^ KamikazeCricket

I comment on religion all the time not because i am a christian but because of the irrationality surrounding it and the behavior of so many deluded people.

Just because people comment on the MJ thing dose not always mean they give a fuck about MJ it can be that they think again a huge group of deluded people are acting disproportionately. (and other reasons)

Well, spoco2... did you actually read the 41 page document I referred to:
www.schapelle.net/propositions/hiddentruth.pdf ?

If you did, you will have seen that all the major points are externally referenced, and really not disputed. Or how about the human rights abuses: www.schapelle.net/report.html, also referenced? All that is ok by you is it? Nice.

And it's hardly a duplicate. The first is a static image of lyrics. This is a film which someone has clearly put a great deal of work into.

But if you open a page with an empty heart, and a mission to criticize, you are going to come up with irrationality I guess. Bet you're a really nice guy to know. Let her die, eh?

FFS. Some people.

The impact is only an impact because people have deluded themselves. OUTSIDE of irrationality MJ,ELVIS, whatever are pretty much erlivent to the world other than being significant artists to a large number of people. yah thay entertained which is fun and yah its a shame that they will no longer produce music but we have recordings of there work and no doubt new people will come along who do stuff that's just as entertaining if not better and different.

Peoples reactions are totally disproportionate to the actual worth that the person is. Its so narrow minded to be so emotionally invested in 1 person who you don't know and only like because of there art and probably for many people because of there publicity and media image.

also MJ wasn't exactly producing the best music for the last 10 years granted he might have been about to produce some realy nice stuff we shall never know but looking at the evidence to hand The MJ as a producer had died a good 10-13 years ago.

This whole event is another reflection on how a large proportion of society are completely mentally fucked and unable to be proportional.

Unless you knew him personally you are simply morning a fictional image and your loss of the potential for him to make new music /dance ruteens and as i sead its not that likly he would be producing annything as influencail afrtisticly sugnificant that he had alredy done 10 years ago .

Its not really that bigger loss relitavly speeking compared to day to day life anyone that actually thinks rationally would come to that conclusion.

From the perspective of fans he hasn't actual died his image and music will live on i don't think any of the fans ever really knew knew him as a person any way so in some ways MJ as people know him is not really dead.

finaly ! lol he died spontaneously in a fairly pain free manor not a bad way to go , and i think he probably enjoyed manny aspects of his life so its not relay that bad at all. , I am all for people playing his music and having a party though its always good to have an excuse to party whatever its for , im just annoyed by the people crying and it being a major news story and all this talk about how much of a huge loss it is.

I don't see anything in that article I disagree with.

I might possibly take issue with the nefarious implications of "Obama used hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds to appeal to and manipulate this illiteracy", but only because it implies that this was unique to Obama's campaign, and not the general state of all political campaigns during my lifetime.

I wholeheartedly agree that Obama can't stop the economic crisis, only soften the blow. I also agree that this illiteracy and irrationalism will be Obama's greatest enemy in the years ahead (see QM's comment above for an illustration).

Thing is, Obama knows that.

I noticed they didn't list the last election's debate literacy level. On a lark, I looked it up. Turns out Obama was speaking at a trend-reversing 9.3 average grade level.

What is so insane about this video? Irrationality is an element of insanity, and Keyes has a good bit of ratiocination to back up his assertions. I happen to disagree with almost everything he's said... He doesn't understand who the president really is for starters. But INSANE? Nope.

>> ^enoch:
take away the voice of those who are being exploited,oppressed and abused.
they WILL find a way to fight back,and be heard.

That's exactly the kind of deaf irrationalism Harris is talking about.

In 50 years, India is going to have made enormous progress, just as Singapore did in the last 50 years, while the countries that listen to bleeding heart liberals who say violence is their birthright if they're not as well off as other nations will be just as undeveloped as they are today.

That was unbelievably shit. No not THE shit, just shit. This is exhibit A in how to absolutely ruin what has the potential to be a very, very good movie. Larry Charles is obviously exceedingly satisfied with himself after having made Borat and decided to make Borat 2 and call it Religulous. Every single interview in this is so entirely FUCKED by slimeball editing techniques and fast cut MTV style stock clip inserts (OOHhhhhhh!!! look at the SHINY SHINY!), that I can almost never actually tell AT ALL when the interviewee's answers were actually to the question that was just asked, or not. Any pretense of intellectual honesty (a thing that I should bloody well think a movie setting out to criticize irrationality would hold in VERY high esteem) is entirely obliterated by snide, underhanded bullshit production techniques. This movie is the "Expelled: No evolution allowed" of the secular world. I say all of this of course as a dyed in the wool, inveterate atheist. Religion, especially the more harmful flavors, deserves to be excoriated, mocked and generally devalued, but if you have to literally rearrange the words of your opponents on tape to do it, you've failed. I can't even much enjoy the parts where the religious nuts actually DO appear to make fools of themselves without any help from Charles, because I'm constantly second guessing the context. I don't blame Maher for it at all, but this was an extreme disappointment. I recommend Johnathan Miller's "A Brief History of Disbelief" or Dawkin's "The Root of All Evil?" over this turd any day.

