You're still missing my point.

No one NEEDS (your word) a church to "complete them". I'm not saying there are no positives to belonging to a church (sense of community, charitable works, etc), but those can all be found elsewhere.

This is demonstrably true and has nothing to do with being an atheist.

I really don't care if someone else is religious or not, as long as (as you say) they're a good person. Frequently, that's in spite of or even in direct contradiction to their churches teachings. And quite frankly, as you don't suck at your religion, I really don't care what you believe. Problem is, lots of people really do suck at it, as we were sadly reminded once again this weekend.

One more thing:
>> You don't like religion being all judgey? I recommend you stop doing it yourself, and let people be.

What gave you the idea I don't like judging other people? I judge people ALL THE TIME.

It's how I decide who I want to be friends with, who I want to employ, hell, even which pub I want to go to. If you don't judge, you don't think. I just don't judge people for things I don't have a problem with (gender, sexual orientation, race, etc). On the other hand, I ABSOLUTELY judge people if they are spiteful, petty or have terrible taste in music

No, I have zero problems with the church judging people for immoral acts. I just vastly disagree with them on what constitutes an immoral act (they generally seem to be pretty down on two people loving each other if they don't have the right set of genitals, I'm more opposed to child sexual abuse, for example).

So yeah, I judge.

I'm sitting here judging the hell out of those assholes in Paris for example. And there's "nothing wrong with that. Judging is human."

I think if someone is in a particular church -- or not -- or whatever they are personally drawn to -- IT IS NONE OF MY BUSINESS TO JUDGE THEM.

If they need it, they need it. Whatever happened to them in their childhood, or whenever -- the church -- whatever church -- or non-church -- fits them.

You are an atheist, right? I don't know if you grew up in a church or not. I don't know why it is so terribly important to you to be an atheist.

But it FITS you.

It is the height of judgmental righteous behavior to look at anyone else's choice and say it is wrong.

Am I a Mormon? No. I agree with you. How this church started is the height -- or the depth -- of religious absurdity. How anyone can choose this church as an adult? How can that be.

And yet. My brother -- who has a Master's Degree in Aerospace Engineering from USC, military pilot, history buff, wide stripe of artistic urges and talents -- this guy chose the church in his early 20's. For his own reasons. Because he needed it, coming from our family of origin.

To quote Jerry Maguire -- it completed him. And like love, it is illogical and not for anyone else to judge.

You don't like religion being all judgey? I recommend you stop doing it yourself, and let people be.

Now, the Mormon church getting involved in the laws of the land? I got a big beef with that.

But as for individuals, making individual choices, for individual reasons.... I gotta say I don't see much difference between your judginess and any Catholic priest laying down "God's law" about how people are "supposed to" believe and behave.

You see that, don't you? There is no difference between your judgement and any religious person's judgment?

God created the devil, but he wasn't always Gods enemy. The scripture reveals that he was a cherub who covered the mercy seat in Ezekiel 28:11-19..here is an excerpt:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ezekiel+28&version=NKJV

14 “You were the anointed cherub who covers;
I established you;
You were on the holy mountain of God;
You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones.

15 You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created,
Till iniquity was found in you.

A cherub does not look like what is described in the popular imagery. You can find a description of them in Ezekiel chapter 1.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+1&version=NKJV

We see in Isaiah 14:3-21 that Satans sin was wanting to replace God and be worshiped himself. Here is an excerpt:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+14&version=NKJV
12
“How you are fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer,[b] son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!

13
For you have said in your heart:
‘I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;

14
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will be like the Most High.’

15
Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,
To the lowest depths of the Pit.

In Heaven, Satan had a perfect life but he threw it away in a mad ambition to replace God with himself. This is exactly what he tempts us to do, as we disregard what God wants and sit on the throne of our lives as king. He got what he wanted in a way, as scripture calls Satan the god of this world, his rule over this world, as ours, is only a temporary affair; we will all stand before God on judgment day and give an account.

And now for the rest of the story....

Thanks for that.

(I'm such a judgmental dick ) My apologies to the young ladies.

It's so hard for me not to be judgmental when i watch this video. I'm old

Actually, most satanists believe in veneration of the self over others. "Do whatever thou wilt" as it were.

