50 replies to this topic

[Singularity]

I know that sounds harsh, but Jesus Christ, it's taking too damn long to rid the world of this deadly meme. Religious thinking has to be eradicated like a pandemic mental disorder if humanity is going to make any headway. This mind virus is so insidious that I'm afraid we'll probably end up with people worshiping the Singularity (not me), if it ever arises. Don't laugh. There are already people thinking along those ridiculous lines and it's saddening.

Just look at it this way, religious thinking is a threat and it adversely affects the health and peace of the people in the world, just like second-hand smoke... but far worse. So, sorry folks, but you're going to have to practice your religious thinking outside... as in, outside this world.

Flame away.

XXXXXXXXXX - a ten letter word that rhymes with Fantasia.

[Ben Simon]

I know that sounds harsh, but Jesus Christ, it's taking too damn long to rid the world of this deadly meme. Religious thinking has to be eradicated like a pandemic mental disorder if humanity is going to make any headway. This mind virus is so insidious that I'm afraid we'll probably end up with people worshiping the Singularity (not me), if it ever arises. Don't laugh. There are already people thinking along those ridiculous lines and it's saddening.

Just look at it this way, religious thinking is a threat and it adversely affects the health and peace of the people in the world, just like second-hand smoke... but far worse. So, sorry folks, but you're going to have to practice your religious thinking outside... as in, outside this world.

Flame away.

XXXXXXXXXX - a ten letter word that rhymes with Fantasia.

The problem isn't religion as such. It's bad religion. If the world were populated by people like Aquinas and Descartes we wouldn't have a problem. On the other hand you could eradicate religion completely and you'd still find destructive ideologies, fanaticism and fundamentalism taking root. Blaming religion is an immature and reactionary way of looking at the problem.

[Singularity]

...Blaming religion is an immature and reactionary way of looking at the problem.

Reread the post. I did not blame religion. I blamed RELIGIOUS THINKING. Religious thinking is the meme virus. Religion is how the virus organizes the infected hosts in order to support the spreading of the virus.

The human mind is vulnerable to this virus and there doesn't seem to be a cure in sight. Something must be done for the good of the whole or humanity will most likely perish.

[Ben Simon]

...Blaming religion is an immature and reactionary way of looking at the problem.

Reread the post. I did not blame religion. I blamed RELIGIOUS THINKING. Religious thinking is the meme virus. Religion is how the virus organizes the infected hosts in order to support the spreading of the virus.

The human mind is vulnerable to this virus and there doesn't seem to be a cure in sight. Something must be done for the good of the whole or humanity will most likely perish.

Religious thinking? Can you define that for me? Because religious thinking seems to be innate to all of humanity.

[Singularity]

Religious thinking? Can you define that for me? Because religious thinking seems to be innate to all of humanity.

I know "religious thinking" sounds like an oxymoron, but not all thinking is correct. Religious thinking is a form of irrational thinking. Simply put, all theists engage in religious thinking. The theists are the infected ones. Just focus on the theists, or stay away from them, whichever you prefer.

[forever freedom]

Religious thinking is part of the current human brain, unfortunately. Only a small percentage of humans are born with the tendency to think independently. I believe this is genetic. Our choice is to provide humanity with "isms" that are relatively healthy and which propel development.

[Ben Simon]

Religious thinking? Can you define that for me? Because religious thinking seems to be innate to all of humanity.

I know "religious thinking" sounds like an oxymoron, but not all thinking is correct. Religious thinking is a form of irrational thinking. Simply put, all theists engage in religious thinking. The theists are the infected ones. Just focus on the theists, or stay away from them, whichever you prefer.

Aaaaand we're back where we started. ALL theists engage in 'a form of irrational thinking', which you are yet to define? Not especially persuasive. How do you define religious thinking?

Religious thinking is part of the current human brain, unfortunately. Only a small percentage of humans are born with the tendency to think independently. I believe this is genetic.