>> ^messenger:
>> ^gwiz665:
They NEVER keep it to themselves.
Coming from someone who seems to understand evidence and logic and theories, I can't imagine you mean this literally. Do you mean you see a lot of religious people who don't keep it to themselves?

Naw, I was being facetious. My point was more that when a religion actively requires you to recruit and thus "save" people, a follower would be obligated to spread their belief. And even if they don't blather on about it, the religion still directly influence their decisions. A deeply religious person in power scares me, even if they keep it under wraps.
On a related note, most religions are extremely jealous about people leaving their religion (apostasy).


Other than that I have a bit of a grander scope on my objections, in that I think that religion is detrimental to the human race. Like a ball and chain it keeps us from being able to run. We are in essence slaves to superstition, irrationality and foolishness, even if we don't believe in it ourselves, because people in power impose their stupidity on the rest of us.
This seems like the same (valid IMO) point to me: people who impose their religious beliefs on us are slowing us down as a people. Right? And if they kept it to themselves, then they wouldn't be slowing us down anymore.


You would think so, but we cannot isolate people completely from the rest of the world - there will always be reasons for interaction between the peoples. I have nothing against "healthy" traditions with no logical purpose (birthdays, xmas or in some sense even prayer), but when people actually believe that something is different just because they pray, it's ones birthday or it's xmas there is an intellectual dissonance, because nothing has changed.

The only way we advance as a species is through science and technology, religion is very similar to what it was a thousand years ago.

>> ^gwiz665:
They NEVER keep it to themselves.

Coming from someone who seems to understand evidence and logic and theories, I can't imagine you mean this literally. Do you mean you see a lot of religious people who don't keep it to themselves?

Other than that I have a bit of a grander scope on my objections, in that I think that religion is detrimental to the human race. Like a ball and chain it keeps us from being able to run. We are in essence slaves to superstition, irrationality and foolishness, even if we don't believe in it ourselves, because people in power impose their stupidity on the rest of us.

This seems like the same (valid IMO) point to me: people who impose their religious beliefs on us are slowing us down as a people. Right? And if they kept it to themselves, then they wouldn't be slowing us down anymore.

Messenger:
As long as they keep it to themselves, I have no problem with people believing in anything. But when religions actively encourage that they don't keep it to themselves, there is a problem. They NEVER keep it to themselves.

Other than that I have a bit of a grander scope on my objections, in that I think that religion is detrimental to the human race. Like a ball and chain it keeps us from being able to run. We are in essence slaves to superstition, irrationality and foolishness, even if we don't believe in it ourselves, because people in power impose their stupidity on the rest of us.

I don't directly gain anything from mocking them, I avoid losing our collective sanity.

>> ^blankfist:
From slate.com: "If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to. In this event, the world's judgment will be severe and inescapable: The United States had its day but, in the end, couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race."

I don't think you'd get kicked out of school for wearing a t-shirt with that on it.

"Vote for Obama or you're a racist" might, but I defy you to find some Obama supporter selling a t-shirt like that.

^But n***er is a racial epithet. And, people sporting that word on an anti-Obama t-shirt probably aren't part of the Republican Party "officially" (in terms of being on the McCain team). Once again, not to stick up for the Repub party, but rather I'd like to point out the hypocrisy of the Dem party... your party members may call him a white guy, but I've felt racial anger from people of color in your party for not wanting to vote for Obama.

From slate.com: "If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to. In this event, the world's judgment will be severe and inescapable: The United States had its day but, in the end, couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race."

So we vote black or nothing else? Classic fear mongering. The worst your party has done, NR, is use racism and self-righteousness against the rest of us.

P.S. I'm not voting for McCain. I feel I must reaffirm that in fear of a vote retaliation on the Sift.

They sure built some clever and biting social commentary into this show. I always wondered how much was overshadowed by the over-the-top hilarity.

Critiquing the social tendency for some black people to throw this word around but also consider it jarringly offensiveness when used on another's tongue (in the waiter scene) has been done to death in comedy. But if its a person's name, and just a word again,... well thats maybe a clever idea to start with. Using that to then examine the irrationality of racism (showing how stereotypes always describe more than the intended group), then recognize differences can exist in cultures separated by race (Dave's wife talking about a broken bottle and dice game, alluding to a starkly different life compared to one the title family leads) and to finally externalize the terrible hopelessness discrimination can instill with a serious line delivered as if in jest...

'Oh Lord, this racism is killing me inside!'

Dave's the master!

Dawkins only has an attitude of superiority because he's angry that the world is shaped in the image of the numerous gods people fight over. Sometimes the ways of the world can be too much to bear for someone who thinks logically.

Dawkins' main point of contention that places him above religious dogmatists is that, as a scientist, he knows that if god was proven to be real, he wouldn't shun the idea and stick with his dogma. That is what elevates science over dogmatic thinking--the ability to change your mind.

As proselytizing as he may seem, Dawkins would never subvert his rationality simply to pander to his beliefs. And I applaud him for his seemingly arrogant behavior, because it stands up to irrationality.

Religion is, was and always will be about irrationality - it has nothing to do with compassion. Irrationality is not a virtue, and religion will never be a positive force in the world.