Obama's NOT Jesus Christ? NO WAY!

Yeah, i'm just as happy as the next person that we're finally going off into a new direction. I'm looking forward to actually seeing what becomes of this presidency.

What pisses me off are the people who seem to think that those of us who voted for and support him are somehow all brainless sheep who worship this man. No, you fucking nimrods, this is a democracy... we VOTE for who we think will do the country best! Often this person holds firm ideas about which we can agree. This is precisely an example of that. I don't need you to continue reminding me that he's not the Messiah. Jesus H. Christ, I'm an Atheist! I don't need reminding that a messiah will never come!

Obama is a man. Obama is a politician. He's as fallible as anyone else, but he seems to have a MUCH clearer plate than most anyone who had ever run for president in the past.

I'll tell you where parallels may be drawn, however. They may be drawn from men to men. Obama's promises are much like Roosevelt's- who was very much a mortal. His charisma is quite similar to that of John F. Kennedy. His convictions, personality, and philosophy... those are something fresh, and they are exactly why I voted for him. They are something that he developed from growing up as he did, and ending up where he did. that to me is fascinating. Since his values seem to be in the correct place, I am fairly sure nobody has much to worry about. We shall see how things will go from here.

In the mean time, please stop insulting my intelligence with your presumptuousness.

aww, da poor POOR widdle Baby war-vetwan, and Barebac-- I mean, brokebac-- I mean saddleback.

All potential respect for John McCain: Gone.

Valid assertion: John McCain wasn't actually in a "cone of silence" during the first thirty minutes of the saddleback forum. Therefor, it's probable that he had prior access to the questions.

McCain's fallacious response: That's impossible, he was in his motorcade on the way to the event! The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous!
Red Herring, appeal to pity, appeal to emotions,

Valid assertion: John McCain is uncertain as to how many housing properties he actually owns. Very interesting. Very few Americans have this problem.

McCain's fallacious response: "This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison," referring to the prisoner of war camp that McCain was in during the Vietnam War. "Obama lives in a frickin' mansion!"
Appeal to pity, appeal to emotions, ad hominem tu quoque.

Do you see how this works? Somehow McCain, a war veteran, is now incapable of lying and it excuses him from having ridiculous brain-farts over something that should be common knowledge, like 1+3 = 4! Did I mention that he was not only a veteran, but a POW... so it's even LESS likely that his campaign is lying. These arguments are fundamentally flawed.

Using inductive reasoning, the probability is there: It IS pretty probable that someone from McCain's campaign notified the candidate of the questions he'd be hearing beforehand. This is NOT flawed reporting from NBC. So that's the first fallacy: just because McCain was in his motorcade does not make it any less likely that he received the questions on the way. And his campaign has avoided that question quite a bit. And then there's this POW bullshit. alright grandpa, we know you were in the w-- yes, you were in the war, and it SUCKED! Yeah, we've heard it already. You've told that story alr-- GRANDPA PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP, THIS IS GETTING OLD.

Of course, I never told my grandpa that, because he actually had interesting things to talk about.

This whole Saddleback forum was a complete mistake anyway. After viewing it myself, the entire thing was just a circus set up by the evangelicals. Obama never had a chance there. His responses were intellectual musings. McCain's were one-sentence responses, preaching to the choir. They were a black and white interpretation as to how the world is supposed to work. You know, simple things that the evangelicals could digest straight from the pages from the bible. I, for one, am not surprised that the polls show Obama slipping. Whether or not I give them credence is another thing altogether.

So yeah, McCain is a fuckoff who will not be getting my vote, and I now vehemently oppose him and his campaign, for his blatant dishonesty, misdirection, and the disgraceful misuse of his POW status during vietnam.

In the words of Keith Olbermann: Mr. McCain-- GROW UP!

Faith Healing is SICK

Someone once told me that it doesn't matter what people believe in their own personal lives, as long as they're happy. I thought it was a powerful statement, and I know that, to a considerable degree, what other people hold as faith does not directly effect my life. I accept others' beliefs, though I usually groan to see varying degrees of delusion eating the life out of many people in this world. To me, it's like watching someone being cheated out of money right before my eyes, without that someone realizing it. Except in this situation, it's not money, it is the time we have left on this earth. But hey, they're happy, and who am I to interfere. They'll only fall asleep one day and never wake up from that again. I'm not affected.

