FIve things that you believe never should have been invented.

[imnot]

Vuvuzelas. Seriously. If I wanted to hear shit like that I'd stick my head in a beehive.

Spray tans. I have never seen a good spray tan. Or even a remotely natural looking one.

These and

Reality tv
facebook
health and saftey
(i dont mind a bit but what we get now is bloody redicoulus[small]can not spell tonight[/small]
I mean 'warning coffee is hot' WTBH!)

 

[Loud Noise]

1. The Wheel
2. The Engine
3. Language
4. Civilization
5. Sliced Bread

You want us to go back the Dark Ages, don't you!

OT: All I can think of is...the nuclear bomb.

Much farther than that! We still had Language and The Wheel during the Dark Ages. I'd say, small Hunter-Gatherer Tribes. ^_^

Would this be before or after we crossed the Bering Strait?

Either/or. As long as there was no established language, we're good.

Well, not "good", but...

Some form of language has always been a part of human existence, however. It is in part why we have developed such large brains (other than that large brains were considered a sexually desired trait). Whether it is verbal or communicative through body posture.

 

[ALuckyChance]

I've spocken to a number of hindu and to be honest i've got no beef with them. As you say they are inoffensive although i don't know enough about them to say that with certainty. I'd still rather if people did good things out of kindness or genuine compasion rather then what they think they can gain from it.

I haven't forgotten that religion has helped shaped the world (and i like the world) but wars and plagues have helped shape the world as well and I certainly don't think we need those today either.

I've always thought that most of the old religions were meant to not be the cause of kindness or compassion, but an enforcer of it. People do not give money to a beggar simply because they think it's a one-shot ticket to Heaven, or even a plus. To some, that may be a small part of what they feel, but most of it is pity, which is really what most people would feel, even without a religion guiding them.

Of course wars and plagues shaped the world. Really, though, it's impossible to put things like that into the 'good-bad,' sliding scale of morality, because it's impossible to tell whether good or bad things occur from the disaster. At least, not until the consequences have already occurred, and remember that a bad reaction may be counteracted by a good one, either immediately, or decades later.

 

[Drop_D-Bombshell]

1. Justin Bieber - 'nuff said
2. Ghetto rap remakes - Seriously? Rappers making songs based on nursery songs? Get a life.
3. Spiders - Creep me out so much!
4. Paranoid stay at home mums - Not everything's meant to be based around children!
5. SAW movies - anyone who likes watching people get tortured and mutilated seriously needs to die, and i don't wish death to many people.

Those are my two cents.

 

[MetroidNut]

1. Scientology - I view it as a cult and a threat to freedom of expression.
2. Imperialism - fucked up about two-thirds of the world, and gave my beloved America a horrible reputation
3. Political Parties - George Washington was the only President in US history not associated with a party, that's kind of sad
4. Discrimination - "killing people for being different" summarizes much of human history
5. Off-Topic Debates on Religion - the thread's practically been hijacked by now

One thing I don't hate, though? Nuclear weapons. Don't get me wrong, they're horrifying devices with the potential to completely destroy the human race. But without the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction, I think World War III would've happened in about the early 1950s.

 

[Ampersand]

I'd be glad to. As for social structures religion is a dividing factor more than anything else, it arbitrarily labels people from the time they're born and incourages them to shun people who hold diffent view points then they do, creating rifts in communities. Hence detrimental to social structures.

As for morals. You can't say that religion and morality are linked because it is literaly impossible for someone to be moral as a result of their religion.
Example: If someone does something good because they fear what punishment they will recive if the don't, then they are not making a moral decision.
On the other hand there has been an awful lot of totally immoral acts, both in the present day and throughout history, that have been done not only in the name of religion but justified using religion.
Hence detrimental to morality.

and I could go on.
Religion just can't be defended and trying to defend it on a social or moral ground is really not puting your best foot forward.

Well, at least you can speak properly, but you're still wrong on a few points. You can communicate your ideas in a precise manner, and I appreciate that.

First off, most religions do not hold shunning as any real part of it's practise. It's natural human nature to find absolutely anything that seperates one man from another, even down to hair colour. To say religion causes rifts is silly, because people do that themselves, with or without religion. Inter-faith dialogue works very well where I live to bring people together, but of course it's the hardcore atheists/anti-theists avoiding it all and creating most of the separation, which is a little ironic.

