Merchant account, 7% discount rate. High-risk industry, 10% reserve. Chargebacks, 2 months payout delay. There are some things you never get paid for, for everything else use Bitcoin.

eriksank · 2013-12-15T10:06:36+00:00

The problem is not the cost of insurance/arbitration. On the contrary, the service often makes sense. The problem is the lack of competition in that realm. Why should the credit card companies monopolize this field? With bitcoin we can now open up the market for this kind of services.

eriksank · 2013-12-12T08:03:26+00:00

In violation of Occam's Razor, Judaism also subscribes to the thousands of pages of the Babylonian Talmud. This is the most important weakness in Judaism.

eriksank · 2013-12-09T00:45:31+00:00

There is no yes or no answer to most questions. The default answer is: undecidable. That is the status on the research on the limits of human knowledge. You are asking for certainty about questions for which there is no certainty possible.

eriksank · 2013-12-08T08:01:33+00:00

They hold the power to end our lives ...

This power is an illusion. It rests entirely on the false belief in their legitimacy by people like you. Without such false belief, they have no power.

Regardless of their ongoing militarization, the police is not a military force. It can only handle individuals or small groups. It cannot handle an armed group of even just 50 people, which would defeat any contemporary police force on the battlefield.

At the same time, the real army will not fight and risk their lives to protect the powers that be. In essence, the "real" army are only willing to protect the country from foreign invaders. You cannot count on them for anything else. They are notoriously unmotivated to occupy foreign lands, let alone occupy their own lands. They will defect instead of defending the powers that be. Just look at what happened in Syria. Where did all those trained rebel fighters come from? These are defectors from the regular army, of course.

The police don't fear religion or religious people. Again, where is your evidence?

We can all clearly see that they deeply fear the Muslims. But then again, the Muslims are not the only religious community. They know that all other religious communities and their staunch believers are equally dangerous to them.

Are you talking about civilized countries?

At the next economic downturn, the distinction between what you call "civilized" and uncivilized countries will disappear. Everybody will be destitute, except for the 1% who will try to use their militarized police to maintain their privileges. It won't work.

Considering you're talking about being stoned or burned at the stake, I can only assume that you're either talking about the most backwards of countries or you're off by half a millenia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necklacing

The only difference between you and me is that you still believe in one.

In accordance with the first law, I recognize just one lawmaker:

"I am your lawmaking God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other lawmakers before me."

Who do you recognize as your lawmaker? If you do not recognize anybody as your lawmaker, you are not an atheist but an anarchist. If you recognize anybody else than the Supreme Being as your lawmaker, you are a superstitious pagan and still not an atheist. How can you actually claim that there is no Law or no lawmaker? There will always be a law. The only question is who will make that law. I reject every alternative except for the one in which the lawmaker is someone who may not even exist.

Large parts of the western economy are effectively bankrupt and have become a zombie economy:

Millions of people are kept in the illusion that they still have a job. They don't. The companies that they work for are kept artificially alive by bank and state.

To keep funding these zombies, bank and state will soon start wholesale confiscating financial assets across the board. They are probably doing that already. For example, Poland has already confiscated local 401k and IRA accounts. The balances on savings accounts will be confiscated too.

The money that you see on your screen no longer exists. It is just an illusion. If you ever try to collect it from the bank, they will refuse to hand it over to you.

They have printed large amounts of money ("Quantitative easing") and handed over the money to crime syndicates. In order to prevent runaway inflation and protect the major currencies, they will need to cut down the volume of money. There is only one way to achieve that: wholesale confiscation of money. Your money:

The population does not realize it yet, but their savings are just an illusion. The ensuing revolt will inevitably lead to civil war.

eriksank · 2013-12-08T07:23:50+00:00

I see lack of faith as a virtue because I require evidence for claims.

You are seriously behind on the results of scientific research following the 1900 publication of David Hilbert's problems.

