From the Mail:
The Daily Mail said: “While the Mail would fight to the death to defend those papers that printed the cartoons, it disagrees with the fact they have done so. Rights are one thing, responsibilities are another.
The daily mail having a concience? I think not…
I have moved this site to a new host and to new blogging software (WordPress). I am too lazy to make it look different from the default at this time though.
You may think I find certain classes of person annoying. I have realised though that I was mistaken for all this time. There is one class of people whom I find more annoying than any other.
Have you ever spoken to one of those Christians who will tell you they were “saved” at the age of 5, 6, 7 or something similar? No, I don’t mean all Christians, most Christians are not annoying, most religious people are not annoying – I merely disagree with their religion, and will be annoyed if they try to push it in my direction. This particular class of Christian really irritates me though.
What sort of person can arrogantly claim that because they heard about a particular person from a particular mythology at a particular age and then believed in that person subsequently, that they are “saved”? What does that even mean? That they will automatically go to heaven? What if Hitler believed in Jesus too, would he in that belief system also go to heaven? I would hope not… in which case, you can’t be saved yet, can you, being saved is surely something that can only happen when you are finally judged when you die (or later on some day of judgement). Immediately? I don’t think so, any God who took such an approach would be unpleasantly immoral.
Maybe I really should be questioning what “saved” means in this context. They way these people appear use it though is arrogant, and therein lies the problem I have with it and them.
Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional “next world” is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them.
- Richard Dawkins
Once promoted to Kernel Panic it’s a short step to General Disaster
I don’t ask this question with regard to any specific religion, rather I am questioning the use of the terms. It seems that cults are not accepted and religions are… I might not be able to act within the recommendations of a given cult, say, at work (taking breaks when my cult requires) but with a religion I would tend to be able to. So where do we draw the line between the two? Why is Satanism generally thought of as a cult and not a religion – while really there is little distinction between it and Christianity to a non-believer.
It seems that the generally accepted principle in society is that the use of the term cult has negative connotations. We talk about cults as bad things, but religions are perfectly good entities.
One suggestion might be that cult implies a degree of control, whereas religion is simply a description of belief. In that case though wouldn’t most Evangelical Christianity be defined as cults, Catholicism to a certain extent and almost certainly all but the most lenient treatings of Islam.
It does seem that the term cult is one used to attempt to distinguish religions we don’t like, from those that are large enough that we have to like for fear of being accused of discrimination. We can hold back a small cult, we can say it’s not important enough to have to consider in our laws… and discriminating against a small enough group of people has always been socially acceptable; but a religion we must accept, take steps to relax discrimination laws with respect to and generally treat as a reasonable entity. Cults are bad things or, worse, false things; we can’t have people believing in something we consider to be false, can we…
Well, I return from the land of the free, as they say. Not a phrase I associated with the place except from rumour, but nothing’s perfect. It was an excellent trip though, the landscapes are amazing, it’s a great shame that cities have been placed on much of it, as is always the case, but it is particularly pleasing that such large areas of land have been set aside in national parks and that the national parks offer pretty good facilities for visitors.
Roads and plugs are best left unmentioned…
The theory of Intelligent Falling. Maybe this one should be proposed for inclusion…
A wonderful way to prove one’s own ignorance:
A:
Could you tell me why fire is not alive?
B:
Uh…fire is a catalyst, guy. Didn’t your mommy teach you anything?
A:
Um, at the risk of descending to your level, it seems that your mommy was your only source of your home-schooling. Fire is not a catalyst: By definition, a catalyst is a substance added to a chemical reaction that increases the reaction rate by providing a reaction path with a lower activation energy. The catalyst is not consumed (i.e., does not lose mass) in the process. Heat nor fire are catalysts, because they are not substances.
B:
Catalyst A substance, usually used in small amounts relative to the reactants, that modifies and increases the rate of a reaction without being consumed in the process.
Fire A rapid, persistent chemical change that releases heat and light and is accompanied by flame, especially the exothermic oxidation of a combustible substance.
Does fire increase the rate of reaction? Definately. Is fire consumed in the process? Nope. Does fire induce a change from one state to another? Yes. Are all fires catalysts? By definition, yes, because they consume fuel and oxygen, produce heat and cause a conversion. Are all catalytsts fire? No. Is there any particular reason we are discussing this outside of the fact that certain evo’s were proved incorrect in their definition of nonliving? Not at all.
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Not to mention of course that it’s definition as a catalyst isn’t really directly related to whether or not it is alive…
A slight extension to Rishi’s small crisis of non-faith, of a sort at least. This is something that was brought to my attention recently.
Let us consider the concept of a god.
Either the god exists, or the god does not exist. It would be reasonable to say that if the god does not exist, this discussion is moot. If the god does indeed exist then this brings up a further question:
Is the god good or evil. If the god is good, we have nothing to worry about, regardless of our views of him.
However, there is one final possibility. The god is not good. This causes problems, the first of these is that many people, myself included, would not want to have anything to do with an evil god. However, being evil, and all powerful, whether I want anything to do with said entity or not is not really important. If the god is evil he will find ways to punish us for his pleasure anyway. In this circumstance I don’t think we can win.