That doesn't mean that I don't get REALLY fucking pissed off when I see a large mass of people being duped of life and money when they follow some creepy fuck with a bad accent around the globe so that they can help him make money in exchange for "miracle "

Seriously, I thought this fucker was dead.

http://www.peterpopoff.org/

But no, he's back up, still cheating people out of their time and money, and still living a lavish life through selling "miracles." Seriously, miracle water, miracle bread, miracle mana, divine transaction, or however the hell he puts it. This guy thrives off of the testimonials of the few people who mysteriously received checks in the mail for some outrageous amount. Considering this guy's popularity, there ought to be windfalls all throughout the U.S. where people mysteriously receive sums of $100,000 in their mailboxes. This is not the case however. I think that God is the last person we have to blame for inflation, unless we take George Bush's statement that God guided him to the whitehouse seriously.

This all angers me so much because I cannot stand to see others suffering. So it's even worse when I see someone else profiting off of others' sometimes life-threatening ailments and suffering. Worse still when the profiteer is lying to make money. And even worse when he's using 'faith' as a base for his profitable lies. These are very low individuals. This guy is saying that if you eat this miracle mana bread shit that he personally prepared, that you will start to get checks in the mail worth several tens of thousands of dollars. He is saying that he 'divinely' stopped cholera, typhoid, and other water-borne diseases by giving these African children 'miracle straws.' which are really just simplified water filters, and probably wouldn't last more than a few weeks at best.

Sorry, but faith healing is a moral abhorrition. It wouldn't be so bad if all of these guys were just writing checks and sending them off, but that is simply not the case. These people are making personal profit off of it. This Popoff guy drives a $100,000 car, lives in a multi-million dollar house, and probably bought his multi-million dollar family. It's ludicrous, and these are the types of people worthy of being locked up in a capsule and subsequently launched in the general direction of the sun. Wouldn't that be morally abhorrent? Maybe, but it's one less asshole on this planet who bathes luxuriously amidst other people's suffering.

Anybody, be they Theists, Agnostics or Atheists should be skeptical of a claim such as this "with a pledge of $1000 I will prey on -- err, excuse me, pray for you and you will come across mountains of success! Oh yeah, and your cancer will be gone. You have cancer right?" I've come across too many of these people in my research, and it really has got to end. I don't know how, but it just has to.

Someone needs to line Benny Hinn, Peter Popoff, Pat Robertson, and Uri Gellar for good maesure and release 10,000 sex-starved monkeys on them infected with that virus from "I Am Legend" Then nuke the general area. Maybe God will be omnipresent enough to cure all of those monkeys, and have them sing "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" as a perfect baritone choir while the fucktard televangelists quietly get away. Hey, if it happened that way, that would be MORE than enough to make me believe in god.

Until then, the only thing Peter Jackoff would expect from me is a box of leftover "Santorum" remnants from FC after all has been said and (proverbially) done.

Anyway, just thought I'd post that rant.

Six Years of shit.

Yay nostalgia.

I wasn't originally going to say anything about the subject, but as I'm hearing more and more about it, listening to the Radio, and glancing through blogs,
Is it insensitive of me to not care very much about 9-11 anymore?

I woke up today, and I thought to myself, "Man! This is a pretty good day!" and I went about my life not even giving a thought to the explosive events of six years ago.. until of course I tuned in to the radio in the late evening.

I swear they play some of these documentaries every year... especially PBS. Don't they have better things to do with their funding?
Here are a few things I don't get about this whole 9/11 hype every year:

Why are people allowed to capitalize on this event?
T-Shirts that say "NEVER FORGET..." and have pictures of two buildings burning in the background
T-Shirts that have pictures of a bald eagle crying against the background of burning buildings, faded into a larger background of an American flag.
pictures of burning buildings everywhere-- post-cards, neckties, tattoos, posters, stain glass windows, flags, etc.
The idiot box showing the collapse from OVER 10,000(!!!!) different angles, with people crying, and running, and dying amidst the cloud of burning building material.
It's amazing we're not singing:
Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to yoouuu!
Happy birthday dear 9-11!!!
Happy birthday to yoouuuuuuu!!!
And many more....