Are you saying religious people are incapable of independent thinking? ...I swear, my mind boggles at some of the things said on this board about religion. It's so dispiriting. That should be our real concern... why is religion so powerful that it can compel even the non religious to switch their brains off when discussing it?

Edited by ben, 31 May 2009 - 06:14 AM.

[forever freedom]

Religious thinking is part of the current human brain, unfortunately. Only a small percentage of humans are born with the tendency to think independently. I believe this is genetic.

Are you saying religious people are incapable of independent thinking? ...I swear, my mind boggles at some of the things said on this board about religion. It's so dispiriting. That should be our real concern... why is religion so powerful that it can compel even the non religious to switch their brains off when discussing it?

Why does my statement disturb you so much? First, i said "only a small percentage of humans are born with the tendency to think independently". The word "tendency" is not there for no reason; read my words carefully because they're seldom there if they have no purpose.


And yes most religious people don't have the slightest natural tendency to think independently. It's too much work/effort for them to think for themselves about every idea that they hear, so they decide that if the person who's saying it looks like he knows what he's talking about, that's good enough for them. Don't fucking tell me this isn't so with most religious people.

Edited by forever freedom, 31 May 2009 - 07:16 AM.

[Singularity]

Aaaaand we're back where we started. ALL theists engage in 'a form of irrational thinking', which you are yet to define? Not especially persuasive. How do you define religious thinking?

Ben, if you don't know what I'm talking about, then you need to go do some homework on the basics, or go ask your mom.

Read about objectivity and what the scientific method is, as well as formal logic. Once you understand these things, then you will realize that theists use none of these tools to test their beliefs and instead simply believe whatever they want to believe for whatever reasons that have nothing to do with actual truth, but, rather, some other agenda, sometimes emotional, sometimes for the purposes of control or for other selfish reasons.

Did you know that religious people (theists) openly admit that they believe in things with no evidence whatsoever? They call it "having faith." To have faith means to force yourself to believe something is true, even though you really have no idea whether it is true or not. Usually, these people have emotional investments in their beliefs... that is to say, they WANT what they believe in to be true so badly that they just keep telling themselves that it is true until they basically brainwash themselves into thinking that it is fact. This is actually a psychological trick that great liars use on themselves because know that to be believable when telling a lie that it helps to actually believe the lie that they are telling because they will come across as more authentic. So, a lot of liars, when telling a lie, will go into a kind of make-believe role playing whereby they will create a fiction based on the lie; the more elaborate the better. This way, they can become more absorbed in the fantasy-based lie, so when they tell the lie, it comes across as genuine and the other person will hopefully not get suspicious. It's basically the same mental process that one would go through with faith. You have to start off with assuming the premises is true. In this case, the premises is everything that the Bible says, or any religious book for that matter. Then, you try to forget that your starting premise is only an assumption and get fully engrossed into all of the stories and conclusions that follow from the assumed, but as of yet, unproven premise. If you work at it long and hard enough, you would have invested a great deal of time and effort, not to mention emotion, into your fairy tale. And, since it is a fiction that pleases you and suits your needs, you have no desire for the story to end and no desire to go back and do what you had postponed, namely, the testing of the premise to make sure that it is correct. The whole storyline is based on and follows from the premise (or set of premises) and the TEMPORARY assumption that it is true and accurate. If the premise is untrue, then the whole storyline is baseless which can be upsetting to the person who really wants the story to be true. Religious thinkers ignore the fact that they are supposed to go back and test the premise for truthfulness so they know if the following conclusions are valid. They skip this one simple step and this is what causes the problems. Usually, people don't even "go there" because they know the whole house of cards can come tumbling down and can cause great emotional and psychological conflict if they come to the conclusion that everything they believe in that their religion taught them is baseless and could be completely wrong, if not outright lies. If you are a religious leader, then that can be and end of your career. If you have a lot of religious friends, that could mean potentially losing all of your friends.

Breaking the shackles of religious thinking and learning to think objectively is not easy, but it's not that hard either. But, then again, there are some pretty weak-minded people in the world and not everyone can handle the truth because the truth hurts sometimes.

