*promote me some missionary orange pekoe

Tasmanian has had a very rough time with the Tassy Tiger also being hunted to extinction (kind of a marsupial wolf iirc) and, not to equate humans to animals, the Tasmanian Aboriginals also being wiped out due to small pox and other diseases from well meaning missionaries.

In the devils case, this seems to be an awful trick of evolution, as noted in the video, a single animal experienced a cell mutation which left it with a communicable cancer that is uniquely suited to transmit via the devils form of (anti)social interaction... = (

So...are we talking about Swan monogamy or situational or temporary monogamy? Because last time I checked the majority of Americans or others haven't had just one partner. Nor, even if they have, do they keep those "feelings" of relationship to one individual (Such as that soulmate feeling, sex-free.)

You could argue that boning, fucking, sucking, dating people until you decide it is convenient to settle down is monogamy, and that's fine. Well, right until most people leave/cheat/explore. Then they gotta get back into the routine eventually, because you know it's so natural...

You are born human, sexual, primal, and society tames you. You are born uncircumcised, and who tells you it is wrong? Religious freaks. Who tells you missionary is right, and sex is for procreation? Society. Basically, anything that Rome and Greece did, after they committed atrocities around the world, is now considered wrong. Orgies, emperors, GAY SEX, etc. Coincidence? Probably not.

Tell me Chaos, who did tell you polyamory was "learned"? Biologists? Or society? Or some crappy half-witted data that just says so?

No, devil's advocate here is the same, to me, as devil's advocate against homosexuals.

At least that's my heartfelt belief. I was once wholly monogamous, even turned down a threesome with my first girlfriend. Then I realized that marriage was based on ownership, a very human trait, but monogamy is inconvenient for damn near everyone who practices it.

Three things I have to say, @bobknight33:
1. You're complaining about christianity being attacked. Ok, fine, I'll tell you something: I am tired of your religious beliefs invading my life like an middle eastern dictator a small, oily country. Oh, I have it good, I'm a straight, white middle-european man, I'm fine so far. Others are not. They're tired as well.
I can go on a meth-bender, marry one of the Kardashians in Vegas and annul the whole affair in less than a week. If I win the lottery, I can post on Craigslist and get myself a nice gold-digging whore who'll sign a certificate that makes us husband and wife if I'm willing to trade lackluster blowjobs for money. Best part, it ain 't prostitution if you're married, legally worldwide. Heck, I can even become an abusive piece of shit as long as I can beat her well enough so she won't complain to others.
Because marriage is sanctimonious.
If I was gay and would like to marry the guy of my dreams that I've been with for 20 years, that isn't possible. Because the book doesn't approve.
If my sister got raped, you people would force her to birth the child of her rapist. Her concerns don't matter, life is a holy gift from god. Care to explain to me the position of the catholic church (you know, those christians that make up the majority of christianity) on slavery during centuries slavery? How holy was life in all those european colonies back in the day with all these missionaries teaching the good book? What exactly was their statement as an organisation when millions or people were murdered during the third Reich?
All that silence but when it comes to abortion, you people show up with guns and show the value of this great gift by murdering doctors. Fuck my sisters concerns, right? It just rape, walk it off.
I'm well of, I could join the club as a full member anytime. As long as I'm not calling the cops on the pedophile priests and the self-loathing faggots can stand on their pulpits and tell little children they're broken. I could be among you.
But I have a conscience. I can't buy all that talk about love and forgiveness and ignore all that hatred and cruelty that is in the very basis of your beliefs, that wretched, old bible of yours.
I have to look that man in the mirror in the eyes.
The only way you can impose all that crap on me anymore if through the government. I believe your faith has as much place in there than Tom Cruise's. None.
The Prodigy said it best and I think the people who lived at the time the bible was written would agree: Invaders must die.
Your religion invades my rights as a human being.

