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Climate change will eventually send MORE people to HELL FASTER, so I vote for HELL.
I think climate change is the result of all the greenhouse gases emanating from the mouths of science-denying preachers telling their congregations to "go forth and be ignorant."
If you look at this gas under a microscope, you'll see that it's made up of 2 ignorance molecules, 4 stupidity molecules, 3 "I don't care to know the truth" molecules, 5 Bible-worship molecules, and 10 "I need to make everyone else ignorant, too" molecules. You'll note there are a lot of molecules for a gas and that is why it is so heavy and prevents heat from escaping into space -- hence it is a greenhouse gas. With the right optical filters, you can see this poisonous fume escaping through the roofs of churches all over the country. It's a bright pink color because it tries to appear harmless, even joyful and happy. However, the smell of this gas is reminiscent of the perfume of 15 old women all mixed together. I'm sure you know the smell I mean. Anyone who has been to church probably knows precisely the smell I'm talking about.
Wouidn't it be nice if we could have religion AND science?
But no. Instead we have to continue spreading ignorance and being the laughing stock of the world. Well, except for countries where the majority of its inhabitants still live in mud huts and believe the moon is the eye of a giant god watching them all night ... and the sun is a giant fiery soccer ball that the god of soccer kicks across the field from horizon to horizon -- or some such ridiculousness *shrug*.
Yes ... imagined dilemmas take time and effort away from real ones.
Good to see even a brief post from you, by the way. Many of us here have you in our thoughts.
Aww thanks mordant. Unfortunately, I don't know how many posts I'll be able to write tonight, but I'm writing a few. I wrote a longer one in the thread about sin.
How did the US become one of the most ignorant countries in the world?
Word War II
The war tempered religious fervor in Europe; it made many people truly question whether there was a god, for how could a good and just god stand back and allow Hitler to do the evil things he did. That was the rationale at the time, the reason why religion and belief in God took a severe hit after the war.
For America, well, it was just the opposite. Because the U.S. emerged from the war untouched, the richest, the most powerful nation on the planet, a nation which sustained very few casualties during the war comparatively, AND the only nation with the atomic bomb ... well, in the minds of the American people, that proved beyond doubt that God had chosen America as the new Chosen People, the new Israel. Now America was blessed, blessed, blessed.
Now religious fanaticism has gone through the roof and into the stratosphere. This only got worse as America's prosperity continued to soar through the 50's. It's this very reason why certain people like Jeffbase are scared to death of gay marriage ... they're afraid of losing our privileged status in the eyes of God. He might decide to go bless some other nation (from the looks of it, I guess he blessed atheist China LOL!)
But truth be told, that is where a lot of today's fanaticism and hence our ignorance comes from. There is a concerted effort to keep Americans dumb and poorly educated because it is well known that the more educated you are the less likely you are to be a fundamentalist, to take scripture literally, to be a fanatic, etc.
If anyone out there actually thinks I'm blowing hot air, remember that I will never put a single letter on this forum that I cannot back up with facts and every now and again I like to remind everyone of this. So I will make this one of those times.
This Republican platform was buried in their education proposal for 2014 and while I haven't followed up on whether or not this was actually implemented, it doesn't really matter. What it shows is that there really ARE people out there with power trying, whether successful or not, to dumb down our kids.
"Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."
One thing I do want to draw attention to ... the part that I emphasized with bold lettering.
So ... critical thinking skills and other "higher order thinking skills" have the purpose of "challenging the student's fixed beliefs."
There you have it in black and white. They don't want students to learn how to think because they might become to smart for religion. That's exactly what that sentence says.
What more can I say? This isn't a conspiracy theory. This isn't something for the Tin Foil Hat Society. This isn't atheists going off half-cocked afraid of religion or atheists simply attacking Christianity for no reason.
No.
THERE ... IT ... IS. Undeniable proof that agents of religion are trying to keep our kids STUPID so they can be more easily brainwashed into the worst of religion -- fundamentalism, fanaticism, science-denying, and all the rest of it. You don't need to take away people's higher order thinking skills for them to become normal Christians.
I'm not going to link it because there are so many good articles on this. My advice is to google search "republican education platform" and believe me it will come right up.
How did the US become one of the most ignorant countries in the world? There is no doubt that it's our education system. Since most folks in the US did not go to college, they have only been exposed to 12 years of primary, secondary and high school education. What is even more disturbing is that we as a country have known for years that our education system needs an overhaul but so far the wrong people and methods have been employed.
I am so happy to see Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about how disturbing it is for him to see children going to school and memorizing. What depresses him is that kids merely memorize information, regurgitate it for an exam and then forget it all. What that information meant, how factually true it was, seems not relevant to them.
Tyson cites that the educational system is flawed for it allows for people to graduate into adulthood even without knowing the difference between what is true and what is not true about the world.
Most Americans don't possess the ability to think and rationalize, no critical thinking abilities and yet they seem to be proud of it.
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND followed by RACE FOR THE TOP did us in.
That and GREED. We let ourselves be directed by people of STATUS and GREED as we ran around chasing the American Dream that died in 1946ish.
Then we act like dogs, lying UNDER the tables of those with STATUS and WEALTH hoping, praying for just the smallest morsel that will motivate us to support the establishment and TURN on each other.
The war tempered religious fervor in Europe; it made many people truly question whether there was a god, for how could a good and just god stand back and allow Hitler to do the evil things he did. That was the rationale at the time, the reason why religion and belief in God took a severe hit after the war.
For America, well, it was just the opposite. Because the U.S. emerged from the war untouched, the richest, the most powerful nation on the planet, a nation which sustained very few casualties during the war comparatively, AND the only nation with the atomic bomb ... well, in the minds of the American people, that proved beyond doubt that God had chosen America as the new Chosen People, the new Israel. Now America was blessed, blessed, blessed.
Now religious fanaticism has gone through the roof and into the stratosphere. This only got worse as America's prosperity continued to soar through the 50's.
Interesting theory. I think it has some merit.
Growing up in my fundamentalist church there was a lot of "patriotism" intertwined with the religion. Old Testament readings tended to be interpreted with America as God's Chosen People much like Israel. And we sang songs like "Onward Christian Soldiers" which were blatantly militaristic.
That was back in the 80's when much of the WW2 generation was still alive, so there was still plenty of nationalism in the air despite the Vietnam disaster.
Of late there has been a bit of a rift in that denomination, with the ultra-conservatives (oddly) being less nationalistic. That's probably due to the perception that America has rebelled against God with legal abortion, acceptance of homosexuality, etc. The ultra-conservatives have even denounced the kind of generic references to God in politics as "Civil Religion" that sets itself up against the One True Faith. The "regular" conservatives tend to be more nationalistic, and more likely to get upset over things like removal of the 10 commandments from public buildings, etc.
It's dangerous when people start assigning things like national prosperity to the actions of deities, rather than basic economics. We might make bad decisions like allowing our industry to go overseas while thinking that God will keep us prosperous nonetheless.
I have been informed that there are some significant dangers facing humanity. One is Hell: a place of never ending torture by the Christian God after death. Another is global climate change due to fossil fuel emissions.
My question is this: which threat is greater? Should we focus our energies on saving people from Hell or fixing climate change? And why?
Since global warming is just a hoax that was conceived of by people looking to steal money and power from the gullible, I'd say hell.
Religion is a hoax used to separate people from their money and their senses.
That remains a logical fallacy to say that because you speculate that some religions behave so such that no truth can be found in all religions. Actually how humans behave has nothing to do with how true God is.
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