Pretty much like any other religion, it's a mystical justification for behaving in the manner they want to (much like christianity is a justification for being judgmental and annoying ; ).

Man, people are so pathetic. Glad this video shows that some people understand people are non-judgmental. Wear makeup, stay skinny/fat, be someone I love or else!

Except I wasn't offended. I was curious.

Funny how a simple question gets some folks bent out of shape.

Remember I said that some women aren't feminists in my original post. I also said no judgment. I also said I was curious.

What part of that shouts that I am offended?

I am honestly curious.

Mordhaus got it. He just answered my question.

Just curious, given this comment. No judgment here, just curiosity....

Do you consider yourself a feminist? Do you think you have an appreciation for the struggles of women in today's hyper-sexualized society?

Are you annoyed at women complaining about gender issues and their struggles?

These are honest questions, I swear. I know women who aren't feminist, who don't have an appreciation blah blah blah. You could be one of them. Although I think you are a man of a certain age.

So? Are you? A self described feminist?

Ah Asmo, this is humorous. Not in a way that has me thinking less of you, but due to the fact that even the smartest people make the most indefensible arguments. Stewart always has a joke when Republicans (and sometimes Democrats) do the same thing Chaos just did and which you defended--which is to ignore the "implied" in a statement. Usually Republicans use hate speech or such, but they just don't say the hate literally (Often when Obama's policies were compared to Nazi Germany's policies, for example.)

I.e, "Hey, I'm not saying Obama is like Hitler, but look at the smoke stacks coming from the White House?! They look like Jew smoke to you?!"

Another, but this one in more relation to our conversation.

I.e., Hey Lawdeedaw, when you have dick in your mouth does it taste good? WOAH, I DIDN'T SAY YOU SUCK DICK! YOU IMPLIED THAT! I just asked, you know, when dick is in your mouth...

See how utterly indefensible that above statement is? Or why Stewart gets so pissed, rightly so, when people make that argument? People can hide behind the most obvious statements and it's bullshit. Or people can be ignorant of the statements you make, and it's just as bullshit.

If you can't see the sense that makes, don't respond to this post please. I don't argue with ideology that blinds people to clear points and I have agreed with my fair share of points over the years when I have been wrong...so I expect it returned in kind.

Second, you do have a point about me being judgmental. I am jaded because every marriage I observed growing up was toxic. "Dad can't divorce mom, even tho she abuses us kids." Was a wonderful house I lived in. My wife was beaten for years by her husband, until she took poverty and destitution over that, and then met me. The list goes on and on, yada yada, no more need to explain my own life history because it isn't necessarily what happens in all of America. So I look at the worst aspects of marriage. Aspects that are as universal as the fact that we eat, breathe, shit and die.

Of course I also use history and stats to back up my judgment. So; marriage is a civil contract based on liberty and property (At least the part of marriage that matters to the government insofar as the rights they give you.) If the world's population of homosexuals is around 2.5% or so, depending on the estimates, then cheating (seeking out more than one relationship at a time) is much more naturally inherent to humans than sexual orientation by far. This is also natural in regards to the homosexual relationships as well. Cheating causes so much grief, repercussions, and yet it is only one bad aspect of being tied into a contract that many societies make difficult to break either through legal means or cultural taboos. Furthermore, abuse, divorce, long-term separation for business matters, much of these things kind of lend credence to the fact that marriage is created by society and has nothing to do with the "apparent" definitions we apply to it.

And Asmo, naughty naughty Asmo, you implied something...I am in no way shape or form telling other people what "their relationship is about." Just because I say something is inconvenient for damn near everyone (For some it is not) doesn't really mean much of anything. Shoes are inconvenient because you have to tie their laces. Is that me telling you how to shoe? No. How about kids? Kids are a hell of an inconvenience, but if you said I was degrading parenthood, especially my own, I would tell you to fuck yourself with that bold-faced lie.

If you are focused on the "property" aspect of that comment, well, you have an issue with my definition of the government's hand in marriage.

"People choose to be polygamous" means people what polygamy? A-they are born that way? B-it just happens? Or C-Hrm, lets see...they must LEARN it. You specifically compared it with being born gay versus choosing (ie., learning something and then choosing it.) Whether this was intentional or not is...irrelevant...

