I'm a Biologist!

[Austin]

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I found this amusing...as if being a biologist is of significance heh

[Agrippa]

Well, that guy is "no biologist", but just a plain stupid idiot.

You probably like the movie "Religulous", here with a senator:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjR7AWSmI6o

[Austin]

Well, that guy is "no biologist", but just a plain stupid idiot.

You probably like the movie "Religulous", here with a senator:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjR7AWSmI6o


Ya I saw that documentary by Bill Maher. I personally didn't think it was as good as I had hoped. Amusingly I had a Saudi foreign scholarship engineering student with me the night I saw it and he insisted he be allowed to come with me to see a movie....boy was he quite when we left! Ironic because when we went in, 5min into the movie some idiot and his girlfriend got up all at once, and the guy turned to the maybe 30 people sitting behind and declared "this is a stupid movie" and stormed out girlfriend in hand. What an irony, the 12th century Saudi guy on a King Fahd oil scholarship stays and watches the whole movie but some dumb-ass young guy and his girlfriend who were brought up in the West and had payed for their tickets storm out....Ill never forget that, life has its great ironies.

I used to be an atheist but went back to being a Christian for reality-based reasons of which would negatively effect me if I stayed an atheist. Even still though I always like to keep up on the issues and characters in that world.


EDIT: and yes that senator...There is a sad truth in the U.S., if you are religious enough you can literally win on that and on that alone....you can honestly not have any other credentials other than having had kids and being married (which is an important credential if you are running for office in America)

[Agrippa]

I dont call myself atheist btw, but agnostic.

Science determines what we can know, but in my lifetime many rather important things will be still unknown for even the most intelligent of mankind, probably that will never chance.

Crucial is, that science and facts are not always that obvious and even more important, inside of a rational frame you can interpret things. Now this possible interpretations are what I can accept in a high level debate.

Inacceptable are those "beliefs" of whatever kind which clearly dont fit the facts. I mean if there are Creationists saying humans lived with dinosaurs in Garden Eden thats insanity, thats a mental defect, they function on the level of a 3 year old or being so totally brainwashed that they can't distinguish an X from an U like we usually say...

One really has to ask whether this is a deficit of the brain and personality or if it was or is useful, how this trait can be used or changed to work better, more rational.

Thats the difference I always try to make between higher, rational Idealism and primitive Idealism. Higher Idealism means you have ideals which fit the facts and keep trying to evolve the own ideas according to them, so you get the best results by being at the same time group oriented and rational in your approach.

Primitive Idealism on the other hand, mainly religious or pseudo-religious, is unable to distinguish between valuable goals and values in this world and simple superstition, fairy tales written many years ago.

As I put it for Mohammed, he offered his Arab kin a good tool for expansion and success IN HIS TIME, even he himself would have changed many things later, would have taken this rule away and adding this, I'm absolutely sure. Yet that won't happen, especially in the Monotheistic book religions, because written once, true forever, just the interpretations change and they are sometimes even more stupid - like in the case of Evangelicals, than the whole scriptures.

The old testament is just a Jew-story, its all about how god and the jewish interests ruined people and persons, how they finally made it through all hardships blabla...

If I want to have a transcendental motivation and idea, I surely won't start with the Old testament and the New Testament is in many ways against the reality of life and rules in this world, so thats not that optimal neither.

But reasonable religious people can be ok, like the Catholic astronomer in Mahers movie f.e., he just knows what he's talking about.

Mahers was also great with the Jew and the Sabbath, because they summed the whole Jewish spirit, so dominant in lawyers and our whole Western law system, especially in the USA, up (roughly like this):
"God is almighty and allknowing, if there are loopholes in his rules, he made them for being discovered and used if needed..."

Thats the sort of "religion and law" which tries always to be verbatim but ignores the sense of a rule. Its particularly common among American Christians too. They ignore that the sense is more important than a verbatim rule if a religion has any moral value at all.

Thats sick and the most useless of all religions, a real problem case. But for Jews that kind of education in debate with each other "and god" was good for "intellectual selection" and making them fit for various jobs - including comedien one has to add.