His father was a drinker
And his mother cried in bed
Folding John Wayne's t-shirts
When the swingset hit his head
The neighbors they adored him
For his humor and his conversation
Look underneath the house there
Find the few living things, rotting fast, in their sleep
Oh, the dead

Twenty-seven people
Even more, they were boys
With their cars, summer jobs
Oh my God

Are you one of them?

He dressed up like a clown for them
With his face paint white and red
And on his best behavior
In a dark room on the bed
He kissed them all
He'd kill ten thousand people
With a sleight of his hand
Running far, running fast to the dead
He took off all their clothes for them
He put a cloth on their lips
Quiet hands, quiet kiss on the mouth

And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floor boards
For the secrets I have hid


Sufjan Stevens on John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
“I think it’s kind of an exercise in humuliation. I won’t pretend to empathize with his behavior or his desire. But I can empathize with his nature. I feel our way of alienating and disassociating with serial killers is a way of disengaging with the reality of our nature, and that we are very selfish, possessive, violent people. I have high regard for the industry of humanity and our ability to give and generate love, but I also think we are selfish animals. I guess I felt a real conviction, although I don’t know where it came from, to humanize John Wayne Gacy, Jr. in a way that enabled us to encounter our own beasts within ourselves. [But] there was nothing good about him. He had no sense of grief about what he did, even to the very end. I’m not pretending to know where that comes from.”

>> ^dedstick:

Brilliant but disturbing concept of corporations as inhuman. Something I have always intuitively felt but could not (or would not) articulate. Bravo!


I don't like people describing things humans do as "inhuman". I just don't like it, what the Nazis did was a part of our nature taken to the extreme. What the Russians did after the Nazis raping tons of German women is also a part of our nature.

>> ^gorillaman:

@Unaccommodated
Modern marriage has nothing whatsoever to do with the production of children.
Marriage can only be worthwhile as a private contract contrived to serve the happiness of its participants. Its legitimacy should not be determined by the number of similar arrangements or the prevalence of comparable relationships in nature.
The biological source of our sociosexual proclivities is only a starting point, the raw material to be combined with our culture and worked by our intellect to produce something of greater value. Humanity has the power to surpass nature.
Homosexuality crossing a threshold of acceptability now that it's practiced by a significant enough percentage of the population is an idea that ought to be offensive to pretty much everybody.


Marriage is FAR, FAR from simply a private contract, it is a public occasion. While the participants in the marriage may make promises to each other, its always done with public input. When people get eloped it often hurts other people in the family for not being able to give their input. Marriage and its public nature, is a human universal. In western Christianity it comes with the portion of 'speak now or forever hold your peace'. In other situations it can be as simple as leaving your belongings in front of someone else's dwelling for a day in the public eye.

Its very clear you think humans are removed from 'nature'. We are not. We do not transcend or surpass our nature, we are who we are. The nature that created your body is the same nature that created your brain and the way you think. Of course other things affect the way you think, but you can't get passed your human way of understanding things. Our Biology affects are behavior and culture, until the point where our culture influences our biology. That is why only some cultures, with a practice of raising cows, people can drink milk as adults. We will never become removed from this cycle.

Homosexuality has had varying amounts of acceptance at different places and different times. Its not only a modern development. I am saying that homosexuality makes up a significant amount of the human population, and probably always has far into our past. I am not saying 'Oh, I guess now it should be accepted', I am saying 'Why should it be anything other than accepted?'

By "closest at hand", I didn't mean that you grabbed it right away. While you did spend years coming to Jesus, it's no coincidence that you did, IMO. You say that among religions, you were particularly prejudiced against Christianity for it's implausibility. This doesn't surprise since it was the one you were most familiar with, and so the one you had seen the most problems with, until you investigated the other ones, and found them even worse. As you have noted several times yourself, growing up in the West, you were also strongly prejudiced towards Christianity, since a large part of our cultural ethos and moral code stems directly from it, even for us atheists. So, if you were going to discover that one religion was the true one, it would almost certainly be a strain of Christianity as it's the one that fits your own culture's moral code the best. If you'd chosen Voodoo instead, then your careful search of religions would be something worth pointing to as evidence.

I was prejudiced against Christianity because I didn't believe Jesus was a real person. I had never actually seriously investigated it, and I was also remarkably ignorant of what Christianity was all about, to the point that it might strain credulity. So no, it wasn't due to familiarity, because there wasn't any. I was just naturally inclined to reject it because of that doubt about Jesus.

At the point at which I accepted it, I had already rejected religion altogether. I was no more inclined to accept Christianity than I was Voodoo or Scientology. I had my own view of God and I viewed any imposition on that view as being artificial and manmade. The *only* reason I accepted Christianity as being true, as being who God is, is because of special revelation. That is, that God had let me know certain things about His nature and plan before I investigated it, which the bible later uniquely confirmed. My experience as a Christian has also been confirming it to this day.

These definitions, especially the ones about Satan are really self-serving. You declare that you have the truth, and part of that truth is that anyone who disagrees with you is possessed by the devil, which of course your dissenters will deny. But you can counter that easily because your religion has also defined satanic possession as something you don't notice. Tight as a drum, and these definitions from nowhere but the religion's own book.

My view is not only based on the bible but also upon my experience. I first became aware of demon possession before I became a Christian. I had met several people who were possessed by spirits in the New Age/Occult movement. At the time, I didn't know it was harmful, so I would interact with them and they would tell me (lies) about the spiritual realm. I thought it was very fascinating but I found out later they were all liars and very evil. It was only when I became a Christian that I realized they were demons.

I don't think everyone who doesn't know Jesus is possessed. If not possessed, though, heavily influenced. Everyone who sins is a slave to sin, and does the will of the devil, whether they know it or not. The illusion is complex and intricate, traversing the centers of intellect, emotion, memory, and perception, and interweaving them; it is a complete world that you would never wake up from if it wasn't for Gods intervention. The devil is a better programmer than the machines in the Matrix.

