slug.com slug.com

6 4

The primary problem with American culture is we're too damn paranoid. I sometimes wonder if X-Files ruined the country.

People are intrigued by conspiracy theories...but the excitement that stems from striving to uncover those conspiracy theories tends to be misleading.

My fellow Americans...Earth is a much more boring place than you often think it is. The experts might be wrong...but they tend to be right. That's why they're called experts. The government might be engaging in conspiracy theories, but they tend not to...that's why they're called "conspiracy theories" as opposed to "typical behavior."

The flue vaccine works. The covid vaccine will not place nano-machines into your blood stream that brainwash you. There are no pan-dimensional lizard people controlling the government. Earths is billions, not thousands, of years old...with life being at least millions of years old. Sometimes news reports make misleading claims about global warming...but it's not a liberal conspiracy to gain power. That doesn't make any damn sense.

Also, QAnon is bullshit...and the globalists do not want to harvest you for your organs for their experiments. Globalist goals are pretty strait-forward. They're not Satan-worshipping Illuminati. They're just globalists.

MrShittles 7 Feb 24
Share

Be part of the movement!

Welcome to the community for those who value free speech, evidence and civil discourse.

Create your free account

6 comments

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

0

I will give you that, you take the extreme theories and pass those off as if government doesn't have skeletons.
Ask 3,000 architects, and engineers if the twin towers could collapse on themselves. They have done the tests and the science to prove they can't.
Ask the 2,000 police and firefighters that testify they heard the explosions going off in secession.
I'm supposed to believe government over experts.
Vaccines are not natural. We all have an immune system for a reason. I don't think there is anything nefarious going on with them, but most are truly not needed.
Anyone who thinks jabbing a child with over 20 or 30 vaccines by the time they reach high school is good. Well I have only had 4 in my life. I'm 50 and healthy, rarely even get a cold let alone a flu. Why because I eat right, and exercise. Maybe we should push that instead of vaccines that we know do have some harmful elements, regardless of intention.
With the CDC admitting in 2019 they have no studies that say vaccines do not cause autism after decades of saying otherwise
People are going to question. When lies are being told. One can't help by try to reason and deduct why they would lie.
This is how conspiracies are born. When they lie people dig.
So many examples of conspiracies that turned out to be facts. Yet those never get mentioned by those who wish to label people crazy.
It's always the extreme ones that get me ruined
Like that is making a valid point.

*Here's a study that supposedly shows that vaccines don't cause autism, at least in one way. I didn't read anything except the first couple lines of the summary...but it looks like the CDC do have a study that points to vaccines not causing autism...at least in this way. I don't know if that's the type of autism risk you're referring to or not though: [jpeds.com]

*Vaccines are natural. They used to do the same thing your immune system did. Medical professionals would introduce genetic material from viruses (in a weakened state) into your system to, kind of, get your body used to the viruses. Vaccines in general just focus on teaching your body to get used to viruses through introducing them to some kind of information relating to the virus. Opposition to that just because it's "unnatural" is like being opposed to bananas. You're going to need something more than it being "unnatural" for your arguments to be worthwhile. Everything's unnatural...and nothing is.

Okay...so you've got this substance that definitely saves lives. This substance could have negative side-affects that impact people's health over the long run...but so could the diseases this substance protects people from. You really don't have any reason to believe the side-effects of this substance will be worst than the side-effects of the diseases it protects people from. All the respectable medical professionals have been advocating using the substance for decades. If they're wrong and it's discovered, that being wrong could lead to massive distrust of the medical community, and their fellow professionals will no doubt strive to hunt down and condemn wrongness as a matter of principle. The government, too endorses taking this substance.

Why the heck would you not take the substance? Why would you think that there's anything more likely to be dangerous about a vaccine that's been designed to protect people, that the experts insist is safe, than a disease that's been evolved to kill and damage people?

Skepticism is great. Confidence without evidence is not.

0

I have intensely studied all of the V, and do not believe it will work over time; it won't solve the problem.
You have your MSM opinions, I don't share any of them.
There are EXPERTS that disagree, just as educated.

