Chubby Nickel Audio Vlog

While randomly enjoying some random intertubes, a friend linked me this with a comment that this guy should be put in his place. I agree, but I don’t think that I have the ability nor position to do so, I just thought I’d run a little commentary on this nasty… I guess technically “article” is the descriptor.

This year will go down in history as the beginning of The Great Collapse Awakening. We have two great opposing forces, never seen before on this planet occurring at the same exact time. On the one hand we have a deepening global great depression, which is in reality a dismantling, or collapsing in disguise. On the other hand, we have at the same time, a great awakening, not only politically, but of the entire human potential emotionally, and spiritually. For the first time in history, humanity is waking up, in mass, to their enslavement by the international banking families. A monumental time in the history of mankind where fundamental choices of how we live will be made on both the international and individual level, by every single person. You will be forced to decide whether you will live in LOVE, or live in FEAR…????

Actually on one hand right now and for the last year, we have a recovering global economy, not a deepening one. The economy always fluctuates, this is normal. I completely disregard this false dichotomy and make the choice to live neither by love or fear but to live by rationality.

Whether you look at small towns, or large cities, across this nation, and around the world, people are waking up to their manipulation by government and corporate entities. One of the top political strategists for the Obama administration, Zbigniew Brezinski, in a 2010 speech before the world elite, said that for the first time in human history mankind is politically awake. I would agree with him, and I would also say that not only are people politically awake, but more and more people are becoming emotionally, and spiritually awake.

What does emotionally and spiritually awake mean? I’m sure it sounds good to some people, but it’s very meaningless without a definition. Does it mean that people can now experience their emotions? I hadn’t known that that had been a problem.

Are you trying to maintain a positive attitude on the inside while all around you your world is crashing down around you? There IS a reason that this generation is the first generation, in recent memory, that could have less than the previous one. The truth is you have been lied to, manipulated, and set up, your entire life. The game was set up way before you were even born. Your parents were lied to also, and their parents before them. While they toiled under these lies, it is only now, in this generation, that ignorance of this system will lead to total disaster. For the power elite that run the game are calling in their cards. This is the pivotal point in history that everything will change. You must wake up. You can regain your vision by learning how to see around their lies. You can be free from those who seek to control you!

Yes, you have been lied to, manipulated and set up by people you’re entire life, so why stop now? Become manipulated and lied to by this douche bag too! Or maybe exclusively if that’s your thing. This is an appeal to fear, which one must remember as it will be important later when this idiot tries to claim that he’s all about love and not persuasion by fear.

Since the dawn of time there has been an ongoing epic battle between the forces of all that is good, loving, and light; and the dark forces, which feed on fear, avarice and evil in men. I have long since chosen which I would stand with. Being on the side of light my heart is often filled with love and a desire to help others who have lost their way. I know, however, that there is an opposing force out there that works in the shadows, plots, and schemes to gather ever more power and control over others.

Such a bold claim should be backed by some heavy evidence, because it’s not a brute fact. Remember the previous sentence where I pointed out the appeal to fear? Well now this guy is putting himself on the “dark forces” side due to his “feed[ing] on fear.” So now he’s clearly against people who feed on fear, while he himself is feeding on fear…

The main objective of those on the darkside is power. The main tool of the darkside is money, not just weapons, and land acquisitions. They are only what money purchases them. You will soon see, if you don’t already know, that these people have long ago acquired all the money they or their families would ever need. Through out history the wealthiest people have been the people who control the money, originally called money changers. It was not long before they amassed greater sums of money than even kings and queens.

This is a very extraordinary claim, that requires extraordinary evidence.

Thus what we have occurring is an ongoing battle, or ( at a deeper level ) dance, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. By your actions, or in actions, you will aid one of these forces. The forces of darkness hope you will choose to be silent. They hope to discourage you, or out right scare you into acquiescence. They make it fineable or even criminal to speak out against them.

Yes, that is why this guy is now behind bars and fined into the poor house… because the evil forces won’t let anyone speak out against them…

The events of this year clearly outline this dance between the forces of light and darkness

The Great Collapse is a force being set in motion by the international banking families. It is an attack they are launching on the masses. It is aimed at destroying us physically, mentally, and monetarily. What they call the Great Culling is at the foundation of the strategy. This is their incremental, but purposeful lowering of the world population by 80% – 90%, down to 500 million people. They believe that they can most efficiently control this number of people. Right now, they believe that our numbers are too high, and that eventually would get out of hand, and they would lose any control they might achieve.