Actually, it was a very different feeling from that. I didn't feel I was the target of any conspiracy. I had stumbled into one --my group of friends-- but I was ignorant of the conspiracy before I had my experience. After I had it, I realized that they were all part of something bigger than me that I could never understand, and that I was actually in their way, that my presence in their group was really cramping their style a lot, slowing things down, forcing them to get things done surreptitiously. I realized they weren't going to directly remove me for now, but I didn't know how long their patience would last. So I removed myself, and hoped they'd leave me alone. In hindsight, they were horrible friends to begin with, so it was no loss for me. Losing those friends was a very good move for me.

Whatever they were involved in, it sounds like it wasn't any good. I can get a sense for what you're saying, but without further detail it is hard to relate to it.

Again, you're claiming you are right, and everything untrue comes from Satan, and if I have any logical reason to doubt your story, you can give yourself permission to ignore my logic by saying it is from Satan and that's why it has the power to show the Truth is wrong. So, any Christian who believes a logical argument that conflicts with the dogma is, by definition, being fooled by Satan, and has a duty to doubt their own mind. Even better than the last one for mind control. It does away utterly with reliance on any faculty of the mind, except when their use results in dogmatic thoughts. Genius. Serious props to whoever came up with that. That's smart.

God is the one who said "Let us reason together". I accept that you have sincere reasons for believing what you do and rejecting my claims. If you gave me a logical argument which was superior to my understanding, I wouldn't throw it away as a Satanic lie. I would investigate it and attempt to reconcile it with my beliefs. If it showed my beliefs to be false, and there was no plausible refutation (or revelation), I would change my mind. The way that someone becomes deceived is not by logical arguments, it's by sin. They deceive themselves. You don't have to worry much about deception if you are staying in the will of God.

Like, if you say you believe God exists, I say fine. If you say you know God exists, I say prove it's not your imagination. If you say evolution is wrong, ordinarily I wouldn't care what you believe, except that if you're on school board and decide to replace it with Creationism or Intelligent Design in the science curriculum, then I have to object because that causes harm to children who are going to think that they are real science, and on equal footing with/compatible with/superior to evolution.

Have you ever seriously investigated the theory of evolution? Specifically, macro evolution. It isn't science. Observational science is based on data that you can test or observe. Macro evolution has never been observed, nor is there any evidence for it. Micro evolution on the other hand is scientific fact. There are definitely variations within kinds. There is no evidence, however, of one species changing into another species. If you haven't ever seriously investigated this, you are going to be shocked at how weak the evidence actually is.

evolution is unproved and unprovable. we believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable.

sir arthur keith
forward to origin of the species 100th anniversay 1959

You may be right. I may be right. I think it's more likely that I'm right, but that's neither here nor there. How do you know you're not seeing things that aren't there? My experience proves the human mind is capable of doing so and sustaining it. The bible could have been written by several such people. Maybe in that time and place, people who ranted about strange unconnected things were considered to be prophets, and once plugged into the God story, they went to town. I'm not saying it's true, just a possible theory.

There isn't anything I can say which will conclusively prove it to you. The reason being, because my testimony is reliant upon my judgement to validate it, and you don't trust my judgement. You are automatically predisposed to doubt everything I have to say, especially regarding supernatural claims. So asking me to prove it when you aren't going to believe anything I say about it is kind of silly. All I can say is that I have been around delusional people, and the mentally ill, very closely involved in fact, and I know what that looks like. I am as sharp as I ever have been, clear headed, open minded, and internally consistant. You may disagree with my views, but do you sense I am mentally unstable, paranoid, or unable to reason?

Also, the prophets in the bible weren't ranting about strange, unconnected things. The bible has an internal consistancy which is unparalled, even miraculous, considering that it was written by 40 different authors over a period of 1500 years in three different languages.

If I was "in it" and deceiving myself then, I was in something and deceiving myself before. My beliefs about all supernatural things remain unchanged by my experience, that's to say, I still don't believe they exist.

I didn't either, so I understand your skepticism. Until you see for yourself that material reality is just a veil, you will never believe it. But when you do see it, it will change *everything*.

First, not claiming to have created anything doesn't mean he didn't do it, or that he did [edit] claim it and the records were lost. Two, hold the phone -- this rules out Christianity. Genesis states the world was created in six days a few thousand years ago, or something. You can argue that this is metaphorical (why?), but surely you can't say that world being flat, or the sun rotating around the Earth is a metaphor. These are things God would know and have no reason to misrepresent. Since it's God's word, everyone would just believe it. And why not? It makes just as much sense that the Earth is round and revolves around its axis.

There is no reason to include Gods who made no claim to create the Universe, which is most of them. If their claims are lost in antiquity, we can assume that such gods are powerless to keep such documents available. What we should expect to find, if God has revealed Himself, is an active presence in the world with many believers. This narrows it down to a few choices.

I don't argue that this is metaphorical, I agrue that it is literal. I believe in a young age for the Earth, and a literal six day creation.

[On re-reading the preceding argument and the context you made the claim, it is a stupid see-saw argument, so I'm taking it back.] Consider also there are tens of thousands of different strains of Christianity with conflicting ideas of the correct way to interpret the Bible and conduct ourselves. Can gays marry? Can women serve mass? Can priests marry? Can non-virgins marry? And so on. Only one of these sects can be right, and again, probably none of them are.

The disagreements are largely superficial. Nearly all the denominations agree on the fundementals, which is that salvation is through the Lord Jesus Christ alone. There are true Christians in every denomination. The true church is the body of Christ, of which every believer is a member. In that sense, there is one church. We can also look at the early church for the model of what Christianity is supposed to look like. The number of denominations doesn't speak to its truth.