I had pneumonia over 30x, and it WASN'T until I did not take ANTIBIOTICS that I healed. Tough, horrible experience but I never got it again because my immune system found the CURE.

I don't trust unknown drugs. People have DIED immediately after, and they were happy getting it.

I took enough drugs to last 2 lifetimes.
I am free of symptoms.
They haven't even PROVEN the virus.

But we ALL do what seems best.
We ARE all different, like our fingerprint. Jt nay be fine FOR YOu?
Don't sell it to ME or I'll start discussing the conspiracy ideas that just don't rake in BILLIONS.
If they were LIABLE but they get a free pass. And so I pass.

If you're SICK, stay home. Masks do nothing, and are harmful.

Now it sure looks like the Arctic is melting to me.
But I doubt it's what they think.
More regional testing with published results is needed.

This dispensation of earth is shown to be young but there are other dispensation.

Regarding your pneumonia issue...you do know that sometimes people have bizarre anomalies involving their health, right?

They have obviously proven the coronavirus. Watch the news. There are lots and lots of people out there with no rational motivation to lie about the coronavirus, but with massive damaging consequences for lying about the coronavirus. All the nations' medical workers would have to be lying...all the government would have to be lying...a large percentage of the people administering the shots would have to be lying, the American Red Cross would have to be lying because they tell you if you've had Covid antibodies if you've given blood. The private company 23andMe that looks at your genetics and tells you about it would have to be lying, because they also tell you if you have covid antibodies. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to claim that they have not proven the coronavirus exists...or maybe you're talking about the flu. The same logic applies there. There is no possible motivation, or way, that the world could be lying to that degree.

The belief that masks don't work is more reasonable. I've ready study that suggested that they don't do much...but that study only tested how likely they were to prevent you from getting the virus. What I've heard is that their purpose is not to prevent you from getting the virus, but rather to prevent you from spreading the virus. They might be wrong about it helping to prevent you from spreading the virus if you have it and don't know, but I can't think of a reason to believe they'd be more likely to be wrong than right, and they have no motivation to lie about that either.

There is no possible way Earth is young for the reasons I've previously described. Other reasons include that they've seen Galaxy GNZ-11 which has been estimated to be 13.4 billion light years away. That means that light would have had to take quite awhile to get here. I suppose they could be wrong about that and I don't know exactly how that knowledge works...but the sheer overwhelming number of field experts that insists that Earth is billions of years old should be enough to convince people. Such field experts have no motivation to lie.

I don't understand exactly how geologists arrive at their conclusions, or archaeologists, or astrophyisicists, or evolutionary biologists. I do know that they have no motivation to lie though, and I know that Earth not being extremely old would require magical things to have happened, and we have no reason to believe such sudden processes are possible, so far as I can tell, nor method to explain how they would have occurred.

Life had to evolve from non-life at some point, into all the organisms we see around us. People had to evolve from microbes. Knowledge of our history goes back to several thousand years B.C...and not a whole lot seemed particularly different back then. With such little change in humanity and other life over that period of time...I personally don't know why the experts Earth is billions of years old, but I have strong reasons to believe that Earth is well over 10,000 years old. The closest thing to evidence we have that Earth is 10,000 years old comes from a book...written by flawed humans, humans who also have frequently believed in religions with beliefs that, if true, would cancel out the religion of the God of Abraham. We know that people have been wrong about their religious beliefs before...so, the question is, what's more likely? That ancient, ignorant people made a mistake...or that the entire scientific community is engaging in a massive conspiracy for no apparent reason...and that a form of magic exists that nobody can think of any explanation for the existence of that makes mountains rise and fall and animals and plants evolve far more quickly than everyone believes...and that the Stars are no more than a few thousand light years away...so that their light could have arrived here in time for us to see it?

1

Well I may agree with the sentiment but the details not so much. Propaganda creates moral panic which produces conspiracy theory. Trust me the establishment pushes propaganda every day all day. It's why traditional morality condemned lying so strongly it destroys social trust and introduces paranoia.