Seriously, this is far too many extraordinary claims with no supporting evidence. The economy is getting better showing that the Great Collapse is not working. The banks lowered interest rates down to no gain for a while to help the economy recover, showing that the banks are willing to sacrifice temporary profit for long term stability… which hardly matches the evil doom inspired conspiracy banks as portrayed here. Unless the banks are so amazing that they hide their evil nature by helping and preventing exactly what this douche bag is claiming that they want. Don’t you see it? The very existence of opposing evidence is the evidence that the evidence should lead to the opposite of where the evidence actually leads.

They are carrying out attacks on us at many different levels. Biological attacks are being carried out through the use of vaccines, and the poisoning of our air, food, and water. Vaccines have had limited success, because they are voluntary, however the elite, like Bill Gates, are financing the development of vaccines that can be sprayed in the air, put inside mosquitoes, and inside of food. They will even be sold to people through the pharmaceutical industry as replacements for the costs of continually having to pop pills.

What was that about the “evil” and/or “bad” side using fear? Vaccines have saved billions of lives, to propose that they are being used to kill people is another one of those “evidence that opposes my conclusion is evidence for my conclusion” retarded, bullshit mess of nasty. The poisoning of the air is not from some massive global conspiracy, it’s from normal everyday things like eating, driving and wearing clothes. Bill Gates has donated millions of dollars to prevent the diseases that mosquitoes carry, again more opposite evidence.

Aerial spraying of aluminum, barium, corexit, and many other known toxins are being purposely sprayed on us. Genetically Modified Organisms ( GMO’s) are used in our food supply, often along with known carcinogens. The passage of the so called Food Safety Act will be used to tell us what we can and cannot eat, grow, and sell. It is part of a worldwide plan called Codex Alimentarius, which is part of Agenda 21, which is a UN plan to control the world. If the UN was truly a benevolent body of countries truly seeking to peacefully coexist, it might be one thing, but instead it was developed by a private group of international banking families, meant to centralize their power over the world, to push their agenda for their own interests.

What was that about the bad guys using fear… “[...]and the dark forces, which feed on fear[...]” So he is part of the dark forces trying to feed on fear, don’t trust him. The UN is very far being powerful let alone the one world power.

Hate, ignorance and hypocrisy… I’ll just label this as stupidity.  So how does one fight such a powerful foe? How does one defeat such a resilient enemy? If you don’t think stupidity is a prevalent and dire disaster in a bottle, just try to talk to some people, watch TV and/or listen to the radio. There are people that listen and believe these public personalities just because they’ve been brought up to never question certain things. People will fight you hand, tooth and nail defending the most ridiculous ideas spawned from mere speculation and confirmation bias just because it’s said with confidence.

How does anyone fight confidence? The biggest problem is that these radio personalities are bluffing… bluffing that they know what their talking about, bluffing that the majority of people will call it out and bluffing with a big bank against small fries. Of course they can fail many hands while the greater public goes all in and loses. You want change? You want things to stay the same? You want us all to jump into a time machine to find a long lost past that only truly existed in your diluted memories from infancy? Well it takes more than “I want the country the way it was when I was growing up” and other appeals to emotion. It takes reason well founded on the best evidence available, obtained without a course of action derived before researching.

Of course I’ve said nothing to help this problem. Seeing the world for what it is, throughout all known history… we as a human race have come far, so I have no doubt that we won’t reach the lofty goal of enlightenment, reason and peace one day… I just think we all can speed it up a little. Question authority. That is all it really takes… well that and listening.

Of course merely questioning authority isn’t enough just as that, there are some guidelines. Question all authority, it’s not enough to question the authorities you don’t agree with, the most dangerous authority is the authority you don’t question. Remember authorities should be authorities because they know what they’re talking about. Questioning someone who knows what they’re talking about should never be a problem (unless they have clearly answered the question several times), they should be able to explain it… if they can’t, then they’re not an authority worth shit. Not only should any trustworthy authority be able to explain their reasoning, they should be able to provide examples and in most cases cite research and/or facts that support their conclusions. I’ve seen too many times where some jackass will say they’ve “done the research” but fail to provide any kind of reasonable source for that “research” and more pathetically: fail to provide the points of data that lead them to that conclusion.

