* Unemployment has had a sharp drop from 9% to 8.6%! This happened as 120,000 new jobs were added.
Wait a second; how does that add up? How can a measly 120,000 jobs cause unemployment to drop that much?
Oh, 315,000 also gave up looking for work. Why do we keep using the regular unemployment statistic? It seems to conceal more than it reveals these days. Usually, a drop in unemployment would be a good thing, but these days all it means is that people have given up.
* GM is now offering to buy back Chevy Volts so they won’t burn your house down. Winning the future, people; winning the future.
You know, the future is never what we expect, so it’s always a dumb idea to try and force technology in a certain direction. Know what I want for the future? My house to not be on fire.
* New study says that religious people trust atheists about as much as they do rapists. Atheists are a bit scary, but they don’t actually exist. Everyone I know who calls himself an atheist subscribes to some morality, and morality is betting on long term results on short term actions. Since you can’t logically prove it out, it involves a leap of faith. And if you’re making leaps of faith, you pretty much have a religion. So it’s not that “atheists” don’t have a religion, they just have a disorganized one. Which isn’t that scary.
* In a scientific (Science!) study done by Saudi Arabia, it was concluded that allowing women to drive will cause the country to have no virgins and turn people gay. It’s funny when some weird fundamentalist makes a silly proclamation like this, but this is a whole country. They really should just start doing a tourist campaign like, “Come to Saudi Arabia and have your pictures taken with modern day cavemen! Laugh as they’re frightened and confused by your women drivers!”
* Wisdom of the Day: “Do your part to drop the unemployment rate! Convince a discouraged job seeker to despair, drop off the grid and become a hobo.” –David Burge
* New Crowder video!
Should we be encouraging our children to join the entertainment industry? I’ll make a TV show if someone will pay me lots of money.
Apparently, parallel parking isn’t considered an important skill in Saudi Arabia.
“New study says that religious people trust atheists about as much as they do rapists.”
Athiests do have a religion. They’re usually narcissists that worship themselves, and can’t believe there could be anything greater than themselves or anything they aren’t capable of understanding. That’s usually dangerous. For reference, see the former-Muslim in the White House.
“morality is betting on long term results on short term actions”
I would say you’re not a moral person if the only thing stopping you from a raping and pillaging is the threat of punishment from a divine entity. Morality can simply be empathy for fellow humans.
[So if you don’t have a natural feeling of empathy for someone, no need to be moral? Atheists often throw out the canard about only being good because you fear divine punishment, but most Christians don’t think that way. But what is the atheist alternative? Be good because it causes the evolutionary programmed response of an empathetic feeling? What if we could make a drug to do the same thing?
But what I was talking about in long term action is that stealing can benefit you now, but you don’t steal because stealing might harm society at large. -Ed.]
“In a scientific (Science!) study done by Saudi Arabia, it was concluded that allowing women to drive will cause the country to have no virgins and turn people gay.”
Has to be true, look at all the women drivers in commiefornistan. There are no virgins and they are all homosexuals or piglousys.
If women drive, they can get to dinner without me picking them up.
If you let women drive, they will want to vote, and then they will want equal pay. Then who is going to make the sandwiches?
There was 220,00 jobs saved or created in October (according to the gubmunt) and 315,00 people left the pool. So that is a .4% decrease! So if I spend another trillion I have decreased spending. Science!
So they’re saying that if a Saudi woman has sex with a man it will turn him gay or it will turn her gay or both of them will turn gay? They must be really, really bad at it!
Old West outlaws rob trains. Country music outlaws fight against the Nashville establishment. Saudi outlaws have the gall to show their faces!
I can’t make this stuff up.
“If you let women drive, they will want to vote, and then they will want equal pay. Then who is going to make the sandwiches?”
I’ve been wondering this since puberty, plenty. Long before that, I was only worried about my mother’s milk.
I always thought what Frank wanted for the future was lasers on dinosaurs. Now I find out it is just for his house not to be on fire. He is a lot easier to please than I thought. As for me, I won’t be happy until we are living in Dino-Riders world.
Yep my volt may be extremely overpriced and not work decently, but, the heater is incredible.
The worst thing about atheists is that they won’t shut up about it. They are more fervent proselytizers than the most dedicated Mormon missionaries or Jehovah’s Witness doorknockers – and their motive isn’t to bring you to eternal life, save your soul, protect you from hell-fire or let you share in the joys of a personal relationship with God, but to prove how much smarter they are than you, you dumb, deluded, irrational, fantasy-believing moron. Preach, preach, preach – just like the religious nuts they condemn for imposing their narrow-minded, judgmental views on them. Keep your bitter disillusionment to yourselves!
