Comments by Logician

Comment #116230 by Logician on January 25, 2008 at 10:56 pm

I find it most interesting that this continues the idiotic idea promuglated by religion that one can 'feel', etc, without sensory instruments - i.e. - the body.
When I was in my single digits and first fed this bullshit by my relatives (my parents knew me too well to even try) my response was the same then as it is now: "How is that possible?"
No one then, nor even yet, could give me a satisfactory answer. When I laughed at their explanations, I was told I would burn in agonizing pain forever and ever and ever!
Now keep in mind that I was only six years old! I knew even then that people who believe this shit are idiots and filled with the most disgusting hate.
The only response to them is to challenge EVERY lie in the video and when no explanation is forthcoming, dismiss them loudly, mockingly, and very, very publically.
If you lose a 'friend,' you're much better off, and don't worry about whether you'll 'make any points' for the atheist cause.
When the student is ready, the teacher will be there. The morons making this piece of shit aren't ready and don't deserve your precious time or consideration.

2. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #94060 by Logician on December 4, 2007 at 4:58 pm

Oh. My. God. (so to speak)

Anyone ever read "Towing Jehovah" by James Morrow?

It was one of the funniest pieces of modern American fiction I've read in a long time. I grew rapidly entranced with the story and hung on every word. And when I hit the ending I was so furious I threw it across the room.

I COMPLETELY disagreed with the author's contention at the very end. You see, God has died and left his corpse in the sea for all to behold, very deliberately. Of course the main churches go ape and do everything they can to hide the evidence. Even the atheists want to destroy it, largely for the reasons cited in these very posts. It is left to our feckless hero to reveal the knowledge to the world because only he understands WHY the world has to be told.

The author's reasoning as to why God had died and left the evidence was so beautiful it made me want a god who could be so damned thoughtful. And then our hero takes a good, hard look at humanity and decides to keep the knowledge to himself. Why? Because humanity couldn't take not only the PROOF of God's existence but the shattering fact that he was no longer there and it was time to grow the hell up and start taking care of itself.

After taking a good, hard look at the world myself I had to admit he was right. And after reading the thoroughly depressing posts here it's obvious even atheists aren't ready to truly, once and for all, REALLY think for themselves. They STILL think in terms of being followers with emotional bonds, or leaders constrained by the opinions of those followers, instead of just being individuals.

We're still not there, as the responses to this fairly simple concept have shown.

How terribly sad. Now I really DO need that beer...

3. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #93568 by Logician on December 3, 2007 at 2:07 pm

Hear, hear!

Ziggy-zocky, ziggy-zocky, hoi! hoi! hoi!

'Nuff said!

4. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #93556 by Logician on December 3, 2007 at 1:32 pm

One woman, one man, for life. And anybody that doesn't do it or agree with it is a male chauvinist dirty old man pig...

I haven't heard such hysterical rantings since the 60's. I feel like I've stumbled into a group of old maids who simply HATE those FILTHY men...

Look, folks, if you want to become the property of another person cause you think it's right for you, fine. If you want multiple partners of both or either sex, fine. If you don't want to get married, fine.

What seems to be missing here is that there is NO biological imperative for ANY of the above choices. But to assume a MORAL stance over what is no more than a social construct concerning behavior between CONSENTING ADULTS is shockingly beneath a rational person.

100 years ago is was MORAL to kill humans with 'red' skin. 160 years ago it was MORAL to OWN humans with 'black' skin. Morals are SOCIAL contracts, folks, get in touch with a library and do some damn research. I hang around atheists because by and large they're a freethinking bunch used to questioning EVERYTHING. Not a bunch of twits hung up over people having sexual fun sans "ownership" of each other's bodies for life. How terribly sad.

My tax dollars are being spent to brainwash innocent children in the ways of superstition through the 'Faith Based Initiative' and you're arguing over the semantics of 'love', 'marriage', and the like?

Puh-leeese!

5. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #93364 by Logician on December 2, 2007 at 11:00 pm

Wow, Louise, where do you work?
I mean, with such omniscience you better be working in some psyche field, cause you know how EVERY person who has EVER cheated feels:
"and the person who cheats seldom wants 'out of the relationship', they just want a bit on the side."
Can you back that up? I mean, for EVERYBODY? Such a judgemental statement smacks not of knowledge but bitterness.
Whatever hurt you may have suffered, you need to understand that your preferences are not everyone else's and you can't speak for them or make them do as you wish.
Too many people get married in this country for all the wrong reasons and RD is simply pointing out a very bad result of those reasons. It's time to evaluate the entire concept of believing 'our way' is the only way.
Lordy, who knew so many atheists still held onto old religious ideals?

6. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #93220 by Logician on December 2, 2007 at 12:48 pm

etny,

Not meant to infringe upon your daughters, meant only where do you find your justification for any one way for consenting adults to behave?

I have lived in many cultures all over the planet (courtesy of Uncle Sugar-I was trained to go to strange places, meet exotic new people and kill them. I was a wuss, however, and never did. Found them altogether too fascinating...)and I just can't come up with any one way consenting adults should behave as long as no one gets hurts.

{As I proof this I realize that is probably the key - no one gets hurt. That would entail mature adults educated not only of their options in life but about themselves and their prospective mates. And continually willing to adapt to the fact that their mate WILL change over time as well as themselves. And willing to adapt to ever increasing changes in society and, and, and, carry moon beams home in a jar...crap, if we all waited until we achieved that, we'd die out in a generation...}

The trouble in our own society, as a woman living in Utah told me this am, is that we have no healthy examples of polygamy or polyandry to draw upon. When examining either type we have to go to other cultures which opens up whole new variables not applicable to American culture, such as it is.

As other more erudite posters have said, the good Doc needs to elaborate.

Nonetheless, I agree that there are far more pressing issues we all need to deal with. Unfortunately I've run out of patience with magical thinkers. I have to admit to standing in awe of their shear ability to ignore what's in front of their face, even when it's a 2X4 smacking them.

I was sputtering about that the other day when a more clear thinking person said, "Dude, stop arguing with idiots, they only bring you down to their level and then beat you with their experience."

'Nuff said.

7. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #93174 by Logician on December 2, 2007 at 11:21 am

RE#93158 by Polydactyl on De 2 @ 1045 am:

Well said. I think that may be all RD was trying to get at, the rethinking concept, no matter how inflammatorily he went about it.

Incredulous in an earlier post suggested renewable contracts in 3 to 5 year segments as an idea. Although that would give an altogether sinister new connotation to the phrase "doing three to five"...

As you point out it could be simply a generationaly thing, this idea of not being restricted to one partner once in a life till death. It's definitely something to explore.

I will be firing up our weekly meetings with this topic just to see where it goes. Just as on this site we have lots of strong-minded, opinionated people in our group so it should be interesting.

No matter how volatile, it's still nice to be able to discuss something without the thought of a term in prison or physical torture being the result.

And who says atheism is bad? Oh yeah, the Pope...

8. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #93118 by Logician on December 2, 2007 at 8:41 am

Say there, etny, you've been given your chance to wax philosophically about your justifications for your moral absolutes concerning behavior between consenting adults. Where are they? Y'all claim the right to train your daughters that only YOUR way of thought about behavior between consenting adults is right, where's your reasons?

Here's your chance to rebut not just RD but "emotional me".

The net waves reverberate with...nothing.

9. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #93051 by Logician on December 2, 2007 at 4:10 am

RE#92930 by etny on De 1 @ 7:21 pm:

Well of course you will, you have no rational defense, only emotional. If you attempt to state there are moral absolutes regarding behavior between consenting adults, you tread among the religidiots.

Period.

And yeah, I'm hot about that issue because I have been screamed at, hit, spit on, and told that the DEATH of my daughter was absolutely necessary to: stop Katrina, stop the wildfires, stop the tornados, stop the earthquakes, keep the bridge up, stop the terrorists, etc., etc., etc. And not just by toothless inbreeds but by Minnesotan suburbanites.

I am no longer surprised by the idiocy of religion, after all it's just a story, but by the rabid stupidity of humans regarding ANYTHING they are squemish about. And now it strikes among supposed rational thinkers.

What few on this site get is the key concept: WHY do we accept yet another thing without questioning it? If you're too squemish, admit your inability to deal with the subject rationally and bow out. No problem there. Not everyone is a rocket scientist, not everyone is a Tiger Woods.

And if the mouth breathers "associate" the questioning of laws designed to govern the behavior of consenting adults, then good for them. Religion is all about control and it's time to stop it not just at the philosophical level but at the legal level as well.

10. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #92820 by Logician on December 1, 2007 at 2:14 pm

RE#92739 by etny on De 1,07 at 11:24 am:

Dude, what CENTURY are you from? "moral rectitude"?! The LAST time I heard that filthy little pharse it was used to prosecute a teacher for being with another man. I despised it then and I do now. I hereby challenge you to rise to the level of this site:

EXACTLY what do you base your concept on that there is ONE moral code of "monoandry"?
And EXACTLY what do you base your belief on that you have ANY, and I mean *ANY* right to impose that on ANYONE'S children, ESPECIALLY your own?

