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40 years ago I was trying to blow things up, making gunpowder etc. Back then telephones were rotary dials and in many places still wind me ups on what was known as a party line.
When I started my training, the miracle of multiple conversations on one pair of wires via a complex and huge carrier system was possible, but then we still had vacuum tube technology radios. The computers were no better than today's calculator and yet we sent men to the moon on this technology in 1969.
My first calculator I got in 1975 but we were not allowed to use them, we used log books and slide rules to do complex math, back then kids brains were developed. My first digital watch I got in about 1977/8 and that was a new miracle.
The old codger scientists that sent men to the moon, it is their technology that spawned the rapid development of what we have today.
In your young lil' life, you have no idea where the current science and its foundations came from. We old codgers still have the ability to use our brains as they were properly trained, the math we learned back then still is used in this day and age.
Oh and in 1971, we actually learned to write neatly and spell.
The internet was not actually invented, it came about as a new method of communication and that only started happening in the 80's but very basic connectivity to banks. Emails were a thing that happened in the late 80's on mainframes but was what was called intranet.
PC's only came into use in the mid 80's as a office tool and partially as a gaming platform for home users. The first floppy disk was 12 inches diameter and only stored 4kB of info. This was followed by 5-1/4 in floppies and then 3-1/2 in diskettes to what we now have in the terabyte range on servers.
Us old codgers grew up and witnessed and spent lots of money in upgrades as the technology expanded/grew.
My first cell phone was also a weapon as if I threw it hard enough at your head, it would knock you out. It was pretty useless outside of major centers.
Now with the internet folk have devolved from the written word back to pictures and videos. Cell phones are now cameras and internet connectors.
So just imagine if the old codgers like Thomas Edison never invented the telegraph recorder aka tin foil phonograph, where would your internet be today?
I don't want to derail, but there's one thing I don't like about being Atheist.
I really, really, hate when I'm around people speaking cliche God things "My prayers are with you" blah blah...and I feel like a smug A-Hole for thinking I'm smarter than this person. I even feel smug saying that.
Maybe I still have some catholic guilt in me, lol. It's not that I feel bad..I just.. hate to feel "better" than other people....unless it's one of those loons who take religion WAY too seriously..then it's ok to be smarter.
A personal benefit is that my nonbelief in god and the afterlife drives me to live a much happier, more productive and more virtuous life than I did when I was a believer.
I don't want to derail, but there's one thing I don't like about being Atheist.
I really, really, hate when I'm around people speaking cliche God things "My prayers are with you" blah blah...and I feel like a smug A-Hole for thinking I'm smarter than this person. I even feel smug saying that.
Maybe I still have some catholic guilt in me, lol. It's not that I feel bad..I just.. hate to feel "better" than other people....unless it's one of those loons who take religion WAY too seriously..then it's ok to be smarter.
I'm amazed sometimes how much people can teach me something. Yes, maybe thinking that being a smart atheist with the logical and evidential higher ground can have me strutting around like a smug buttshaft feeling so darn pleased with myself.
But then, that's better than having an illogical and evidence - denying faith and still feeling so darn smug at how meek and humble I am as required by my faith. So, after all I'll stick with what I've got - of which I am at least now aware.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 07-06-2011 at 12:05 PM..
Reason: going for my Good Grammar badge
I really, really, hate when I'm around people speaking cliche God things "My prayers are with you" blah blah...and I feel like a smug A-Hole for thinking I'm smarter than this person. I even feel smug saying that.
Don't think of it as being 'smarter'. Think of it as being more open to reality. After all, you were probably just as 'smart' when you were a believer. You just didn't know as much and hadn't broken the shackles of religion yet.
In response to H0TMESS and his feeling superior, and to anyone else who feels that way, many many moons ago I used to think almost the same way. Fortunately I was able to stumble upon a better way of thinking that obviated my previous way of thinking. What I did and what quickly became part and parcel of me is simply the following.
Instead of looking and thinking of humanity with the words Superior and Inferior, is to simply use one word known as, Different. I assume (VJ) that this way of thinking will soon become an automatic way of one's thought as it did for me. Once this came about with me, I was able to realise the depth to which I had sunk subconsciously with my discrimination.
Try it, I think you will like it. Cheers, Snaefell.
How about just using the phrase 'more highly evolved' or 'further along' to describe it? It doesn't mean 'more intelligent'. It simply means past "childhood's end", to quote the great Arthur C. Clarke.
How about just using the phrase 'more highly evolved' or 'further along' to describe it? It doesn't mean 'more intelligent'. It simply means past "childhood's end", to quote the great Arthur C. Clarke.
I agree. I don't believe that we are any more intelligent than our stone -age forebears, but we have a lot more technology and information.
I do not consider myself particularly bright, but I will say frankly that I am astonished at how my mental potential has been doubled, first by getting a handle on logical thinking and doubled again by the Internet which has put a huge amount of instant information at (literally ) my fingertips.
It has to be used intelligently and that means considering all aspects of the argument - nearly all sites are a bit partial about what information they put in and what they leave out.
Mighty intelligence is of no use is if it doesn't want to learn or consider but thinks it knows it all already. And that's the answer to the common theist jibe at science and atheism - science and atheism doesn't for a moment claim it has all the answers. It is theist that believes it has all the answers - or the only answer that matters.
After reading a thread on R&P,it would appear that another benefit of atheism is not to feel that something is wrong/bad/sinfu lto become sexually aroused from anything other than the presense of a spouse.
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And all the other Sundays 
) my fingertips. 
