Festivus bites, which is the entire snide point. It is a cry of anguish in the face of globalization and flattening of cultural, ethnic and religious hierarchies. It is a reaction to the demographic blowback of the American empire.
I'm an atheist and I smoke the virgin birth, Silent Night, and all that shit.
Posts by rmt1
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10For my atheist friends....Happy Festivus!!!
by BurnTheShips inmaybe i will set up a festivus pole next to the christmas tree in your honor next year.
aluminum has a very high strength to weight ratio.. festivus is your heritage.
it's part of who you are...... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8g4ztf7him.
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rmt1
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152
More proof of Global Warming
by BurnTheShips inpeople freezing to death.
o fortuna!.
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20081222/gpg0101/81222109/1207/gpg01.
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rmt1
Gore is hypocritical and fake. Day After Tomorrow is exploitative Hollywood. As far as demagogues and entertainment industries go, exaggerating exploitation of a de facto situation/disaster is _normal_.
The show-me-the-money part of this debate is incontrovertible evidence that the thermohaline cycle is slowing. It's big and will be hard to mistake.
But until and if that happens, it continues to be the opposite of stupid to vigorously explore alternative fuels, for too many reasons other than carbon footprint. -
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In The Beginning...
by Blueblades inbeginnings are always difficult.
wherever one starts, there is always the question: what was before that?
this question comes from our sense of objective causality - that everything must be preceded by its cause.. must everything have a cause?
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rmt1
Don't know / can't tell if anyone is actually bothered by the unsearchableness of the first springs, but here's how I'm not bothered: My cathexis or emotional attachment to the question approaches the horizontal asymptope of zero (x-axis) as the logarithmic scale of what may have passed before us grows beyond my immediate comprehension.
Eg. An oscillating model of universal Big Bang and Big Crunch, universe after sequential universe, does not present any conceptual problems other than the question of when and how it began. So this model is a little too comprehensible and so I have mental energy left over to be bothered.
Eg. A serial Big Bang model where a new universe erupts out of the cold head-dead dissipated state of the previous, is also sort of a blossoming idea, very comprehensible, and causes the same problem.
Eg. A parallel Big Bang model, where there are multiple universes forming simultaneously as bubbles in a higher-dimensional foam- now that's a little hard to get around, because it requires a spatial relationship between universes with Hubble expansion throughout. It's an annoying model so I don't give it too much concern.
Eg. A Copenhegan multi-universe by itself doesn't answer the when how of the beginning. But a multi-universe that is the result of a collision between two higher dimensional branes (membranes, but 4th dimensional) starts to wear down my concern about beginnings pretty quick.
To sum: I hope to think I have some rudimentary assessment about how unspeakably insignificant I am in comparison to what's out there, that the emotional attachment of my observing 'I don't know where the beginning is' approaches zero, and indeed the emotional attachment of the question begins to approach zero, so that I don't ask it. -
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Imagine no religion - living life in peace?
by jws ina lot of people have pointed out that a lot of the world's problems have religion at their core.
religion's crimes are vast.
from crusades to inquisitions to genocides to our current wars.
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rmt1
Religion is the predilection for a group to maximize chances of survival by realigning animal evolutionary suspicions with some dominant polarity of narrative etiology. It is not a superficial facet of homo sapiens. It's an integral component of consciousness and responsible for getting homo sapiens up out of prelinguistic fear-response and being able to assign some approaching-rational cause to the thunders and lightnings of evolutionary past. In our modern terms of consciousness, there is no possible state of "What if there was no religion." There would be no homo sapiens if there had not been religion. But what you'd have is what you'd be back to originally, before "religion" conferred group fitness through galvanization. You'd have an upright, larger version of chipanzees - highly intelligent and social but not in a position, yet, to conceive, communicate and explain to each other the phenomena in their environment. One could well call that a peaceful period - we were a long way off from Predator drones. There was no ideology around which to formulate pre-existing rights to resources. The worst threats were animal predators, disease, starvation, exposure, and an occasional "homocide" through basic competition. But you could still call that period "living life in peace", relatively. As for modern homo sapiens "living life in peace," that would take weed.
