I was surprised by the outpouring of religious sentiment on the thread about all of us being star stuff. Children of the supernovae. Kind of poetic to me.
Now I don't have any problem with religious folk that don't push their religion on me. If you want to believe in God(s) that's fine. If you want to tell me about your religion that's fine. If I feel like it I'll tell you about atheism. If you want to invade my life (one way is by trying to close my favorite club...) then we have a problem!
Too true, slick. That and his closely related brother Greed.
Satanic ?
If a thread was made to troll people this is it
Hey Zip, where is this religious oppression happening? The south? I've never seen it.
@ime -- I'm curious why you say that this is designed to troll. If I were saying something like "religious people are morons" or "religious people are assholes" that would clearly be trolling.
The strongest statement I made was that religious people shouldn't invade my life. Just to be clear, what I mean by that is that they shouldn't use the legal system to tell me what to do unless there is a secular basis for the law (i.e., something most religious and non-religious can agree on -- no murdering, no fraud, no assault, etc.). There is no secular basis for telling people they have to go to church (or telling them they can't go to church) so that's off the table.
It would seem to me to be the case that a group of folks with a "socially questionable" hobby like strip clubbing would agree with that. And also recognize that some religious folks (NOT all religious folks!) are the biggest group trying to do things like close SCs, stamp out porno, etc.
It just seemed to have an air of baiting to it.
Zipertard their is no gods but meeeeeeeeeeeee !
Mikey -- for "oppression" I'll throw out one big thing that affects SC hobbyists. Many cities have ordinances that require SCs be a certain distance from churches. Why? I have no issue with people wanting to go to a church, but why do THEY get a special "bubble" around them?
If the point was that the city didn't want things that had a high potential to lower property costs...cool, require sexually oriented businesses to avoid certain types of signage, etc. But why do places of worship get placed on a pedestal?
Now this isn't huge oppression. The US is (mostly) a free country. But it still says that a religous group gets to trump a business owner "just 'cos". Indeed, think of all of the consensual crimes that are illegal (though sometimes violations are ignored). How many are ultimately driven by religion? Why was Ken Cuccinelli all bully for sodomy laws and no contraception? etc. etc.
I want to stress that I'm only criticizing those religious folks that want to impose their beliefs using the law. This isn't a general trashing of religion.
Zipertroll its because church is sci-fi and clubs are not
Agreed, zipman. Too often the overly vocal religious zealots give the more tolerant ones a bad rep.
5005 their is no bad rep but Mine !
@Dracula -- yeah you are...who's the lil' prince o' darkness on da DB? It you lil' dude!
@ime -- it's interesting that you perceived the first that way. I was genuinely curious whether the comment on the previous thread were a "we're going to give Alucard shit" thing or a genuine objection to the statements about atheism.
Richard Dawkins has said that religion is the one thing that you can't criticize without getting a strong objection. But SOME religious folks want to have it both ways. They want to be able to base certain laws on their vision of morality but if you call them on it they lose it because you're "criticizing their religion".
Let's go to Virginia for the Rep. Thomas Garrett (who ran as a "Cuccinelli conservative") wants to outlaw oral and anal sex between teens. Mind you that this doesn't limit things like adults preying on under 18s -- there are laws against that already and they SHOULD be enforced. Eugene Volkh said of this law:
Well, Virginia law provides that genital sex with a 15-to-17-year-old is a misdemeanor, and sex among 15-to-17-year-olds is perfectly legal. So if two 17-year-olds are choosing whether to have oral sex or genital sex, the law would push them towards the form of sex that is more likely to transmit disease, and more likely to cause unwanted pregnancy. Genius.
What secular goals would this legislation further? None. It's basis is ultimately the beliefs of the religious right. Note that Cuccinelli wanted more expansive "crimes against nature" laws. My feeling 'bout sodomy (among consenting adults) is "don't do it if you don't like it". My other feeling is "fuck yeah!"
I don't care who believes what everyone should be free to believe what they want. I fucking hate people who try to force others to believe same as they do whether religious or athiest. People need to worry about themselves.
In regards to the other thread the person who started it is a total troll but never in a funny way he's just a douche. Even as far as his "proof" some borderline webpage doesn't cut it. At minimum peer reviewed articles from reputable sources are a start.
Im god
One thing I will agree with others is that I do not believe just because you or I believe something, we should not be forced into believing what someone else believes in. They can argue about it and talk about it but I sure hope they do not try to pass laws enforcing what they believe. If you don't believe guns are needed, that's fine. Just don't try to restrict everyone else's rights to protect themselves. If you believe drinking is immoral that's your right, just don't pass laws restricting my ability to have a drink, with possible exclusions for safety reasons, ie drunk driving. However laws against buying beer on Sunday are in contradiction to what the Founding Fathers set up in this country regarding freedom of religion. My religion as far as I know doesn't care or sees nothing wrong with buying beer on Sunday. I believe Baptists or some other religion put all those laws on the books. I disagree with them.