I agree with that. I'm not talking about propaganda from news sources that arbitrarily decides that every hurricane or forest fire was caused by global warming. I'm talking about what respected authorities claim. There is often a difference. For example...a time or two I've seen news companies doing that and looked up information from actual researchers and found out that they've disagreed.

2

But I'm totally convinced the paranoids are out to get me, and just cause I'm paranoid, doesn't they are not out to get me ... get it ? or have they got to you too ??

Yes. I'm a pan-dimensional lizard person.

@MrShittles Do you also time travel ? - Yeah Company for my next trip

@The_Q I only go forwards in time. To do so, I take my spaceship into orbit around a black hole at near light speed, so that the immense gravity and speed shoot me forwards in time a few billion or million years or so. I actually started doing that about twelve billion years or so ago. I made a couple pit stops before getting here.

I can't go backwards in time though.

On a side note, there was a technologically advanced dinosaur civilization that left Earth. Star Trek was actually right about that. Most of the stuff in Star Trek is real, actually...including the stuff about the holograms that can somehow hold objects. I don't know how that works...but I know I bought a pocket proctologist that I named Gizmo for five dollars. I just turn him on like a flashlight and I no longer need to get doctor visits for that.

0

Global warming is still just a theory.

A scientific theory is a theory that has been so well-tested that pretty much everyone who has an opinion of worth perceives it as true....like gravity, and evolution.

That said, I don't know if it's a scientific theory or not.

One thing I should emphasize is that there's a difference between anthropogenic global warming and global warming in general. You will not find many people with respectable levels of knowledge claiming that global warming doesn't exist. For that to be true, the stations that have been monitoring Earth's temperatures would have to be wrong...and for global warming in general to be true, the only thing that has to happen is for the monitoring stations to be correct about Earth's temperature pretty steadily increasing since the 1970's. That's relevant because, obviously, we've had the best testing equipment most recently...but it's also relevant because during that time period the Sun had not been increasing in solar output, on average, and yet Earth's temperature has been pretty steadily increasing.

Now...pretty much everyone whose opinion is of worth appears to agree that Earth's temperature has been increasing since the 1970's, despite the Sun not producing more energy (on average). Also...if something aside from humanity has been causing that global warming...people have typically had to guess about what they think it is. Nobody, at least so far as I'm aware of, seems to have confidence that something aside from humanity has been the more likely explanation.

Now, what people with opinions of worth often disagree on is how much humans are causing that global warming. Some respectable climate scientists wonder if we're causing very little of it.

@MrShittles Oh its a theory...

3

The primary problem with American culture is we're too damn paranoid. I sometimes wonder if X-Files ruined the country

Paranoia is just smart thinkn' when they really are out to git ya - George Carlin

People are intrigued by conspiracy theories...but the excitement that stems from striving to uncover those conspiracy theories tends to be misleading

Must you always be right? C'mon man - have a little fun in your life

My fellow Americans...Earth is a much more boring place than you often think it is

HARDLY boring - ever! at any given moment Earth is not boring. Ignorance creates apathy

The experts might be wrong...but they tend to be right. That's why they're called experts

it's not a question of qualification but a matter of motivations. Being "expert" does not imply forthrightness

The government might be engaging in conspiracy theories, but they tend not to...that's why they're called "conspiracy theories" as opposed to "typical behavior."

Conspiracy theory is an oft misused word(s) - Unknown or unproven things does not equate to a conspiracy theory. Its a matter of plausability. It's not "conspiracy theory" to be skeptical of gov't officials dictates and their motivations for such. It's good and healthy to be skeptical of any and all gov't officials - Gov't is not your friend.

The flue vaccine works.

maybe - sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't

The covid vaccine will not place nano-machines into your blood stream that brainwash you. There are no pan-dimensional lizard people controlling the government. Earth is billions, not thousands, of years old...with life being at least millions of years old.

True dat!

Sometimes news reports make misleading claims about global warming...but it's not a liberal conspiracy to gain power. That doesn't make any damn sense.