Secondly, "It's LITERALLY impossible for someone to be moral because of religion". So you're telling me there's not a single person ever who has become more religious and become a better person for it? So all that charity stuff set up by Churches, that's not moral? That's not encouraging morality? Sorry, that claim really is just wrong.

Thirdly, seriously, noone gives a shit about "punishment". We do good things because we know they are good, we're no different from every other human in the world. There is not a single person I know who has ever had a fear of God, and that's from going to three Catholic schools in two different cities in my life. That's simply a misconception, plain and simple. That's always been a line trotted out by the sort of athiest who feels himself superior because of what he beleives, the saddest kind of person.

Finally, using religion to justify an amoral act does not mean religion is detrimental to morality. If an individual chooses to wrongly use something to justify his own actions, that does not make it amoral. It is simply being used by a selfish person for their own actions. If an athiest wre to blow up a Church and full congregation in the name of atheism, would that then dictate the entirety of athiesm is amoral?

I've spocken to a number of hindu and to be honest i've got no beef with them. As you say they are inoffensive although i don't know enough about them to say that with certainty. I'd still rather if people did good things out of kindness or genuine compasion rather then what they think they can gain from it.

I haven't forgotten that religion has helped shaped the world (and i like the world) but wars and plagues have helped shape the world as well and I certainly don't think we need those today either.

Do you know what the Caste system is, and what an abhorrence it causes? And on the contrary, wars are natural for humans. We will never be without conflict. That is not to say we should try our best to stop them, but it's silly to think or even hope we will ever be without violence.

Rap

Herp

Rap

Derp.

Hey! You stole my thing! :3

The first missunderstanding you have is that you seem to think that athiesm is some sort of oganisation that is ploting against religious groups, that is not nor has it ever been the case. What I stand for ( and what every athiest i've ever met have stood for) is educations. Improving people knowledge and understanding of the world, and it has been religious groups who have stood in opposition to that for thousand of years. It's only when religious groups start actively retarding the progress of man kind of man kind for the sake of perpetuating their own personal beliefs (or worse, interfering with the education of young children) that I start having a problem with them.

Secondly: I've never seen anyone become a better person as a result of finding religion, however i've seen alot of people become better people as a result of loosing religion. In my experience as soon as people realise that they no longer blindly follow dogma they obtain a much better understanding of what is actually wrong and what's right, (I know i did).
Saying that religion makes people more moral is like saying that the death penalty makes people more moral, It just keep people afraid so that they behave themselves. Religion great if you want to keep people under your thumb or motivate them to go to war but from a moral stand point it's utterly useless.

thirdly: "There is not a single person I know who has ever had a fear of God" That is wrong, plain and simple. I'm only 20 years old so the worst of this was over before i was born but i've seen people do aweful things out of fear of god. I've seen people hate and ridicule other groups of people and even kill because they're afraid that if they don't it will compromise thier beliefs.
Also it's not just that people are afraid of thier god either, many people like that they think they understand the world and are terrified that they might find out that they don't, it can make people very agressive and even dangerous.
I don't know where you live but if you've never seen this it must be a very nice place.
I take no pleasure in telling you this but you're wrong about that. ( I wish it was just a line)

Fourth: You can't do something in the name of athiesm, that doesn't make sence. By it's definition it is the default position of all consious living things (we are all born athiest)
However religion is an invention of man kind, it can be used as a tool. It can be used to build something(on a foundation of falsehood and fear) or it can be used to reek unimaginable destruction and suffering, which it has done many times. In my opinion that is a tool we don't need. There are alot of much better ones that don't have as high a cost.

Finally(this is getting long, frankly I wouldn't blame you if you haven't read this far.)
No i certainly did not know what the caste system was.
I would ask you to never( and i mean never) dare to say that war is part of human nature. Because first of all it isn't true and secondly that kind of attitude on a global scale is part of what enable it to continue. Ego and greed can be part of human nature and they can leed to war but as hard as it may be they can be overcome.
I've studied war and martial arts for years and the only thing it's tought me is that fighting is hard, distructive (inconvenient) and ultimatly pointless.
I'm not that smart, if I can figure out, that violence the worst way of resolving a conflict, then anybody can And the more people who reasize this the closer we will be to being free from it.