It has to be correct. After all look at all the women in the Clinton and Obama administrations. They all drove.
I didn’t mean to imply that Christians are moral only because of the threat of divine punishment. I agree that it’s not the reason most Christians are moral. That being said, there are Christians who aren’t moral. The two don’t seem to be strongly connected.
For the record – I was raised as a Christian and became an atheists when I got older. I still adhere to some things in the bible because it’s common sense e.g. “do unto others as you would have others do unto you”. I don’t think the message of that statement is tied to the existence of a divine entity.
[It’s common sense? You can’t take advantages of others and get away with it? It’s all leaps of faiths — if I behave this way, I have faith that means things will work out for the best even if I can’t logically prove out that will happen. I.e., it’s a religion… just not a very solidly constructed one. -Ed.]
I think God would not approve of the foregone conclusions of both political parties that the only way out of our debt mess is to print more money.
I think he’d send in the meteors.
At the risk of being a muckadoo (coming to this site to seriously debate things)
morality is betting on long term results on short term actions. Since you can’t logically prove it out, it involves a leap of faith
Ummmmmm, no.
I think Jesus was a great philosopher, but not the Son of God.
I’ll give you an example of how a non-believer can prove that working toward the common good, or “morality”, being better.
Take merging. If we work together and merge properly, traffic flows smoothly.
If we each only think of trying to get ahead of someone else, that’s when traffic gets screwed.
The idiots zooming up the closing lane to the end then cause everybody to have to slow as they jump in front of others where if they merged at higher speeds before the end of the end of the lane causes them to slow, traffic flows.
So working together for the common good helps us all. This can be seen throughout history.
A rising tide lifts all boats, to steal a quote.
I don’t need a God to tell me that.
[You’re applying a measure of faith there. That’s what you want to think is true — that all working together is for the best — but you can’t actually do a logical proof for that. In fact, one can certainly come up with situation where on can benefit at the loss of others. So why not benefit? Empathy? And if you didn’t have empathy…
To me, I just don’t see atheist asking enough questions — actually exploring their philosophy to the logical conclusion. They’re like everyone else — they come up with a philosophy that seems to work and then don’t analyze it any further. They just don’t recognize the leap of faith there while those who call themselves religious are much more cognizant of it. -Ed.]
But on the other hand, Saudi Arabia has an abortion rate of approximately zero, which is 1.1 million less than the United States. So I’ll give ’em this one.
@Veeshir: If you believe that Jesus was only a great philosopher, you have to believe that he was quite literally insane because he made it crystal clear that he believed himself to be the son of God and furthermore that the only way to God is through him. (C.S. Lewis)
,b>[You’re applying a measure of faith there. That’s what you want to think is true — that all working together is for the best — but you can’t actually do a logical proof for that.
No, I provided an example where we can see it work. A very concrete example. No faith needed as we can all see it work. In driving, when it’s each man for himself things go south quickly.
We can see that in many different examples, but I chose one, very concrete example. I’m not sure how you could say it was “faith” when it was concrete.
And I asked lots of questions. I spent 13 years in Catholic Schools and until I was in my 20s the idea of there not being a god didn’t really cross my mind.
I thought long and hard before I made the decision to not believe in a god. I still remember the first time I didn’t go to Easter Mass. It was scary.
I’m also not arrogant enough to say that there is no god, merely that I don’t believe there is. I find it very unlikely. But like Heinlein, I think that if there is a god, all the names have to go in the hat.
Maybe Zeus is angry we’re not sacrificing white bulls or Huitzilopochtli is really angry we’re not sacrificing people to him and that’s why we have Barack Obama.
[You can come up with as many anecdotes as you want, but that’s not proof. I see you want to believe that working together is the best way, you just can’t prove it. It’s faith. It’s a religion.
The question is not whether to have religious faith. It’s what are you putting your religious faith in and why? -Ed.]
And Burma, possibly, but I still like his philosophy.
It’s funny how self proclaimed “smart” people can never answer simple questions such as:
How is saying, I’m not a Christian, I’m an “atheist”, any different than saying, I’m not a Christian, I’m a Jew or a Muslim or a Buddhist etc etc?
And when you loudly proclaim that you’re an “atheist” and any and all religion has to be banned and Christmas is bad and all the other crap you spew,
to the point of actually going to court over it, how is that ANY different than the stuff you’re complaining all the religious people do?
