oh look its the snowflakes on another cancel crusade. what a bunch of LLLLLLLLooooooosssahs

You can't kill a living human being...

Death Penalty exists...

Abortion will always be a touchy subject, but if you have money to travel, you can get that abortion in places that support them. So what these abortion laws do is punish poor people who can't make that trip. Then those same people are forced to either put the child up for adoption (because we don't have a ton of children that can't be adopted already) or they can raise that child, most likely in the same situation that led to them being poor and not having a proper family unit.

Storytime, and god help me if my wife ever finds out I talked about this.

I was raised in a poor home, with an abusive family. My wife was raised in a poor home with a good family. When we started dating after High School back in 1992, you had two choices for safe sex, condoms or birth control (doctor visit with no insurance and it was Texas in 1992, they weren't just tossing it out like free candy). We had to use condoms because we couldn't afford birth control and because she was scared of using it. If you have ever read the side effects, you might be too, seeing as death can be one of them in rare instances.

So condoms were the watchword. But accidents happen; maybe one just didn't work right, maybe it was the one that broke one time, but we ended up getting pregnant. I told her that I would do whatever she wanted. We planned to marry soon anyway, so I said we could shotgun it if need be. She said she didn't think she wanted a child. So I said that it was HER decision, but I would be there through it.

It isn't easy. Unless you have been in that exact situation, you will never know the fear and uncertainty involved. We were 18 and 20, just starting out with shit jobs, living with parents, and with a 1968 Catalina as our only vehicle. Her parents would have forced her to have it if they knew, because they thought the same way as @bobknight33. We would have been stuck living with them, they already didn't like me because I wasn't deeply religious and not into ranch life. My parents wouldn't have taken us in because my mom didn't like my wife until years later. The stress and anger would have probably split us up, and both of us would have likely remained poor to this day.

Instead, my wife chose to not have the child and got an abortion in the first trimester. We kept it to ourselves, married later, and are still together today. We both fought our way out of being poor people to being on the upper spectrum of middle class. We decided we just didn't want kids and now we spoil our niece. I will swear right now that we would never have made it to where we are today if we had been forced to raise a child because of someone else's deranged idea that every child must be born regardless of the future in store for it.

So, yes, I can speak to what an actual poor person goes through in that situation. We were lucky, because there weren't laws rammed through by religious people who have no clue of the consequences, just a strong delusion that God wants all children born. Funny how those religious people wash their hands of the aftermath of their crusade. Even funnier are the ones that quietly send Mary Lou to California to 'visit an aunt' for a couple of months when they find out their spawn got knocked up.

TL;DR

If you fight against easy abortions, except those where the child has reached the capability to survive if it had to be medically removed from the mother, you and the rest of your ilk can go fuck yourselves.

Yes....Despite the efforts, prayers, claims, and wishes of Republicans, most of whom were shocked the military and police didn’t join their coup.
It’s what Q said would happen, isn’t it?

Edit: Remember, Republicans use the media to brainwash people JUST LIKE YOU to achieve irrational, non factual thought like fearing Jewish space lasers, thinking long term public pedophile Trump is some crusader against the pedophilic cabal that is hundreds of thousands of democrats and media personalities who eat freshly birthed babies by the truckload, like Coronavirus is not dangerous, not deadly, and isn’t as bad as a normal flu, like there was some huge conspiracy to defraud you by “stealing” the election perpetrated by millions in countries around the world including long dead leaders, allies and enemies alike, and every government agency that exists despite there not being a scintilla of evidence and despite this election being the most scrutinized ever.

🤦‍♂️

You mean a Brahma day? Close. It's around a 311+ Trillion year cycle, and hardly resembles astrophysics beyond the one hypothesis that the universe "bounces" in and out of existence, expanding then collapsing then expanding....forever....but most hypotheses disagree. Some claim the universe will not collapse but expand eternally, ending in a big freeze, some suggest collapse in 5 billion years from now. Until we understand dark matter/energy, we are in the dark on this question.

The lifespan of Brahma (creator god) lasts for 100 of his years. His 12-hour day or Kalpa (a.k.a. day of Brahma) is followed by a 12-hour night or Pralaya (a.k.a. night of Brahma) of equal length. At the start of his days, he is re-born and creates the planets and the first living entities. At the end of his days, he and his creations are unmanifest (partial dissolution). His 100-year life is called a Mahā-Kalpa, which is followed by a Mahā-Pralaya (full dissolution) of equal duration, where the bases of the universe, Prakriti, is manifest at the start and unmanifest at the end of a Mahā-Kalpa.[13][24][25]

1 day (12 hrs: Kalpa) of Brahma = 4.32 billion solar years (1,000 Mahā-Yugas) (14 Manvantaras + 15 Sandhyās)
1 Day (24 hrs: Kalpa + Pralaya) of Brahma = 8.64 billion solar years
30 Days (1 month) of Brahma = 259.2 billion solar years
12 months (1 year) of Brahma = 3.1104 trillion solar years
50 years (Parārdha) of Brahma = 155.52 trillion solar years
100 years (lifespan: 2 Parārdha) of Brahma = 311.04 trillion solar years
I see a slight similarity, but not a correlation.