I hope that gives you a jump start into understanding what religious thinking is.

Edited by Singularity, 31 May 2009 - 10:19 AM.

[william7]

I know that sounds harsh, but Jesus Christ, it's taking too damn long to rid the world of this deadly meme. Religious thinking has to be eradicated like a pandemic mental disorder if humanity is going to make any headway. This mind virus is so insidious that I'm afraid we'll probably end up with people worshiping the Singularity (not me), if it ever arises. Don't laugh. There are already people thinking along those ridiculous lines and it's saddening.

Just look at it this way, religious thinking is a threat and it adversely affects the health and peace of the people in the world, just like second-hand smoke... but far worse. So, sorry folks, but you're going to have to practice your religious thinking outside... as in, outside this world.

Flame away.

XXXXXXXXXX - a ten letter word that rhymes with Fantasia.

The problem isn't religion as such. It's bad religion. If the world were populated by people like Aquinas and Descartes we wouldn't have a problem. On the other hand you could eradicate religion completely and you'd still find destructive ideologies, fanaticism and fundamentalism taking root. Blaming religion is an immature and reactionary way of looking at the problem.

Nice post! Glad to see you on the job ben. When the meek and the humble - living communally according to the Scriptures - populate the earth and control science and technology we won't have a problem.

[kismet]

Blaming religion is an immature and reactionary way of looking at the problem.

No, it isn't. Religion enables fundamentalistic, religious thought, anti-scientific thought; it enables people to ignore the evidence. We're not saying the world would be good without religion, we're saying it would be better without the religions (and cults) we have today.

Aaaaand we're back where we started. ALL theists engage in 'a form of irrational thinking', which you are yet to define? Not especially persuasive. How do you define religious thinking?

Almost. Undeniably MOST theists, if we define theism as belief in an interventionist (mostly Abrahamitic) god, engage in an absurdly irrational form of thinking. Believing that a 'god' intervenes in our lives, even though every single such claim has been disproven using the scientific method; one of the few places left for god is as an untenable, non-intervening, deistic creator (although, this makes god just a thought experiment).

Flame away.

If I was a mod you'd be so banned for saying this.  This constitutes 100% trolling. Way to ruin a good discussion.

Edited by kismet, 31 May 2009 - 04:10 PM.

[Luna]

In Israel religious people are against cosmetic surgeries because it is interfering with nature.
But the same people are FOR cosmetic surgeries for a female because it pleases the male and is considered.. I forgot the word, but a good thing.
I find it funny :D

Not all religious people are bad or even like that!
Some religious people are all for cosmetics and science.
The non interfering and leaving things as they are and accepting is the problem.
But then there is a problem of people want something which is harming.
So both wanting a change and not wanting to change types of thinking are problematic!

I don't want to be a psychiatrist:D

[Singularity]

Nice post! Glad to see you on the job ben. When the meek and the humble - living communally according to the Scriptures - populate the earth and control science and technology we won't have a problem.

Doing the good work, eh? Are you guys partners?

Look, I know it's a nice thought to think that the meek will inherit the earth, but that's just more wishful thinking. It even says much worse. It's saying that these meek individuals are not involved in the struggles/battles in life, because they are either too weak, or too apathetic to be involved. They comfort themselves by telling each other, "Don't worry, one day all those big bad crazy people will destroy themselves in their greedy aspirations for power and then we can just walk in a take it all." What a great storyline for those who are greedy but don't have the constitution to work for it.

Life isn't all peaches and cream, and if the so-called meek ever did inherit the earth, without a doubt, all the power struggles would start all over again on a new leveled playing field. If you can't accept this as truth, then you are seriously avoiding reality.

QUOTE (Singularity @ 30-May 2009, 11:11 PM) Flame away.
If I was a mod you'd be so banned for saying this. This constitutes 100% trolling. Way to ruin a good discussion.

Oh, thanks for the heads-up. I shant do that again... but I haven't engaged in any personal attacks or other annoying behavior meant to distract from the discussion, which I believe is what trolling is.