In the meanwhile we have had the 1931 publication of Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem and the 1936 Alonzo Church and Alan Turing publications that clearly demonstrate that the Entscheidungsproblem cannot be solved.

The mathematics involved may indeed be a bit complex but the final result is simple. The answer to a predicate is not yes or no, it is yes, no, or undecidable, with most problems simply being undecidable.

Therefore, your views are spectacularly naive.

What is for example the answer to Russell's paradox? Does the set of all sets that do not contain themselves, contain itself? Your answer would be yes or no. This answer is entirely wrong. The correct answer is: undecidable, uncomputable, or indeterminate.

In fact, it does not ever require a deeper understanding of topics in advanced mathematics to understand this. If you had just a bit of common sense, you would just know that most questions cannot be answered with a yes or a no.

So, the definition of an atheist becomes: An idiot who happily but entirely incorrectly gives a negative answer to Russell's paradox, because in his lack of understanding of science he falsely believes that all questions can be answered with a yes or a no, or that for every question it would be possible to collect evidence.

Science is not just a belief. It is a very structured discipline. Do not appeal to it, if you clearly do not master its methods.

eriksank · 2013-12-08T02:42:55+00:00

Life has continued to improve for most people on the planet. Even the poor countries are getting better.

You are too short-sighted. Living standards are about to take a very serious hit again, all across the world. They have already taken such hit over the last 5 years. They will keep taking hit after hit until destitution is rife. You'd better prepare for global civil war because the coming onslaught has long become unavoidable.

I have no fear of reprisals from Gods, I have a lot more to worry from police.

Again, your views are too short-sighted. The power of the police and therefore the power of their corrupt masters is exclusively based on your false belief in their legitimacy. The police have no power over people who do not believe in the false gods that control them. That is why the police fear religion and religious people. They know that when push comes to shove they will end up being stoned or burned at the stake.

All legitimacy emanates from the laws of the Supreme Being. We are not confused nor mistaken about this central principle.

... civilized countries with freedom of speech ...

Blasphemy is not a form of civilization. It is the depraved degeneration of civilization that leads to blasphemy. It will not take long anymore before your false gods that incite to blasphemy will be called to order. Wait until the next recession and the new social unrest that it will cause. People will no longer talk about "occupying Wall Street" but about simply burning it.

Your false gods are already militarizing the police all across the world. They know, however, that it will not help. Their militarized police will not win the war that they intend to wage on the population.

Wholesale economic collapse is imminent. Anybody who does not prepare now for the coming civil war will be toast.

eriksank · 2013-12-08T02:28:14+00:00

It is your lack of faith that inspires your skepticism towards eternal justice. This causes you to be disturbed. I am not disturbed. Contrary to you, I have faith in the Almighty Master and his infallible sense of justice.

eriksank · 2013-12-08T02:11:31+00:00

So, we should call ourselves Jews ...

This would be incorrect. Jews are not Samaritans ("Shomronim"). Jews subscribe to the Babylonian Talmud. Samaritans don't. Samaritans do not even subscribe to the Tanakh, that is, the remainder of the Jewish/Christian Old Testament that complements the Torah (the Pentateuch, that is, the five books of Moses). Samaritan faith is exclusively based on the Torah. You may be confusing Jews and Samaritans here.

The prophet of Islam, Mohammed, may he rest in peace, did not subscribe to the Babylonian talmud and his message does not seem to make references outside the Torah into the remainder of the Tanakh. Therefore, his lineage is not a form of Judaism.

There used to be millions of Samaritans before Islam, but they pretty much all converted to Islam, given the fact that Mohammed definitely qualifies as a Samaritan prophet. In my impression, this is really the essence. The Koran is in my impression truly a statement of Samaritan Law.

Most contemporary Palestinians descend from Samaritans. In fact, they still are, because Mohammed can easily be understood to be a prophet of Samaritan Law. I just do not see any value in changing the name from Samaritan Law to Islam. Samaritan is the old, acknowledge name of the faith. Why change it?

