|
Politics Where we learn not to think less of others who don't share our views |
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
|
05-02-2011, 10:35 PM | #1 |
Person who doesn't update the user title
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Southern California
Posts: 6,674
|
Y'know what, Zen? I eat wafers. Free wine on Sundays, too. (If the phrase sounds familiar but you can't put your finger on it, Google is your friend and Bob's your ungulate.)
And I was raised Unitarian if I was raised anything. I like to think the experience of youth plus that of maturer years gives me a broad and sensible perspective. Atheism is much too cramped for me. Too much a belief in unbelief so its final reward seems so... picayune. Perhaps the most sturdily rational, or rationalist, atheist I ever heard of was Robert A. Heinlein -- a fellow I'd happily consign to Heaven. Or is it righter to reckon of those who are atheistic "Verily, they have received their reward." The list of despots who behaved all their lives as if there were no afterlife that might possibly be influenced by their deeds in this life is long and written in dried blood: Jenghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Josef Stalin and his enabler Vladimr Il'ych you-know-who, Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler. Those are just the high points. Their nearest real approach to God seems to have been when they were swearing at somebody. There's always that whiff of dead folks around the anti-believers who operate on a large scale, who very often do not discourage their followers to worship them, mortal men, instead of something more abstract and with the right touch of the supernal. What the small-scale antibelievers seem to lack looks like the opportunity to slaughter like the big boys. Now I follow a trinitarian way, to the point of being an Episcopalian lay minister, duly licensed by the Diocese of Los Angeles. There's a lot of... brain going on in the Anglican Communion. You know that's the kind of thing I like. The difference between religious thinking and superstitious (or magickal) thinking seems to me to be in what you do with it once you've thought it.
__________________
Wanna stop school shootings? End Gun-Free Zones, of course. |
05-02-2011, 11:14 PM | #2 |
Operations Operative
Join Date: Feb 2011
Posts: 495
|
You mean like a good Christian like likely presidential candidate Mike Huckabee who links gay sex to bestiality and abortion to slavery and who wants to amend the Constitution to reflect those views?
|
05-02-2011, 11:46 PM | #3 |
Registered User
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Not here
Posts: 2,655
|
Y'all are so cute trying to sustain a rational dialog with UG!
|
05-02-2011, 11:53 PM | #4 |
Operations Operative
Join Date: Feb 2011
Posts: 495
|
Just testing the findings of a recent study in the UK that suggests people with right wing views have a larger area of the brain associated with fear.
|
05-03-2011, 07:28 AM | #5 | |
Person who doesn't update the user title
Join Date: Mar 2011
Posts: 13,002
|
Quote:
|
|
05-03-2011, 11:34 AM | #6 | |||||
Colonist Extraordinaire
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Redondo Beach, CA (transplant from St. Louis, MO)
Posts: 218
|
Quote:
Quote:
Interesting that you wish to "break" me, as opposed to convince me. Personally, I'd just like for you to learn a few things, and perhaps acknowledge a few truths, even if you don't come around fully to my way of thinking, politically. Why would you want to "break" me? That's not very respectful. How about let's not. This thread is about the death of Osama bin Laden. I'd say it's already been hijacked enough, wouldn't you? Quote:
Barack Obama was discussing the reason that so many people in "small town America" are bitter -- and they are, let's be honest. "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not."Do you deny this truth? Is this not an accurate depiction of many small towns throughout the Midwest, where jobs have dried up and nothing more than lip service has been paid to those who have been suffering through the demise of their livelihoods? And that, friend Guerrilla, is why Barack Obama then said, "And it's not surprising then they get bitter." It's not surprising, is it? It doesn't surprise me that people who've been "left behind" by technology and job outsourcing and politicians entering into treaties and working trade deals that have contributed to their towns crumbling around them, would be bitter. I'd be bitter! Wouldn't you? And what do people who have become bitter about how the government has in many ways orchestrated their devolution towards poverty do, when they don't have the political clout to effect change in the big ways that would rebuild their communities? "They cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."That isn't even remotely how you depicted his statement, is it? I don't mind debating you on facts. You're certainly well within your rights to want to counter the assessment Barack Obama made, based on what he actually said. But it's impossible to have a reasonable debate with someone when they aren't debating realities, but made-up stuff. Quote:
Quote:
In the meantime, Osama bin Laden is still DEAD! And it was Barack Obama who orchestrated it. |
|||||
05-03-2011, 04:31 PM | #7 | |
Back in 10
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 3,684
|
Quote:
Sooooooo when you made that post wishing to commit adultery with Anne Coulter [shudder] that was a shining example of your character? Alrighty then!!
__________________
Speaking simply... do not confuse this with having a simple mind. |
|
Tags |
i love tw, i love ug, merc luvs jill, merry xmas from barry o, rip ug, teh president barry, u want me, who be barrio? |
Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests) | |
|
|