2. The method itself doesn't take into account why the religion has spread. The answer isn't in how true it is, but in the genius of the edicts it contains. For example, it says that Christians are obliged to go convert other people, and doing so will save their eternal souls from damnation. Anyone who is a Christian is therefore compelled to contribute to this uniquely Christian process. I can't count the number of times I've been invited to attend church or talk about God with a missionary. That's why Christianity is all over the world, whereas no other religion has that spread. Also, there are all sorts of compelling reasons for people to adopt Christianity. One is that Christians bring free hospitals and schools. This gives non-truth-based incentives to join. The sum of this argument is that Christianity has the best marketing, so would be expected to have the largest numbers. The better question is why Islam still has half the % of converts that Christianity does, even though it has no marketing system at all, and really a very poor public image internationally.

Yet, this doesn't take into account how the church began, which was when there was absolutely no benefit to being a Christian. In fact, it could often be a death sentence. The early church was heavily persecuted, especially at the outset, and it stayed that way for hundreds of years. It was difficult to spread Christianity when you were constantly living in fear for your life. So, the church had quite an improbable beginning, and almost certainly should have been stamped out. Why do you suppose so many people were willing to go to their deaths for it? It couldn't be because they heard a good sermon. How about the disciples, who were direct witnesses to the truth of the resurrection? Would they die for something they knew to be a lie, when they could have recanted at any time?

3. This kinda follows from #1, but I want to make it explicit, as this, IMHO, is one of the strongest arguments I've ever come up with. I've never presented it nor seen it presented to a believer, so I'm keen for your reaction. It goes something like this: If God is perfect, then everything he does must be perfect. If the bible is his word, then it should be instantly apparent to anybody with language faculties that it's all absolutely true, what it means, and how to extrapolate further truths from it. But that's not what happens. Christians argue and fight over the correct interpretation of the bible, and others argue with Christians over whether it's God's word at all based on the many, many things that appear inconsistent to non-Christians. In this regard, it's obvious that it's not perfect, and therefore not the word of God. If it's not the word of God, then the whole religion based on it is bunk.

The issue there is the free will choices of the people involved. God created a perfect world, but man chose evil and ruined it. Gods word is perfect, but not everyone is willing to accept it, and those that do will often pick and choose the parts they like due to their own unrighteousness. We all have the same teacher, the Holy Spirit, but not everyone listens to Him, and that is the reason for the disagreements.

I didn't say people needed it. I said having a religion in a scary universe with other people with needs and desires that conflict with your own makes life a lot easier and more comfortable. Religion, in general, is probably the greatest social organizing force ever conceived of, and that's why religions are so attractive and conservatively followed in places with less beneficial social organization (i.e., places without democracy), and lower critical thinking skills (i.e. places with relatively poor education).

People come to Christianity for all sorts of reasons, but the number one reason is because of Jesus Christ. There is no such thing as Christianity without Him. I became a Christianity for none of the reasons you have mentioned, in fact I seem to defy all of the stereotypes. I will also say that being a Christianity is lot harder than not. Following the precepts that Christ gave us is living contrary to the ways humans naturally behave, and to the desires of the flesh. As far as education goes, Christianity has a rich intellectual tradition, and people from all walks of life call themselves followers of Christ. You're also ignoring the places where Christianity makes life a lot more difficult for people:



In contrast, in times and places where people on a large scale are well off and have a tradition of critical thinking, the benefits of having a religion as the system of governance are less apparent, and the flaws in this system come out. It becomes more common for such nations to question the authority of the church, and so separate religion from governance. The West has done so, and is leading the world. Turkey is the only officially secular Muslim nation in the world and has clearly put itself in a field apart from the rest, all because it unburdened itself of religious governance when an imposed basic social organization structure was no longer required.

Then how might you explain the United States, where 70 percent of people here call themselves Christian, 90 percent believe in some kind of God, and almost 50 percent believe in a literal six day creation?

You're right, and you may not know how right you are. Modern scientific investigation, as away of life, comes almost entirely from the Christian tradition. It once was in the culture of Christianity to investigate and try to understand the universe in every detail. The thought was that understanding the universe better was to approach understanding of God's true nature -- a logical conclusion since it was accepted that God created the universe, and understanding the nature of something is to reveal the nature of its creator (and due to our natural curiosity, learning things makes us feel better). The sciences had several branches. Natural science was the branch dealing with the non-transcendent aspects of the universe. The transcendent ones were left to theologists and philosophers, who were also considered scientists, as they had to rigorously and logically prove things as well, but without objective evidence. This was fine, and everyone thought knowledge of the world was advancing as it should until natural science, by its own procedures, started discovering natural facts that seemed inconsistent with the Bible.

This isn't entirely true. For instance, Uniforitarian Geology was largely accepted, not on the basis of facts, but on deliberate lies that Charles Lyell told in his book, such as the erosion rate of Niagra Falls. Evolution was largely accepted not because of facts but because the public was swayed by the "missing links" piltdown man and nebraska man, both of which later turned out to be frauds.

That's when people who wanted truth had to decide what their truth consisted of: either God and canon, or observable objective facts. Natural science was cleaved off from the church and took the name "science" with it. Since then, religion and science have both done their part giving people the comfort of knowledge. People who find the most comfort in knowledge that is immutable and all-encompassing prefer religion. People who find the most comfort in knowledge that is verifiable and useful prefer science.

The dichotomy you offer here is amusing; Christianity is both verifiable and useful. I'll quote the bible:

Mark 8:36

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

>> ^messenger:

@shinyblurry

Finally getting around to this older comment of yours.

M: The first reason is that it's very common among holders of all sorts of mystical beliefs to have gained the belief following such an experience, and to have attributed the belief to whichever mystical force is closest at hand, in your case, Jesus.