Second, most of the stuff was meant to be irrelevant to the content but also explaining why I hate moral connotations from judgmental assholes. You twist that as though I related it to the video or used it directly against your argument--which I did not. If you didn't understand this, I am not sure how to spell out something so obvious, especially to someone as well-learned as you Chaos. Even if you didn't twist it, your constant poking at it was irrelevant to the argument, and makes your argument seem very petty.

Furthermore, the definition of monogamy is crafted in the best possible light for those "practicing it." They can sugar coat the shit all they want, but it's still shit. Basically they took the most convenient definition they could find and applied it. Remember, I said, "You could argue that boning, fucking, sucking, dating people until you decide it is convenient to settle down is monogamy, and that's fine." Keyword, "that's fine." So yeah, I agreed in a way that the common definition accepted by others is as you said--don't correct bullshit that didn't need correcting.

Lastly, Rome was an example of how history affects perception. Nothing paranoid about that. I think its bullshit, but it happens. It would be like saying that people hate persecution of Jews because of Nazis. In fact Israel can abuse Palestinians these days exactly because of the past. @newtboy was damn right about child rape and didn't need to use sarcasm. Yeah, Rome/Greece had some good and bad, absolutely. But all in all they were hated as a greedy, mass-murdering peoples who brought hell to their vanquished.

As Stewart, an open-minded liberal makes note, polygamists are not at all worthy of marriage equality like gays. Not even close--dismissive. I have often (more often than not) seen discussions on this matter where a conservative will say "Yeah, what next, marriage between animals, or multiple marriages?" The best response was from a gay man, although not alone, it was just asinine. "No, no one is saying THAT..." That, as in those two things compare how? It was his tone that said the most--"I completely agree."

As I told Newt, you can't argue with multiple marriages when you are just trying to legalize gay marriage right now. So when one side demeans it, the other either ignores or joins in. Classic, if you can't stop the bully, pick on his target.

Now that I have calmed down from that judgmental bullshit; better?

Your video, Honest Trailers - Terminator 2: Judgment Day, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Again, I can't seem to pull up the full text of your article through google scholar. Even your summary though states an additional warming contribution of 0.3C by 2100. Sorry, but I don't class that as catastrophic. What's more, simply doing a google scholar search for articles on "permafrost methane climate" and taking the first four full articles give the following, with absolutely zero effort taken to pluck out ones that support my particular claim:

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/2/4/045016/fulltext/
According to our results, by mid-21st century the annual net flux of methane from Russian permafrost regions may increase by 6–8 Mt, depending on climatic scenario. If other sinks and sources of methane remain unchanged, this may increase the overall content of methane in the atmosphere by approximately 100 Mt, or 0.04 ppm, and lead to 0.012 °C global temperature rise.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010RG000326/full
It's a more sweeping assessment so it doesn't have a nice short quotable for our particular point. It's most concise point is in Figure 7 which I'm not sure how to link into here as an image. You can check for yourself though that even the highest error margins on methane releases touch natural emissions till long, long after 2100, matching the IPCC millenial timescale statement I cited earlier.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003GL018680/full
A detailed study of one mire show that the permafrost and vegetation changes have been associated with increases in landscape scale CH4 emissions in the range of 22–66% over the period 1970 to 2000.

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/36/14769.full
We attempted to incorporate in this study some of the latest mechanistic understanding about the mechanisms controlling soil CO2 respiration and wetland CH4 emissions, but uncertainties remain large, due to incomplete understanding of biogeochemical and physical processes and our ability to encapsulate them in large-scale models. In particular, small-scale hydrological effects (36) and interactions between warming and hydrological processes are only crudely represented in the current generation of terrestrial biosphere models. Fundamental processes such as thermokarst erosion (37) or the effects of drying on peatland CO2 emissions (e.g., ref. 38) are lacking here, causing uncertainty on future high-latitude carbon-climate feedbacks. In addition, large uncertainty arises from our ability to model wetland dynamics or the microbial processes that govern CH4 emissions, and in particular how the complicated dynamics of permafrost thaw would affect these processes.