I'd ask you to please think about that because to me there arn't alot of things more important.

 

[Josh Kurber]

3. Automatic soap pumps sold for use in the home. "Never touch another dirty soap pump" they say. You're going to wash your hands anyway, so why should it matter if the soap pump is dirty?

I have pointed this same fact out multiple times to a number of people, and every time I get the same blank stare.

1. Religion - Pretty basic thing here. I suppose it wasn't necessarily an "invention" depending on how you look at it, but... Whatever.

2. Snuggies - ...No explanation required.

3. Nascar - There is something oh-so-unexciting about watching a bunch of cars (I DON'T GIVE A FUCK HOW FAST THEY'RE GOING) take repeated left turns. Make a random one spontaneously explode every lap, and maybe then I'll watch.

4. The Wii - ...I don't really have to explain this so much, either.

5. Collection Agencies - Greedy bastards. Quit wasting space in my mailbox.

I agree with your first three, but for my own opinion I would have to add Call of Duty and the Twilight Saga.

 

[imp-caretaker]

1. public transport
2. the webpage: beautifulpeople.com
3. Twilight (books and movies)

 

[Josh Kurber]

However, it's just becoming another religion, and organisation that suffers blindness, hypocrisy and dangerous zealotism. It saddens me to say that, it really does, but it's true. It's now being described as a "movement". A fucking movement? Most of the people who actively identify as atheist are anti-religion, and, despite their dear-held beliefs, are actually morons with no capacity to think on such a grand scale.

In my own opinion, it seems like you're saying Atheism is becoming just like Christianity (mostly Christianity. At least, the way you described Atheism's new path is exactly how to describe ninety percent of the Christians I know... >_>... AND the world in general.)

And I will gladly agree with you about most "Atheist" people being complete morons, some don't even know what an Atheist is. Hell, I know someone who thinks they are because they don't go to church, yet they think God exists.

 

[Squarez]

Rap

Herp

Rap

Derp.

Hey! You stole my thing! :3

Sorry, it was too good to pass up.

 

[the Dept of Science]

1. public transport

Personally, I find being able to get places pretty useful, but whatever.

 

[Ampersand]

The first missunderstanding you have is that you seem to think that athiesm is some sort of oganisation that is ploting against religious groups, that is not nor has it ever been the case. What I stand for ( and what every athiest i've ever met have stood for) is educations. Improving people knowledge and understanding of the world, and it has been religious groups who have stood in opposition to that for thousand of years. It's only when religious groups start actively retarding the progress of man kind of man kind for the sake of perpetuating their own personal beliefs (or worse, interfering with the education of young children) that I start having a problem with them.

Secondly: I've never seen anyone become a better person as a result of finding religion, however i've seen alot of people become better people as a result of loosing religion. In my experience as soon as people realise that they no longer blindly follow dogma they obtain a much better understanding of what is actually wrong and what's right, (I know i did).
Saying that religion makes people more moral is like saying that the death penalty makes people more moral, It just keep people afraid so that they behave themselves. Religion great if you want to keep people under your thumb or motivate them to go to war but from a moral stand point it's utterly useless.

thirdly: "There is not a single person I know who has ever had a fear of God" That is wrong, plain and simple. I'm only 20 years old so the worst of this was over before i was born but i've seen people do aweful things out of fear of god. I've seen people hate and ridicule other groups of people and even kill because they're afraid that if they don't it will compromise thier beliefs.
Also it's not just that people are afraid of thier god either, many people like that they think they understand the world and are terrified that they might find out that they don't, it can make people very agressive and even dangerous.
I don't know where you live but if you've never seen this it must be a very nice place.
I take no pleasure in telling you this but you're wrong about that. ( I wish it was just a line)

Fourth: You can't do something in the name of athiesm, that doesn't make sence. By it's definition it is the default position of all consious living things (we are all born athiest)
However religion is an invention of man kind, it can be used as a tool. It can be used to build something(on a foundation of falsehood and fear) or it can be used to reek unimaginable destruction and suffering, which it has done many times. In my opinion that is a tool we don't need. There are alot of much better ones that don't have as high a cost.