At which point we'll all exchange our 9/11 souvenir models of the burning buildings, and model airplanes.

There are also these moments of silence everywhere you go-- it's inescapable.

When is the last time we held a moment of silence for the thousands that died during Pearl Harbor? The only time you hear about that event is every time the anniversary falls upon a year that is divisible by ten.
When are Americans going to show any concern beyond themselves?

roughly 3,000 people died in those towers. Millions more die every year of outright genocide for the same reasons: different religions.

Which brings me to my final point. Why glorify god through all of this?

God bless America. Pray for these families. God gives us hope. god, GOD, G_D, gOd, GoD, GOD GOD GOD DAMMIT!!! Everywhere there's god, and he's credited for giving comfort to us during trying times.

In my mind, if he truly existed, none of this would have happened. It's at times like this, when I most expect him to pop up into some church that preaches the ideas that he originally wanted to be taught. But it hasn't happened.

So why glorify god? Why not give money instead to the people that actually ran into those burning buildings and rescued others? You know, the PEOPLE that did something, not the GOD that did absolutely nothing. He's the last person that should be glorified for this, and in fact, he should be severely admonished. After all, this attack was done both in his name, and against his will.

No, folks. The way I see it is this:

The attacks were carried out by people who have delusional ideas about the world. And people that have equally as delusional world-views are pissed off about it, so they have to shove their god's infected penis in other people's faces.

I don't see the comfort in the idea that god brings comfort into this world, and the people that do hold such a belief need to take a closer look at the suffering, and see all of the people (not gods) that are trying everything in their power to alleviate such suffering.

Thanks to all of this nostalgic, delusional BS, I do not celebrate September 11th. I am going to let it pass as another day as I did today, and just not give a damn about it, because there are things in this world that require, in my opinion, more immediate attention.

To Osama:
Happy anniversary!!! Your public video drive to increase annual nostalgia has worked!

~David~

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.

After about 30 minutes on a crash course of learning about Genders of german, I finally have this straightened out.

Why is there a difference in "gut" (good) when concerning the phrases, "guten morgen" and "gute nacht" or good morning, and good nigh, respectively?

Well, it has to do with genders. German, like spanish has genders. Although German has three.

Masculine: Der-- as in, der Morgen.
Neutral: Das-- as in Das Auto.
Feminine: Die-- as in Die Nacht.

As such, Morgen is masculine. It should be Guder; however, in the case of the phrase "good morning", it falls into the accusative case. For some reason in the accusitive case, the masculine form of a word changes from ER to EN. This is why good morning is "guten morgen.
This is also the gase with "good evening", and "good day". Evening and day are masculine, and would be "der abend" and "der tag", respectively.

Good night is also an accusitive case, but "nacht" is a feminine word-- therefor, nothing changes. It is Die nacht, and therefor, gute nacht.

And it's spoken as guten nacht in the same way that brittish people say "an hypothesis" Mechanically it's not correct. It's only correct when you speak it.

Re: Evidence

in response to Ottoid's recent post, concerning the nature of evidence, and the nonexistence of something that might be bullshit in the first place.

The argument is this: I say that there is no evidence that Jesus ever existed. He agrees. But he says that he cannot prove one hundred percent that he does not exist.

I say that the probability doesn't matter, because like any other premise that derives from the bible or any other faith based literature, there has been no evidence for their existence, and therefore, they probably didn't exist. Yes, I said probably. Probably, like there's probably no flying Spaghetti monster, or invisible pink unicorn. Is there a small possibility? Yes. But I think it's negligible. It leads me to decide that Jesus did not exist, based upon additional historical accounts that we have looked over from that time, where we did not find his name. This fact has been verified numerous times by historians across the globe. The only thing saving Jesus is people's continued belief in him only. Christian Apologists come up with "proof", but most are questionable at best.

