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Did you know that Saudi Arabia has made it a crime punishable by death for being an atheist? They call atheists terrorists. That's right, if you openly say that you don't believe in god, they can put you to death. See, that's where irrational beliefs can drive you into doing horrible, irrational things. And once they get rid of all the atheists, they'll start on the Budhists, then the Taoists, then the Mormons, then the Catholics..pretty soon there will be no on left but one scared stiff congregation of Dogmatists of only one world wide denomination ruled by one chief witch doctor priest who claims to be God herself.
I guess I was lucky that I didn't get my head chopped off when I went there...although I didn't openly say anything about my being atheist, knowing that it was not prudent to do so when surrounded by religious extremists when I was there...and that was a long time ago.
Where do you think the US will be in the future if we let the fundamentalist religious types or purveyors of superstition take over our country? And it all starts with people who will believe in nonsense like reincarnation or magic or angels or demons or esp or ......
As our freeloader rancher (Bundy) was doing his drive-by watching the elderly Blacks and the kids on the porch, he was seeing the child rearing pattern of hunter/gatherer societies which was both a result of American slavery's systematic destruction of the Black family and reliance on a preslavery cultural practice. They were forcefully excluded from adopting the white familial pattern. The U.S. still suffers from the echo of this evil and those who do not understand our history in this regard will insure its continuation.
DnBr -- I think it would take a dictator because neither FDR or LBJ could pass a wealth tax. I think if we could break the stranglehold on the media we might accomplish the student loan jubilee.
I was mostly thinking benevolent dictator when thinking about a worldwide wealth tax.
Why would it take a dictator to pass a wealth tax or declare a student loan jubilee? Just elect enough progressive thinking politicians to pass these policies into law.
As for class-war crimes trials and a guillotine in Central Park you are correct, that would take a dictator. But to be absolutely clear here I was not being serious about that. As I said "demand the stars, but settle for the moon." That long line of Banksters and CEO class-war criminals leading to the "national razor" is nothing but a dark fantasy, not a part of any political program of change that I am advocating. I was being hyperbolic, and if some were confused, my bad.
Pal -- Sorry I didn't catch it. I guess AIW is just a better comedian.
Palin -- neither French revolution elimnated the control of the 1%.
Kend, in case you reading the blogs today, I have a question. With Canada's welfare system, how is the welfare payment effected when a person becomes employed?
Thom forgot to mention that Milton Freidman, of all people. thought a min income was needed to make his supply side economics work.
chuckle8: yes, I got a good laugh out of it too! I was trying to be funny as well. Didn't you catch that? ;-}
Sounds good! But before we can demand anything we will have to get rid of the crooked, bought and paid for, politicians. In the French Revolution, the people didn't just complain and talk about a revolution....they just did it! Clever fellow, that Mister Guillotine! Sure put the fear of Zod in those royalist bastards. It actually changed history! Too bad the ruling elite has forgotten what the masses can do if they are ticked off enough.
By the way, I just saw the Disney movie "Bears". Did you know that full grown bears eat 90 pounds of salmon a day to store up enough fat for hibernation during the winter? I thought up a new bumper sticker: "Kill the bears, more salmon for us!" Just kidding of course! ;-} Those little bear cubs are so cute. But those big bears...well, I wouldn't want to meet one in the woods one day! Especially if he knew that I thought up that bumper sticker.
AIW was being funny.
Dancing Bear -- The shortcoming of your plan is that it requires a benevolent dictator. The new deal and the great society policies seemed to be accomplishing the goals you desire. I think a first major step towards acquiring something like those policies would be the passing of "card check". One more democratic senator in 2009 and we would have had card check.
Friends, we keep arguing over how to reform the income tax system, but what we really need to be working for is a leveling tax on individual wealth/net worth - we should tax people based on what they own (both here and overseas) with the goal of achieving a leveling of wealth inequality through direct redistribution. It doesn't need to be a total leveling, but it should be enough to close the wealth gap to the point that no one is left living in poverty anymore. A debt jubilee to wipe the books clean on all student debt would also be a constructive step.
If we want to achieve anything at all we need to be thinking big (bigger then just income tax), because anything we demand will inevitably be whittled down. Demand the stars, but settle for the moon. With that in mind we might consider demanding class-war crimes trials as well. It was the rich after all who broke the social peace of the Fordist economic compact by declaring an open class-war of aggression upon the American working people under Reagan. I'm a peaceful guy, but I confess that the idea of a long queue of shackled Wall Street banksters and CEO class-war criminals running up Broadway to a guillotine in the middle of Central Park does have its appeal from time to time in those darker hours of the night.
Kend: If they are smart, they won't have any of their money "invested" in the crooked Wall Street Casinos. With high frequency trading and insider trading, you are as good as broke anyway when you put your money on the Wall Street roulette wheel. The Wall Street Quants, with their high speed computerized trading programs, and high speed fiber optics channels trading many thousands of trades per second ensuring that they never lose means that normal investors don't have a chance. If they don't understand that and what they are up against, they will eventually lose all their money to these crooks. Congress is just now trying to tackle this problem due to some very embarrassing revelations about this scam. But, will Congress be cowed, like they are in everything else, into passing effete legislation, or dropping it all together?
"Palindromedary you are not well, tell it to your shrink."
Now who is the one being belligerent? Huh?
"Pointing to all the places the supernatural is not in evidence says nothing about where it is. You have not proven anything, you are accepting on faith that there is no God, despite evidence to the contrary."
Pointing to all the places the Easter Bunny is not in evidence says nothing about where it is. You have not proven anything, you are accepting on faith that there is no Easter Bunny, despite evidence to the contrary.
Pointing to all the places the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not in evidence says nothing about where it is. You have not proven anything, you are accepting on faith that there is no Flying Spaghetti Monster, despite evidence to the contrary.