Finally(this is getting long, frankly I wouldn't blame you if you haven't read this far.)
No i certainly did not know what the caste system was.
I would ask you to never( and i mean never) dare to say that war is part of human nature. Because first of all it isn't true and secondly that kind of attitude on a global scale is part of what enable it to continue. Ego and greed can be part of human nature and they can leed to war but as hard as it may be they can be overcome.
I've studied war and martial arts for years and the only thing it's tought me is that fighting is hard, distructive (inconvenient) and ultimatly pointless.
I'm not that smart, if I can figure out, that violence the worst way of resolving a conflict, then anybody can And the more people who reasize this the closer we will be to being free from it.

I'd ask you to please think about that because to me there arn't alot of things more important.

No, I don't think that. But, it is fast becoming what you think it isn't. And I agree with you to an extent; atheism should be a personal choice, something that revolves around you beliefs in a complex and tricky field. However, it's just becoming another religion, and organisation that suffers blindness, hypocrisy and dangerous zealotism. It saddens me to say that, it really does, but it's true. It's now being described as a "movement". A fucking movement? Most of the people who actively identify as atheist are anti-religion, and, despite their dear-held beliefs, are actually morons with no capacity to think on such a grand scale.

And I still don't see where you're coming from with the whole "Religion is in the way of understanding the world". How? The only things I can think religion has ever stood in the way of recently is a tiny sliver of stem cell research, and that hardly affected the overall research. Besides, humans will never understand. It's kind of funnyand kind of sad that we think we ever will. How arrogant.

Man, you've got to stop trotting out the "afraid of God" thing, because it doesn't exist. Maybe in the Dark Ages, but sure as shit not any more. It's utterly ridiculous that you can claim religion cannot motivate a person to become more moral. Mother Theresa is a grandiose example here, but fits. Your death pentalty analogy is flawed as noone is scared of God/punishment.

So, you're saying my personal experience is wrong? My life, the people I know and what I've seen is wrong? That's a hefty claim there buddy. I've got no idea where you're from, since you haven't felt like putting your country on your profile, but down where I live, there is no "fear of God", anywhere. Hell, I don't think there ever has been in our history. "...many people like that they think they understand the world and are terrified that they might find out that they don't, it can make people very agressive and even dangerous." Jesus, I think you just described a shitload of atheists there. That's true of anyone dumb enough to think they hold solid answers. The fact is that I haven't. Between priests, nuns, everyday Churchgoers and people of different faiths, I can honestly say I've never met someone with a fear of God. That goes for this country and others I've visited. It's just not the way religion works here.

Bullshit. The minute the fundie faggots turned atheism into a movement, a "cause", you can do something in the name of it. I've seen people burn down Churches and attack people in the name of atheism. How does it feel being judged on the actions of someone who identifies in the same area as you on a philosophical and theological level but bear no other similarities? Because that's what I go through every time some dipshit tells me I hate gays, or want to spread AIDS, or some other nonsense.

Religion is highly capeable of good, and the general lack of willingness to see that troubles me, always has. It's like there's just a general urge to demonise it; let alone the compulsion to ignore how it works on an individual level. All the charity, social support, the community built, these are all poitives. I've never seen a fight over religion, not once. The worst I ever see is the fucking bogans trying to cast Muslims out of our country, and I can tell you what, they're sure as hell not religious.

Thr caste system is disgusting and I cannot believe it exists in our day an age. But it is not my culture and not my right to do anything.

I'm sorry, but it's true. I understand your personal feelings on the matter but I respectfully disagree. War is inevitable. It has never been about resolving conflict. Children fight. It is natural. Unfortunate, but natural. You know, like suicide or something. Humans love fighting. Conflict isn't used to resolve other conflict, it's used to gain something. Ego hardly ever comes into it. We will never be free from war, global or local. Fuck, the best we can hope for on a global scale is a stalemate, but that just leads to Cold Wars. As long as there are two groups in the world, there will be fighting.

