Billyblobber

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Posts by Billyblobber

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  238

  Another mass shooting, three or four hours ago.

  by James Mixon in

  1. social
  2. current

  san bernardino california.

  up to 12 people have been killed.. the center a private non-profit agency that assists people with developmental.

  disabilities.

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  Billyblobber

  edit: lost my quote here - this was a specific response about Muslims being the source of most of the crazy stuff around the world
  
  

  Nah, most of the TERRORISM on the world stage is coming from the MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA, like it has been for the last century or so.

  The biggest difference is that the global situation has changed since the 80s. Russia was a much, much bigger threat in many groups' minds, so they got the brunt of terrorism for a while. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Western world got in many group's crosshairs, and they are more on an "attack" than a "defense."

  On top of that, the U.S. keeps going around destabilizing other countries and bombing civilians, creating easy breeding grounds/reasons for terrorist recruiting.
  
  Africa has been a pretty screwed up place in general for a while, partially do to imperialism in the past making things a lot worse.
  
  The dominant religion in those areas happens to be Islam, but even when Christianity is dominant in unstable areas, the people do much of the same things (see mutilations in Africa).

  How to fix that, I don't know. You basically have to fix half of the planet, politically, and socially, which may be near impossible.
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  238

  Another mass shooting, three or four hours ago.

  by James Mixon in

  1. social
  2. current

  san bernardino california.

  up to 12 people have been killed.. the center a private non-profit agency that assists people with developmental.

  disabilities.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
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  Billyblobber

  There are no bigger issues that you can address that will save everyone's life. Every bigger issue is a symptom to the flaws inherent in humanity. You can only minimize the effects of these flaws when they showcase themselves.

  Also, it's not an either/or thing and you can do both at the same time.
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  238

  Another mass shooting, three or four hours ago.

  by James Mixon in

  1. social
  2. current

  san bernardino california.

  up to 12 people have been killed.. the center a private non-profit agency that assists people with developmental.

  disabilities.

  1. 
  2. 
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  Billyblobber

  False dichotomy.

  It's not either safe/not safe.

  It's safER/LESS safe that is the question.
• 
  238

  Another mass shooting, three or four hours ago.

  by James Mixon in

  1. social
  2. current

  san bernardino california.

  up to 12 people have been killed.. the center a private non-profit agency that assists people with developmental.

  disabilities.

  1. 
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• 

  Billyblobber

  Aside from the current debate, I can't understand how Americans don't want to do anything about this issue. A guy on a no fly list can still legally buy a gun in this country. Why do we accept this as the norm? If we aren't willing to try anything to stop American citizens from killing each other, why care if terrorists come here to do it?

  
  America is gradually and far too slowly becoming more progressive. As newer generations become more educated (which correlates with being progressive), the far right is getting more desperate in motivating its voter base. At this point, all it can do with that is basically create a fear-based hot button issue rotation that concentrates on those voters -actually- being the ones persecuted or in danger. Therefore:

  Regulating guns = taking your guns for you
  Being more tolerant of other people = taking away your free speech
  Making sure religion is removed from the government = banning Christianity
  Allowing equal rights for homosexuals = taking away our way of life
  
  etc.
  
  It's not as bad as it seems, really. The issue is that what is dying screams the loudest, so you're basically hearing the last and loudest flailing of a dying breed as they try their best to hold on to things, and a machine caters to them. But due to how things are framed, and now that the political system is basically soundbyte based, there is just enough of this left to effectively block real movement on many issues.
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  238

  Another mass shooting, three or four hours ago.

  by James Mixon in

  1. social
  2. current

  san bernardino california.

  up to 12 people have been killed.. the center a private non-profit agency that assists people with developmental.

  disabilities.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
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  Billyblobber

  There is no statistical proof that shows that armed people stop mass shootings any more than the counter, that they only add to the confusion and end up shooting innocents/getting themselves shot. Everyone wants to fantasize about being the hero of Die Hard, but in actuality, most gun owners haven't taken an ounce of target recognition training (which military and police have to do a TON of and still fail at), and would just be likely to get themselves and more people around them killed, making it more dangerous for everyone.
  