You don’t have to be rude, you don’t have to be nice, you don’t have to be neutral… you just have to be there. Don’t try to fight stupidity with fire, fight it with questions. There isn’t a liar around that can clearly explain their reasoning through many questions and there isn’t a question that an authority shouldn’t be able to clearly explain.

Before you answer, try to look at your behaviors from an objective perspective. Ask yourself questions like: when I do the same things as everyone else, do I have my own reasons for it or do I just do as others do? Do you feel it’s easier to “get into the spirit” of things when there are others in the spirit or do you just do what you feel like doing? Are you with the crowd or are you a loner?

This is an important question to ask yourself, not because one is better than the other, but just so that you have a good idea of who you are. Solomon Asch conducted several experiments to determine how likely it is that a person would conform when they can clearly see that the majority is wrong. His study had shown that  virtually everyone would give an obviously incorrect answer just because everyone else was giving the incorrect answer. The study had also shown that just one person going against the majority resulted in the person giving the correct answer even when the dissenter gave a different incorrect answer.

What does this mean? Well it could mean very little for you, but it means a lot to me. I want to be right all the time, and if I can’t see when I’m wrong because everyone else is also wrong, it worries me. I need to make sure the concepts that define my reality are as close to reality as possible, this is important because I make decisions, I vote and I talk to other people. So are you the helpful dissenting voice even when you’re wrong or are you the harmful conformist who doesn’t care if you’re wrong?

Ok, I am addicted to internet arguments. I don’t have to have them, and the only reason to have them is to strengthen and question my assumptions and to force me to re-examine my evidence, possibly fight off some dishonesty, but other than that there is no reason.

So here is a hilarious argument I had with some wannabe philosopher about whether raping babies is morally wrong  and why it is morally wrong. Now I had hoped to get deep into this discussion by actually discussing moral implications, possible good benefits (like raping the babies will cure cancer and AIDS), or whether since the babies won’t remember the experience and may be healed by the time they will start to retain memories, that it doesn’t “harm” the baby in the long term view. But instead I got this:

—-Learn the Meanings of the Words, Please—

DavinCreed: Anyone that has the ability to? stop someone from raping babies, but would stand by and just watch someone raping babies, is a bad person. That includes any god.

larrycastle: You talk about a “bad” person. Says who? [...]Bad based? on what?

DavinCreed: Bad is a negative. The negative effect in this case would be the damage caused to the babies[...]

larrycastle: Your reply tells me that you haven’t really thought this through. Either you believe in a transcendent morality which is in conflict with your views as an atheist or you view morality as relative.

DavinCreed: I think you may have not thought it through, otherwise you would not be using a false dichotomy I.E.: Transcendent morality or relative morality. To show that you used a false dichotomy, here are other types of morality: societal morality and empathetic morality.

larrycastle: There’s no false dichotomy in my statement. Societal morality and empathetic morality are merely versions or subsets of relative morality.

DavinCreed: It’s a false dichotomy because other possibilities exist other than the two you mentioned.

larrycastle: First, a subset of the thing is still the thing. No false dichotomy.

DavinCreed: So self imposed morality is no different than socially imposed morality? If you add in transcendent morality I could add in equally unverified moralities. So it’s a false dichotomy no matter how you? look at it.

larrycastle: Self imposed or socially impossed morality are both conventional.

DavinCreed: Ah, so you don’t know English, or at least what “conventional” means. I guess if you are to abstract yourself to where you can make an agreement between yourself and yourself it could work, but that is just redefining words too much for rational discourse.

—-In the Absences of Evidence, I Can Make Up My Own—-

This next one much funnier, I really just included that first part so that you can see the response that he couldn’t see.

DavinCreed: Unless someone can explain how? it isn’t bad, to have the power to stop babies from being raped but instead do nothing but watch, then god is a bad person.

larrycastle: [I]f I said that homosexuality is wrong uless someone can explain how it isn’t you’d reject my premise as you should. You know better. Things you dislike are not wrong unless proven otherwise.?