While I won't argue there are some things that are not up for argument, murder, abuse, etc., what any two or more consenting individuals do in the privacy of their bedroom is simply NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, in any culture, at any time, no matter how squemish it makes you, no matter if it's even your own adult children!

Just to show you what might in store for you: one of my daughters is married and has made me a grandfather several times over and the other is *gasp* a lesbian. I wouldn't trade either one for a billion little mini frigidares with "moral rectititude." They are healthy, happy with who they are, each other and their partners, who love them AS THEY ARE.

(It wasn't peaches and cream getting here for all of us, they're not perfect and neither are we and we still don't all agree on everything, but what "ain't my bidness" isn't one of them.)

The barbarians are threatening to destroy the world in the name of their fairy tales and you argue over whether a man or a woman can do whatever he or she pleases in the privacy of his or her own life?

Why?

11. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #92726 by Logician on December 1, 2007 at 10:39 am

Holy cow they weren't kidding about losing messages! I had a brilliant missive to all who responded and it just...went away...I know it was brilliant cause I wrote it. ;)

Anyway, sorry to intrude on y'all's space there, Mr. Blackford. ;)

As for the other replies, oh well. But as for enty: (and his/her/it/in transition him/her, whatever, detractors):

enty has a right to ask this question since it is pertinent to the subject. But what enty does not realize is how very, very much it reveals about the questioner. So, I'll give him/her/it an answer:

I have two daughters also, enty, one 30 and one 28. I don't give a rat's ass how many of any combo of any gender they have sex with at once or serially as long as they are happy and their partners are clean. As their father, I love them both, they have their own lives, and the only thing I wish for them is their continued happiness and health. It's very very sad you cannot wish the same for your own daughters. If you had raised them well and hadn't dumped your obvious hangups on them and were yourself mature enough to realize they are independent humans perhaps you wouldn't take such a purient interest in their, as well as others', sex lives....

Boy was I right about the confusion over this subject! At least atheists don't kill each other over their disagreements. Yet. Although those South Park episodes were a hoot...

12. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #92649 by Logician on December 1, 2007 at 3:17 am

RE#92487 by arogop on Nov 30, at 3:54 pm:

"Sometimes when you have something to say it's good to get it out and then tweak it till you get it right. I do this by talking to myself."

Really? Then I would suppose you DIDN'T talk to yourself when you typed this:

7. People retain ownership over their own bodies. Period. Does not matter if you are male or female.

8. A traditional marriage contract between two people binds those two people into one person, then both bodies are the possession of each other by contract.

Your obvious confusion is WHY RD HAS to get this crap out into the open. "People retain ownership over their own bodies." "...both bodies are the possession of each other by contract." Look, dude, either one or the other: you are an independent entity even in marriage or you are the chattel of your spouse, not BOTH.

The confusion in most of these posts is most clearly exemplified in yours and it is exactly what RD was getting at: we need to realize that marriage, like religion, is NOT a natural imperative. Marriage, like religion, is ENTIRELY human constructed and therefore subject to scrutiny, criticism, and change.

At the risk of sounding too low-brow on such an august site, you all would do well to heed Morpheus: "You have to let it all go." You need to question not just religion, marriage, and societal mores, but you must question most closely YOURSELF. WHERE do YOUR feelings and THOUGHTS about marriage come from? Why do you even make the assumption that marriage is anything worth honoring, discussing, or even acknowledging? WHY do you feel two people who love each other should get married? Challenge yourselves to LOOK it all up and RESEARCH the very words love, wife, husband, marriage, etc. Even the Epic of Gilgamesh had much to say about it all and it has all evolved (like religion) a whole lot since then.

What do you know about marriage? More importantly, what do you know about modern American marriage? For instance, you might be surprised to know that marriage is now considered more of a FINANCIAL contract than a LOVE contract by the American Bar Association. Considering how many American marriages end in divorce and the only ones to profit from that fact are the lawyers, that little tidbit should give y'all pause.

I'm serious, here. I mean y'all really should study this as I'm sure y'all have studied religion. Just as those of you on this site who have caste off the filthy shackles of magical thinking and become rational after years of careful study and consideration, you might be surprised where you'll end up on the marriage issue after as many years of study devoted to learning about marriage.

Then maybe you will understand what RD was getting at.