2. Did he rise?
Nope, little, brown Jewish got killed. End of facts, begin of story. I don't trust the testimony of men (and I said this before) who consider a walkman witchcraft. People at that time could be convinced that they farted because they swallowed an angry spirit that wants to escape.
You book did a terrible job of explaining how the world came to be (we're golems that had so much incest that they inbred mankind), makes up the worst disastermovies (everything turns to Waterworld but we have a boat with a pair of every animal in existence [imagine all those different kinds of ants alone] and then incest till population is back up) and turns mushroomtrips/mental illness in supposedly accurate future predictions (you know it's the end of the world because none of the riders is called "Incest").
The only reason people buy into the mythology and the extended universe (where's that bible chapter about Satan ruling the Sarlac Pit and Santa being canon again? ) is because for centuries children were taught it at a young age. And then you told them not to question it as heretics get the stake. Ashes yes but not the quick Buffy way.
Don't get me wrong, I like that Jesus fellow and I'm willing to believe his basic message but let's be honest. If J.K. Rowling was born 2000 years earlier, we'd pray to Harry Potter and wear lightning shaped jewelery around our neck. You guys got big because the Roman empire made you relevant. That's it.

3. What's up with '53'? Is that the christian answer to '42'?

OK, I'm glad you tried though.
Actually I dismiss this as ignoring previous repeated public/biblical statements about god, Jesus, and the holy ghost being a single omniscient and omnipotent super being.
I've been told time and time again that Jesus "sacrificed himself for our sins". That means HE had control, obvious if he/3 is omnipotent, he has control over everything, knows everything, and free will is an illusion/lie...just like the cake. ;-) It simply can't be both ways. Either god is omnipotent or not. There's no such thing as 'partially omnipotent'....it's like saying 'part of infinity'....meaningless. (in case you are unaware, any portion of infinity is infinity)
If it was not intentional, and was all the doing of man, then Jesus didn't do anything FOR us in that death. So why do people thank him constantly? Why do people chastise others with 'Jesus died for your sins...so now you owe him your eternal gratitude'?
Man wouldn't need saving if god didn't CREATE sins to be avoided, or rules and rituals that must be observed (although oddly, every religion interprets the rules differently, even those that take the rules from the same book, which should be impossible if it's really the 'infallible word of god', no? Why would He make his definitive requirements so impossible to understand and follow, unless he's really closer to Loki in temperament and is really just screwing with us all), or punishment for being 'confused' about what's reality and what's not: Hell....or if god doesn't exist, or if god's existence and/or sin is unknown to a person.... (WHAT? What kind of rule system is that?) Reminds me of a joke too....

Aborigine asks the missionary :"So, you say God would not have punished us for sinning if we did not yet know about him or sin, and we would have all gone to heaven?"
Missioinary replies: "Yes, God is compassionate, and would not punish you for not knowing something you could not know, or not knowing rules you had not been taught."
Aborigine replies: "The why the f#ck did you tell us! Asshole!"

I guess I should clarify; I think that the pace of our advances is being bottlenecked by our current system because we (as nations) continue to exploit via a relentless focus on profit rather than try to actually spread knowledge and tech as best we can.

A free education system for the world would be incredibly easy to achieve with our current technology, but as nations we don't even try to aim for such a thing. As universities and other education institutions (publishing companies, etc), we have no incentive to truly aim for this in the current paradigm because it reverses profit growth (which, honestly, in the case of education, is pretty much all over-inflated anyway). There's no malicious intent, no conspiracy, and noble goals abound, but we're doing it at a snail's pace out of selfishness.

Individual people act much more nobly than large, well-established institutions. You see a rather strong trend of such large groups behaving closer to the "rational" approach from economic game theory, i.e. the one where self-preservation and gain are maximized first and foremost. If we just rely on our institutions to fix the problems at their root or think that the incidental improvements tied to increased tech and knowledge are being nurtured even half as well as they could be, I think we'd be gravely mistaken.

I think we both ultimately hope for the same outcome, but we clearly disagree on the extent to which our current society(/societies) effectively move towards those outcomes. I would personally like to see us double down on those things that help move us forward.

EDIT: Some examples of ways we're bullshitting ourselves and not doing half as much as we could, for your pleasure.

Princeton University's motto is "In the service of the nation and of all nations" (probably slightly off on the phrasing, sorry), and they have BILLIONS of dollars of endowment. If they and their alumni network took this motto seriously, with their knowledge of business, tech, and science, they could easily bring entire nations out of poverty by simply helping local people adapt tech in sustainable ways to provide food for their population more easily, institute strong education access, and more. Harvard, Oxford, all the other big names are in similar situations. They can do SO MUCH, but just do little projects while answering to their boards about making sure to keep the cash flow positive, keep the endowment growing, keep using alumni donations to pay for things where possible. It's bullshit.