DavinCreed: I explained why raping babies is bad which could be argued against, but instead you bring up a straw man fallacy about homosexuality? For that to be an equal example, you would have to explain why homosexuality is bad.

larrycastle: You’re pulling a bait and switch. Everything is relative until you want to convict God of immorality. Then you argue based on a transcendent morality. Did you? What is the reason again? You have not explained. You? have begged the question.

DavinCreed: I condemn God by the same standards I would condemn myself and others. Transcendent morality is not needed. I have not begged? the question, explain where I have.

larrycastle: You continue to beg the question. When I ask you to restate it since I must have missed it, you answer, “I condemn God by the same standards I would condemn? myself and others. Transcendent morality is not needed.” So now I know what your answer is NOT. What IS it? Esplain Lucy!

DavinCreed: Learn to read, it’s still there. You accused me of begging the question,? provide the evidence for your accusation. I have provided the evidence for the fallacies of which I have accused you.

larrycastle: I’m telling you, I DO NOT SEE IT. How else do I say it. Maybe my browser is having issues, maybe YouTube is being persnickety (both of which are very possible), or maybe you have not given a reason.

DavinCreed: If you can’t? see it, then why did you accuse me of begging the question? How could you possibly accuse someone without the evidence to back it up? You flat out accused me of being illogical then asked me to present your evidence for you.

larrycastle: Sounds like a copout to me. Yes. Now I’m accusing you of lying. [...] It’s really suspicious that you don’t want to answer the question.

DavinCreed: What’s really suspicious is that you accused someone without evidence.

larrycastle: Look, I’ve gone over every post you have made in this thread and I don’t see the response you say you’ve made. The absence? of that response is my evidence.

DavinCreed: The absence of? my begging the question is your evidence of me begging the question?

Youtube Argument

There are many people in the world who claim to have proof of god’s existence, the proof comes in many forms and is usually quite different from evidence and is usually in the form of a random occurrence or a personal experience or personal interpretation of an event. Opposed to all those kinds of proofs Descartes’ proofs are much better and more well thought out than most. Some people claim that if something is complex and that person is unable to see a way that it could have evolved they automatically claim that it is irreducibly complex (and therefore god exists) unfortunately for them this is usually an argument from either personal incredulity or ignorance. There are people who claim that there are proofs of other worlds in the electromagnetic spectrum and since there are anomalies in random places it is proof of spiritual influence of some kind, but this is unfounded and only plausible to people who are not acquainted with how electromagnetic fields can be produced. Some say that they have had personal revelation, but I fear that most of them are liars, opportunists or people who have a certain form of epilepsy that causes experiences similar to out of body experiences or near death experiences. In none of these does Descartes make his case and his proofs are harder to disprove than the others though he falls very short of finding evidence for God.

The cause of the dilemma – does god exist or not? The dilemma is caused by many issues of the human condition that have been proven and evidenced in history, anthropology, psychology, and other sciences. It is as simple as asking the question “why do people believe in god?”. People are probably inclined to believe in god or at least were inclined as such because of the lack of knowledge of natural phenomena and it’s causes. The original belief of early humans was likely that of animism. Animism is a belief that everything has a spirit and a consciousness. Because in early humans it was probably easier to get along with this belief and had some advantages because things were understood to be another being, perhaps even on an equal footing with ones-self. After this it became something a little less animistic and it is the belief that all things have a god behind them that is the cause of them. Perhaps all things is a bit of an overstatement but not by much, many times in ancient history there are gods for almost everything. This polytheism was the common belief for a long time after the neolithic revolution in which men began to live not as wandering vagabonds but as food growers and animal raisers. It was only but recently – about 2000 years ago – that monotheism became popular and with it came large organized religions, the majority that we have today are monotheistic and this is the god that Descartes is trying to prove in both “meditations on first philosophy” and in his “Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences” though the former will be the focus of this text.

