But the color and font sizes are so compelling, NC!
SweetBabyCheezits
JoinedPosts by SweetBabyCheezits
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Dont send your kids to church
by StopTheTears ingo with them!!!.
go with them!!!.
go with them!!!.
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Anyone here use a tablet computer
by maksym injust curious here who uses the new tablet computers, whether they be android based or ipad ios from apple.
does anyone here use a phone to post and what is your experience with that?.
i'm curious as to how much more time there will be before these devices are the main computers for people.
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SweetBabyCheezits
I want to echo what Snare said, except I'm only using the iPad 1. I got it as an early xmas gift and feared the "novelty" would wear off quickly. It didn't. I am just as fond of it now as I was day one, of not more so. If I were told that I could only keep one piece of electronics for personal use, it would be the iPad. I use it more for education (personal and kids) and business than I do as a toy, but it's just a pleasure to use all around.
Oddly enough, I prefer reading books on my iPad over print. Now that they're putting out some quality multimedia ebooks (including textbooks), I have little interest in buying bound books. I know I've praised it on another thread but the app/book of Dawkins' The Magic of Reality is awesome to read with the kids. Well worth the money, considering I'd have paid about the same $13 for a print copy but wouldn't have all the cool interactive stuff with it that they enjoy.
If interested in saving a chunk and you don't need the latest version, I highly recommend Apple refurbs. They are refurbished in China with original parts and ship to you indistinguishable from a new one. Not a scratch, new box (marked refurb), shrink-wrapped, with same 1 year warranty that you'd get buying a new one. But you can save a chunk of change.
FTR, I'm a PC user otherwise (by upbringing/culture - ha).
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SweetBabyCheezits
Gah, one last thing...
[off topic]
Tammy, I want to apologize for the time I insisted you (or I) would be Muslim if born and raised in Afghanistan. That was arrogant of me. While there's a good statistical probability that it's true (99% Muslim population), nobody can say for sure. I should've at least tempered that statement with "very likely".
[Back to you, Tom]
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SweetBabyCheezits
Sulla: Golly. I had it all wrong:r You really are some kind of hero! Lost your cherished family relationships for deciding to leave the JWs! Who among us could ever question your moral superiority after that? You've earned it, SBC, you've earned it!
Oh, come on now, Sulla. I'm not comparing my morals to yours nor am I claiming to have outstanding morals. I'm just saying that some of us have stopped letting our actions be guided by fear of a deity who gets his jollies from the smell of burning flesh and the cries of drowning children or of those being mauled by bears. Or perhaps you think I have no room to talk about morals since my compass doesn't tell me which day it's okay to eat fish?
Sulla: Anyhow, once you ignore your comments that are designed to change the topic, we really are left with my basic claim that everybody here would have merrily sacrificed kids along with everybody else at the time.
Comments designed to change the topic? You mean like the one below, which was spot on topic, but you ignored because you just don't know these statistics and it helps your assertion to pretend nobody could've ever demonstrated "relatively progressive" thinking?
SBC: It would've been incredibly difficult to evolve morally under those circumstances. Does that mean not one individual among them fled, defected, or at some point voiced objection?
... or this one, which contains a link to peer-reviewed archaeological research entitled Skeletal Remains from Punic Carthage Do Not Support Systematic Sacrifice of Infants...
SBC: To insist that you know exactly what I or anyone else on this forum would've done in Carthage - even while uncertainty exists as to how prevalent child sacrifice really was there - is decidedly arrogant of you.
Of course, that doesn't diminish the evidence for ritualistic human sacrifice in numerous ancient religions. I just wanted to point out that you might not have picked up the latest memo on Carthage since you were so fond of referencing it.
Regardless, I can't make this clearer: you seem to be full of shit with your arrogant certainty. You don't know what Martin Luther King, Jr or Adolph Hitler would've done in a different culture/context. "Maybe", "probably", "likely", and "most likely" are words that even simple-minded folk like me can understand. (To be fair, you make me want to be more conscious of how I put things. Thanks for that.)
Sulla: One is left to presume guys like you, who after all have been through the crucible of unanswered text messages from cherished family members, would have launched some sort of "occupy Moab" movement and brought the whole thing down.