It makes perfect sense. There can be no doubt that the global warming narrative is about redistribution of wealth and a very aggressive power grab. If you don't see that then I submit you are being willfully blind to it.

Also, QAnon is bullshit

I've said all along that Q is a hoax - I tend to agree with some folks who say that Q was a psyop designed to mislead and to give false hope to the hopelessly ignorant.

globalists do not want to harvest you for your organs for their experiments. Globalist goals are pretty strait-forward. They're not Satan-worshipping Illuminati. They're just globalists.

no doubt organ harvesting happens - but on a rather small scale and not for experimentation. That's what "scientists" use aborted baby parts for - experimentation that is. Organ harvesting that has gone on is generally for the purpose selling those organs to people who need them and have the financial resources to pay for them.
I have no reason to believe "globalists" are Satan worshipers but I tend to believe they are filled with evil intent - although they would vehemently deny such. In fact they would argue that they are motivated by virtue and a wish to "save mankind". None are so dangerous as those who are convinced of their own virtue.

*I'd say being an expert does, in fact, imply forthrightedness. Otherwise, they would build up distrust amongst their fellow professionals, and they would not be deemed experts.

*Wondering about conspiracy theories is great. The problem is...a lot of people become confident in them without good reason. Typically, the most boring explanation is the best one, and when people, in large numbers, prefer to believe in the weirder, more interesting conspiracy theories than trusting the boring, more likely ones...we get large numbers of people ignoring important risks to society.

*Government is the closest thing we have to friends...when they've created and endorsed programs containing professionals in their fields. It's often pretty easy to detect government bias. You can tell this whenever the government has placed a person in a field who disagrees with the majority of experts in their field, but agrees with the stance of the political party who put him there. Yeah...the government isn't particularly trustworthy, in many ways. The CIA, most likely has spread lots of propaganda to achieve its aims...to Americans as well. I don't know why they wouldn't. However, in scientific fields there is a Darwinian process used to weed out the less professional persons. Scientists, too, have more motivation than a typical businessperson to follow their consciences. Scientists have much more of a motivation to take on their positions to assist society than businesspeople. And that is why, the conclusions come to by the majority of any scientific community, endorsed by some authority figure of the community, who has the support of the community, are the most trustworthy sources of information we can hope to obtain, generally speaking. Examples of these incredibly trustworthy sources of information would be sources like the IPCC (the international panel on climate change) NASA, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (who say that fetuses won't feel pain before 24 weeks into the pregnancy) and the CDC. These are all organizations that, it would be better for society to blindly agree with than blindly ignore. Ideally, people will research their claims...but there isn't always time for that.

*Sometimes it works better than other times...but I'll just suffice it to say that the flu vaccine exists for valid reasons.

*Global warming obviously has nothing to do with wealth redistribution...because it can't. There is no rational motivation (whatsoever) to make claims about global warming if your goal is wealth redistribution. This is a frequent argument I see, and it makes absolutely no sense. Anyone who believes that has an extremely flawed reasoning process. Programs related to combatting global warming cost money. That hinders the likelihood of the political party expressing concern about global warming getting elected. Therefore, there is no reason to express concern about global warming, unless you actually have concerns about global warming. The belief that global warming is just a tactic to trick everyone into becoming socialists depends on organizations all over the world engaging in a massive conspiracy. One of these organizations is NASA. That makes zero sense whatsoever. People who have the view that global warming is about an attempt to make the world socialist have, likely, been victimized by right-wing propaganda. I've seen the lies right wing propaganda sources often engage in to depict it like the goal of global warming claims is to make the world more socialistic. They love to take comments out of context.

The accurate way of looking at it...is that the people who believe global warming concerns are all about converting the world to socialism have people's motivations backwards. It's not that global warming concerns would encourage nations to become more socialistic. That doesn't make any sense for reasons I've previously described. It's rather than, stronger central governments would be more useful in stopping global warming. Generally, to stop pollution, the best way is through some kind of government action.