  If it was even as hard to maintain a "gun license" as it was a car license, that would be a step ahead. Unfortunately, the political right has successfully convinced a ton of under-educated people that there is a false dichotomy of guns/they're taking all our guns so that any talks of ANY type of regulation becomes the "they're taking all our guns" side of the dichotomy to them, making it impossible to move forward on this issue.
  
  Also, note how oddly silent the people who are trying to focus this on Muslim heritage were days ago when a white Christian shot up a Planned Parenthood partially because of falling for the misinformation circling around what those places actually do.
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  43

  Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories?

  by adjusted knowledge in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  my wife is taking a literature course at a local college.

  this was her final topic of the semester: why rational people buy into conspiracy theories?i automatically thought of this site and of jws.

  the jws i knew, were the kind of people that would believe in conspiracy theories, and i noticed a small following on this site.. the article that was referenced for this course was: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/magazine/why-rational-people-buy-into-conspiracy-theories.html?_r=0.

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  Billyblobber

  Skepticism and conspiracy theory-ing are not the same thing. It's the difference between wondering and making bold statements.

  Wondering if there was something more to 9-11 (ie. the government allowing the attacks to happen, whatever) is one thing. As long as it's just "wondering," it's fine. And if actual evidence actually comes out to support that view, then it's not a conspiracy theory, but actual fact.

  However, making definitive statements, like, "it was faked" is stupid because there's no real evidence existing for that. The latter is what the point of the topic is, and it mostly comes from people with a lack of success attempting to build their ego in other ways.
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  27

  Evolution and Creation—both are stories!

  by lsw1961 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  there are number of nobel laureates and other great scientists in both the camps defending their respective theories of evolution and creation, which means both are just stories, and both suffer from having no eye-witnesses.

  if either of them were true, all scientists would have accepted it unanimously as they do with rest of the laws such as law of gravity..

  this does not mean that there is no god.

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  Billyblobber

  What being is inferior to human beings? This whole premise is flawed, starting there.

  And what the heck does any of this have to do with evolution?
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  30

  "The likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed"

  by nicolaou in

  1. social
  2. current

  presidential hopeful ben carson of course.

  this isn't another gun control debate, i just thought it might be fun to have a topic where we can dump all the hysterical quotes from the candidates.. it's a deep and plentiful mine folks!

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  Billyblobber

  There were several armed uprisings, like the Warsaw ghetto uprising, that worked as well for the Jews as you would figure. Or, as someone else put it; the U.S. put 100,000 Japanese Americans in camps in World War 2; how do you think it would have turned out if all of them were armed and fought back?
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  79

  Right everyone watch this video its insane!

  by username in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  i'm just watching this video.

  now bare in mind this guy has never been a jehovah's witness so he has no investment in this cult.. https://youtu.be/_ry-onhbkya.

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  Billyblobber

  It boggles my mind how some exjws use critical thinking to escape the cult and then refuse to use it when it comes to GMOs.
  
  A big chunk of ex-JWs DON'T use critical thinking to escape from there. They get mad at the organization for emotional reasons, and then latch on to any "anti" stuff from there, without checking the validity just to justify their emotions. They just happened to latch on to correct information in those instances.

  There's a difference between "this doesn't make logical sense," *does research on both ends and gradually finds out most doctrines are lies,* as opposed to, "I'm mad at the organization for whatever reason, or simply don't want to do this any more," *reads third party saying that the organization is basically lies and agrees right off the bat because it supports their feelings." Both lead to a positive outcome in a sense, but both don't come from the same way of thinking.
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  14

  Did anyone learn the truth from having their prayers answered by a knock at the door and then eventually leave the JWs?

  by truthseeker in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i know of one person who had a difficult life, prayed for help, got the knock at the door, got baptized and eventually left the jws believing they were a cult.. has this happened to any of you?

  and if so, did you still feel your prayers were answered at that time?.

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  Billyblobber

  Am I right in saying JWs teach that god no longer performs miracles? I guess it depends on your definition of miracle (for which there is no consensus, naturally) but surely a knock on the door after praying is a form of miracle if god is behind it? If not, then it is pure coincidence (which of course it is).
  
  JWs teach that God doesn't do OBVIOUS miracles that would actually prove his existence. He "uses the angels and his holy spirit" to do things that can't be proven or seen and are indistinguishable from coincidence, though.