[Singularity]

In Israel religious people are against cosmetic surgeries because it is interfering with nature.
But the same people are FOR cosmetic surgeries for a female because it pleases the male and is considered.. I forgot the word, but a good thing.
I find it funny :D
...

There is NOTHING funny about this at all!!!! People DIE every day because of these twisted and manipulative mind games!

That's the virus in you talking. WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!

[kismet]

Oh, thanks for the heads-up. I shant do that again... but I haven't engaged in any personal attacks or other annoying behavior meant to distract from the discussion, which I believe is what trolling is.

I was being rather sarcastic, just wanted to point out that such a comment would be expected from a troll (and personally I particularly dislike this line).

I think people are sometimes exaggerating when attacking religion and there would be no problems if religious people were as well-reasoned as elijah3 presumably is. However, a big issue with religion (and cults and any forms of worshipping) is that it probably enables more attrocities than there otherwise would be (knowing human nature, I'm pessimistically assuming it enables more than it prevents and it's also a great cover for truely evil people as recently documented in Ireland). As much as I don't like simplifying stuff, but those two quotes come to mind:
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." (Blaise Pascal)
"Good men do good deeds, evil men do evil deeds, but it takes religion for a good man to do evil deeds"

Edited by kismet, 01 June 2009 - 01:39 AM.

[Singularity]

I was being rather sarcastic, just wanted to point out that such a comment would be expected from a troll (and personally I particularly dislike this line).

Yeah, I knew you were. That's actually the first time I've ever used that line... I was being pessimistic; expecting the worst. But, I probably should have given imminst forum members more credit; even in this forum. I'm impressed so far.

I think people are sometimes exaggerating when attacking religion and there would be no problems if religious people were as well-reasoned as elijah3 presumably is. However, a big issue with religion (and cults and any forms of worshipping) is that it probably enables more attrocities than there otherwise would be (knowing human nature, I'm pessimistically assuming it enables more than it prevents and it's also a great cover for truely evil people as recently documented in Ireland). As much as I don't like simplifying stuff, but those two quotes come to mind:
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." (Blaise Pascal)
"Good men do good deeds, evil men do evil deeds, but it takes religion for a good man to do evil deeds"

As humans, we already have the ability to kill. Religion gives us a God-given right and duty to kill without the need for rational justification. Religious convictions are also used to declare one's stances as absolutely 100% non-negotiable. It's the only form of close-mindedness that is totally acceptable. A religious conviction represents a closed door to understanding and cooperation.

The Religion Meme must be eradicated... completely. There is no downside to 100% removal. All religious artifacts should be preserved for educational, historical, and aesthetic appreciation. I don't know how to do it. Perhaps, the rational will simply out-compete the irrational. But, still, that sounds like it would take much too long.

Rant over.

[bran319]

If you think eradicating those people who have faith will bring health and peace to the world you have a very gross lack of understanding of the human character.

[Ben Simon]

Ben, if you don't know what I'm talking about, then you need to go do some homework on the basics, or go ask your mom.

I see. Why engage in polite conversation when you can stoop to such insults? You enlightenment scholar you!

Read about objectivity and what the scientific method is, as well as formal logic.

Heh... Got it, kid.

Did you know that religious people (theists) openly admit that they believe in things with no evidence whatsoever? They call it "having faith." To have faith means to force yourself to believe something is true, even though you really have no idea whether it is true or not.

I disagree with that definition. Faith isn't a belief. It's an orientation. It's a far more subtle, expressive concept than you give it credit for. ...Maybe you're the one who should go back to school.

