From scratch, installing Lion: One reboot, one update package, one more reboot, and Safari opens with no bullshit. Windows 7: Two hours, four reboots, and updates that prevent me from shutting the laptop, two more reboots, and IE opens with TWO TABS full of random bullshit.
Truly, I'm just a sheep who doesn't appreciate what Microsoft has to offer.Brandon Matthews
I'm a better agnostic than atheist at this point1, but I resonate strongly with the sentiment that wishing really hard doesn't make something true.My point being, I’m saying God doesn’t exist. I’m not saying faith doesn’t exist. I know faith exists. I see it all the time. But believing in something doesn’t make it true. Hoping that something is true doesn’t make it true. The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.Ricky Gervais via h3h
from a very early age I was bothered by religion, but not for reasons you might expect. let me take you back to middle school and one of my last video game addictions: Sim City 2000. I loved that game, but it exposed my intense dislike for inconsistencies. observe:
nice 12x4 blocks of residential. 12x4 was my building block size. the property was all close enough to the street so it wouldn't undergo traffic starvation, but the blocks were big enough to scale well into the 4x4-building-sized endgame, without too much land being sacrificed to streets.
in no time, these blocks would fill, and my little city would begin to bustle — BUT WHAT'S THIS?!
I took issue with churches because I wanted to maximize population. people don't live in churches, so churches are wasting precious residentially-zoned land!
churches were a type of building that never went abandoned, so the only way to promote new construction was to destroy it. but when I bulldozed the church, the land beneath it was dezoned! look!
why do they get such a privilege? if every time a building is constructed, is there a 1/250 chance it becomes a church? is the church going to stage a slow takeover of all the land in my city by this method? NOT ON MY WATCH! I bulldozed every church and rezoned the land.
as a result of this strange childhood I've always viewed churches as land that could be used better, but never will be. they just clog up the streets every Sunday.
but Cindy and I just moved to a new place, and within throwing distance of our place is this daycare which looks kinda funny. I understand that a religiously-inclined daycare would want to look like a church, but it strikes me as silly.
and then I saw their sign today on my way to work:
edited on saturday november 19th, 2011 at 17:55:
The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.Albert Einstein
a wingnut is trying to protect traditional marriage again, but it's not what you think:
he's trying to ban divorce.
People who supported Prop 8 weren't trying to take rights away from gays, they just wanted to protect traditional marriage. That's why I'm confident that they will support this initiative, even though this time it will be their rights that are diminished. To not support it would be hypocritical.
it would be hypocritical, wouldn't it?
in a way, I hope he makes it to the ballot.
UPDATE: wow, this sure is making its way around the internet. as usual, someone else says it better:
It’s hard to tell whether Marcotte is being serious or ironical about this (his picture is hard to read). Either way, it begs the question of whether people are willing to follow their beliefs to their logical, if unpleasant, conclusions. My experience in life has been that most of the time, people are not.Morgan Clendaniel
my experience correlates.
to help you cut through the crap more efficiently:
replace all mentions of "pro-family" with "pro-church".
because it's pretty obvious they don't care about their families at all1.
Danny's problem with Pascal's Wager:
Say you do believe in god due to Pascal's Wager. You believe in God because it benefits you. Do you really want to believe in a god that's impressed by that?
the man makes a good point.
Christian scriptures spend a lot of time spelling out the evils of selfishness — if you believe based on Pascal's Wager, you don't really have a chance.