I go to both church and strip clubs and I believe many others do too. We as humans are sexual creatures and that is part of life. There are a lot of people using the name of religion to try to restrict and impose their beliefs on others. This country was set up with freedom of religion as a right. I guess you do away with one of the rights, the right to bear arms, they might think it's ok to do away with all your other rights. I believe the Nazis did the same tactics when they started rounding up certain groups they thought might be opposition. Do away with one opposition group, work their way up. The same thing might be happening to our rights. ok my two cent rant is over.
And I think that Cuccinelli is an imsufferable moron as well.
There is a lot of proof out there about the way the Universe began and works and how it has contributed to the beginning of life. I don't intend to ever cite EVERY written word of PROOF as my attackers want.
IMO ime just doesn't seem to read or hear anything that may contradict his beliefs. Plus he has a major issue with me, so hence his claim that my thread was trolling.
If that is the case, then EVERY thread ever started that isn't 110% about Strip Clubs is trolling and most members are guilty.
zipman68, ime was being genuine in his words about "giving shit" or harassment/attacks. He is in conspiracy with others.
^^^there is no conspiracy about you that I am a part of you moron. You just piss off enough people with your nonsense that most people don't like you. Don't ever try to speak on what I think or what I do because you have no idea.
One of the co-conspirators admitted it the other day.
The things I say here are not nonsense. The are many, many TRUE nonsense posters. Just because you dislike what I say doesn't make it nonsense.
I'm no part of any conspiracy plus you don't warrant one. I also don't need any conspiracy I am pretty clear that I think your a nutbag, so no secret there. I get it Costanza just because you believe it.
@alucard. face it. you come out of the shallow end of the gene pool and will never have the intellect to understand the nature of existence no matter how much you wave your PBS science entertainment programs around like some born again preacher waves the good book. it is simply too much for your tiny little brain.
if you want to pretend to understand science then you should start with something like this that is less taxing and at least applies to you in your daily miserable life such as it is:
Abstract (provisional) Introduction Several mammalian species spontaneously align their body axis with respect to the Earth's magnetic field (MF) lines in diverse behavioral contexts. Magnetic alignment is a suitable paradigm to scan for the occurrence of magnetosensitivity across animal taxa with the heuristic potential to contribute to the understanding of the mechanism of magnetoreception and identify further functions of magnetosensation apart from navigation. With this in mind we searched for signs of magnetic alignment in dogs. We measured the direction of the body axis in 70 dogs of 37 breeds during defecation (1,893 observations) and urination (5,582 observations) over a two-year period. After complete sampling, we sorted the data according to the geomagnetic conditions prevailing during the respective sampling periods. Relative declination and intensity changes of the MF during the respective dog walks were calculated from daily magnetograms. Directional preferences of dogs under different MF conditions were analyzed and tested by means of circular statistics.
Results Dogs preferred to excrete with the body being aligned along the North-south axis under calm MF conditions. This directional behavior was abolished under Unstable MF. The best predictor of the behavioral switch was the rate of change in declination, i.e., polar orientation of the MF.
Conclusions It is for the first time that (a) magnetic sensitivity was proved in dogs, (b) a measurable, predictable behavioral reaction upon natural MF fluctuations could be unambiguously proven in a mammal, and (c) high sensitivity to small changes in polarity, rather than in intensity, of MF was identified as biologically meaningful. Our findings open new horizons in magnetoreception research. Since the MF is calm in only about 20 % of the daylight period, our findings might provide an explanation why many magnetoreception experiments were hardly replicable and why directional values of records in diverse observations are frequently compromised by scatter.
You douche-boy (aka DoctorPhil).
WTF? Why the hell would you pick a rather off topic peer-reviewed publication to highlight?
You can't back up your case with logic so you post random stuff that you believe to demonstrate you're intellectual superiority. The sad thing is that you don't even understand how illogical and ill informed your arguments are. So you invade a thread where I was trying to suss out the thoughts of people who post here. I wrote it respecting a diversity of opinions. If you just want to trash Alucard start your own damn thread.
Or just once decide to be a reasonable person. Give up this "I'm educated and superior" act and try to have fun. Sheesh...just stop bein' a douche.
zipman68 have you noticed how many of his [DoctorPhil] so-called posts are aimed at me? That should tell you a lot about that thing.
If you look at the history of mankind, it would seem that Ares/Mars is our favorite deity. We love to worship War.