Patriotic Backfire

It seems that whenever someone pushes for something based on patriotism, that thing they are advocating makes the country something to be less patriotic about.

Forces Against Pursing Happiness

Needing to work together in a society that tries to push people to be independent causes so much stress and anxiety as to make pursing happiness all but impossible.

Life Support

Existence is a support group for everyone’s eventual death, no different than a support group for older parents about to die. But we don’t treat each other as well, looking to get over on one another as if no one dies.

Divine Abuse

It seems to me that the way believers defend their god is very similar to the way an abused wife "defends" her husband (and her marriage) before realizing there's a way out.

Happiness Is Losing Your Self

It seems that the most common form of mental peace is described as the loss of “I”--the sense of individuality gives way to a connected experience to everything else. It comes from drugs, meditation, strokes, etc. People don’t get a “moment of clarity” and declare they were separate from everything. Yet, we still fight to maintain a sense of separate uniqueness with all of its unhappy results.

You Don't Deserve It

No one deserves the required experience of their own success or failures because they are not solely reached.

Wasted Plans

No matter how much we plan, we seem to rarely use those plans when the time comes.

See What I Mean?

While trying to rationalize, people will switch back and forth between definitions and meanings in order to suit their prejudices and immediate needs.

Immoral Reason

If a god can make anything moral by declaring it so, even though we can reason otherwise, why do we have reason at all? Is reason then to be delcared immoral?

Flat v. Hollow

Looking at the rest of humanity as an atheist is like attending a never-ending debate between people who believe the earth is flat and those who believe it’s hollow.

Nothing IS a Theory

Nothing is a theory. A theory is an explanation of a set of facts and/or how those facts produce an observable phenomenon and likely contains within it a means to disprove its validity. To say something “is just a theory” would be similar to asserting your secret dessert is “a just recipe," a statement that is pure nonsense.

The Theory of Gravity, Music Theory, Theory of Mind, and Theory of Crime, are just a few theories that go right along side the Theory of Evolution, all of them offering explanations of the subject being studied--not something that eventually gets “upgraded” to a fact. Available facts gets used to build the theory, which changes as new or corrected facts get discovered.

If people misunderstand the scientific use of "theory" they don't understand that the best layman's equivalent is "explanation." When anyone hears someone use "theory" in the scientific sense, replacing it with "explanation" would be extremely helpful.

 

A Regrettable Afterlife

Even if you are a god-believer and believe you are going to heaven through "grace," wouldn't it be better to look back and say you made life as pleasant as possible for as many people as possible rather than looking back and seeing the pain and suffering you caused through bigotry and intolerance?

So Glad Things Have Improved

Suggested possible response to those making claims of being hellbound: "Thanks so much for the reminder of the myths and superstitions developed by ancient peoples because they didn't have access to the information we now have. It was a shame they had to live in a time like that. Can you imagine what that was like? Yikes."

The Glue Test

Do you ever get the feeling that some zealous believers are just like 2nd graders who refused to grow up, still primarily using the part of the brain that remembers fondly what it was like to eat glue?

A Perspective On Glenn Beck

If Glenn Beck wasn't famous and you ran across him in a rubber room saying the same things he's saying now, I doubt anyone would think it out of place to find him there.

Real v. Fantasy Should Have A Clear Winner

When people try and dispute real history (and in connection, science) with the Bible, I get the same feeling I suspect would arise if they used "A Tale of Two Cities" or "The Three Musketeers."--surreal, WTF moment that makes me fear for the future of humanity.

Information Always Improves With Time

It still slays me that the assertion of error-free truth in any religious "revealed" text can't simply be rebutted with the counter-assertion, "We have better information now." Unless you hold a position that knowledge doesn't improve with time, this should be a simple and logical statement that's easy to understand and accept.

Controlling The Future

If you come to understand how something works, you can essentially predict the future. If you can control that thing you now understand you can manipulate the future. Maybe religion is like that, too. Praying to a god gives you a sense of control over that god and power over the future. You just have to first understand how that god "works," which leads you to priests and holy books.

Missing The Cycles

We live in a primarily cyclical universe. We can see cycles in everything from the universe itself to weather to planetary rotations to the circulatory system of plants and animals. But we often try and impose linear explanations and planning on our cyclical existence. It can only cause conflict but we fail to see that and continue our mistakes. Ironically, we often impose "circular logic" on an issue, which is an invalid form of rationalization.

Successful Communication Is Joy

It seems to me that successful communication with others is what brings a joy we often don't realize we require before any other kind of joy. It may be what we seek as a pre-requisite to much else and don't even know it.