"For I and you" - meaning the US inhabitants - it does plenty. You are not being killed or maimed, you are not starving, you keep building, repairing, etc. You keep creating while those others are destroying. Double-whammy.
Most people do not believe in afterlife. They think they die and become "worm food" in the words of Ricky Gervais' character from Extras.
Being reckless as humans tend to be they think the situation holds while they're alive. And when it's time for "coming around" it'll be someone else on the receiving end.
Good for you. What are you worried about then? What does it matter if anyone lives or not? If there's earth or universe or anything at all? When you're gone, you're gone. For you nothing existed before you were born, and nothing will after you're gone. Same for everybody else according to you. The believers are mistaken, they're delusional. For them nothing is out there either.
Jeez, maybe because we atheists realise that we only have one life, this is it, let's make the best of it while we can.
If some idiot with a holy book does something good, great, but they're also likely to do something really horrible and evil and either think that it's ok because of their religion or that they'll be forgiven by their invisible friend.
An atheist's moral is based on what's best for the most of us. A religious person's moral is based on weird rules in (usually) a really old book that in the end is all about scoring points in 'heaven'.
An idiot with a holy book hiding behind some religion is just that - an idiot. No one can claim they heard something from heaven, or on the radio for that matter, and justify their actions by it. No one can use belief as a cover, by definition. When you hear such claims you know it's a fraud before you, or just a fool.
Just like when you hear atheists are better humans due to their "one life" realization. They are not. Plenty of horrible actions from this "enlightened" kind as well.
Lie esteemed atheists, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, as opposed to those dreadful idiotic believers, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King. Yeah, I get your point.
That, in my opinion, is a very narrow minded perspective, (to think that we are nothing more than worm food.)
But somehow, I don't think we're going to have to wait all the way until the afterlife for this one to come back to bite us.
Nevertheless, if we were to stop for a moment and consider the degree of our complicity in all this, repentance would most definitely be in order, first of all, and then perhaps, civil disobedience.
Believing in any mythical construct is pure idiocy. All of it can be traced back to old dead men making up an instrumental lie so that people would serve them.
Religion can be considered just one of such constructs. There are many that atheists believe in and serve the same purpose if one chooses to reduce it this way.
You can't really blame the atheists. They've been led down the garden path for so long into nihilism. There's no place for religious beliefs to land in them anymore.
In my experience, there's only one effective way to deal with atheism:
Gods are just artifacts of value judgment. They aren't necessary, even if they did exist. All religion is best dismissed as a generated defense of slavery.
You're right. What have I been thinking all these years?
Looked at from that perspective all this makes perfect sense!
We live in an ultra-Darwinian world of Eat or be Eaten! Survival of the fittest!
We are nothing but animals ourselves without a soul with nothing to look forward to.
We don't expect ethics or morals from a Wildebeest? Do we? Of course not! Why should we expect them from ourselves or each other?
All of that craziness I've believed all these years about Telepathy and Mind over Matter and about stepping off from this world into another kind of reality where whatever we Intend comes into being instantaneously and we are no longer bound by the limits of Time/Space and the Laws of Physics? Madness!
Religion is just the opiate of the masses! A means of trying to force them into being something they can never be - Human Beings.
Oh my God! Where do I sign up to be one of the Global Elite? They've had the right idea all along. It's a dog eat dog world where you are either the boot or the face that it's grinding into the pavement.
I've been on the wrong side all along.
Thanks Societies Stinky Parts. You have opened my eyes for me!
That's a pure misunderstanding as I understand it. The God (or the notion, if one prefers) is there not to do stuff for one, but help one do the right thing. If one is seeking such help. But no one is obligated to.
Many cults - especially the proselytizing type - simplify (bastardize) things to just get people in.
It is not the U.S. citizens (other than the ruling classes) that is responsible for any of this. Plenty of U.S. citizens are dying of treatable diseases because we lack free health care. Plenty of Americans are starving. Nobody is maintaining the American infrastructure which is collapsing all around us. Nothing gets repaired because the corporations don't want to spend any money on repairs. The United States is the greatest destroyer in the world. Your comment is a fairy tale.
You are not wrong but neither are you right. Have you ever tried to get an American to understand this war? I believe a majority support it. Yes they have been scammed but they want to be scammed. Otherwise the perennial “USA USA USA” chants would have been silenced long ago.