SB: Even then I had no religion or belief system. From there, I explored many of the worlds belief systems and philosophies, religions and traditions, for many years, before being led to Christianity. To note, at the time, out of all the religions, I considered Christianity to be one of the least plausible. Again, because it had been uniquely confirmed to me, there was no way to deny it. The evidence was as plain as my reflection in the mirror.

By "closest at hand", I didn't mean that you grabbed it right away. While you did spend years coming to Jesus, it's no coincidence that you did, IMO. You say that among religions, you were particularly prejudiced against Christianity for it's implausibility. This doesn't surprise since it was the one you were most familiar with, and so the one you had seen the most problems with, until you investigated the other ones, and found them even worse. As you have noted several times yourself, growing up in the West, you were also strongly prejudiced towards Christianity, since a large part of our cultural ethos and moral code stems directly from it, even for us atheists. So, if you were going to discover that one religion was the true one, it would almost certainly be a strain of Christianity as it's the one that fits your own culture's moral code the best. If you'd chosen Voodoo instead, then your careful search of religions would be something worth pointing to as evidence.

[God] is the only source of truth, and anyone in contact with Him has access to that truth. The second and lesser power is that of Satan. He is the source of all lies, and anyone in contact with him is deluded and in bondage. Satan is the ruler of the world system, and in general, the people who are enslaved to him are not aware of it. He can only really enslave someone who is ignorant of the truth.

These definitions, especially the ones about Satan are really self-serving. You declare that you have the truth, and part of that truth is that anyone who disagrees with you is possessed by the devil, which of course your dissenters will deny. But you can counter that easily because your religion has also defined satanic possession as something you don't notice. Tight as a drum, and these definitions from nowhere but the religion's own book.

I think it's a natural thought to have, that your life might be something like the Truman show, and everyone else is in on the conspiracy. A belief like that puts you in the very center of the Universe, and from there you could weave together any story you could imagine.

Actually, it was a very different feeling from that. I didn't feel I was the target of any conspiracy. I had stumbled into one --my group of friends-- but I was ignorant of the conspiracy before I had my experience. After I had it, I realized that they were all part of something bigger than me that I could never understand, and that I was actually in their way, that my presence in their group was really cramping their style a lot, slowing things down, forcing them to get things done surreptitiously. I realized they weren't going to directly remove me for now, but I didn't know how long their patience would last. So I removed myself, and hoped they'd leave me alone. In hindsight, they were horrible friends to begin with, so it was no loss for me. Losing those friends was a very good move for me.

The thing is, what I know now is, that everyone who falls into these traps has a little help. That you don't just fall into the abyss, you get pushed in. Satan fuels these types of experiences supernaturally. He can cause people to give you responses or engage you in dialogues which confirm the lies that he has planted and therefore reap a harvert of delusion. He will even give you these kinds of experience in order to debunk them later with the ultimate goal of getting you to doubt the real thing:

Again, you're claiming you are right, and everything untrue comes from Satan, and if I have any logical reason to doubt your story, you can give yourself permission to ignore my logic by saying it is from Satan and that's why it has the power to show the Truth is wrong. So, any Christian who believes a logical argument that conflicts with the dogma is, by definition, being fooled by Satan, and has a duty to doubt their own mind. Even better than the last one for mind control. It does away utterly with reliance on any faculty of the mind, except when their use results in dogmatic thoughts. Genius. Serious props to whoever came up with that. That's smart.

I admit some things I believe may seem counter-intuitive to you, but as you have admitted, our intuitions about what is correct are not always reliable. Quantum physics is a good example of this truth.

I have no problem with counter-intuitive things. I love them. That's why I'm do drawn to quantum physics. I really try hard to wrap my mind around how some of those things can be so, but I really can't. I trust it's so only because experimental evidence bears it out. The only claims of anybody's that I have problems with are A) highly improbable ones only where following such a belief will somehow result in an undesirable outcome; and B) internally self-contradicting or otherwise demonstrably impossible ones.

Like, if you say you believe God exists, I say fine. If you say you know God exists, I say prove it's not your imagination. If you say evolution is wrong, ordinarily I wouldn't care what you believe, except that if you're on school board and decide to replace it with Creationism or Intelligent Design in the science curriculum, then I have to object because that causes harm to children who are going to think that they are real science, and on equal footing with/compatible with/superior to evolution.

It seems to me that you're still very much interpreting reality through your experience. You make the leap that since you were able to fool yourself to such an extent, and that your experience had the character of the supernatural, that everyone who has a supernatural experience is undergoing a similar process. Yet, this is a classic example of confirmation bias. How do you know that you're still not seeing things according to an unconscious paradigm you haven't yet questioned?

You may be right. I may be right. I think it's more likely that I'm right, but that's neither here nor there. How do you know you're not seeing things that aren't there? My experience proves the human mind is capable of doing so and sustaining it. The bible could have been written by several such people. Maybe in that time and place, people who ranted about strange unconnected things were considered to be prophets, and once plugged into the God story, they went to town. I'm not saying it's true, just a possible theory.

As far as truth, it is by nature, exclusive. There is no true for me, or true for you. Someone is right and someone is wrong. This world was either created with intention, or it manifested itself out of sheer happenstance. There either is a God or there isn't.

Excellent to hear. I agree with everything here and might refer back to this several times when I get to your other comment about the nature of God.

You believe you were just deceiving yourself. What I am telling you is that you had supernatural help, and that you're still in it.

If I was "in it" and deceiving myself then, I was in something and deceiving myself before. My beliefs about all supernatural things remain unchanged by my experience, that's to say, I still don't believe they exist.

First, you can rule out all the gods who make no creation claims. Two, you can rule out the creation claims that contradict the basic evidence.