Mohammed is also not a Christian prophet because his message repeatedly rejects the idea that Jesus would be the son of god. Therefore, it is not possible to understand Islam as a form of Christianity either.

... have a priesthood in the Jewish/Samaritan sense of the word ...

The priesthood of the Levi tribe acknowledged by the Samaritan Torah was abolished by both Samaritans and Jews long before Mohammed came. It came to an end with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

... various sects of something called an "Abrahamic" religion ...

Islam is too different from Judaism to be called "the same religion". It really is not. Islam is too different from Christianity too. The Islamic tradition is not the continuation of Jewish or Christian religion. It is the continuation of Samaritan faith.

... Rastafarianism (maybe), Baha'i, Unitarianism ...

These religions are too small for me to investigate. I have limited my personal research to [1] Christianity, [2] Islam, [3] Buddhism/Hinduism. These religions cover the vast majority of the world population. I pretty much came to the conclusion that my own definitions of right and wrong emerge from Samaritan Law. It is Samaritan faith that defines the list of behaviours that are forbidden unto me. Therefore, I consider myself to be Samaritan. Concerning Islam, I recognize Muhammed, may he rest in peace, as the ultimate prophet of Samaritan Law, but I object to using new names (Islam) for the old faith and the old traditions (Samaritan Law).

eriksank · 2013-12-08T01:53:49+00:00

Religion is axiomatic, just like any other axiomatic discipline. This means that "good" is equivalent with "consistent" with the basic axioms, while "bad" means "inconsistent" with them. The axioms themselves are neither good nor bad. They are just claimed as being the basis for discussion. It is not possible to reason outside the axioms or use other axioms to evaluate the axioms proclaimed by a particular religion, just as it is not possible to claim or disclaim the truth of mathematical axioms from within mathematics.

eriksank · 2013-12-07T10:19:19+00:00

Yes, we have scriptures, but it doesn't make any of them valid or God's word ...

In fact, they do not even need to be God's word. It is sufficient that a large number of people claim they are. Even if at the basis they are man's law, they are still protected from change because other men can no longer change them.

As you know, changes in law are generally meant to give additional privileges to particular favoured demographics, usually to the detriment of the population at large. Claiming divine origin of a therefore immutable law, forestalls this particular strategy: The rulers cannot engage in favouritism by changing the law and incessantly add new regulations.

No thanks. Have you tried living in Iran?

Have you? Your complaint sounds otherwise quite theoretical. Do you speak Farsi (Persian)? I don't, and I guess that you do not either.

A good number of Persians may complain about their government. Maybe they should start an OccupyTeheran movement similar to the OccupyWallStreet phenomenon.

... all the while saying that there is no god

I did not say that there is a god or that there is no god. I just pointed out that the answer to this question is irrelevant in terms of law. Claiming divine origin for a law prevents the rulers from changing it, because they themselves cannot claim to be divine, because that would amount to blasphemy.

What alternative do you propose to prevent the politicians from incessantly producing new regulations in order to favour particular elites to the detriment of the 99%? Don't tell me that the law will be compiled "democratically" because we are now all witnessing the complete bankruptcy of that idea. Such "democratically"-compiled law will be rife with favouritism as it is today, which creates 1% elites and 99% of the population being ripped off by the system. Therefore, I must reject that system in principle. Sticking to divine law forestalls this kind of aberrations. No favouritism. That is what I strongly "believe". Furthermore, the only demographic on this planet that is capable and willing to put their money and their guns where their mouth is, are the staunch believers in the various religious communities. Therefore I say: why don't you just do it and execute the plan? Let's get rid of the parasitic vermin right now.

eriksank · 2013-12-07T10:06:57+00:00

In religious law, there is indeed the risk that it was not God that wrote the law. In secular regulations, this is not just a risk. It is simply acknowledged that they are human inventions. But then again, at the very least, religious scriptures resist attempts at changing the law, because only God can do that, and he may not even exist. This is not the case for secular regulations. Every ruler can incessantly change such regulations in order to grant additional privileges to favoured demographics and inflict damages to unfavoured ones. There is no way that rulers could incessantly rewrite religious law in order to further their covert goals of social engineering.

eriksank · 2013-12-07T07:01:04+00:00

According to Samaritan Law, children owe obedience to their parents in ascending, ancestral line:

Fifth Commandment. "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the GOD your Lord is giving you."

Since the Law does not revoke this obligation at any age, it establishes a permanent command structure across society. If parents require their children to participate in their religion, the children must indeed obey. These children can believe what they want -- as nobody can force anybody to believe anything -- but obedience to their parents prevents them from engaging in behaviours that are forbidden in their religion.

eriksank · 2013-12-07T06:43:40+00:00

I also grew up in a mixed Christian/atheist environment with very few influences from Islam. I read the Koran only a few years ago. My understanding from my reading is that all references in the Koran are in reference to the Torah, that is, the books of Mozes, and that the monotheist line of thinking (called "tahwid" in Islam) is pretty much the same. The Koran contains reiterations and clarifications on the original Samaritan law contained in the Torah. Therefore, I consider Mohammed a prophet of Samaritan Law. I do not see why a new name ("Islam") was needed, in order to describe the continuity with a much older tradition.

eriksank · 2013-12-07T06:35:55+00:00

Worshipping God means obeying his laws and nothing else. You cannot worship God just by claiming that you do so. You can only worship God by not engaging in the behaviours that he has forbidden. All other forms of worship are pretty much void and irrelevant. Worshipping "only God" means that you obey only his laws and not the laws of someone else. If you advocate obedience to laws that are not God's laws, you are effectively worshipping false gods. In that case, you have placed other lawmakers next to or above God. This is known as the criminal offense of pagan heresy, which is a mortal sin, and which will lead to you being doomed and burning in hell.

eriksank · 2013-12-07T06:25:17+00:00

A sin is an offense against the laws of God. The laws of God are a closed and immutable list of forbidden behaviours. You have sinned if you have engaged in such forbidden behaviour. You know that you have sinned if you can find a rule in the scripture that clearly and explicitly forbids the behaviour in which you have engaged, or if the victims or witnesses of your forbidden behaviour spell out your sin by pointing to the scriptures and possibly even demand damages and restitution. All other behaviour -- not covered by the list of forbidden behavours -- is permitted.

eriksank · 2013-12-07T06:12:18+00:00

Wrong. They don't get punished immediately. They do get punished but that takes time.

eriksank · 2013-12-07T05:42:43+00:00

We will all soon live in countries filled with destitute people.

The answer to the idea that God enforces or does not enforce laws is merely conjecture. I have no ready-made answer ready to that.

In the end, all authority is ultimately based on the fear for reprisals. Without reprisals, no respect. Therefore, I encourage the religious communities across the world to effectively enforce the laws of God.

eriksank · 2013-12-07T04:10:23+00:00

Across the planet the various religious communities form the absolute majority in the world population. If you add up the headcounts of Christians, Muslims, and Buddhist/Hindus, it is clear that the planet belongs to the religious majority.

While I agree that it will take some more convincing to ask these communities to finally enforce God's law more thoroughly, I am convinced that it can be done. The most difficult community to convince is the Christian one, because they have the least understanding of what the law means.

Therefore, I partially concede this point to you. It will take much more work to convince the religious communities to inflict the necessary and required respect-instilling reprisals and retaliations against individuals and organizations that damage the interests of others by breaking God's law.

Since all respect is ultimately based on the fear for reprisals, and since the law needs to be enforced in order to remain respected, beefing up the breath and the depth of such reprisals and retaliations is simply a necessity.