Almost in the beginning of the fourth meditation Descartes states “That it is impossible that god should ever deceive me.” (Meditations on First Philosophy 510) This belief perhaps was not proven wrong then and some would say even now it is still true. Though the proof for god is non existent at least in the form of tangible evidence. Every piece of evidence that is found supports a universe where not random chance nor a designing god is the reigning power but something even simpler and more majestic in every way I can imagine. When he states that “it is impossible that God should ever deceive me.” (Meditations on First Philosophy 510) it seems that in order for a god that cannot lie, in order for him to exist in a world where evidence for him to exist he would have to have planted evidence contrary to his existence for all of the things that we now find. Such as the tree ring dating system which is accurate to the year proves that the world is at least 13,000 years old so young earth creation would be impossible. The fact that the only evidence for the beginning of the universe points to a big bang and not to a designer.

Descartes also tries to give God all the credit for the judgment that is inherently in him. Judgment in itself is in no way proof of a God or a designer. The faculty to judge things is not inherently human nor is it in any way perfect in any thing that we now know to exist. The ability to judge is something that would have been weighted high on the scale of values of things that were naturally selected for. Things without the ability to judge or without the power to use it would die off quickly for either being too ineffective in hunting for food because they couldn’t judge many things such as distance, speed, direction or intent. All of these things are part of the ability to judge.

There was not a valid alternative to belief in a god or gods. So his understanding of how natural things are can probably be understood, and it is because of the fact that he was probably raised in religion his whole life so as to make his belief in god a part of his subconscious and as such probably superseded all his other preconceptions. This is probably why when, try as he might, he attempts to remove all of his preconceptions but fails in this one because it is so inherent in his nature because of it being a part of his life from during his primary enculturation in which most of a person’s understanding of the culture in which they live is learned. For him it included the belief in god and in such a way as to be imperceptible to him. He then tries to assert that “he surely did not give me the kind of faculty which would ever enable me to go wrong[...]” (Meditations on First Philosophy 510.2) And in this he does a fairly good job in proving that if one removes all assumptions and attempts to try to find only those things which can be known without doubt. Though in this he is mistaken in the fact that he can imagine himself without his body and that there must surely be a self separate from the body. There is indeed the mental perception of having an consciousness outside that of the body and is perhaps hard to overcome even with the evidence to the contrary. If the body was separate from the intelligence behind it it would certainly not be damaged along with the body though this is inevitably the case that when the brain is damaged it can limit speech, mobility, understanding, and many other things which would be considered part of the soul and yet the ability to use them are damaged when certain parts of the brain are impaired.

In his third meditation he says “The mere fact that God created me is a very strong basis for believing that I am somehow made in his image and likeness.” (Meditations on First Philosophy 509.2) But how can this be? He claims that he is made in Gods image simply because God made him. The idea sounds poetic and pleasing yet there is something very wrong with it. God also made the hideous angler fish and every disease and every planet and moon by his thinking and they cannot all be in Gods image for the simple fact that they do not all look alike, nor do they even have the same scale. If he were a dog would he think that he was made in God’s image even though religious men claim that right for their own? Yet he made the dog as well as man by his thinking and they do not share in likeness.

Descartes also states “that I exist and have within me an idea of a most perfect being, that is, God, provides a very clear proof that God indeed exists.” (Meditations on First Philosophy 509.2) This is total fallacy! I cannot imagine how one could think that just because they have an idea of something perfect that it is proof of the existence of the thing. Perhaps my imagined perfect thing is not the same, could it be that it exists because I can have a clear idea of it?

Perhaps this was taken a little out of context, perhaps he means that he can imagine only two constants so far, his mind and God. Though his mind he would consider his spirit because his body may not even exist and God he believes to be the body of perfection that every thing that is good is embodied in is this one being called God. But even that must not be so, if everything that was good was placed in a being, as well as unlimited power, knowledge and intelligence could that being possibly be in existence because with benevolence comes the necessity to do good and not just know good. If there was one who was in existence who knew the best thing for the human race, or the entire world for that matter would not such a being be pressed to help out? In all that we have here, in all that we have done to one another and to the other creatures and even to the earth, could he not be good enough to help? We are fighting wars against people who think killing infidels is how you get straight to heaven, men and women are dying fighting a group of people who would use handicapped people to blow innocent people up. The most atrocious wars ever fought were fought in the name of God and in his name millions have died. No Rene Descartes does not prove God, he only proves that he can only imagine a world where God exists also known as the argument from ignorance.