Usually, these people have emotional investments in their beliefs... that is to say, they WANT what they believe in to be true so badly that they just keep telling themselves that it is true until they basically brainwash themselves into thinking that it is fact. This is actually a psychological trick that great liars use on themselves because know that to be believable when telling a lie that it helps to actually believe the lie that they are telling because they will come across as more authentic. So, a lot of liars, when telling a lie, will go into a kind of make-believe role playing whereby they will create a fiction based on the lie; the more elaborate the better. This way, they can become more absorbed in the fantasy-based lie, so when they tell the lie, it comes across as genuine and the other person will hopefully not get suspicious. It's basically the same mental process that one would go through with faith. You have to start off with assuming the premises is true. In this case, the premises is everything that the Bible says, or any religious book for that matter. Then, you try to forget that your starting premise is only an assumption and get fully engrossed into all of the stories and conclusions that follow from the assumed, but as of yet, unproven premise. If you work at it long and hard enough, you would have invested a great deal of time and effort, not to mention emotion, into your fairy tale. And, since it is a fiction that pleases you and suits your needs, you have no desire for the story to end and no desire to go back and do what you had postponed, namely, the testing of the premise to make sure that it is correct. The whole storyline is based on and follows from the premise (or set of premises) and the TEMPORARY assumption that it is true and accurate. If the premise is untrue, then the whole storyline is baseless which can be upsetting to the person who really wants the story to be true. Religious thinkers ignore the fact that they are supposed to go back and test the premise for truthfulness so they know if the following conclusions are valid. They skip this one simple step and this is what causes the problems. Usually, people don't even "go there" because they know the whole house of cards can come tumbling down and can cause great emotional and psychological conflict if they come to the conclusion that everything they believe in that their religion taught them is baseless and could be completely wrong, if not outright lies. If you are a religious leader, then that can be and end of your career. If you have a lot of religious friends, that could mean potentially losing all of your friends.

Breaking the shackles of religious thinking and learning to think objectively is not easy, but it's not that hard either. But, then again, there are some pretty weak-minded people in the world and not everyone can handle the truth because the truth hurts sometimes.

I hope that gives you a jump start into understanding what religious thinking is.

So religious thinking is forming conclusions without evidence, because to do so meets some other need? Interesting. And you would never be guilty of doing anything like that would you?

...Ideology is the problem. And it's everywhere. In churches and mosques. In universities and houses of government. In this very thread.

Edited by ben, 02 June 2009 - 10:54 AM.

[moonlight]

...Blaming religion is an immature and reactionary way of looking at the problem.

Reread the post. I did not blame religion. I blamed RELIGIOUS THINKING. Religious thinking is the meme virus. Religion is how the virus organizes the infected hosts in order to support the spreading of the virus.

The human mind is vulnerable to this virus and there doesn't seem to be a cure in sight. Something must be done for the good of the whole or humanity will most likely perish.

hello friends
im a new member of this site, im muslim....i read all of this speechs and i rly liked it and i have some questions regarding this issue,
1- why religious people dont let their daughters do study and do anything they want ,not out of the limit... they are not given much independence.
im not saying that the religious should be eradicated. No... but everything has its limit.

is there any reason that they do this? please let tell me some informations.

tell me the solution.

and how to remove this religious thinking and being strick on females out of this world????????????

waiting for ur ideas.....

[mentatpsi]

There is no evidence that second hand smoke is deadly <_<.

Anyways, it's comedic that you guys are critiquing abstract information. Religion's existence isn't what creates fools... it's the mentality that underlies the receptivity to such foolishness. Sure one could postulate that religion breeds these mentalities, but the struggle to combat childhood neurosis (as freud liked to call it) is more enlightening and powerful than if we were merely born into scientific skepticism.

Plus... i have to agree with ben in terms of Descartes and Newton and the rest of the scholars with enlightenment mentality (in relevance to the movement that occurred near the french revolution). Religion can give man purpose, and even though it is paradoxical to hold scientific mindsets in one hand and religious ideologies in the other, it has been done before.

What can one say but man is a paradoxical being.

Best regards .

[mentatpsi]

i would however sponsor this religion:

http://www.thegoodat...can-get-behind/

[VictorBjoerk]

people here really seem to hate religion. I think religion/spirituality is something typical for humans and usually a good thing ( except for extreme fundamentalists like those who are against abortion etc..)

However I don't like when the belief of an afterlife is used as an excuse for not curing aging and defeating death.