It's true. For the most part, we have been so thoroughly brainwashed for so long that the faculty of critical thinking is atrophied in us, if not entirely missing.
It takes a great deal of effort to free oneself from the degree of mind control that we have been subjected to.
Speaking of 'fairy tales', have you ever read any? Read "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare? Seen the movie, 'Forbidden Planet'?
It's interesting how what is known as the 'Perennial Philosophy' keeps emerging in one way or another in popular culture throughout history.
Perhaps it is nothing more than 'escapism'. But perhaps, it is something deeper than that, trying to tell us something, if only by analogy...
Ever seen a movie called, 'The Matrix'?
The life that we have become familiar with, the only life we know, may just not be exactly what we think it is...there very well may turn out to be much more to life than meets the eye.
You don't necessarily have to vote for the Capitalist Pigs. All you have to do is buy what they have to sell you in order to encourage and empower them to continue with what they are doing.
Well, actually, for those of us inhabitants with peaceful ideals and who are forced to pay for the adventures of US MIC in multiple ways, it does hurt as we suffer poor health care, mediocre education, crappy public works, vast inequality.
Essentially you’re arguing that it’s all cool so long as someone else, anyone but Americans, pays the price. We mustn’t disturb American blissful ignorance.
From what I read and hear on this side of the pond many Americans are dying because they are refused affordable health care and medicines - so effectively, being killed by your own Govt, many live on or below the poverty line and are unable to afford proper nutrition so are starving slowly and not much building or repairing of public infrastructure seems to be happening.
So what is America creating other that the machinery of mass murder and death and instruments to cling to a fantasy of global rule and power.
"For I and you" - meaning the US inhabitants - it does plenty. You are not being killed or maimed, you are not starving, you keep building, repairing, etc. You keep creating while those others are destroying. Double-whammy.
Yes. But, 'What goes around, comes around' and I'm sure that all of this will catch up with us sooner or later.
Most people do not believe in afterlife. They think they die and become "worm food" in the words of Ricky Gervais' character from Extras.
Being reckless as humans tend to be they think the situation holds while they're alive. And when it's time for "coming around" it'll be someone else on the receiving end.
I don't believe in an afterlife. I am an atheist. Religion is superstition, nothing more.
Good for you. What are you worried about then? What does it matter if anyone lives or not? If there's earth or universe or anything at all? When you're gone, you're gone. For you nothing existed before you were born, and nothing will after you're gone. Same for everybody else according to you. The believers are mistaken, they're delusional. For them nothing is out there either.
Why worry then?
Jeez, maybe because we atheists realise that we only have one life, this is it, let's make the best of it while we can.
If some idiot with a holy book does something good, great, but they're also likely to do something really horrible and evil and either think that it's ok because of their religion or that they'll be forgiven by their invisible friend.
An atheist's moral is based on what's best for the most of us. A religious person's moral is based on weird rules in (usually) a really old book that in the end is all about scoring points in 'heaven'.
I could go on for hours...
I bet you could but there's no need.
An idiot with a holy book hiding behind some religion is just that - an idiot. No one can claim they heard something from heaven, or on the radio for that matter, and justify their actions by it. No one can use belief as a cover, by definition. When you hear such claims you know it's a fraud before you, or just a fool.
Just like when you hear atheists are better humans due to their "one life" realization. They are not. Plenty of horrible actions from this "enlightened" kind as well.
Lie esteemed atheists, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, as opposed to those dreadful idiotic believers, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King. Yeah, I get your point.
That, in my opinion, is a very narrow minded perspective, (to think that we are nothing more than worm food.)
But somehow, I don't think we're going to have to wait all the way until the afterlife for this one to come back to bite us.
Nevertheless, if we were to stop for a moment and consider the degree of our complicity in all this, repentance would most definitely be in order, first of all, and then perhaps, civil disobedience.
"We" are not complicit unless we voted for the capitalist criminals. I did not vote for any of them. The ruling classes are responsible for all of it.
Whether or not there is an afterlife, imperialism comes home to roost and has been doing that for awhile.
Believing in any mythical construct is pure idiocy. All of it can be traced back to old dead men making up an instrumental lie so that people would serve them.
Religion can be considered just one of such constructs. There are many that atheists believe in and serve the same purpose if one chooses to reduce it this way.
You can't really blame the atheists. They've been led down the garden path for so long into nihilism. There's no place for religious beliefs to land in them anymore.