The control of changes in the carbon balance of terrestrial regions by production vs. decomposition has been explored by a number of authors, with differing estimates of whether vegetation or soil changes have the largest overall effect on carbon storage changes (39–41). These results demonstrate that with the inclusion of two well-observed mechanisms: the relative inhibition of respiration by soil freezing (42) and the vertical motion in Arctic soils that buries old but labile carbon in deeper permafrost horizons, which can be remobilized by warming (3), the high-latitude terrestrial carbon response to warming can tip from near equilibrium to a sustained source of CO2 by the mid-21st century. We repeat that uncertainties on these estimates of CO2 and CH4 balance are large, due to the complexity of high-latitude ecosystems vs. the simplified process treatment used here.

And I was able to find the full PDF for your own original sink on the subject:
here
We conclude that the ice-free area of
northeastGreenland acts as a net sink of atmosphericmethane,
and suggest that this sink will probably be enhanced under
future warmer climatic conditions.

All of the above seem to fairly well corroborate my earlier citation to the IPCC's own summary of the current knowledge on permafrost and northern methane impact on future warming:
However modelling studies and expert judgment indicate that CH4 and CO2 emissions will increase under Arctic warming, and that they will provide a positive climate feedback. Over centuries, this feedback will be moderate: of a magnitude similar to other climate–terrestrial ecosystem feedbacks
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter06_FINAL.pdf
From FAQ 6.1

If you want to more simply claim that there exist studies, with noted high uncertainties, that under the worst case emission scenarios that show a possible significant release of methan prior to 2100 and possible catatrophic releases after, then I agree. If you want to claim that the consensus is we are facing catastrophe in our lifetime, as your first post claimed, then I most point to the overwhelming scientific evidence linked above that simply does not agree, once again chosen at random and with no effort to cherry pick only results that match what I want. I must note I lack surprise though as the IPCC had already been claiming the same of the literature and existing evidence.

@newtboy,

How about great big citation needed. Your making a lot of assertions and about zero references to back anything, your just one step shy of claiming because I say so as your proof.

The rotting material creates exponentially more methane than any mechanism could trap.
Citation required.

your study quote did not say that "they've identified regions up north where the soil absorbs more methane the warmer it gets
The abstract is only a paragraph and the charliem gave the link up thread, just go and read it already, they did numerical estimates AFTER going in and directly measuring the actual affects. And I must additionally add, it's not MY link but was instead the ONLY claimed evidence in thread of your catastrophic methane release.

Let me start us off, the IPCC once again summarizes your problem as follows:
However modelling studies and expert judgment indicate that CH4 and CO2 emissions will increase under Arctic warming, and that they will provide a positive climate feedback. Over centuries, this feedback will be moderate: of a magnitude similar to other climate–terrestrial ecosystem feedbacks
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter06_FINAL.pdf
From FAQ 6.1

There are caveats prior to the above quote about unknowns and uncertainty and the possibility the affects will be less or more, but the consensus is, don't panic. Like I said.

As for bringing that person from 1915 in today, you don't get to tell them the environment will be destroyed 100 years from 2015 in the year 2100 as a result. You have to prove that first, which you have merely asserted, not proven. On the other hand, my evidence was bringing our visitor from the past showing them the year 2015, and the consequences of rising global temperatures by 0.8C since his time in 1915. Then I say we ask him if abandoning coal power, airplanes, satellites, and cars to prevent that warming is a better alternate future he should go back and sell the people of 1915 on. I'm thinking that's gonna be a hard sell. I'm additionally pointing out that the IPCC projections for the next 100 years is 1.5C warmer than today, so we'll be going up by 1.5 instead of the 0.8 our visitor from the past had to choose. The trick is, I don't see how you can claim that panic should be the natural and clear response. You need a lot more evidence, which as stated above you've failed to provide, and more over what you've posited is contrary to the science as presented by researchers like those at the IPCC.

It may be unfishable in 15-20 years at current acidification rates.
citation needed.

by 2025 it's estimated that 2/3 of people worldwide will live in a water shortage.
citation needed, and you need to tie it to human CO2 and not human guns and violence creating the misery.

Northern India/Southern China is nearly 100% dependent on glacial melt water, glaciers that have lost 50% in the last decade
citation needed

The downvote was not for your opinion, it was for your dangerously mistaken estimations and conclusions...
, says you. If you don't use any evidence to refute me it's still called your opinion...