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"We Are No Longer Minutes Aways From The New System ---We Are Seconds"
by minimus inthat's the latest being circulated from our dear witness friends and relatives.
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rmt1
LOL WTW "I wouldn't be surprised if the Filthful and Disgraceful Slavebugger starts using tenths of seconds when the people start slowing down again. Then, milliseconds." That's like the Fed cutting the prime funds rate to NOT zero percent, because that would be showing their hand, but a range between 0% and .25%. JWs will never ever be able to say "It is happening now."
But this seconds business: I've been out now 10 years and the last I was in, they wanted the UN to somehow mandate a stoppage to all religious organization and somehow take over religious property? I mean, that's what they mean when they say the beast will turn on the harlot and devour her, right? They aren't just throwing around exploitative bible porn but actually have some estimation, expectation on how such a grandiose interpretation might physically happen? Right? That would take 1) a bunch of time to convince the public that the temporal secular powers have a right to take away their god(s) 2) discussion, committee, etc. 3) implementation. That process alone would take tons of God-seconds.
And then isn't there something about the King of the North, King of the South, and hooks in the jaws of Gog and Magog? What's their new light on that now? That's got to be a couple more God-seconds. -
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In The Beginning...
by Blueblades inbeginnings are always difficult.
wherever one starts, there is always the question: what was before that?
this question comes from our sense of objective causality - that everything must be preceded by its cause.. must everything have a cause?
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rmt1
I'll offer a simple model for how time could have looping cause or a non-existent First Cause:
Time flows in one direction.
The earth rotates in one direction.
Time is contiguous and continuous along all points we observe.
The earth's surface is contiguous and continuous.
A single causality in time has a small adjacent set of causes and a small adjacent set of effects.
A single point on the exact Equator has a single adjacent point to its West, and a single adjacent point to its East.
Now think of our 3D reality existing within a 4D hypersphere where time is a fifth orthogonal direction. And think of East as cause and West as effect. If time wraps around the hypersphere, then any individual line of causality will meet its (Eastern) "cause" if it traces its effects down the 'Westward' line, and will meet its (Western) "effects" if it traces its causes down the 'Eastward' line.
You will logically ask, well who created the 5-dimensional hypersphere with time as a continuous loop, and you got me. -
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"We Are No Longer Minutes Aways From The New System ---We Are Seconds"
by minimus inthat's the latest being circulated from our dear witness friends and relatives.
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rmt1
Hard economic times are the JW version of Black Friday - it's when they recoup losses in RNF that occurred during the times when the normal majority of humanity had a decent livelihood and level of happiness. This is when they can store up the necessary number of converts for their next lean time. But they have to act soon!! There's only so many shopping days left for them to store up enough nuts for winter.
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Myth...
by Quirky1 in1.a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, esp.
one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature.2.stories or matter of this kind: realm of myth.
3.any invented story, idea, or concept: his account of the event is pure myth.
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rmt1
I would not flatter the JWs, or Brooklyn, or the FDS, or Russel, or Rutherford, or any of the great lights of the JW experience with the word 'myth'. Any good leader takes the best of what his people offers and guides or facilitates them in that direction; he has the 'mandate' of the people. Any good textual representative of a people (eg Homer) takes the best of what the people believe in their daily lives, their traditions, their etiologies, their sentiments about wind and weather, and distills them, along with peers (eg Hesiod), into a barely coherent but extremely compelling narrative that lives on far longer than its language of origin. It says something often true, and often crude, about our reality.
JWs expect someone to get fired up and give a crap because Jesus came invisibly in 1914. Nope, sorry. JWs do not qualify for the word 'myth'. Their storyline is derivative, arbitrary, top-down not bottom-up; they do not seek to represent the daily lives, traditions and etiologies of their rank and file. Instead they seek to impose those things to a conformity. JW doctrine attempts to cover all bases so hermetically that they invent God's intentions and hidden meanings in terms of blood, birthdays, etc. JWs own God, control his voice, control his meaning, and make him do their bidding. "Jehovah" is their brand name, after all. They could be "Jehovah's Handlers" for all that. Mythology is more open to daily experience, and not a dogmatic policy text. -
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Were There Certain Bible Events That U Used 2 Question As Really Happening?
by minimus inanything that you used to raise your eyebrows to, biblically speaking?