Oh my god, that's what you call perfectly describing psychology? Ok, your standard of proof is clearly light years away from mine.

Good poetry outweighs crusades, dark ages, etc?! Not to me.

You can say that, it's just a tool and can be used for good or bad, but in reality it's a tool for controlling the masses and pitting different segments of the population against each other. As a whole, religion has done exponentially more damage to individuals, society, and progress than any estimation of it's real world benefits. Only by adding the infinite good of heaven can the scales be even close to balanced imo.
The same may be true of science, it's real world benefits, which are ubiquitous and undeniable, may be outweighed by it's side effects since making the planet uninhabitable clearly outweighs extending grandpa's expected lifespan by 10% and keeping his lights on.

Is there a crusade coming or a jihad coming?

https://qz.com/523255/the-us-meat-industrys-wildly-successful-40-year-crusade-to-keep-its-hold-on-the-american-diet/

I'm sure an honest fellow like yourself, would also call out bias where ever you see it right? Like if the link you posted was from an organisation posing to be a non-profit diet advisory, but was really just a front created by meat and dairy industries to help sell more of their products. You would call that out too right?

Your video, Gator Crusader Falls in Gator infested pool when rope breaks, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

"They murder over tiny details".

Question, who is 'they'? The 'Christians' who ran the crusades? The protestant 'Christians' bombing the English Catholic 'Christians'? The Catholic 'Christians' cleansing the protestant heretics? The current pope of the Catholic church? The folks in your neighbourhood that attend a church sometimes? The people that check off 'christian' on the census?

Your entire exposition gives the distinct impression that you include everyone in the whole group as 'they' and liken them not only the the very worst in the group, you even insist that the worst aren't quite bad enough(Westboro), are as bad as what YOU define their beliefs to be.

Is some lengthy theological dissertation refuting your interpretation of the bible required evidence before you'll accept that calling all christian's murders is unfair? I'm sorry I won't present you that kind of evidence in thread, but I'm quite confident you are as capable as me to quickly google for the likely hundreds of hefty books already dedicated to exactly that...

Enoch nailed this in the second post.

Trump is NOT the problem. The extreme right is the problem. The extreme left is the problem. BOTH the extreme left and the extreme right WANT both sides to become more extreme. Both the extreme left and right want a fight because they deeply believe their holy crusade is right, to facilitate their fight they need the moderates to fade away. Poisoning both parties so they are unpalatable to the moderates is what they want.

The Alt-Right doesn't want moderate right leaning voters in the republican party. They are so far right those moderates are traitors to their cause and enemies to their ideals.

OWS, BLM, and the SJW's don't want moderate left leaning voters in the democratic party. They are so far left those moderates are traitors to their cause and enemies to their ideals.

Trump is just a symptom of the two extremes successful campaigns of growth. The only upside to Trump being president is that at least their is some glimmer of the republican party itself questioning the wisdom of the direction it's being dragged along. The democratic party meanwhile is doubling down on an absolute refusal to try and lure away or court moderates that voted republican, because after all, they are the enemy.

If the parties can't be forced to try courting moderate voters, this just keeps getting worse. Don't delude yourself into thinking the answer is to get a Democrat in next time. Without moderating the underlying extremes this just keeps getting worse.

Thank you @enoch, I was trying to figure a way of replying on how there isn't a denial that a minority of Muslims believe in suicide bombing, but that it isn't as widespread and exclusive to Islam as the far right make it out to be. You summed it up pretty well.

I was also going to add all the abortion clinic bombings and the Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park bombing... all Christian and being done in the name of Christ. Then in Ireland/UK with the IRA... though that one isn't just religion and is more political (though again, many of those political differences has to do with worshiping Christ the wrong way).

There are militant Buddhist too, who do very violent and aggressive acts against others.

And there are plenty on the left who decry Islam, look at Sam Harris by example who argues the danger of Islam a great deal.

I agree, that we need to address the underlying political issues... and sometimes just need to let things go. There is a big civil war going on the middle east between denominations of Islam, and we are picking a side, which in turn makes us a target of the other side. We ignore the fact that the goal of terrorist groups is to make it an "us vs them" world, so that it makes it easier to recruit potentially radicalizeable people. I hear Christians bemoan how Christianity must be true because of all the persecution, proves Satan is trying to push Christianity down, but then they have zero empathy for how it must feel for a Muslim, and the persecution they feel, and how that must make them feel they are the right one for the same exact reasoning.

The fact so many Christians are not only willing, but calling for a war, for a new Crusade basically, shows that Christians are just as easily radicalized. They may not be strapping bombs to their chests yet, but I'd guess if they were in a Muslim country and felt they were being repressed, then I'd wager they'd be more than willing to engage in suicide bombs.