Yes, well, I wouldn't expect someone with your impeccable social graces to place much value on genuine relationships with flesh and blood when you have an invisible, omnipotent, miracle-working friend you can talk to at any moment.
You and your moral vanity really outta get a room.
So sayeth the fellow with Santorum dribbling down his chin after a vigorous romp with his own intellectually pretentious ego.
Listen.... ultimately, it's your god I'm mocking, not you. Okay, no. Scratch that. Ultimately, it is you I'm mocking because your god is conveniently absent. But to be totally honest, this whole exchange is really only happening because you were a true douche canoe to NC - who (whom?) I respect - and it seemed rather undeserved.
Sulla: NC, you make me smile when you are so charmingly clueless. I know a lot of charmingly clueless people and, if I knew you, I bet you'd be my favorite one of all! ...... Is there any point in reminding you that the moral is that you're not supposed to do human sacrifice?.... Probably not, because you have such industrial strength cluelessness.
So maybe we just got off on the wrong foot, Sulla. Maybe I mistakenly assumed your above post was condescending and spiteful when it was just your socially inept way of flirting.
Either way, I see that we're reducing this thread to a grade-school playground so I'm just gonna let myself out the door. Have a flipping awesome week!
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How to stump the atheists
by StopTheTears inask an atheist if he or she believes in the existence of aliens?
if they answer, "no," then ask them how do they know that?
the truth is that no atheist can reasonably deny the existence of alien life.
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SweetBabyCheezits
"Don't you believe in flying saucers", they ask me? "Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?"
"No", I reply. "No, no, no, no, and again no."
One person, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out, "Don't you believe in anything?"
"Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be."
-Isaac Azimov -
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Dont send your kids to church
by StopTheTears ingo with them!!!.
go with them!!!.
go with them!!!.
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SweetBabyCheezits
I kinda think taking the kids to church is a worthy idea, providing it includes taking them to mosques, temples, synagogues, etc.. in equal amounts as well.
Exposing them to a diverse range of ridiculous beliefs & rituals may be a good way to show them that faith is the surest path to fallacy.
Or so I've heard. As a dad, I haven't been able to do that myself but that's in part due to the lack of diversity in our area.
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SweetBabyCheezits
Sulla: Yes, life an an atheist in the 21st century American context is such challenge. Exactly the sort of bold moral action that makes it quite certain that, were you living in Carthage back in the day, you'd have had a) the moral insight to object to the practice and b) the courage to stand against it.
[edited to remove "Dear Pompous Assclown"]
It's true - I very well might've followed along with the culture of that time & area. I don't deny that. (See definition of the adverb maybe.) It would've been incredibly difficult to evolve morally under those circumstances. Does that mean not one individual among them fled, defected, or at some point voiced objection? Is that what you're saying? I don't have the statistics in front of me and I'm no historian so perhaps you could dumb it down for me.
To insist that you know exactly what I or anyone else on this forum would've done in Carthage - even while uncertainty exists as to how prevalent child sacrifice really was there - is decidedly arrogant of you. In other words, it's expected.
Granted, I'm ignorant. The only thing I'm certain of is that one of us rejects the notion of a bipolar, bloodthirsty deity who demands the saccharine adoration of his creations and becomes petulant if he doesn't receive his flattery. The other is you.
Also, you say I'm guilty of moral preening, which to your credit is a terrific expression to use here. But it's not that I think my standards of morality are inherently higher. They aren't. It's more that I believe some people morally evolve and develop autonomous thought at a faster clip than others. For example, I don't have a governing body directing my views on morality, nor do I have a pope. How about you?
As for the moral insight and courage to object, I lost somewhere around 90% of my cherished family relationships by taking a stand for my views. Ergo, shut the fuck up about that which ye not know.Warm heathen love,
SBC
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SweetBabyCheezits
Cheeze, have I told you lately that I love you?
Only once in the last hour, Beks. I was beginning to feel a little neglected.
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SweetBabyCheezits
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure." - Mencken
Were it not for the few who spoke up, driving incremental changes from one generation to the next, we might live in a very different world today. Of course, we still have a long way to go.