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rmt1
The highest energy expenditure post-creation miracle was Joshua and the sun standing still. Get the earth to stop rotating, now hold it (Bacardi), now start up again. If all God did was to hold the crust of the earth still while the core and mantle continued to rotate beneath, then that's probably why we will be having earthquakes in one place after another. The next highest energy-intensive miracle was the parting of the Red Sea. This one can be plausibly accounted for by local tectonic activity that caused a tiny tsunami - it drew the water away, then threw it back.
Miracles are a form of taxation, and a security badge swiped by believers when encountering other believers so they know who is who, and who is with them, and who is worthy of being in their graces. If you believe in a low-level miracle, you get access to a set of goods offered by the tribe/denomination. In JW terms, if you believe that God created all, you get low-level acknowledgment and encouragement. As you move up to successively harder-to-believe, more inscrutable and erudite miracles, like God caught up Elijah in a whirlwind or Jonah survived three days and nights in a shark, or Jesus' fishes kept spontaneously replacing themselves, then you get higher levels of access. You might get invited over as a good associate for a meal. Later you get trust, and possibly invested responsibilities. (I omit the obvious main taxation and indicator of group investment, field service.) Miracles are also an evolutionary display of cognitive load capacity. If I can believe something so incredible as God caused a virgin to spontaneously conceive, and still get by physically in terms of fitness, then (in evolutionary terms) belief in that miracle, which should by all physics render me less fit, is actually an indicator of excess or reserve cognitive capacity. In a complete vacuum, with no other co-believers to observe your stake in a particular miracle, there is no particular advantage to believing in that miracle, other than the hope itself that God might redirect a miracle to you. Hope is another evolutionary adaptation related to but separate from belief in miracles.
google "evolution of religion" fitness belief display -
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Life after being a Witness...What are your beliefs now?
by Quirky1 insome here have moved on, some have found new faith and some have haven't.
did you maintain christianity or do you no longer believe?
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rmt1
You asked. I am an atheist but I am smoking the month of December for all the Christmas brain chemistry (dopmine, serotonin) that can be had from what they call 'the greatest story ever told'. I admit I have not read many of the world's spiritual products, and I admit there could be cultural bias, but it is my opinion that the Christians of yore had better weed than Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, Hinduists, Native Americans, Africans, Scandinavians, or Celts. Granted, this 'greatest story ever told' has integrated elements of most of these religions and or cultures with their dominating religious outlook, but it has been Christians who have sewn it up into a package. To sum this up (puff), the Christian story provides the deepest hit of domanine and serotonin.
That being said, I still am governed by the rationalist and atheistic pursuit of truth. There is a symmetric and elegant beauty in mathematics that a normally enculturated homo sapien might be tempted to insist can only be the handiwork of an intelligent designer (Xian or not). I resist that temptation, even though the math (and the physics) are sometimes as beautiful as 'the greatest story ever told'.
So, my message would be: embrace and make peace with the religious capacities of your homo sapien brain, because those fascinating, beautiful capacities are there due to the success of your ancestors who gained evolutionary advantage from them. Those ancestors of the human project who told the best story gained the most attention, adherents, then power. the |story|, itself, is how Christianity grew up and overcame the Roman collection of jejune and quotidian rituals. E.g. offering incense to the emperor or the family ancestors did not give you the same serotonin and dopamine hit as did this business of dreaming about a king and castle coming with the clouds. And alliteration always helps, which is why Beowulf kicks ass as a fine example of Christians taking the best of 'pagan' culture and reorienting it along the vector of the 'greatest story.'
Or even, don't try to bend the spoon, try to understand there is no spoon.