Talk about logical fallacies....!
Actually, I had entertained the idea that someone would say something like that even before I started writing my "long diatribes". I certainly don't think that makes me "psychic", though. One can anticipate how someone might respond...which doesn't make it "psychic". Just as you anticipated how I would respond to Hartmann's bringing up the Flat Earthers subject. I suppose that other similar beliefs as that of the Flat Earthers and geocentrists, like all other religions and beliefs in the supernatural, all tend to dismiss and dispel the superstitious beliefs of others while totally believing in their own.
So-called "psychics" are just another part of the "paranormal" flim-flam that some people get suckered into believing. It's all hog wash! And the reason why some people get away with convincing others that they have "psychic" ability is by a number of tricks...including suggestions that are so broad and ambiguous that the "believers", who want to believe in the first place, get fooled into believing that the "psychic" has been successful in proving his/her "psychic" abilities. Some "psychic" people are very good at picking up little clues that can steer them into what to say to convince their subjects that they are for real. It's all trickery and deceit.
Why can't people dismiss the idea of reincarnation? Is it because they fear death and that they can't bear the idea of "that's all there is"? That's about the same reason why so many people believe in heaven...an afterlife. Surely you haven't been taken in by those reincarnation flim-flammers have you? What proof do they have that reincarnation is real? Of course, they have all their stories, just like the heaven's gate (you know...pearly gates and streets paved with gold) crowd, too. There is just no hard evidence that reincarnation is real. There is no hard evidence that Heaven or Hell or God or Satan are for real. They are just as valid myths as the ancient ones of Attis, Adonis, Isis, Ahura Mazda, or Ahriman. If there is any evidence, then show me. The burden of proof lies upon those who make extraordinary claims. And all claims of supernatural, superstitious beliefs requires proof of their reality.
Humanitys team -- I assume you have heard about the concept of "single issue voters". I think the 1% use spirituality as one of those single issues. Based on that correlation I think movetoamend.org could eliminate spirituality in politics.
Reading Thom's introductory post about the flat-earthers, I thought to myself: uh-oh here it comes; more of Palin's long-winded, religion-bashing diatribes, and another debate about the supernatural! Gee I must be psychic.
Palin, I'm no more a fan of religion than you. Given the second-class status most (if not all) religions have assigned my gender, I have as much reason to reject religion as you do, aside from the silliness of the beliefs religious folks subscribe to, at least from my perspective. But I can't dismiss the concept of reincarnation so readily… Sorry buddy! And if that makes me an uncritical thinker in your estimation, so be it. But pleeeeeez spare us the footlong diatribes!! We've heard it all before.
Mark, just a friendly suggestion: Give it a rest. You are fighting a losing battle with Palin. His mind's made up and he's as stubborn as they come. You've made excellent points here on this issue but they'll never have any impact on ole PD. You're only setting yourself up for more frustration.
C'mon guys, give peace a chance! Peace, love an' grooviness! - AIW
God controls the climate.
Hummm let me think about that . This answer is of somebody not willing to take responsibility for all of us ? This denial of truth like the Earth going around the sun is still the main problem Humanity faces .
Beliefs create behaviours and this creates your on the ground experience .If we want the world to change we can only do this at the level of belief.
First belief we can change is our own power in believing we can change. We are life and life is just another name for god so who holds the responsibility ,we do !
Humanity is stuck because of its beliefs .How can we evolve when the most powerfull country in the world is still being run by organised religion ,spirituality is our politics demonstrated that is where the work must be done.This is now so obvious and if humanity does not alter its most basic beliefs about itself and start being responsible for the human family we can kiss a brighter future goodbye .
Palindromedary you are not well, tell it to your shrink. You are a man obsessed. Pointing to all the places the supernatural is not in evidence says nothing about where it is. You have not proven anyhing, you are accepting on faith that there is no God, despite evidence to the contrary. The cognitive dissonance is yours. Of course, on some level you know this and for this reason are so belligerently defensive.
You are, in fact, a reiligious fanatic albeit nihilistic in your religiosity's nature. You are obsessed with your beliefs despite - perhaps because of - their shaky foundation.
2950-10K, Pope Urban VII may not have been good on the astronomy but he, like the ancients and others not technologically advanced, was very spiritually advanced and developed. Westerners of current times have been called "technically competent barbarians" and it is a basic truism that the technically advanced people are inwardly lacking while the technicly primitive are more highly developed personally and, if you will, spiritually. I would caution you from falling into the Western cultural bigotry and supremicism that presumes the superiority of our way of life and thinking.
Remember the more essential part of our discussion, the effect of unguarded technology. We could've done well to have retained the harmony with nature that the more "primitive" peoples maintain. Technology may be greatly overrated. It's good for enabling conquest but the cultural dominance that resulted from that will soon lead to our extinction.
So the regular guy like you me better take responsibility or its game over .Great comment so true and the higher the blasphemy the greater the truth.
chuckle8: Thanks for that link to Years of Living Dangerously I watched it. Very scarey! Very informative! I might even have to subscribe to Showtime to watch the other sequels. Thanks, chuckle8!
"Don Cheatle then talks to one of the fundamentalist parishners and he points out to him how hard it would be for him to accept the reality of climate change no matter how true he thought the fundamentalist climate change scientist was." --chuckle8
I think that is called "cognitive dissonance" when you say you wouldn't believe in something even if it were true.
Whoa doggie!
http://www.google.com/m?q=logical+fallacies+logic+syllogism
The Earth and the Sun revolve around each other, and the Moon chaperons the dance.
The Earth is NOT flat; the Earth is NOT round; the Earth is concave!!! And the universe is dimensionally screwed up.
The foundation for a new religion has now been laid - any joiners?