Skybird - Interesting theory but I am not so sure. It is not limited to the USA and it's not a new phenomenon.

For many years, people have damned right-wing dictatorships in South America, Asia and elsewhere, but tolerated, nay idolized left-wing dictatorships. Apartheid was a world issue, but equally odious racial policies in Africa were met with a blind eye. Same behaviour, same nasty laws, but a totally different reaction.

This is not to defend those right-wing problems, but it is a curious fact.

These people have opposed every single scientific advance we've ever made since the times we were living in caves.

They won't be satisfied till they fling us back to those "simpler" days. :nope:

Hello,
as a geologist, and a paleontologist, i can tell you the news that the dinosaurs are among us ! Seldomly animals become extinct, only their forms and variety change. Speaking of birds here.

Speaking of 7000 to 10.000 years of earth's age, yeah right. You know what ? It does not bother me. If i am a senator, or a trucker or whatever i do not bother whether the stars are billions of other suns, or just lamps hanging there for my personal pleasure. If i am a geologist helping producing oil i am not interested in when it generated (160 m. years ? Atheist !!), it is plain there. Why should i care.

There certainly are some forms and species that have really vanished, however the genetically religious type does not seem to become ever extinct.

I bet even the Australopithecus still lives, i only need to look for certain managers, politicians and religious personnel of the type mentioned above :88)

And this is old, and i posted it before, but i still think it is worth a look:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a15KgyXBX24
And I do not even mean that ironically.

Greetings
Catfish

It is possible that I saw you too much as commenting on the forum only.

Pfah...no wonder religion is 90% the cause of a war....

HunterICX

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is generally burned at the stake...

I keep seeing this posted. OK, I'll call. There have been some, to be sure, but 90 percent? On what are you basing that figure?

Be careful Trex. Hunter is ok but the forums athiest whacko contingent will come down on you for questioning their dogma...

August - Thanks for the warning, but I am always amused when it becomes clear that atheism has become a faith in its own right. If a person wishes to be an atheist, that's their choice, but I can see little difference between a fundamentalist Christian or a fundamentalist Muslim ranting about the evils of others and a fundamentalist atheist doing the same.

I'm willing to be the lightning rod - let's see if I get something asides from a 180 degree turnaround of what's on the website that started all this.

Skybird – I think you have a point WRT the current political situation in the USA. As to the larger question, I am starting to see it as conspiracy theory writ very large.

The p-shrinks seem to feel that those embracing conspiracy theories are inherently lacking in self-confidence. (A lack of education also contributes to it, of course.) Put simply, such vulnerable people are unable to see the complexity that guides the world or appreciate the huge role that random chance plays. They find it hard to accept personal or national failure. The simplest way out of this for many people is to look for the hidden hand, a vast, shadowy Them on which to blame all the problems of the world.

The evils of the world, so this line of thought goes, just have to be the result of somebody acting with evil intent. Even things with a simple explanation must be the result of a larger plot. It’s as if Occam’s Razor has never been postulated. Some examples:

• As the USA is all-powerful and as the CIA is all-knowing, 9/11 just couldn’t have been the result of a limited plot by a bunch of &%^$#! ragheads – that would be a unacceptable blow to national pride. How to explain it? Well, it had to be a conspiracy involving the highest levels of the US government. They (generally led by a cabal of George Bush, gray aliens, Jews and the Freemasons) knew but didn’t stop it. Or plotted it. Or a bomb was built into the World Trade Centre when it was built by a Republican architect in order to be able at some time in the future distract national attention away from domestic problems. It goes on.
• No loonie ex-Marine could possibly have killed the President all by himself. Therefore, according to conspiracy theory, there had to have been a plot, a big one, one preferably involving the unlikely mix of the Mafia, the John Birch Society, the CIA (again), Castro and, presumably, SPECTRE.

(Which is not to say that there are not real conspiracies, real plots. Nixon was a classic example of a conspirator, but note how badly those secrets were kept.)

Taken further, given that somebody has to be responsible for all the ills of this world, it is comforting to settle on an entity with (supposedly) the power to make it all happen. At a stroke, the USA is demonized and everything it does tainted. (Personally, although the Yanks can be bullies at times and although they sure do make mistakes, if there is to be a superpower in the world, I am profoundly grateful that it is the USA, which at least tries to work towards freedom and democracy.) In turn, anybody the USA is civil to or supports is damned by association. Anybody opposing the USA or its allies is automatically good.

Facts are ignored, parallel abuses condoned or waved off, balance dispensed with, logic and fairness of mind simply suspended. As just some examples, racism here is despicable; racism there is OK. Soviet MRBMs are OK, ours are provocative threats to peace. Fighting in Afghanistan is Bad, but we need to get into the same sort of war in the Sudan; that would be Good. A white South African policeman shooting a protestor is Bad; Winnie Mandela can order necklacing and commit fraud but is still Good.

The problem of course is that these things start feeding on themselves. Once one accepts that the United States of Amerika is responsible for all of the evils in the world (OK, the Burmese junta too, but they’re bit players), everything that George Bush does becomes part of the conspiracy. I’m not defending Bush, but the poor man couldn’t announce a trillion dollar plan to completely eliminate global warming by 2012 without the usual pack of attack Chihuahuas coming out with charges that he’s trying to (insert evil plot here).

@Trex,

I will honestly admit that my statement of 90% was sucked out of my thumb, but there is nothing more in the world that can piss me off and that is Religious Extremism(which is the cause of many wars in history).

forcing and saying that THEIR religion is the only Religion.
I have no religion at all, people that have a religion I keep them in their respect as long they dont bother me with it.
I have a Muslim working next door, a hard working fella I have good chats with him. he for example spits on that scum that are the cause giving all the muslims a bad name.

I dont hate religion itself, I hate the people abusing it.

HunterICX

Hunter - I could not agree more with that. Any of it.

That's the problem in a nutshell Hunter. People blame religion for starting wars when in reality religion was just used as an excuse, a cover, for the real motive, common greed.

Yeah !!! And us athiests are aparently really grumpy, cranky, and mean too !!! Make sure you have an adult handle us or move you away from us ! :D

If I remember correctly 'Gators, 'Crocks, and Sharks all date back to the time of the dinosaurs. Also I think Dragonflies do too although they were much bigger back then. :hmm:


Also if you built a time machine and went back to Big Bang you could claim humans exisisted since the bigining of time. :p