Socrates and alcibiades

it seems the dilemma of laws over morals is a major one. Perhaps it is because it is one of those things that has no clear line. Somewhere between people who break the laws for fun and those who keep the laws without question there has to be a middle ground. From the center the view has to be a lot different from the views at either radical end. It would have to be one of a careful balance that has been thought out thoroughly and as unbiased as possible. It would be impossible to know that one point in the line could be the most centered point. It would also be impossible to claim that any one person has this perfect perspective because everyone has their own perspective. There are things in this life that are worth breaking the law for and there are cases where laws must be broken for the sake of morality.

The philosopher Thomas Aquinas said:

thomas aquinas

Law does not profit a man unless he obeys it. But the very fact that a man obeys a law is due to his being good. Therefore in man goodness is presupposed to the law. Therefore the law does not make men good.

This goes a long way into answering the question of always obeying the law or not. In the first sentence it is shown that the laws mean nothing and can be of profit to no person at all unless they are obeyed. There are some in the world who believe that laws are unnecessary and that man would be better off without the restrictions of law. They would be wrong because without laws and people to enforce them the weak would be overcome by the strong and the

dumb by the persuasive. Anarchy is in no way a natural setting either. Humans, animals and bugs all have some sort of social agreements with others of their species otherwise their species would not survive. Ants have queens, Animals have packs or other types of groups in which to maintain their species. Humans however because of the complexity of our species the social interactions are also made more complex. We have groups that start at siblings, friends, family, all the way to nation, world view and religion. It is because of the complexity of our species that we need law enforcement, governing bodies and legislators to provide the good of the people or at least as close to good as we can get.

The Thomas Aquinas quote at the end said “the law does not make men good”. This is true because of the fact that a good man is not good because of the law. The law is good or bad because of the man who made it. Even obeying the law is not a sign of a good man it may only signify a man who is scared of the consequences of the law and there is a difference between a good man and one who is scared of law enforcement. A good man obeys the laws because they are moral and follows his moral compass. A man who has no moral compass can still obey the laws. But because he is lacking in morals he won’t know when to break the laws if necessary and may cause harm in inaction.

The reasons for breaking the law must be good. That is, the benefit must outweigh the cost of breaking the law. Socrates said; “neither injury nor retaliation nor warding off evil by evil is ever right.” . In this many would not agree. The causing of harm to someone who would do you harm is not allowed by this principle. Though I would argue that my children who are in my care still should be protected by any means necessary from people who would do them harm. Of course I am not saying that someone who would do little harm deserves a great deal of harm done to him. That is not my case at all, though I would argue that those who would do evil to my mostly defenseless children would be deserving of as little evil as possible to stop them from harming the innocents that are in my care. For that matter it may be said that it would be moral to save someone who is not in your immediate care from harm by doing harm to the perpetrator.

The damage-benefit analysis is a tough one to measure when weighing the law against the moral. For one, if in breaking the law others may feel inclined to do likewise it may not be in the best interest to break it. Also as Socrates said “Do you imagine that a State can subsist and not be overthrown, in which the decisions of law have no power, but are set aside and overthrown by individuals?”. This would be chaos and anarchy. As previously stated it would not be a good thing for people to live that way. Without laws and enforcers only the strong and the smart would have the upper hand and equality would be a word without meaning. The morals of a man should be the first and foremost consideration and the laws perhaps a close second.

Morals could be misconceived in modern cultures to mean values given by our god(s) or holy writings. But I do not mean morals in this way though many do, but I mean morals in the view of a carefully measuring mind to find the value of actions such as do the most good. Things to keep the equation even or towards the good would be considered moral or at least not immoral. Even holy writings can fail the test of morality and more often than people think. The apostle Peter said that Lot was a just and righteous man yet in Genesis, Lot’s way of saving the angels that came to visit him is offering his two virgin daughters to the crowd of people insisting on raping the angels. I don’t think offering ones children to an angry mob to spare angels would be considered moral or should be for that matter.