Also, people claim that global warming concerns are all about re-distributing wealth to third world nations. Again...people making that claim have people's motivations backwards (undoubtedly because they've been subjected to conservative propaganda). There have been various global-warming fighting strategies that involve re-distributing wealth from first world, to third world nations. How they would work, is typically, that nations that produce over a certain amount of C02 per person would have to pay a fine. The results of these fines would go to nations that produce below a certain amount of C02 per person. It's noteworthy that, while China is commonly thought of as the world's biggest producer of C02, per person, they still produce less C02 than the United States, Australia, and a few other big C02 producers...and it could very well be that they would therefore receive money from such a program that the U.S. would pay into. The benefits of such a system would be providing the wealthier nations that produce more C02 more incentive to produce less C02, while providing the poorer nations that produce less C02 a financial incentive to develop into environmentally friendly energy sources, rather than the currently much cheaper coal option...and that's one of the few ways we can make clean-energy sources cheaper than coal. Without that system, the third world has much more incentive to industrialize into coal...and once they become as industrialized as the U.S., that could be a major problem.

Thanks for your response.

Combatting climate change doesn't get people elected...and, the money used for it results in less income that can be spent on the social programs democrats and socialists love.

The best example of this I can think of is France. France had what I consider the ideal system for obtaining electricity. They got most of their energy from nuclear power. They had an abundance of it, actually. Therefore, the next rational step (to me) would be to add additional taxes onto fossil-fuel related technologies so as to push society over into buying electric cars...and that sort of thing. I find that a wonderful idea...but their populace protested on a massive scale.

Now, the U.S. has never gone as far as France. People would despise those sorts of taxes even more here.

The only rational motivation for expressing concern about global warming...is because you have genuine concerns about global warming. Now, these concerns might be wrong, but they must exist, or no political party has a motivation to express those concerns.

@Genghis thanks

@Genghis, @MrShittles well, Mr Shitties you and I completely disagree on almost everything you say here - but hey - that's what free speech is all about. We can mutually accept and or reject whatever is said by each other. So I say viva la libert'e!

@iThink I don't know your sources, so I suppose you could have seen things I have not. However, I've got a lot of experience hunting down out-of-context statements and right-wing propaganda. If you show me some things you've seen...a lot of the time I'll have seen it before and I'll be able to point out what's misleading propaganda and what's not, and why, with sources for my information.

@Genghis There's a reason why the term "sheeple" tends to only be used by the right. There's a similar reason why the left tends to think of a lot of Republicans as McDonald's worshipping cultists and conspiracy theorists. It's not a term that most of society has much respect for.

"Sheeple" was a term invented by a people a lot of Democrats and independants see as unreasonable.

You'll see Democrats expressing the same sorts of disdain for people who distrust respected organizations.

@Genghis I like to say that skepticism is indeed healthy...so long as it's consistently applied. The sad truth is, however, that most people don't have the time to do the research to apply it consistently...and that's why the majority of people who distrust NASA and the CDC and the IPCC and these sorts of respected organizations pretty much blindly trust right wing websites and talk-show hosts...despite these sources of information often having massive financial motivations to tell people whatever they want to hear, in order to make money off the attention...and these organizations usually being created by uneducated persons with strong political biases.

@Genghis There's a difference between knowledgeable confidence and bias.

And no...left wing sources are often crap too. Don't go to left wing sources of information. Rather, go to sources of information that agree with many of the sayings of the experts. Those do seem to be more in line with Democrat beliefs than Republican ones though. For example, if I see a pro-choice website, those website, that website is going to be a ton more likely to back up their views with science-backed data, and less propaganda, than a pro-life website.

@Genghis The right does tend to be more anti-science than the left though. It has more young earth creationists, by a significant margin...or at least it did in the last Pew study I checked. The right is often highly opposed to abortion...to a degree that proves an irrational mentality of anyone who holds that view. A rational thinker would recognize that abortion will usually assist the fetus more than it harms it. Right-wing propaganda artists will know this, and will often deny scientific claims as left-wing propaganda. I've talked about logical ways to view abortion a lot in the past. I could do it here too...but that's a long conversation.