In the case of Jesus, the lack of evidence for his existence, is the evidence for his non-existence. If he existed, you would think we might see him in some of the secular writings of his time-- not decades or centuries after, with no personal or independent accounts. The case for the historical figure of Jesus is something that we can analyze with fact, and has nothing to do with faith, but the idea of faith too, is relevant. It's relevant because the argument that Christians use to "prove" god's existence is this:

Well, you can't DISPROVE him, can you?

No, you can't. And that's problematic. Try to disprove the existence of anything that doesn't have any evidence in the first place, and you won't get anywhere.

Alright Otto, that's my official reply to your post. If you want to read on you may, but these are merely thoughts that arose while writing a response to you. Some of it is repeated, other is actual evidence of actual events that further prove my point. I don't think you understand the scientific method, and I don't think you understand falsifiability.

I realize that it takes evidence to prove the existence of something. In science, that's all we rely upon, the evidence, and the merit of such evidence, as decided upon by the learned scientific population of nations together.

He keeps complaining about my invoking of faith into this argument-- I do not mean to focus my attention on faith, but that's ultimately what it comes down to. Just like with any other scientific concept, we didn't prove that the sun didn't go around the earth, we proved that the earth went around the sun.

What we were talking about in our argument, however, was disproving the existence of something that arose out of faith, such as god, or Jesus, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or a celestial teapot. You can't disprove the existence of any of these. Since they are NOT falsifiable, there is no reason to believe that there will ever be any evidence that proves its existence. It comes down to falsifiability as far as faith is concerned.

When we speak about scientific terms, we don't seek to disprove something, we seek more and newer evidence. Say we're talking about evolution. If there ever was a case where we found a human skeleton in the same layer of strata that dinosaur bones are in, then evolution would be in serious trouble. It would have to either make up for itself, or it would just phase out of existence. Or it was a fabricated hoax. Scientific concepts are constantly changing in this very way. It's what we call the scientific method.

in the matter of faith however, these ideas have existed for millenia. There are supposed "historical accounts" that hardly have any merit when one looks at the artifact record of that time. Just a few of those stories are linked very loosely with actual historical occurrences. The Great Flood, for instance. This is hardly a history textbook we're talking about here. This goes for anything that people just make up on the spot. This is why the idea of god is as stupid as the celestial teapot. This is why we don't have to disprove the existence of god-- because it's as ridiculous as the teapot. We simply can't falsify those claims, like we can with evolution, with gravity, with atoms.

Prove to me first that there's any real evidence that god actually exists, then we'll start talking about falsifiability. Philosophers have been trying for centuries. There is, as of yet, no evidence. I imagine it will remain so.
Just as the discoveries of the micro-cellular world of biology, you need to prove to me that something really small is there, before I can say, "now hold on a minute, that's not what the evidence suggests..."

You can't disprove the existence of something that doesn't have any evidence. It's completely illogical.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"
~Carl Sagan~

What the shit?

Yay! I'm so happy to be going back to school, now that I have a new direction and all! Everything is complete, and all I'm waiting for is my FAFSA!!!!

Otto: Here's your mail from today, it's from CNM.

Me: Okay, cool, maybe they've already given me financial aid! *RIIIIIIP*

"Dear Student,

Your FAFSA ... blah blah blah... has been selected for review by the department of education. Please submit COPIES of your taxes, your parents taxes, both W-2 forms, your birth certificate, your social security card, your grandfather's social security card. The death certificate of your mother's aunts second cousin twice removed, your prepuce (if applicable), a complete copy of yours and your parents genome and your right kidney.

This verification is completely random, and it has nothing to do with how much we trust our students to not make errors on our applications, even though we already make it as contrived as possible. After all, it wasn't difficult for you to have someone drive you to your parents house to get their tax information, sit for several hours deciphering the language that we use on your FREE application for federal student AIDS-- er, aid, and double check to make sure that you didn't miss anything, was it? No, your parents don't live on the complete opposite side of town. Your parents also don't make you fill out everything yourself, even though it says "Parents" on it. We are Jedi.

Thank you for your cooperation,
and by the way, we will send a law enforcement Clydesdale horse to assrape you if we find ANY inconsistencies on your application.

Again, thank you for your cooperation.

Have a nice day!

~CNM Financial Aid bureau-- I mean, department~"

I forgot how fun Financial Aid was :)

fuckers

~David~