In The Apology Socrates said that even if his life was saved and his freedom guaranteed he would not give up philosophy and his investigations. He would not give up his life’s work for the last remnants of his life. Or in other words he would rather give up his life rather than admit to doing wrong where he feels he did none. That decision contributes to the truthfulness and morality of his life. The fact that he would rather die than to break his morals is testimony of his conviction to his beliefs.

In conclusion, morality is more important than law. Law is for a base morality that sometimes does more evil than good but for the most part laws are in place to keep the majority of people on a basic morality. But one’s morality should be paramount to the laws of his nation. The choice between obeying the law and being true to one’s morals is by no means an easy question. But with contemplation and a good moral compass the truth is that the law has and will need to be broken. The morals that one lives by should never be compromised for the sake of the law or the sake of one’s life.

Poor Richard

I keep hearing people say that the U.S. protects freedom of religion and not freedom from religion. How is this possible? This is a self defeating concept. If people are not protected from religion, how would they be able to have their freedom of religion? If a religion is able to walk all over people because those people are not protected from religion, what is protecting their freedom of religion? I know I asked the same thing twice and I do personally hate repetitive argument tactics, but I feel this is a very important question.

These people that don’t want people protected from religion are happy because they think their religion is the one that is right. They don’t need protection from religion because it is their religion that is the one that others need protection from. I am talking about the U.S. and Christianity. The religion of the majority doesn’t need protection from itself, but they want to go a step farther and start pressing their religion into laws and onto everyone that believes differently.

Let me tell you (and go ahead and please research this), it was a hell of a lot different when the U.S. declared independence from England. They were not allowed to practice what ever religion they wanted because they didn’t have protection from religion. Yes, without protection from religion, unless you want to practice the major religion, you will not have the freedom of religion. Let’s say that we take away the protection from religion in the U.S., what flavour of Christianity should the state support? Southern Baptists? Catholic? Seventh Day Adventists? Born Again? Mormonism? Jehovah’s Witness? Well you better be ready to convert because if there is no freedom from religion, then one of these is going to be the one you will not be protected from.

Freedom from religion is not just about protecting the minorities rights, it’s about protecting everyone’s right to practice or not practice any religion or lack of. Because if you don’t protect the minority, then the majority calls the shots. This is one reason why the U.S. is a republic and not a democracy. Yes we have democratic elections, but we elect those people into a republic. The founding fathers could see, by the example of the Britain they freed themselves from, that a monarchy didn’t work anymore, they also could see that a democracy could not work. So they decided to create a completely new form of government, a democratic republic.

If you say that Muslims cannot go to a school and spread their word, then Christians also don’t get to go to school and spread their word. Because if you say that Muslims can’t spread their word in schools but Christians can, that is a law respecting a religion (read the first amendment). However, if you say that no religion can spread their word in schools, then that is a protection from religion that protects the peoples freedom of religion. In order to comply with the first amendment, you need to either spread the word of all religions or not allow any religion to spread their word.

Freedom from religion is the most important way to protect peoples freedom of religion. Also, remember any right you take away from someone else is also a right that you take away from yourself. In the U.S., everyone’s rights are affected by taking away rights. So quit being idiots and understand that in order to protect your freedom of religion, you need to provide protection from religion.

Now I know that many of you will undoubtedly be true believers and will probably not be swayed, but let’s have a little faith shall we? The genealogy of Jesus is important to note because if he were not of the line of david then he would surely not be fulfilling the prophecy as put in Jeremiah 23 5 saying “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.” Now, lets first put to rest that his line to David is seriously in danger according to the contradicting genealogies of Matthew 1 and Luke 3. Matthew has 28 generations and Luke has 43! you can’t call that a typo there’s seriously something smelly there… now lets also consider the fact that the names in the accounts have almost no names in common! read for yourself it’s despairingly inaccurate and it is really doubtful that each translation of the bible would correspond with this inaccuracy.

Oh and did I mention that both Matthew and Luke place Jesus’ adopted father Joseph as the descendant of David and if you’re a Christian you know that Mary conceived without Joseph’s help so, that would place him nowhere on the line of David because there was no donation from Joseph to Mary’s egg. So how you ask could he be of the line of David as prophesied in Jeremiah that’s a toughy… oh yeah it’s because he’s NOT OF THE LINE OF DAVID and the lineage connecting him to David is made up lies by disciples after the fact trying to make him fit into the prophecies of the old testament so, sorry your bible is either fallable and therefore not worth the read because you can’t be sure of the facts or because it’s all just fairy tales and old wives tales about things that either didn’t happen or happened and then were expounded upon to make them supernatural.