The pint being, yes, some Muslims do engage in suicide bombs, but it isn't just them. Christians have done it plenty in the past, and will undoubtedly return to it again, especially as the more radicalized and violent portion of them become normalized here in the US thanks to the election of Trump who encouraged them all through his campaign.

You're kidding, right?
Do I have to make a list? On every continent white people visited (if you can call showing up and not really leaving a visit) we fucked up the lives of a good portion of the people living there.
Sure, mankind has always been cruel, in every corner of the earth. However, white people are to murder, theft and slavery what Coca Cola is to refreshing diabeeetus (yes, that's how it's spelled). A fucking international enterprise whose traces can be found everywhere. On every fucking continent.
I hope we can agree on that. Otherwise, here's a short list: Gippsland Massacres, Nagasaki, Opium Wars, My Lai Massacre, fucking Iraq, Crusades, Apartheid, Herero and Namaqua genocide, that whole Columbus mess, Trail Of Tears and transatlantic slave trade (because why the fuck not?). Oh, my bad, I forgot the freaking Holocaust and starting 2 World Wars.
Who does this? Who? White people, that's who. Europeans and their descendants.
Would you like to argue that level of evil is genetic? I won't.
It's cultural. We europeans (and later our emigrated offspring) always thought we're better than everybody else, we had god on our side (and the Pope agreed!). Probably a leftover from the Roman Empire. And that's why everywhere we go, we steal, murder or occupy the shit out of every place. No other collection of ethnic groups has so much blood on their hands and it's not because we're worse DNA constructs than the others. All humans are capable of evil, it just takes a certain way of thinking to go that far.
Thankfully, we wrecked our own continent so badly during WW2, that we finally started to improve our ways. But here's the problem: we just started. We're far from being done.
Orban, LePen, Farage, Putin, Petry and last but not least Trump.

Gary Breecher, better know as The War Nerd, "Saddam Died Beautiful: A Special Eulogy":

"Blaming Saddam for being what he was is like blaming a rattlesnake for killing. That's how it lives, and it's what that Crocodile Hunter guy would've called "a bee-YOO-tiful ambush predator." Saddam was right for Iraq the way a Sidewinder is right for the Mojave. The NeoCons scared us by shaking his fangs in our faces, as if Saddam planned to bite every single commuter in LA, when all he wanted to do was stay alive and in power -- because those were the same thing for him -- in the Iraqi desert, where everything stings, sticks or bites. We may as well have gone on a crusade to wipe out all the snakes and spiders in the desert for being what they are. Only difference is, we wouldn't have lost 3000 soldiers that way."

---

Saddam was a rat-fuck bastard of the lowest order, but the world ISN'T a better place now that he's gone. In fact, for the amount of chaos his removal has sown, he might as well have been named Franz Ferdinand

And what Pograms are the church conducting? What inquisitions are the church conducting? What political leaders are the churches jailing? What scientists are the church burning? What bible translators are the church burning? What wars are the church waging? What crusades? What adultresses? What witches?

"Let me just tell you something -- for hundreds and thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way-- because it had to give so much ground and because we know so much more. But you've no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had god on its side."

--Christopher Hitchens

You can't possibly be serious.

Without wishing to bang on about it - that happens a LOT on the internet. I think it's less about tone of voice and more about people being so offended by inequality that they are over aggressive in their pursuit of equality. They attack the argument before fully understanding it or allowing it to be fully expressed.

It's a really tight line to walk and I know this because I have in the past offended respectful, honest people in my crusade which was against abuse of power and authority. I hated being mistreated by people in authority so much that I became prejudiced against people in authority. The reason I behaved like that is because of how I was treated by authority figures in my formative years and the defence mechanisms I developed because of it. And in the same way, some women who are very poorly treated by men may develop barriers, prejudices and coping mechanisms in response.

(... and that's why I make a dozen edits to my posts. Sometimes I get carried away and detract entirely from what I was trying to achieve.)

I'm not saying that's the underlying cause of the misunderstanding here, but the point I'm trying to make is that there may be good reasons why someone just said something you thought was sexist. Problems arise, I think, when we deal in absolutes; this person is definitely chauvinist because he's ignorant and rude, this person is definitely a man-hater because she is ignorant and rude - both may be unfair to the other.

er, by the time of the Last Crusade, Indy has seen:
- the literal manifestation of the power of god melt Nazis faces
- some magic rocks burning an Indian guy

I think it's pretty safe to say that Indy has accepted that in his fictional universe, the supernatural is real. Hell, if I saw what he'd seen by that point, I'd be a god-fearing Christian.

As for Pascal's wager, I've always viewed it as the height of moral cowardice. If you want to believe in God and you're not shoving your beliefs down everyone else's throat (looking at you, ISIS, evangelicals, catholic church in Ireland, etc), go nuts.

But don't believe because you're afraid of hell. If you're a good person and you die and it turns out there is a god, if he condemns you to eternal suffering for not believing in him, then fuck him, he's an asshole and I wouldn't want to spend eternity under his thumb anyway.