I mean that's what religion is all about, the belief of immortality but in another dimension, if we can achieve immortality here through curing aging, make an enormous improvement in general security, upload everyone's brain as a backup in case of accidents and then of course sterilizing everyone.

Then religion isn't necessary

I would also like to add that I extrawork as a tourist guide in a church.....

[kismet]

people here really seem to hate religion. I think religion/spirituality is something typical for humans and usually a good thing ( except for extreme fundamentalists like those who are against abortion etc..)

From scientific POV it's a waste of time at best, but it seems that in real life it has been the best (and quite a unique) excuse to kill and/or harm others without prosecution.

If you think eradicating those people who have faith will bring health and peace to the world you have a very gross lack of understanding of the human character.

No.

We're not saying the world would be good without religion, we're saying it would be better without the religions (and cults) we have today.

So religious thinking is forming conclusions without evidence, because to do so meets some other need? Interesting. And you would never be guilty of doing anything like that would you?

Unnecessary 'tu quoque' fallacy. Yeah, I'm guilty of damaging or stupid behaviour; so are you; doesn't change the fact that we'd like to get rid of most of it. We're not talking about prejudices are we? Prejudices (i.e. quick and dirty thinking) is necessary for survival, but if you've got enough time to consider all the evidence such thinking is useless.

Edited by kismet, 04 June 2009 - 12:31 PM.

[Ben Simon]

If you think eradicating those people who have faith will bring health and peace to the world you have a very gross lack of understanding of the human character.

No.

Yes.

Unnecessary 'tu quoque' fallacy. Yeah, I'm guilty of damaging or stupid behaviour; so are you; doesn't change the fact that we'd like to get rid of most of it. We're not talking about prejudices are we? Prejudices (i.e. quick and dirty thinking) is necessary for survival, but if you've got enough time to consider all the evidence such thinking is useless.

Perhaps my point wasn't clear. I wasn't merely pointing out that we all behave with stupidity sometimes. I was attempting to say that the kind of thinking 'Singularity' is railing against is evident in his posts to this very thread. 'Religious thinking', as he describes it, is the basis for his beliefs about religious people.

except for extreme fundamentalists like those who are against abortion etc..

Opposing abortion is not evidence of fundamentalism, much less extreme fundamentalism. It's pretty troubling to me that so complex a moral issue could ever be dismissed on those grounds.

Edited by ben, 04 June 2009 - 03:19 PM.

[mentatpsi]

The desire to abolish religion completely is no more fanatical than those who base their entire life upon its messages. It serves a psychological purpose.

I was kind of hoping someone would be able to debate whether or not being brought into scientific skepticism at a young age is healthier than being brought into it out of one's own cognition and realizations. It still seems to have shadowing within it a follower attitude, however at least the initial training for inquisitive thought is nurtured and rewarded.

Regardless... religion at times benefit social order which is necessary for civilizations to develop. What i mean by this is that it forms a governable people under one or more banner rather than several thousands. The questions as to why we exist, why were we placed here cannot be answered in any rational means, and some people are not comfortable with such uncertainties.

[Saber]

You can't eradicate religions because more will be spawn in the next generation
That is unless we start selectively breeding people to think rationally, but those kind of people usually off themselves pretty early or choose to celibate out of frustration of the stupidity around them, a shame really.
As for religion enabling atrocities, no it doesn't. The problem stems from self-delusion and egotism. We all believe we're right and we'll do anything to prove it in order to protect our ego. Look up the list of cognitive bias. It's absolutely mind-blowing.
The things we do to protect our frail little ego
Religion is just another tool for self-delusion. Praying, in particular, is quite amusing. We like to fool ourselves that we have the ability to change things out of our control by praying to an invisible man, lol.
In the end, you can't expect too much. We're still only animals. There's a biological limit to our brain. You can't blame them or scream at them in frustration. It's like children, the only thing you can do is explain things to them and hope that one day they'll grow up.
I've thought about it a lot. There's no way 6.5 billion people on Earth can desert the primitive mindset and hold hands together to work toward life extension, space exploration, etc. Let me know if you find a solution.