Attempting to enlighten the misguided,

Poor Richard

Tiv are a quaint group of west African people who, in an article by Laura Bohannan called “Shakespeare in the Bush”, presume to know the meaning of a Shakespeare play, perhaps you’ve heard of it… It’s called Hamlet, now despite the low profile of the author (after all who’s heard of Shakespeare?) when the play was described to the Tiv elders they decided that they would tell her what the play was about.

Though the Tiv elders are hearing this third hand and have no prior knowledge of the underlying culture behind Hamlet they found entirely different meanings than a westerner would have… not to say they’re wrong but you’ll just have to read the article at This link.

The kind of assumptions are very different from their prospective and found that Hamlet’s mother should have remarried so soon after the death of her husband, not in the least bit precocious or non ordinary, queer, weird, odd, awe-inspiring, awful, creepy, curious, dreadful, eccentric, eerie, far-out, fearful, flaky, freaky, funky, ghastly, ghostly, grotesque, haunting, horrific, inscrutable, kinky, kooky, magical, mysterious, occult, oddball, ominous, outlandish, peculiar, preternatural, queer, secret, singular, spooky, strange, supernal, supernatural, uncanny, uncouth, unearthly, unnatural or crazy do you get my point? they thought it was normal.

I wonder if we could learn something from this…

Poor Richard

Common sense can be used very effectively with common situations, and with common things. Things a 5 year old can understand can be useful for things that are simple in nature, things that only require a basic understanding. So why do these two seemingly simple terms keep getting so misused in arguments? Yes this is going to be another partially religious post, but honestly, what doesn’t involve religion any more? Or more accurately, what doesn’t religion involve itself into?

“Common Sense” and “So simple a child can understand it” are two of the things dishonest bellenders like Ray Comfort, Kirk Cameron and Kent Hovind use to try and persuade people. The intent is do a kind of “Emperor’s New Clothes” tactic to make people think that because it seems so simple, it must be true and the complex answer must be false. After all we should always be using Occam’s razor to determine the validity of things right?

Let’s go a little out of order here, first Occam’s razor is not a method for determining the truth of a thing, it’s a method for discovering the truth of a thing. Occam’s razor does not make complex solutions false just because they are complex, and doesn’t make simple solutions true just because they are simple. It only means that you should first try the simple solutions first to see if the simple solutions are true or not, not to just assume that the simplest answer is the true answer.

What is common sense? Why is common sense so uncommon? If I stole an apple from a store and that apple cost $0.55, then common sense would tell me that I just saved $0.55. However the result of my theft increased the price of all future apples by $0.01. Now my not so common sense would tell me that if I want to eat apples at a lower price for longer, then stealing an apple would not benefit me at all in the future and I would be losing more money than I would save from stealing one.

Now here is another analogy, lets say that you see some mold on a piece of bread and you are currently ill with Pneumonia. Common sense would tell you that if you ate the moldy bread that you would become more ill. Rational thought and the scientific method would tell you that you could turn that mold into something that would help you fight off your Pneumonia.

The reason for these analogies are to explain that common sense is not always the best tool for determining things.

Now onto the most ridiculous: “so simple a child can understand it.” If you are saying that it must be true because a five year old can understand it, then I have to laugh at you because you are a tool. Does a child’s understanding of how the Internet works match our understanding? No? Well then I guess its not real then, lets get the children to correct our understanding of the Internet. Does a five year old’s understanding of how a camera works match our understanding? No? Well then I guess we better consult some five year old children to tell us how cameras work.

Yes, why don’t we base everything on what a five year old understands, after all it was a five year old that discovered that mold can help cure people and that you can send moving images from one place to another through thin air using radio waves. Come on, seriously think about it before you fall for this dishonest tactic. Do you think we would have computers if we relied only on what five year old children can understand? Do you think you would even have a house? How about farming? How about the internal combustion engine? Would you trust the world to five year old children? No, you wouldn’t no matter what you may be saying right now.