Jake's comments (member since Dec 26, 2008)

Jake's comments from the Atheists and Skeptics group.

Brian wrote: "rgb,

Still the holy writ from your presumptions of omniscience continue:

/Look, Brian, you've already demonstrated almost complete ignorance of the basis of abstract knowledge --/

This claim y..."

I have to say Brian, I have not seen anyone in this forum use so many words to say absolutely nothing.

Salon is on it: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/09...

Ray Comfort and his monkey - Kirk Cameron - have a new angle of attack. I doubt it will go anywhere, but it's still maddening nonetheless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN9zpf5cT...

I think comprehension in mathematics is a great gauge of intelligence. But I'm terrible with math, er go I'm an idiot. :)

I remember some of these recommendations from earlier posts, esp. the Brin works. I have a couple of those on my to-read list. I think this will give me a helluva head start. Thanks much!

Thanks for the recommendations. I'll check into those.

thanks for that laugh, Charity!

re: Illuminati, I've always loved this piece - and other work of Giger.

I forced myself to read all of TDVC, and was mad at myself for it so much that I stopped reading fiction (for the most part since). I was reading Dave Eggars's first book, andstopped mid-book. But then, that's prob. coz it was a load of pretentious crap. Though I still think he's a creative writer, and is doing much to advance American lit., whatever it's worth anymore.

A&D was stupid, sort of like a beta TDVC. I stopped after the first few chapters. If I had read it first, I never would have bothered with TDVC. I immediately stopped dating the girl who had recommended both to me, but mainly because we couldn't have an honest dialog about how stupid the books were. (That's not the whole story, but it's a big part!)

I'm mostly done with fiction anymore these days. Real life is far too fascinating, and so fucking unbelievable most of the time. I can't get enough of it.

On that note, can anyone recommend fiction that doesn't suck? I'm open for it.

(I can't recall the last work of fiction I didn't put down half-way through,save RGB's Book of Lileth, and a book called Vellum, which I thoroughly enjoyed, though many seem to hate.)

I'm still beyond words. The closest I can come is tackling the argument over the disconnect between right-wing-nut domestic terrorists and the right-wing-nuts who abhor every other sort of terrorism, never equating the two by practical definition: terrorism is violence used as a tool for attaining political objectives.

These sick f-cks make me want to become violent, but I know better. Yet, I am still stuck right now. And I am incredibly angry, and at odds about how to vent.

Words fail me.

Like this little guy?

Hey, if the Church of Scientology can get tax free status, then so can the Church of Non-Believers & Never Day Saints. Sign me up!

rgb wrote: "Take oil out of the equation, remove the oil money, and suddenly everything will be different."

This is the thing I've always found perplexing. In the space race against Russia, we spent incredible sums of money and human resources on what was in large part symbolic at its core, with perhaps only passive regard to the tangible benefits that it would yield (much of what came out of that had not even been predicted). We did that for strategic purposes, to cement our standing on top of the mountain.

It seems to me that had we spent half that money and human effort on ridding ourselves of dependence on oil as our primary source of energy, we would have succeeded years ago (esp. after the first oil embargo).

I'm not naive. I'm aware of the short-term gains and financial rewards our leaders got, and the roadblocks in our way (Vietnam, other pointless wars, like Gulf War I).

I can't help but be amazed at the lack of visionary thinking this country has suffered from its elected leaders. Even more amazing is how cheaply those with vision have been bought out.

If my recollection of history serves me correctly, there were significant militant factions of Jews - splinter groups from Haganah and it's smaller sects - guilty of terrorist attacks against the British of the Palestinian Mandate. In the conflict between the Jews and Arabs in Israel/Palestine, neither side is innocent.

Jews and Arabs have co-existed in Israel/Palestine for centuries, and they have also had many violent episodes. How are they any different than most peoples of the world?

For the most part they aren't. But for the significance of what happened in WWII, and for the demand of oil by the Western world, that tiny speck of sand would not otherwise matter to us anymore than what is happening in Sri Lanka, or many parts of Africa. Israel/Palestine matters to our government - and our media, and us by extention - only insofar as its strategic importance, and political influence in this particular case.

Let me ask you, Tom, does your heart ache for Native Americans as it does for the Jews in Israel?

Michael Chabon is great, and friendly too! He's terrific at correspondence.

Thanks for that recommendation.

I was just thinking that very idea of the US giving land to the Jews post-WWII as Dan suggested. I wonder how that would settle with those we displaced earlier were we to have created "reservations" for Jews, but with all the financial and military backing we give them now. Would the Indians be our Palestinians? Are they not already, to some extent?

wowzers!

rgb wrote: "I'm thinking of writing a different story. ..."

Be careful with that. It will probably get translated, edited to remove the Game Over, and become a book of "evidence" to support to already extant wingnuts' insanely stupid beliefs.

A fun read for those of us able to distinguish fact from fiction...

Lauren wrote: "Accidentally, my foot. :)"

spills his seed and lies about it? I can hear the coals being raked now.

I'm with you RC. I can't wait for the Rapture so those clowns will get off my planet!

heh... apparently, Xtians don't care for Google's logo of the day (an homage to Ida):



http://www.rr-bb.com/showthread.php?t=93...

mmmmm... atheists are tasty!

I was on my way here to post the National Geographic story on this, and am glad it's making the rounds all over the place.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...

But I agree with Dan, that this won't change the minds of many creationists. Their stubbornness to facts is astonishing, as they frequently prove. I look forward to their attempts at spinning this story though. That it will be finding a mass audience is a very good thing.

Now once we actually discover incontrovertible life forms on another planet, then the argument will actually advance greatly. Until then, we're going to have the same arguments we've been having since Darwin.