OT - Über's Open Debate Thread

A well balanced opinion that does you great credit, Stroller.

Don't apologise, I probably was slower than you. My analyst says I'm a reflector...

 

Well...............time for me to hit the sack, although I probably won't be able to sleep as I try to work out the origins of the bloody universe!!

 

You're joking aren't you. Dave believes Elvis lives and JFK was killed by Greenpeace!! The theory that aliens may have visited us in the past is far too mundane for our Dave's fevered imagination.

 

I shall have to consider calling you Tardis instead of Travis, such is the confidence with which you state that schools, hospitals and so forth would have been created anyway.

The fact is that it didn't happen this way. I can only imagine that early mankind, not understanding the sun, moon, day, night, rain, wind, fire, ice etc. had to conclude that a higher power was making this stuff happen until science could catch up. So he settled upon there being Gods to explain the inexplicable. Then he set out to appease, please and worship these Gods, the natural progression taking us eventually to wonderful architecture within which to worship, wonderful literature with which to glorify, beautiful art and music with which to celebrate. To teach the young of these great Gods would have been a natural step. To set up institutions within which to nurse his flock another..

None of this happened outside of some form of worship or fear of a god (as far as I'm aware).

 

Yep, just joshing with ya, Col (as you know I am).

 

The only Travis' I know are a Scottish band and the bloke wot was in neighbours!

Don't know what it means but I'm sure its a compliment!

 

Religion...don't get me started. I follow the Hitchens (C) guidance that we have an obligation to confront and mock the people who force this **** down the throats of the young, the weak, the ignorant and the scared. It offers no solace, only slavery. But I promised Brix I would not get over excited on this subject on here, as I will offend any believers around quite deliberately, so I'll leave it there. And to be fair everyone who has posted on this thread on the topic is basically in agreement, and to the best of my knowledge we've never had any preaching on here, so there's no fight to start anyway.

 

Hard to say, because there was no alternative control experiment. Surely mankind would have been capable of these great things without the 'inspiration' of religion - perhaps even greater without religious restriction?

 

As for the us not doing 911, the alphabet agencies mix in ridiculous things like the planes were holograms or it was a missile that hit the pentagon. This then makes any questioning seem stupid.

They did it the minute the prism thing linked, I saw posts in a forum claiming prism could hack into peoples brains. This was from someone that joined that day.

On 911, there was a drill about terrorists hijacking planes, on 77 there was a drill about terrorists bombing London. On the day of the Boston bombing, there was a drill about the marathon being bombed. That alone is too much of a coincidence.

remember the US is a a country that wanted to bomb its own ship to get public support for a war with Cuba. Look up operation north woods.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

Rejected by Kennedy and he was murdered less than a year later.

 

It still is, how else would the republicans convince broke, poorly educated, hillbillies to vote for them while totally screwing them over?

Abortion, that's the only thing in the us that decides who people vote for.

 

Really? What about
Gay Rights
Racial Equality - Obahma is proof of that!
kids Education
Terriosm issues
and of course abortion

think you may be over simplyfying the issues a bit mate. Diffrent demographics have diffrent priorities. All politicians just play on those priorities!

Im pretty certain my 3 uncles and Aunts dont vote based on the issue of abortion alone. Esp as they all have gron kids and some work for the government.

you need to re-think that statement mate.

 

I'm thinking that your comment may well be just part of the means.
It may also have been introduced to to give the poor / needy, a purpose to live in hope.
It may also have been introduced as a means of securing income, hence power for those who controlled it.

One could think of many purposeful reasoning's as to why it should be introduced and the benefits to both provider and user.
It just comes down to what people's perception of religion is all about.

For me to comment on what religion is all about may be in agreement with some and total disagreement for others.
All I know is that whether you are religious or not, it has no bearing on whether you are a decent human being or not ................... history will acknowledge that.

 

So you think that the towers were destroyed by what exactly? Were all the eye witnesses, passengers, videos etc etc faked? A set up that big is far more unlikely than a God sitting on a cloud imo.

 

The only way that you could have set up an alternative control experiment would have been to have created an ancient civilisation that believed in nothing, and I don't think anything of the sort existed? Even the pagans believed in something. The ignorant mind of early man was susceptible to belief in the supernatural because, as I have said, science was way behind. Even when science started to explain certain aspects of one's existence many scientists etc. we're condemned to death for heresy. Dangerous to challenge the religious status quo, even today. Islam survives and is strong because it deals swiftly and with force to challenges of this nature, whereas Christianity tries to adapt to fit into the modern world, so will ultimately wither and die.

As I said, the fact is that it happened this way. I'm sure there are examples of early atheistic contributions to art, architecture, music, education and medicine, but not in the same concentrated and concerted way these were introduced under the auspices of organised religion.

 

Indoctrination is an interesting subject, Stan. We are all in some way indoctrinated, if not by our parents' faith, then maybe by their politics, their football team or their attitude to others. And, if not by our parents, then perhaps by our peer groups, certainly by some of our teachers when it comes to politics, and by certain celebrities and media types.

The danger for many people comes from those that have "only read one book", as one of my early career mentors once wisely warned me. He was referring to a Swiss-German senior manufacturing director that had only read one book on production optimisation (batch) and would not accept that there were now new and better ways (lean, one piece flow, kaizen), but it is nevertheless a worthy analogue.

That is why I read Hitchens C and Hitchens P; for one to deny that the latter makes some good observations on the modern world would be a trifle unfair.

 

For me......Peter Hitchens is quite mis-understood. Probably because he sounds so impossibly posh, people naturally assume that he's a raving, right-winger!! When you actually listen to what he says, he often makes very good observations on the World we live in and most of what I've heard him say I find hard to argue with.

 

It's the 'heresy' point again, Col. When people like Peter Hitchens challenge modern 'convention' with truths many refuse to listen to what they actually say simply because of from whose mouth these truths are uttered. Many would have him burned at the stake just for challenging the cannabis lobby.

 

Planes, either it was allowed to happen which what the drill was for. To cause confusion so no fighters would be put in the air to stop it.
Or it was remote controlled, experts have said the manoeuvres for the pentagon plane was way too good for the supposedly attackers who were bad pupils at a flight school. Everything would match up with what the witnesses saw.


Do you know also that a plane smuggling the Bin Ladens (but not Osama) out of the US was the only non military jet allowed in the air for the next 24 hours, those Bin Ladens are very good friends of the Bushs.

 

Are they in the US?

 

I've read plenty of Enid Blyton too mate. 'Noddy takes on the Papists' a particular favourite.. I know what you mean though, it is supremely dangerous to adopt someone else's thinking to the exclusion of all else. My liking for Christopher Hitchens is mainly because I only really read any of his stuff a couple of years ago, and it just captured what I had thought/felt for most of my life on religion perfectly, and much more eloquently. Also recommend Francis Wheen's " How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World" a very funny account of the rise of Fundamentalist religion, voodoo economics, New Age bollocks and management guru in the 80s and 90s.

As for management books, I resist wherever possible, especially the ones my US marketing colleagues occassionally send me as a kind of unconscious warning that some new fad is about to be taken up. My first response is usually "OK, I'll skip the next 3 meetings while I read this, as there is no way I'm even opening it on my own time'.