@MrShittles
A rational thinker would recognize that abortion will usually assist the fetus more than it harms it

Utterly ridiculous thing to say.

do you not see the obvious contradiction in this statement? Are you being intentionally obtuse?

@MrShittles The right does tend to be more anti-science than the left though. It has more young earth creationists

I don't understand why anyone thinks that "creationism" and "science" are mutually exclusive. Furthermore, your implicit position that "the left" tends to be more about "science" than "the right" is - is a gross generalization and inaccurate IMHO
There are plenty of people who work in STEM fields who also happen to be "of the right" politically speaking. Conversely there are Millions of self described "leftist, liberals, socialistic minded people" who invest belief in myriad forms of spiritual, religious, ideologies. Because they profess to NOT BE CHRISTIAN does not mean that they believe there is nothing beyond the objective, material world/universe. They in fact hold to a belief system that is obviously UN-scientific. Again, to the exclusion of Christianity. Go figure.

@iThink Creationism and science are not mutually exclusive, in my opinion. I can think of a number of ways an intelligent being might have created earth. I, personally, can't see that being as omnibenevolent, given the nature of the world around us...but I could understand people wanting to believe in a loving God, or at least a halfway decent God...and I could believe in a halfway decent God...but that's another topic that doesn't have nearly as much to do with science as young earth creationism does.

Young earth creationism is impossible, I would say. It would require not only a massive conspiracy in the scientific community...but a massive conspiracy engaged in by God itself...for some bizarre reason, in an attempt to fool humanity into believing Earth is quite young. God would have had to begin the universe with the light from stars that appear to be billions of light years away, starting much closer to Earth than that, rather than originating at the stars the light emerged from, so as to have time to reach Earth, so that our telescopes could detect it.

The Amount of Americans who are not Christian is almost negligible. Christianity, I'd say, is neither a left nor right thing. However, there appear to be considerably more young earth creationists Republicans than Democrats...and I can think of no mentality that implies a worse skill at abstract reasoning. Belief in witchcraft by Wicca...I can understand that. Belief in God...I can understand that. For young Earth creationism to be true...pretty much everything our scientific community has concluded must be wrong though, and I have no idea why an intelligent deity would want to give us that impression.

Maybe telekineses exists. Maybe prayer works. I don't believe in that stuff personally...but it'd be hard to prove wrong, except by saying that I don't know how it would occur. If Earth is only a few thousand years old though...I have no clue what's real and what isn't. I have no clue how Earth could come to its current state without the assistance of intense magic, the likes of which we've never seen before, and I can't think of how it could occur...and that's because we know things about people who lived thousands of years ago, and they didn't seem to live in that different of a world from us.

Now...if the young earth creationist belief says that Earth is millions of years old, rather than billions or mere thousands...I suppose that could be more plausible...but I can't even think of any Biblical sources that point to that prospect...so I don't know why we wouldn't just go with billions of years old like the experts say instead.

@iThink My statement "A rational thinker would recognize that abortion will usually assist the fetus more than it harms it" is not a contradiction. To harm something, the act has to do something which makes the organism lose something than benefits it, or make it suffer somehow. The American College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians and the Royal college of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in the U.K. have stated that fetuses lack the equipment to experience pain before 24 weeks. The vast majority of abortions take place in the first trimester...13 or so weeks. Therefore, they are not likely to be harmed by abortion.

Furthermore, they are likely to be assisted by abortion, because when the parents get an abortion they undoubtedly did so because of some kind of situation that would have brought the new baby more disadvantages than without the situation...or else the would-be parents would not have gotten an abortion. Therefore, the abortion essentially removed that harmful obstacle from the would-be child's life.

And if the parents had another child at a later time when, perhaps, they're more financially stable...that's essentially the same thing as never getting pregnant in the first place, but waiting until they were more financially stable.

