Pranks like this may be distracting to some, but they don't affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission.