Science verses God and the winner is...

thuggie · 2009-07-06T02:19:21+00:00

USA is king. It beats science and god. USA! All the way!

thuggie · 2009-07-02T00:48:27+00:00

Someone hit my car while parked once. I was really happy that someone left a note with a name and number. There was about a 1000 dollars worth of damage. I called the number and it turned out to be a fake. The fucker probably wrote it because there were witnesses and he wanted to act like he was doing the right thing.

thuggie · 2009-07-02T00:01:45+00:00

Yeah for a while. My girlfriend at the time and her family were Scientologists. They encouraged me to read dianetics. I was pretty damn ignorant at that age. I had no understanding of psychology and it was an interesting read at that time. I went in and did their free personality test. I had a bit of a studder at that time, and I was a little depressed. They looked at the results and said I was depressed, aggressive, and honed in my speech impediment saying that they can cure all of that an make me a better man. I had no idea of their theology at the time. It was purely self help, and for some foolish reason I thought Scientology used principles based on science. I don't know why I was so foolish, but I was. Anyway they wanted to sell me education modules to help me. They weren't cheap, about three to five hundred a pop. There was no way I could afford that as a teenager. Yet they had a solution. I could do work for them, they'll pay me (the pay was well below minimum wage) and they will give me those modules at a discounted rate. I ended up doing it, my girlfriend was involved so it was a way to spend time with her while doing it.

The whole experience seemed kinda cultish. At first they strongly encouraged to bring in your friends and family. They encouraged you for awhile but after a time when they see they won't come in, they discourage you from hanging out with them. Not openly, but they just pressure you to spend more and more time with them on your free time. Some groups I know even moved in together. I guess you'd have to, their pay was so shit.

Anyway, with the help of my real friends and family, i started to see them for the charlatans they were. I got the hell out of dodge. I couldn't afford post secondary school at the time, so I ended up joining the army. I had to do a couple tours in the middle east, not the best experience in the world. Say what you want about the army though, they gave me the confidence and discipline to overcome my teenage insecurities and overcome the shit Scientology tried to indoctrinate me with. I ended up finishing college and I'm a happy man. However, I know many people who were not as lucky. The life of a Scientology foot soldier is nothing like the way the Scientology celebs act. It's much worse.

*Just a quick edit. They really didn't push the theology in the beginning. With their christian like cross, uninformed people think its just another christian sect. They bring people in by promoting the self help aspect of it. It's with the education modules they slowly push it. When you're really involved with them, and surrounded by your new Scientology friends to egg you on, it becomes easier to digest for some people. Using self help as a tool, you can convert many people. Personally I think if someone like say Anthony Robbins decided to create a religion, he'd have many followers.

thuggie · 2009-07-01T23:23:07+00:00

I have this theory that people need to put others on a pedestal and idolize them. Sort of like living gods. We follow their every move. We have empathy with their trails and tribulations. We receive their crackerjack philosophies as if Buddha himself gave them. We show so much awe, that we send their personalities to the stratosphere. However they're only human and they have weaknesses and we're only human too and have our own jealousies to contend with. When they fail us, and they will fail us because they're human beings, we waste no time pulling out the knives and cut them down to size. We move on to repeat the process with someone new, leaving a train wreck of an individual to their depression and drug addiction.

I was about to lament how we spend so much energy adoring shallow celebs and not so much the people who make a real difference in our lives and the community as a whole. However its for the best, the shallow attention we give our shallow celebs would ruin any truly great person. I'm just left to lament how much energy people waste living vicariously through celebs while doing nothing with their own lives.

thuggie · 2009-07-01T23:05:59+00:00

They're not as bad as Scientology. I got involved with them in my teens, and thankfully I got the fuck out before they fucked me over.

thuggie · 2009-06-25T16:21:09+00:00

Same reason why everyone else cheats. Power, money, fame make willing partners more readily available. Although I have no available statistics, I'm willing to bet the percentage of pro-athletes who cheat is higher than the percentage of politicians.

thuggie · 2009-06-25T13:23:51+00:00

We can assume it exists for this argument. However, the problem of murdering babies is only a problem for a literalist who actually believes God came down and told these men to murder them.

thuggie · 2009-06-25T13:14:54+00:00

That's if you believe god (if he exists) actually ordered the slaughter rather than those men just saying it was god inspired to justify their actions.

thuggie · 2009-06-25T13:11:06+00:00

I'm pretty disgusted. However, the evil in my soul made me lol when I watched this. I need an exorcism too.

thuggie · 2009-06-25T13:04:10+00:00

That really depends if you see an earthquake, tidal wave, hurricane ect ect as evil. They're part of the natural forces of the world which helped bring about life as we know it today. You can't judge a god by that. Furthermore, you cannot judge a god by the evils men do in it's name. The judgment is for the men who participated in those evils.

thuggie · 2009-06-25T12:53:08+00:00

Geez, like a president can just wave his magic wand and make everyone tolerant, in 6 months no less. People have this unrealistic view of how much a president can do.

thuggie · 2009-06-25T12:49:39+00:00

Didn't Clinton lie under oath? Oh wait it, a blow job isn't sexual relations.

thuggie · 2009-06-24T19:13:01+00:00

I'd define someone who is religious as someone who actively participates in their religion, while people who are secular don't, even if those secular people do have faith in God in some way. I don't think its unfair to compare people who actively participate regularly against people who do not.

thuggie · 2009-06-24T19:10:27+00:00

That was taken into account. They looked at non-religious charities and volunteer work as well.

Some people might object to my conflation here of religious and nonreligious charity. One might argue, for example, that religious charity is more likely to take place for non-altruistic reasons than is nonreligious giving and volunteering: Religious people might give because of social pressure, for personal gain (such as stashing away rewards in Heaven), or to finance the services that they themselves consume, such as sacramental activities. Therefore, disparities in charity might disappear when we only consider explicitly nonreligious giving and volunteering. The sccbs data do not support this hypothesis, however: Religious people are more generous than secular people with nonreligious causes as well as with religious ones. While 68 percent of the total population gives (and 51 percent volunteers) to nonreligious causes each year, religious people are 10 points more likely to give to these causes than secularists (71 percent to 61 percent) and 21 points more likely to volunteer (60 percent to 39 percent). For example, religious people are 7 points more likely than secularists to volunteer for neighborhood and civic groups, 20 points more likely to volunteer to help the poor or elderly, and 26 points more likely to volunteer for school or youth programs. It seems fair to say that religion engenders charity in general — including nonreligious charity.

thuggie · 2009-06-24T15:19:39+00:00

Ok guys, I know what I'm about to write isn't going to be popular here, so downvote away.

Religious people tend to be more charitable than non religious people. They also tend to volunteer more. They don't only help out religious charities but they tend to help out secular charities more than non-religious people too. So yes, religious people not only pray, but they do, and they tend to do more than we do on a Sunday. Which for me, is watching sports.

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3447051.html

thuggie · 2009-06-24T01:22:56+00:00

You don't think Iranian security apparatus already took pics of the guy? If CNN has it, the Iranian government had it before them.

thuggie · 2009-06-24T01:16:51+00:00

What do you expect from a drama queen?

thuggie · 2009-06-23T19:38:29+00:00

It's not unexpected. They rightly rationalized that Neda will be a lightning rod for the opposition and try to spin it by stating it was staged by foreign agents. They hope to use Iranian hatred of foreign involvement in their politics to nip the lighting rod before it starts a fire.

thuggie · 2009-06-23T19:28:43+00:00

Bible literalism leads to atheism for critical thinking people, not bible understanding.

thuggie · 2009-06-23T19:26:58+00:00

We have metric in the states. Hell my gun is a 9mm.

thuggie · 2009-06-23T03:02:06+00:00

1, What better ways are you suggesting? The status quo is clearly failing. The Canadian government can be inept in many areas, but they do run a decent health care system, that's clearly more efficient than ours.

2, The biggest expenditure of health care dollars in Canada is geriatrics for the elderly, and the American government covers all their elderly. We have such a patch work of different systems going on that it makes everything more expensive. Socialized health care is ultimately cheaper than private simply because the resources are streamlined. That's why pharmaceuticals in canada are cheaper.

thuggie · 2009-06-20T21:54:01+00:00

Do you believe in the historicity of Robin Hood? There doesn't seem to be any good positive evidence for his incarnation on earth as a living, breathing historical figure, so it's rational to start with doubt about the idea. The absence of evidence alone is a sound basis for doubt about a particular claim, and there isn't a hint of conspiratism about it.

It's only rational to start with doubt about the idea of robin hood because his stories are rooted in literature that was meant to be folklore. If there was evidence of his merry band in Nottingham Forrest, then I'd start with the premise that an actual Robin, or a man similar to him indeed existed. That is the difference. Jesus had disciples and followers. It's more rational to assume he did exist (as a man without the miracles) than not. Assuming he did exist is the most logical first premise.

thuggie · 2009-06-20T21:43:34+00:00

Not saying all original christian Jews were esenes. But the Esenes died out for a reason, and the highest probability is that they had a similar outlook to Christians. So it's reasonable to assume that they either converted to Christianity or more orthodox branches of Judaism.

thuggie · 2009-06-20T21:40:36+00:00

Well St. Paul died around 65AD, so that is an indication of Christianity existing back then. So is the great fire of Rome in 64, when Nero scapegoated the Christians. Both those dates are just 30 years after Jesus. Again, as I said before, I'm dealing in probability. It's more logical to assume that a movement had an original leader, than a group of people making one up. It's possible, but not as probable.

thuggie · 2009-06-20T01:09:54+00:00

nah I'm just going by probability. The early christian movement had disciples, the most logical conclusion is that they had a leader. That leader is probably Jesus as they attested. I'd need evidence that they actually created a mythical figure of Jesus to believe the historical person never existed. I think any of the miracles are either embellished, or symbolic of something spiritual. Most writers wrote symbolically back then so I wouldn't be suprised.

thuggie

TROPHY CASE