First, not claiming to have created anything doesn't mean he didn't do it, or that he did [edit] claim it and the records were lost. Two, hold the phone -- this rules out Christianity. Genesis states the world was created in six days a few thousand years ago, or something. You can argue that this is metaphorical (why?), but surely you can't say that world being flat, or the sun rotating around the Earth is a metaphor. These are things God would know and have no reason to misrepresent. Since it's God's word, everyone would just believe it. And why not? It makes just as much sense that the Earth is round and revolves around its axis.

I thought about weighting the probabilities for each religion, but discarded it as unwieldy and unnecessary. There are so many mutually exclusive strains even within a single religion that we are still left with tons of them to choose from.

Your evidence about what the most influential/largest religion is is valid (in the "indication" sense of "evidence") for Christianity's being true, and for it being the only reasonable candidate for being true, but is not conclusive. My counterarguments are several:

1. If having the largest relative numbers is evidence of the probable truth of something, then even larger numbers is stronger evidence that it's probably not true. Around 2 billion people are Christian, so around 5 billion are not. By this method, while it's most probable Christianity is right, it's more probable that none of the religions is right. [On re-reading the preceding argument and the context you made the claim, it is a stupid see-saw argument, so I'm taking it back.] Consider also there are tens of thousands of different strains of Christianity with conflicting ideas of the correct way to interpret the Bible and conduct ourselves. Can gays marry? Can women serve mass? Can priests marry? Can non-virgins marry? And so on. Only one of these sects can be right, and again, probably none of them are.

2. The method itself doesn't take into account why the religion has spread. The answer isn't in how true it is, but in the genius of the edicts it contains. For example, it says that Christians are obliged to go convert other people, and doing so will save their eternal souls from damnation. Anyone who is a Christian is therefore compelled to contribute to this uniquely Christian process. I can't count the number of times I've been invited to attend church or talk about God with a missionary. That's why Christianity is all over the world, whereas no other religion has that spread. Also, there are all sorts of compelling reasons for people to adopt Christianity. One is that Christians bring free hospitals and schools. This gives non-truth-based incentives to join. The sum of this argument is that Christianity has the best marketing, so would be expected to have the largest numbers. The better question is why Islam still has half the % of converts that Christianity does, even though it has no marketing system at all, and really a very poor public image internationally.

3. This kinda follows from #1, but I want to make it explicit, as this, IMHO, is one of the strongest arguments I've ever come up with. I've never presented it nor seen it presented to a believer, so I'm keen for your reaction. It goes something like this: If God is perfect, then everything he does must be perfect. If the bible is his word, then it should be instantly apparent to anybody with language faculties that it's all absolutely true, what it means, and how to extrapolate further truths from it. But that's not what happens. Christians argue and fight over the correct interpretation of the bible, and others argue with Christians over whether it's God's word at all based on the many, many things that appear inconsistent to non-Christians. In this regard, it's obvious that it's not perfect, and therefore not the word of God. If it's not the word of God, then the whole religion based on it is bunk.

I agree to some extent about psychological motivations but reject the premise as a whole that people need religion to live in a scary Universe. Most atheists aren't aware of the vast intellectual and philosophical traditions of Christianity, or how self-critical it can be. Even Paul said that if Jesus is not resurrected that we are all fools. We're not just a bunch of ignoramouses who drank the kool-aid and are waiting for the UFO to arrive.

I didn't say people needed it. I said having a religion in a scary universe with other people with needs and desires that conflict with your own makes life a lot easier and more comfortable. Religion, in general, is probably the greatest social organizing force ever conceived of, and that's why religions are so attractive and conservatively followed in places with less beneficial social organization (i.e., places without democracy), and lower critical thinking skills (i.e. places with relatively poor education).

In contrast, in times and places where people on a large scale are well off and have a tradition of critical thinking, the benefits of having a religion as the system of governance are less apparent, and the flaws in this system come out. It becomes more common for such nations to question the authority of the church, and so separate religion from governance. The West has done so, and is leading the world. Turkey is the only officially secular Muslim nation in the world and has clearly put itself in a field apart from the rest, all because it unburdened itself of religious governance when an imposed basic social organization structure was no longer required.

It's funny but science functions in the same way for atheists as you say a god does for theists.

You're right, and you may not know how right you are. Modern scientific investigation, as away of life, comes almost entirely from the Christian tradition. It once was in the culture of Christianity to investigate and try to understand the universe in every detail. The thought was that understanding the universe better was to approach understanding of God's true nature -- a logical conclusion since it was accepted that God created the universe, and understanding the nature of something is to reveal the nature of its creator (and due to our natural curiosity, learning things makes us feel better). The sciences had several branches. Natural science was the branch dealing with the non-transcendent aspects of the universe. The transcendent ones were left to theologists and philosophers, who were also considered scientists, as they had to rigorously and logically prove things as well, but without objective evidence. This was fine, and everyone thought knowledge of the world was advancing as it should until natural science, by its own procedures, started discovering natural facts that seemed inconsistent with the Bible.

That's when people who wanted truth had to decide what their truth consisted of: either God and canon, or observable objective facts. Natural science was cleaved off from the church and took the name "science" with it. Since then, religion and science have both done their part giving people the comfort of knowledge. People who find the most comfort in knowledge that is immutable and all-encompassing prefer religion. People who find the most comfort in knowledge that is verifiable and useful prefer science.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'jose gonzalez, in our nature' to 'jose gonzales, in our nature' - edited by kulpims

Modern medicine is extremely effect, especially when compared to none, for every vegetable hooked up to life support there are thousands of people who would otherwise be unproductive that have had their productive years extended. I don't view medicine as unnatural for people because it is an extension of our natural ability to understand and manipulate our environment. Just as regulation is something we can use to manipulate the market to avoid undesirable situations while allowing for continued prosperity.