In the meantime, cheer up and look on the bright side. There's no way for society to function without "religious thinking." I can already see it disintegrating, hedonism, nihilism, suicide. While thinking in a rational manner doesn't cause these behaviors, when you remove the precious little delusion, weak people have nothing left to hang on to. It's a self-defense mechanism for them.
What you have to do is covertly use this to your advantage. Become a cult leader, become a politician, start a religion or dedicate your life to science, etc.
If you truly are smart enough and this rational thinking is a useful as it seems, then religious people should pose no problem.
Most of them work their whole lives to keep society functioning, taking vacation once in a while. Sure, they have irrational beliefs, but they never do anything about it anyway. What's troubling is the people on top, and I'm quite sure some of those people don't believe their own bullshit.
Deception is slavery, and slavery is necessary for the proper functioning of society and civilization.
As for the issue of crimes, life itself necessitate crime.

I don't foresee them posing much of a problem for life extension. You see, like children, if you give them a piece of candy, they'll surely take it. Self-delusion/faith/principle can be temporarily put on hold and conveniently put away if necessary. It's like those people that oppose stem cells. Suppose they go blind and given the choice of restoring their sight with stem cells, not one of them will refuse the offer. Life extension is an even harder deal to refuse. It works like it always will.
A brilliant caveman started the first fire but his brother pissed all over it because it was evil, and playing God. A few of us will always go on dragging the rest of humanity.

[Singularity]

Ben, if you don't know what I'm talking about, then you need to go do some homework on the basics, or go ask your mom.

I see. Why engage in polite conversation when you can stoop to such insults? You enlightenment scholar you!

No ben, I just jumped two steps ahead and changed form. I recognized right-off that you were trying to pull me into little quibble match to get me side-tracked off the main point. So, I did what you didn't expect. I stopped being intellectual and poked a little fun at you. I'm sure you'll add that to your bag of tricks now, along with the basic straw man tactics like when you insinuate that I am suggesting the eradication of human beings when I keep saying over and over that it is the meme VIRUS that needs to be eradicated. And I know you know what a meme is. And if you do not, then it's awefully irresponsible of you to argue against something you know nothing about and takes 2 seconds to google.

Why do you feel the need to "stoop" so low ben?

[Ben Simon]

Ben, if you don't know what I'm talking about, then you need to go do some homework on the basics, or go ask your mom.

I see. Why engage in polite conversation when you can stoop to such insults? You enlightenment scholar you!

No ben, I just jumped two steps ahead and changed form. I recognized right-off that you were trying to pull me into little quibble match to get me side-tracked off the main point. So, I did what you didn't expect. I stopped being intellectual and poked a little fun at you. I'm sure you'll add that to your bag of tricks now, along with the basic straw man tactics like when you insinuate that I am suggesting the eradication of human beings when I keep saying over and over that it is the meme VIRUS that needs to be eradicated. And I know you know what a meme is. And if you do not, then it's awefully irresponsible of you to argue against something you know nothing about and takes 2 seconds to google.

Why do you feel the need to "stoop" so low ben?

That post was genuinely bizarre. Firstly, I asked what you mean by religious thinking becuase you seem to be using the term very loosely, and I think it's important not to equivocate in these sorts of discussions. How cynical would you have to be to think an honest question is 'trying to pull you into a little quibble match'? Secondly, I have never insinuated that you wish to eradicate human beings. What do you mean?

Seriously... not everyone who disagrees with you is out to trip you up and fight with you.

[mentatpsi]

Seriously... not everyone who disagrees with you is out to trip you up and fight with you.

speak for yourself sir. I've been wearing full boxing attire, but he detects every attempt to lure him. Perhaps you can distract him?

[Ben Simon]

Seriously... not everyone who disagrees with you is out to trip you up and fight with you.

speak for yourself sir. I've been wearing full boxing attire, but he detects every attempt to lure him. Perhaps you can distract him?

Ha.