I shouldn't be surprised. I'm alittle disappointed with the dishonesty i'm seeing here though. I'm not calling you a lier, but if you can say this to me, "I've never seen a fight over religion, not once. " and mean it, then you are obviously very naive.
Need i remind you that there are still parts of the world today that I would be killed (literally executed) for saying much less then i've said on this forum.

Since you seemed interested I'll tell you that i live in Ireland.

War is inevitable? Really? Why exactly is that? War is not a force of nature like high winds and flooding, war only happens when someone wants it. and from the way you speak it sound like you want it a little bit (stop that). Yes children fight but children do alot of stupid stuff, they need to, thats how they learn and grow up. Which is why we as a society need to grow up and realise how childish we're being.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Pokemon

...

*looks at avatar and badges*

...we may have some disagreements there...

OT:

1) Firearms (because we weren't already capable enough of massacring each other)

2) Human Trafficking (Or slavery in general I guess. Both disgust me.)

3) Psychedelic drugs

4) Gasoline/fuel (Life would be a lot nicer in my opinion if everybody had a horse instead)

5) Anon (They give the internet a bad name)

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

I have pointed this same fact out multiple times to a number of people, and every time I get the same blank stare.

Same here. It's not a complicated idea, how can you not understand?!

OT:
Twilight
The Jonas Brothers
Those fake arms you can hug yourself with (cookie for the name)
Torture porn movies
Iran (Yeah I went there!)

 

[Frotality]

facebook (social networking in general)- reducing human relationships to text i dont have to think about without any of the social anxiety of direct contact that causes actual meaninful discussion and interaction..

texting- see above

home television- has ANYTHING substantial other than a scant few genuine, impartial news stories come of it?

the firearm(ranged weaponry? modern military tech in general?!)- dont get me wrong, im all for war and violence, but if we were still resolving violence with swords, that took skill, and didnt destroy anything other than the thing we were intending to kill...we would think more about committing to war, and recklessly destroy less of the inhabitable world.

modern human society- which by virtue of not destroying out of pity and letting develop, we have created. the cycle of fulfilling primal desires, destroying ourselves, then going into a victorian hyper-repression, slowly deviating back to caveman, rinsing and repeating is getting old; cant we find a nice middleground, take all the extremists behind a shed and pretend to be sad about shoooting them, and live in a happy, sane, world with no destitute poor serial rapists born of pompous, self-gratifying rich douchebags spending the world's wealth on yachts and sexual debauchery? ....of course not, nevermind, bad idea.

 

[emeraldrafael]

The baggler -laziness

The fanny pack - carry a damn backpack, you just look retarded and fat.

the button that adds another inch to waist (either way) - you';re fat, you odnt get to wear skinny jeans. you;re skinny, buy some damn pants that fit.

anyhting that when you buy the box, says as seen on tv on it. - you just got suckered.

the spork - there's a reason they sell kitchen sets, and what kinda dictator makes you only use two of the three basic utensils?

 

[Scipio1770]

teh_pwning_dude, while you are correct in defending the virtues of religion, you must of course concede to the reasoning behind all these people's counter-arguments.

Ignore for now the question of religion as truth or lie, for it is a trite and unending quarrel. instead consider religion from a societal standpoint. Pragmatically, all religions share a common trait: the persuasion to believe something which can be neither proven nor discredited by your own logic.

While you argue that such a tool has been used to better society (by creating the incentive to obey morals and such) It is an unhealthy practice when those in power themselves fall into delusion. (ex. The Salem Witch hunts, the Spanish Inquisition, the current Saudi Arabian judicial system.) On this point you cannot argue.

Therefore, the problem with religion is that it is a risky tool for society. It creates order and peace, but only so long as the leaders maintain their reason secular. If such a case is not met, then the society falls into ruin (ex. the native american culture, which never progressed beyond primal civilization due to it's flawed theocratic system). In this theory even the U.S. Founders agreed, and duely created the separation of church and state. You can read the rationale of case decisions like Engel v. Vitale to further understand need for that separation.

If in any way you believe something i have said to be untrue, then please say so (with civility) and present your logic. If not, then we may hopefully stop this argument from further polluting a simple comic thread.