In my experience, there's only one effective way to deal with atheism:
https://youtu.be/YnNSnJbjdws?feature=shared
But what about the real thing?
How are we supposed to deal with that!
Gods are just artifacts of value judgment. They aren't necessary, even if they did exist. All religion is best dismissed as a generated defense of slavery.
You're right. What have I been thinking all these years?
Looked at from that perspective all this makes perfect sense!
We live in an ultra-Darwinian world of Eat or be Eaten! Survival of the fittest!
We are nothing but animals ourselves without a soul with nothing to look forward to.
We don't expect ethics or morals from a Wildebeest? Do we? Of course not! Why should we expect them from ourselves or each other?
All of that craziness I've believed all these years about Telepathy and Mind over Matter and about stepping off from this world into another kind of reality where whatever we Intend comes into being instantaneously and we are no longer bound by the limits of Time/Space and the Laws of Physics? Madness!
Religion is just the opiate of the masses! A means of trying to force them into being something they can never be - Human Beings.
Oh my God! Where do I sign up to be one of the Global Elite? They've had the right idea all along. It's a dog eat dog world where you are either the boot or the face that it's grinding into the pavement.
I've been on the wrong side all along.
Thanks Societies Stinky Parts. You have opened my eyes for me!
He was most likely thinking about MORE TAXES!
as it turns out 'god' seems pretty irrelevant. "if there really was a god here, he would have raised a hand by now ...".
That's a pure misunderstanding as I understand it. The God (or the notion, if one prefers) is there not to do stuff for one, but help one do the right thing. If one is seeking such help. But no one is obligated to.
Many cults - especially the proselytizing type - simplify (bastardize) things to just get people in.
well, this 'helping believers to do the right thing' isn't really working, afaik.
It is not the U.S. citizens (other than the ruling classes) that is responsible for any of this. Plenty of U.S. citizens are dying of treatable diseases because we lack free health care. Plenty of Americans are starving. Nobody is maintaining the American infrastructure which is collapsing all around us. Nothing gets repaired because the corporations don't want to spend any money on repairs. The United States is the greatest destroyer in the world. Your comment is a fairy tale.
You are not wrong but neither are you right. Have you ever tried to get an American to understand this war? I believe a majority support it. Yes they have been scammed but they want to be scammed. Otherwise the perennial “USA USA USA” chants would have been silenced long ago.
It's true. For the most part, we have been so thoroughly brainwashed for so long that the faculty of critical thinking is atrophied in us, if not entirely missing.
It takes a great deal of effort to free oneself from the degree of mind control that we have been subjected to.
Speaking of 'fairy tales', have you ever read any? Read "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare? Seen the movie, 'Forbidden Planet'?
It's interesting how what is known as the 'Perennial Philosophy' keeps emerging in one way or another in popular culture throughout history.
Perhaps it is nothing more than 'escapism'. But perhaps, it is something deeper than that, trying to tell us something, if only by analogy...
Ever seen a movie called, 'The Matrix'?
The life that we have become familiar with, the only life we know, may just not be exactly what we think it is...there very well may turn out to be much more to life than meets the eye.
https://youtu.be/anlz3EuuhWo?feature=shared
Do you pay your taxes?
Buy things on Amazon or Costco?
Put gas in your car?
You don't necessarily have to vote for the Capitalist Pigs. All you have to do is buy what they have to sell you in order to encourage and empower them to continue with what they are doing.
What choice to they, or you, have? Individualists trooping to Amazon and Costco.
Caught in a trap! I can't walk out. Because I love you too much baby...
Well, actually, for those of us inhabitants with peaceful ideals and who are forced to pay for the adventures of US MIC in multiple ways, it does hurt as we suffer poor health care, mediocre education, crappy public works, vast inequality.
"Building, repairing"
The Broken Window Fallacy. Good for the glass makers and installers. The rest of us, not so much.
Essentially you’re arguing that it’s all cool so long as someone else, anyone but Americans, pays the price. We mustn’t disturb American blissful ignorance.
From what I read and hear on this side of the pond many Americans are dying because they are refused affordable health care and medicines - so effectively, being killed by your own Govt, many live on or below the poverty line and are unable to afford proper nutrition so are starving slowly and not much building or repairing of public infrastructure seems to be happening.
So what is America creating other that the machinery of mass murder and death and instruments to cling to a fantasy of global rule and power.
Nah, nothing is being "Created" here but an open-air prison and a prison guard middle class to run it.