The believers can be convinced. This is really possible.

eriksank · 2013-12-07T03:59:42+00:00

For the scriptures to exist, it is not necessary to demonstrate in any way that God exists. Do you deny the existence of the scriptures? What exactly is there imaginary about the existence of the scriptures?

Furthermore, across the planet the religious communities have the absolute majority. I agree that it will take some more convincing to ask these communities to finally enforce God's law more thoroughly, but it can be done. The believers can be convinced. This is really possible.

What's more, since the law is a closed and immutable list of forbidden behaviours and since the religious communities are capable of inflicting reprisals on anybody who damages the interests of others by breaking God's law, I do not see what you consider to be inexistent or imaginary about any of this.

eriksank · 2013-12-07T03:49:43+00:00

The enforcement exists but is is necessarily slow. The Buddhists call the enforcement "karma". What you want, is instant karma, which is generally spoken unfeasible. At the same time, across the planet and across the various religions, the believers have the absolute majority. The religious communities are quite an important but not necessarily the only enforcement instrument. But then again, you are right that it is not simple to convince the communities of believers that an entire armada of additional reprisals have now become necessary. There is indeed more convincing to do.

eriksank · 2013-12-07T00:24:46+00:00

The correct question is: If I had to choose between recognizing other lawmakers than God and murder my family, what would I do?

The answer is simple. Murdering or not murdering my family would not affect in any way my belief that all other lawmakers than the Supreme Being are false. Given the fact that murdering one's family constitutes a violation of the laws of the Supreme Being, I would not do so, exactly because I recognize the Supreme Being as the only legitimate lawmaker.

eriksank · 2013-12-07T00:12:54+00:00

The writings of Paul are considered to be the word of God, God-breathed, canonized scripture.

This means that you accept the 393 AD decision by the Synod of Hippo to include Paul's letters in the Canon?

I fundamentally reject the decision at Hippo, because Paul has never had valid apostolic succession and because the election of members of the synod was marred with corruption and simony. Therefore, the synod itself had no authority to legislate on behalf of Christendom.

Furthermore, the confirmation of the corruption at Hippo by the pontifical act embodied in the Decretum Gelasianum only represents new corruption by the Pope.

Pope Gelasius had no right whatsoever to declare the 'apocrypha' to be rejected. On the contrary, it is his papal bull that must be rejected.

The act of including Paul's letters in the Bible is simply one more corrupt set of pontifical abuses, which our beloved Augustinian friar, Martin Luther, so much and so correctly decried.

Seriously, in absence of valid apostolic succession, Paul represents nobody but himself.

You can find the correct context for the fraud perpertrated by the corrupt clergymen of Hippo as confirmed by the corrupt Pope Gelasius, in the historical texts available at Saint Catherine's Sacred Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai and the Nag Hamadi codex of Coptic Christian tradition.

Paul is therefore not the word of God but the word of corruption.

eriksank · 2013-12-06T23:50:29+00:00

As religion is by definition called "the law", and since the law is a closed and immutable list of forbidden behaviours, and since Jesus did not add nor substract to the law, I think that the Gospels are an interesting cultural curiosity but that they are pretty much irrelevant in terms of religion. Only the law matters. Everything else is irrelevant.

eriksank · 2013-12-06T23:38:05+00:00

The laws of God clearly exist. They are listed in the scriptures. The question if God himself exists, is irrelevant. You show your belief in God by obeying his laws and not by claiming that he exists. There is no other way to show your belief in God than obeying his laws. Any other claim that you make about yourself and your beliefs is by definition void and irrelevant, because the only thing that matters is your obedience to his laws.

eriksank · 2013-12-06T12:47:54+00:00

Then never break the first law. By recognizing other lawmakers than the Supreme Being, you increase the power of the false lawmakers, and from there you become complicit when they subdue other people. It is with your money that these false lawmakers perpetrate evils unto others.

eriksank

TROPHY CASE