That is not to say we always regulate properly or fairly, or that everyone in the market benefits equally. The problem with the bailouts was while they averted catastrophic consequences for the majority of people, and inconvenience for the richest.

And therein lies the crux of the problem, the people with the most, those who really created the problem are nothing more than inconvenienced, even if they lose millions they still have enough left to live comfortably, while the average worker who had little to do with the with the shifty policies suddenly have nothing. Further more there are many who benefited greatly by the practices proving if you've got the right acumen, or at least that's the illusion, you can make a lot of money.

Do the majority of people share some blame for what happened, of course, but when you look at who suffers and who had the most to do with the unscrupulous practices, those who had the least to do with it suffer the most. Those who have the most control suffer the least, or worse come out for the better, so why should they change their practices?

And that's why I think regulation has its place, when properly applied it acts as a deterrent for those who would otherwise have little to lose from unscrupulous practices, and gives those who have little control some method of petitioning for change.

As I said before I agree with you in that our regulations piecemeal conglomeration of polices that rob each other of efficacy. However I feel in free market situation you describe the people with the least amount of control suffer the most and the wealth continually gets concentrated in the hands of fewer ad fewer.

In reply to this comment by xxovercastxx:
Regulation, in my natural selection analogy, is like modern medicine: It can sustain companies that should be dead, making those invested in the company happy but having negative effects on the system as a whole.

When the bailouts were fresh news, there were a lot of cries that the free market didn't work. In truth, the free market was working. Those banks had unsustainable practices and they were going down because of it. Would it have been catastrophic when they failed? Yeah. But the recovery process would have started then and there and any banks still standing would have had good reason not to repeat the others' mistakes. Instead the government propped them up and they are back to fucking us.

The auto industry situation isn't much better. Regulation imposes tariffs on foreign cars that get passed on to us in the price. Why? Because American cars suck ass and can't compete on a level playing field. Even with the deck stacked in their favor, the big 3 tank anyway. The government bails them out because of some misguided sense of national pride. They justify it with talk about lost jobs, but it's all nonsense. The demand for cars doesn't go down because car makers go out of business, people who would have bought from the big 3 just have to buy from someone else now. Toyota already employs more Americans than the big 3 combined. The textile manufacturers see no change in business volume as the other car manufacturers increase production to fill in the gap left by the big 3.

Let them tank. Let the jobs migrate. Let failed companies stand as examples to the rest.

I really feel like people are somewhat spoiled. They're no longer willing to see or endure anything "bad", but the old and sick must die to make way for new life, both in nature and in business, and things can get real ugly when you try to stand in the way of that.

I don't think everyone needs to be professionals at any level of market freedom. Even the most ignorant person knows they're being screwed at some point and there's nothing that says the free market can't contain professional advisers and watchdog groups.

What I think government's biggest role ought to be is enforcing a level of transparency so that we all have legit information to make our decisions on. The FDA requires ingredients to be listed on all food items. Some people don't pay any attention to it, but it's there. I'd like to see that sort of thing everywhere.

Meh. Not feeling it, despite the great music. I found the explanation to be over-simplified and to rely too much on fear of the unknown as a causative factor not only in history but for why religion exists in the world of today.

Also, the vid didn't make a very persuasive case for how religion is preventing us from doing all those great things the video assures us of being capable of at the end. The fact is that you could get rid of all religions tomorrow and people would still be killing each other and ignoring each others' suffering for a host of other reasons (nationalism, ethnic conflict, greed, etc.). Religion is not what is holding us back; our own human nature is. For many people (I noticed for example Ghandi in the clips of the great people shown) it is in fact religion that helps them to overcome our natural inclinations towards selfishness, greed, and self-preservation and live more humanely.

Won't downvote, but can't bring myself to upvote either.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^MaxWilder:
>> ^Yogi:
>> ^MaxWilder:
Look, it's your choice.
You can use grown up words to express yourself, and other grown up people will respect that.
Or you can spew ignorance from your dirty blow-hole like an inbred 12 year old, and the grown-ups who hear you will dismiss you as a waste of oxygen who will never amount to anything of any importance except for when you knock up your cousin and spawn some duplicates of your diseased and ill-formed brain.
Choose your own adventure, kid.

I assume you're talking to me in which case I'll explain that you don't know me.

I wasn't talking to you specifically, but that's besides the point. Do you want mature people to respect what you are saying? Then use mature language. I don't have to "know you" in order to dismiss you as immature, ignorant, and inconsequential if I hear (or read) slurs based on gender, ethnicity, or sexual preference.

So you're saying that swearing or taboo words make people think that I am somehow ignorant or inconsequential?
That's bullshit. Stephen Fry pointed that out as well, some of the smartest most educated people he's ever known swear all the time. Dan Savage uses "faggot" he's definitely smart and respected. Louis CK uses faggot in his act all the time...he's obviously a very good writer.
I'm sorry I just do not fucking agree with you, based on these examples. If you want to dismiss me as immature or ignorant fine...the likes of Stephen Fry, Louis CK, and Dan Savage won't and that's just fine by me.


I never said anything about swearing in general, though that is closely related. I'm saying that how you use words reveals things about yourself, and you will be judged accordingly. As others have mentioned, context is essential. Of course I can't claim to have seen everything they have ever said, but I will bet dollars to donuts that Dan Savage and Stephen Fry have never uttered the word "faggot" as an intentional slur against another person. They would use it tongue in cheek, or as satire targeted at people who use it as a slur. And if Louis CK uses it as a slur, then yes, my opinion of him will drop several points. But I would have to see it in context. As for other types of swearing, if you swear occasionally to emphasize a point, it can be very effective. But if you're dropping the f-bomb every other word, it ceases to become a bomb and starts to become a sign that you're an idiot.