@MrShittles "young earth" creationism. wow. ok well, all I can say about that is that mankind has its own developed concept of time itself and the measurement of time.
I agree with you - the universe (which includes the earth, space and all its contents) is really dimensionally unknowable to the human mind.
It is rather silly when you really think about it the way that biblical text tells of people living hundreds of years and - well, if taking literally (which IMHO) it should not be, the bible is just silly and definitively un-scientific.
It is a spiritual text. It is an attempt to connect life and the vagaries therein with a concept of higher purpose - a higher order that can never be measured.

This kind of thinking is absolutely NON political. Literally every person who ever lived pondered his own existence and searched for meaning and purpose of himself and all life. Can't separate an intrinsic human quality with political ideology.
You can't label "the right" the way you attempted to do.
Political stripe notwithstanding you me and everyone else carries a perpetual and yet unanswerable question..."what's it all about" - alfie...LOL.

So IMHO people who choose to believe in "young earth" creationism are no more nor less silly than are people who choose to believe in witchcraft or sanitaria.
The fact is that as intelligent beings you and I know that nothing comes from nothing. Zero plus Zero - hell, Zero plus one is still zero...right?
There must be a source to the universe. Logic tells us that that is true. Yet that source is objectively unknowable. So we come up with ways to explain meaning - which are probably all wrong. But it gives comfort to the human mind to believe in something greater than himself. No?

@MrShittles *Therefore, they are not likely to be harmed by abortion"

so then in your mind to have ones life snuffed out is equivalent to doing no harm?

utterly ridiculous.

@iThink I've re-thought my past post. I think you may be right about people who believe in young earth creationism being no more silly than people who believe in witchcraft and sanitaria.

However...those are not our only options. There are also the agnostic theists, and Wiccans who merely view their religion as a sort of fun hobby - not taking their beliefs too seriously. There are the deists, pantheists, and who believe in various aspects of their religions because they want to, but acknowledge that they might be wrong.

I don't see how you can be one of those "open to reality...but with pleasing assumptions about questions science hasn't answered yet" while being a young earth creationist...and everything I've looked at points to Republicans having a lot more young earth creationists that Democrats.

Yeah...other people than young earth creationists may have poor skill at understanding abstract concepts. I'm thinking young earth creationists definitely will have poor skill at understanding abstract concepts though.

Regarding that spiritual life...I agree that people find creative ways to deal with reality...but there are ways of developing spiritual views that can coexist quite well with the most likely actual reality...and when people veer significantly far away from that most likely actual reality, they tend to harm themselves in various ways. Whatever is true, whoever sees that truth most clearly is going to have some massive advantages in term of planning their goals and behavior...and so, when people have some of the extremely unlikely worldviews, the most likely explanation is they arrived at those conclusions because they lacked skill at contemplating abstract concepts...to the extent that they were harmed by their worldview. They'll be laughed at, if nothing else. That being laughed at is an unnecessary harm.


There are plenty of ways to believe in something other than oneself without having a worldview that contradicts the most likely...and there are ways to determine aspects of reality that are more likely than others. You, yourself, see the Bible, i taken literally, as silly. You probably see it that way because you've looked at the patterns in reality, and see no signs of people parting seas by waving staffs and such...and it's these patterns that tell us all we can know about reality...and the worse we are at seeing these patterns, the worse we're probably going to in other areas of abstract reasoning.

@iThink I think you can answer your own question.

Did I say having one's life snuffed out is equivalent to doing no harm? I did not.

Why then, does most abortion not cause harm? It's because, if you were an aborted fetus...you would probably not mind it. Death, to you, would be like going into a deeper sleep...if you understood anything about it at all, in the early stages of development at least.

If, however, you were a fetus with sickle cell anemia, or congenital heart defects, and you were aborted before you could experience pain...and then you were essentially re-awakened, when your mother got pregnant again, and this time you lacked sickle cell anemia or congenital heart defects, you would be better than neutral towards your new life. You would have, essentially, been cured of otherwise incurable ailments...and you would be downright pleased by that.

Write Comment
You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:190665
Slug does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any content. Read full disclaimer.