Answer: IT ISN’T
“atheism” is the religion of SAYING you hate religion. If you don’t like it, don’t go to church, since they don’t try to force their beliefs on you (even though
you insist they do) so don’t pay lawyers to force YOUR non-beliefs on EVERYONE.
It’s funny that atheists don’t believe in God but have His moral law written on their hearts as He said He would. Everyone knows that it is wrong to Kill, Covet, Commit Adultery, Steal etc. All from God’s top 10 list. How is it that everyone instinctively knows this stuff? Hmmmm…
“Atheism is too simple…if there were no God, we should never have arrived at the question in the first place” C.S. Lewis A former atheist who set out to disprove God by reading the Bible and became a Christian!
I think we need a “Philosophy of Religion” thread, Frank. Let me start:
Assertion: “This IS a God.”
Response: “That’s not even wrong!” (i.e. not falsifiable)
Assertion: “There is NO God.”
Response: “That’s not even wrong!” (i.e. not falsifiable)
Taken together, one of them HAS to be wrong. I find that ‘interesting.’
Given that the Bablefish is such a mindbogglingly useful animal, some have used it to argue against the existence of God. The thinking goes like this:
God: I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.
Man: But,” says Man, “The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.
God: Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.
Man: Oh, that was easy. (Who then for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.)
hmmm…
I don’t believe in spirits, spooks, ghosts (holy or otherwise) or dead jews nailed to a board. I do believe that acting like a sh*t will get my ass kicked in this life. That doesn’t make me religious for any meaningful definition of the word.
I also think most “atheists” are leftist creeps who get all excited because the money says “in god we trust”.
[Again, I think a lot people aren’t cognizant of how many leaps of faith they make to settle on a system of morality.
And I’m not sure most atheists are like that; it’s certainly the vocal portion, though. -Ed.]
I see you want to believe that working together is the best way, you just can’t prove it. It’s faith. It’s a religion.
I showed a concrete, real world example. I can’t understand why you won’t accept that.
I will say that I agree with this statement.
And when you loudly proclaim that you’re an “atheist” and any and all religion has to be banned and Christmas is bad and all the other crap you spew,
to the point of actually going to court over it, how is that ANY different than the stuff you’re complaining all the religious people do?
Veeshir’s View on many (most?) atheists.
http://doubleplusundead.com/2011/07/29/theyre-not-atheists/ (warning, some bad language, we cuss a lot at DPUD, it’s required)
I’m done with this thread. I hate acting like a muckadoo.
How dare you question the conclusion of the vast majority of Saudi scientists, you…you…Saudi science denier, you!
If Allah had meant for women to drive, he would’ve given them peripheral vision.
Jimmy,
A philosophy professor at a small college once had an final exam paper with the following prompt:
“Why?”
Those students with the best grades were those who answered “Why not?” or “Because.”
This is all I have to say about philosophy.
I wouldn’t buy a Chevy Volt or a woman driver. I’ll be here all week.
While he might act for the benefit of the group an atheist is going to have self interest as his core motivation. He may not be a sociopath because he sees value to him in the group order or even is just fond of people.
I am a libertarian I think having everyone do what is right in their own eyes is close to an ideal situation. But it works better when they believe in god.
Atheists more law. They need a traffic cop to keep them from charging the merge lane.
Crap been peeling wallpaper today and we get a thread I could knock out of the park. But it looks like I’ll just be content to carry the water for you guys. Way to go guys and gals. I would give HIGH PRAISE, but Frank has the corner on that. Guess I’ll say a prayer for all you here on this part of the intenets. God bless all and Merry Christmas.
“It was the anti-clerical and agnostic world that was always prophesying the advent of universal peace: it is that world that was, or should have been, abashed and confounded by the advent of universal war.
As for the general view that the Church was discredited by the War – they might as well say that the Ark was discredited by the Flood.
When the world goes wrong, it proves rather that the Church is right.
The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do.”
– G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man. 1925
Is GM keeping the electric car subsidy when they “buy back” the Chevy Volts? If so, I just figured out their business plan.
You make it sound like they’re a democracy or something — like half the people are saying women drivers are a bad idea. Hm… I’m actually kind of surprised that science wouldn’t chime in on this. Instead of “virgins” and “gays”, they should have just said, “statistics!” Then people would accept it. I could totally believe that Saudi women are bad drivers.
There aren’t any women on IMAO, are there?