But I think you know what I'm saying and are intentionally being argumentative. So this is my final statement on the subject: Human beings are constantly judging each other. It's in our nature. One of the things that we judge is the maturity level of a person's discourse. The use of slurs based on gender, ethnicity, and sexual preference is rapidly becoming the realm of ignorant, backward, irrelevant people. Are there exceptions? Probably. Should you count on people making an exception for you? Not if you're smart. You can argue that there are powerful and important people who still use these kinds of slurs, but most people will not think of those exceptions when they hear you talk. They will be thinking instead of the 12 year old moron anonymously shouting bile into his xbox, or these horrible children celebrating the death of an innocent boy. It is your choice how you wish to present yourself to the world, so don't try to convince me that you should be allowed to spew hatred without repercussions. That won't get you anywhere.

Sociopaths are a vanishingly small percentage of the population. I was talking about scientific studies with large samples which statistically tend to show that there are certain behaviors that are encouraged by our genes and some that are discouraged by our genes. Emotions are defined as the automatic programs that are executed in an animal in response to certain stimuli. Your life experience can certainly skew the triggers but our nature as social animals and the evolutionary advantage of cooperating with each other means and history has shown that culture corrects and steadily moves towards something that matches our nature. Why nature through evolution has led to nature being what it is currently is where your God or my "mind of the All" or the great mystery enters the picture.

-Karl
>> ^shinyblurry:

Some people feel good when they hurt people..I would say the reward systems of human beings is one of the most suspect things in existence. If it feels good do it is not a basis for morality. Popular culture says to follow your heart. The bible says in contrast:
Jeremiah 17:9
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

>> ^swedishfriend:
Well, it is in our nature as a social animal to share and to help each other, etc. There are built-in reward systems that make you feel good when you give something to someone else (you feel better than if you kept it for yourself). You feel bad when you hurt someone else. You could base your morality around your natural emotional system that has been built by evolution to ensure the survival of the species. Why nature produces life in ever more complex forms is the big question but I think it is scientifically clear that all animals have evolved emotional responses to help the species survive and that we are a social animal like many other animal species who, like us, go out of their way to help and protect each other.
-Karl
PS. edited for rushed grammar.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Whether or not there is actually a higher power that is divinely judicial is irrelevant if everything we do here on earth, on a collective level, is consensus based.
Well, as I said before I believe everyone has a God given conscience which tells them right from wrong, so morality is not determined by concensus but rather Gods standard. Whether humans choose to obey that standard is their personal choice.
>> ^rougy:
>> ^shinyblurry:
I'll ignore all your bait and just ask you this: tell me how in a concensus based morality anything could truly be right and wrong?

But a consensus based "morality" is based on a consensus based "reality", and that's all we have to go on.
Every religion is consensus-based.
Whether or not there is actually a higher power that is divinely judicial is irrelevant if everything we do here on earth, on a collective level, is consensus based.
It may matter on the individual level, but even that is based on a personal belief and not knowledge.

Some people feel good when they hurt people..I would say the reward systems of human beings is one of the most suspect things in existence. If it feels good do it is not a basis for morality. Popular culture says to follow your heart. The bible says in contrast:

Jeremiah 17:9

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?


>> ^swedishfriend:
Well, it is in our nature as a social animal to share and to help each other, etc. There are built-in reward systems that make you feel good when you give something to someone else (you feel better than if you kept it for yourself). You feel bad when you hurt someone else. You could base your morality around your natural emotional system that has been built by evolution to ensure the survival of the species. Why nature produces life in ever more complex forms is the big question but I think it is scientifically clear that all animals have evolved emotional responses to help the species survive and that we are a social animal like many other animal species who, like us, go out of their way to help and protect each other.
-Karl
PS. edited for rushed grammar.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Whether or not there is actually a higher power that is divinely judicial is irrelevant if everything we do here on earth, on a collective level, is consensus based.
Well, as I said before I believe everyone has a God given conscience which tells them right from wrong, so morality is not determined by concensus but rather Gods standard. Whether humans choose to obey that standard is their personal choice.
>> ^rougy:
>> ^shinyblurry:
I'll ignore all your bait and just ask you this: tell me how in a concensus based morality anything could truly be right and wrong?

But a consensus based "morality" is based on a consensus based "reality", and that's all we have to go on.
Every religion is consensus-based.
Whether or not there is actually a higher power that is divinely judicial is irrelevant if everything we do here on earth, on a collective level, is consensus based.
It may matter on the individual level, but even that is based on a personal belief and not knowledge.

Well, it is in our nature as a social animal to share and to help each other, etc. There are built-in reward systems that make you feel good when you give something to someone else (you feel better than if you kept it for yourself). You feel bad when you hurt someone else. You could base your morality around your natural emotional system that has been built by evolution to ensure the survival of the species. Why nature produces life in ever more complex forms is the big question but I think it is scientifically clear that all animals have evolved emotional responses to help the species survive and that we are a social animal like many other animal species who, like us, go out of their way to help and protect each other.

-Karl
PS. edited for rushed grammar.
>> ^shinyblurry:

Whether or not there is actually a higher power that is divinely judicial is irrelevant if everything we do here on earth, on a collective level, is consensus based.
Well, as I said before I believe everyone has a God given conscience which tells them right from wrong, so morality is not determined by concensus but rather Gods standard. Whether humans choose to obey that standard is their personal choice.


>> ^rougy:
>> ^shinyblurry:
I'll ignore all your bait and just ask you this: tell me how in a concensus based morality anything could truly be right and wrong?

But a consensus based "morality" is based on a consensus based "reality", and that's all we have to go on.
Every religion is consensus-based.
Whether or not there is actually a higher power that is divinely judicial is irrelevant if everything we do here on earth, on a collective level, is consensus based.
It may matter on the individual level, but even that is based on a personal belief and not knowledge.