Most large organized religions are also lazy about service. There are many who do seriously just aim at food and medical aid, but most are more interested in conversions and extra tithes than eliminating poverty. How many Christian missionaries of various sects are there around the world? Of them, how many devote their missions to actual service of everyone they can to show their religion through their works as opposed to just focusing on bringing people into the fold via preaching? Additionally, the old "teach a man to fish" concept comes into play here; giving food is good, but we need to be helping people help themselves as well so that they can thrive.

I know shit is very complicated and the answers aren't easy, but we can EASILY do better than this.

Boxes are damage-proof enough, s'how I'd do it if had no bucket-brigade-easier to pick 'em up off the side of the conveyor after they fall than to either twist and toss, or handle-walk-place....economy of movement saves yer spine!!

My personal comfort over your fucking baggage, ya leaflet-printing missionary!!

With all that suggestive dancing, i bet at home they do it just missionary.

These are pretty mild, really.

See http://www.dumblaws.com/

In NY it's legal for women to go topless but illegal to wear form-fitting clothing.

In NY it's illegal to walk around with an ice cream cone in your pocket on Sunday.

In AL it's illegal to have an ice cream cone in your back pocket.

In GA it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your back pocket on Sunday.

(WTF was this ice cream cone fetish people had back in the day?)

In AZ, it's illegal to have more than 2 dildos in a house. (Presumably you can keep the rest in the shed.)

In AK it's illegal to mispronounce Arkansas.

In FL it's illegal to have sex in any position but missionary and never with a porcupine.

In MA, goatees are illegal unless you've paid the fee for a license.

And there are so many more...

Missing a joke about break dancing Mormon missionaries?

Warning, extremly angry rant follows. this was my hometown and goddamnit I am fucking pissed off.

So yes, welcome to Ireland, where they actually tried to stop a raped teenager from leaving the country on the off chance that she might get an abortion! Google the "X Case"

Ireland, where haemophiliacs infected with aids from tainted blood weren't allowed have condoms so they could have sex with their own wives.

Where divorce was illegal until the mid 90's.

Seriously, as @hpqp said, fuck the Catholic Church. If you want to believe in an imaginary friend, fuck it, go nuts, but I cannot understand how anyone could continue to support such a morally bankrupt institution. The WBC are bad, but they're just fucking redneck idiots. The Catholic Church right now is being investigated in Australia. Not because they raped kids, but because they helped the rapist priests move to other parishes, dioceses, even other countries so they could keep being the evil fucks they are.

And I don't want to hear about missionaries or hospitals or whatever. It doesn't balance out. You can do good without the church.

@Yogi, you want to invade somewhere, bomb some white people?
Vatican City, bro. Nuke the fuckers

By the way, some of the best fun I had living in San Fran was fucking with Mormon missionaries on the street there...asking them to show me their garment to prove I was dealing with real reps of the church, arguing fairy tales over dogma, OH, and keep telling the older one to "shut up" that I was talking to the younger one....That really fucks em up!

>> ^BoneRemake:

>> ^shang:
this guy has a really cool webseries, he mixes science and christianity and shows not all christians are fanatical religious closed minded zealots

....They are not ?
shit, i had it all wrong.


Yea he's a pretty cool guy, been watching his web series for a long time now, he's super nice and tries to keep his series on the science, but he does get into some discussion on some of his videos such as this one.

He went to Peru on a missionary service and recorded a clip on his channel and some interesting science / religion discussions in the comments

http://youtu.be/-FV4gBbS63A

I love the part where they mix in their own local religious ceremonies with the stuff they've learned from the missionaries.

It's exported crazy with a local flavor.

Tbh, I quoted it for the first half. I have no idea what the person meant about the middle class; perhaps the effect on education?
>> ^messenger:

I've never thought about how religion plays a role in the erosion of the middle class. Care to expand? I know this wasn't your comment originally, but I'm assuming you quoted it because you agree with it.>> ^hpqp:
top yt comment:
But now the middle class is in decline. Anyone else think religion is playing an active role in this?