>> ^marinara:

1. WWII is a bad example b/c USA had no economic competition after WWII.

Nations aren't businesses. Most of what's produced in the US is sold in the US, always has been, and likely always will be. Exports alone don't account for the rise in prosperity post-WWII. A lot of it was that we'd build up a huge industrial infrastructure that pivoted from making bombers and tanks to making refrigerators and cars.

>> ^marinara:
2. Are you assuming some level of debt after the 'space alien boost'?
I think you are. Or maybe you assume inflation doesn't hurt or something.

I think you're assuming all debt leads to inflation. Have you looked at the stats on debt and inflation recently? Debt's going up fast, but inflation has stayed flat and long-term bond interest rates have fallen, even after S&P tried their best to make them spike by downgrading our credit rating.

>> ^marinara:
Iceland politicians took on their banks, we didn't and now they're recovering while we aren't.


Incidentally, Iceland followed textbook Keynesian macroeconomic policy. Now they're better off than the countries who just tried to stick to austerity and tight money (the former by choice, the latter not).

>> ^marinara:

I doubt that any amount of spending could 'fix' the economy. Instead, you'd have to borrow-spend continuously, like pumping air into a burst balloon.


I think first you have to commit to a theory about what's wrong with the economy now -- not symptoms, like unemployment is high, but what the underlying root cause is.

There are a lot of things it's not being caused by. It's not been caused by any physical damage to our country's industry or infrastructure. It's not been caused by people suddenly waking up one morning having forgotten how to make things. We didn't suddenly lose all our natural resources. What, in terms of real economic capacity did we lose? Anything? Anything at all?

The other half of the "fake alien invasion" thing is that it tends to focus our minds on what's real (factories, workers, materials), and what's not (debt, money, inflation), and helps us realize how ridiculous it is that we would let concern about debt or inflation stand in the way of us putting our resources to work to save ourselves from being turned into some alien race's dinner.

Once you realize that, all you need to do to get the rest of the way is to realize that the best way to save yourself from problems with debt and inflation is to put your resources to work making as much stuff as possible, you start to see why Keynesians are annoyed that they might need to fake an alien invasion to get people to do the sensible thing...

Satan doesn't make you do anything..he merely tempts. It's not Satans fault that someone sinned. He couldn't legally be blamed for any sin that humans do. Our nature is fallen, that is why we're such easy targets. We naturally want to do things which aren't right. The flesh and spirit are at war with one another. The flesh has insatiable desires which never end, and lead people into self destruction. We're willing victims, which is the problem. This is why we must be born again. Until we put on the righteousness of Christ, we don't stand a chance.

The bible is more than a cautionary tale, it is our true history. What is seen by the eye is the surface of the spiritual war that is underlaying all things. Every person you meet is a soldier on one side or the other, and a war is being waged for his very soul. What comes out of his mouth are the weapons of this war, the sword of truth or the flaming arrows of the enemy. There are no coincidences, because all things are being orchastrated.

Since you do appreciate the bible, I will recommend the book of Ecclesiastes to you. It is a book of sayings of wisdom, written by a King who had done it all, seen it all, had every thing a man could ever possibly want and more. It his cautionary tale about life.

Also, I honestly don't see how you think that the one who controls life and death is evil for presiding over it. Over 2 million people are born and die every day. God is sovereign, and He can adjudicate His creation how He pleases. As He said to job, "Have you ever in all your life caused a day to dawn?" He didn't need anyones help in making the Earth, and He certainly doesn't need anyones advice in running it. It was *because* of the evil man was doing that He brought His judgement to bear.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
Change 'Satan' to greed and self interest, and I'm pretty much on board with what you are saying in this comment. I think attaching greed and self-interest to a demon allows us to put one degree of separation between the good and bad side of our own nature - hindering us from taking responsibility for the ill we actively or passively commit on others. "Satan made me do it."
I think there is much wisdom in the Bible, so long as we look at these stories as cautionary tales rather than literal truth; so long as we look at these stories as the wisdom of men rather than the wisdom of a just God - because there are a number of horrors perpetrated by God that far surpass the evil of men.
>> ^shinyblurry:
This "ridiculous caped horned boogeyman" is the image that Satan prefers, and the secular media portrays. It's the image the spiritually undiscerning have of Satan, that he is some overt and absurd caricature of evil. Nothing can be further from the truth. Satan masquarades as an angel of light. When he shows himself to someone, it's under the pretense of good not evil. He is a master manipulator and tactician, more intelligent and powerful than any other creation of God. He shows himself to be a giver of secret knowledge, a liberator of humanity. Someone who has our best interests at heart. His influence is everywhere, in our culture and media, from main street to wall street to pennsylvnia avenue. His product is sin and everyone is buying, and all those who do become his slaves.
>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
Unsaved people don't believe in Satan. You are confusing love with mockery. Satan is one of the most poorly constructed characters in all of Christian mythology - a ridiculous caped, horned boogeyman designed to frighten young children and gullible adults into going to church. When South Park or Tenacious D features Satan, they aren't praising Satan, they are making fun of religion. >> ^shinyblurry:
Unsaved people love this idea of devil as some sort of freedom fighter..but that wasn't the case.

Sin is the cause of evil. It causes a derangement and moral depravity in the heart and mind. From this, wicked intentions and desires arise. Sin is also the cause of death. We are born predisposed towards sin because our nature is inherently corrupt.

Jeremiah 17:9

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?


>> ^Ryjkyj:
>> ^shinyblurry:
Sin is an immoral act which transgresses Gods law. It isn't an absence of God, it is disobedience against His laws.
>> ^Ryjkyj:
>> ^kir_mokum:
and according to your myth, who created evil and lucifer?

This is where you get the fascinating explanation that "evil" is the absence of god. But god didn't create evil and there was nothing in the universe before god. But god didn't create evil.
Get it? Simple right?


I didn't say sin did I? Quit changing the subject.