Ok fine. My apologies. It was basically an exit. I was frustrated from what I was seeing even on this forum, it seems we aren't even making any real progress on educating others about the fallacies of religion. To me, it all looks like stupidity. As I have shown by me provoking you and you provoking me, we can all be stupid. So my apologies for the insults at this point - it was uncalled for. That doesn't mean I will stay with attention on this site, as the last poster noted...
What I came here expecting was a forum of intellectuals that could discuss topics with a very intelligent nature about it. To be able to speak intelligently on almost anything, share ideas and reach a common understanding on a number of topics.
You have to understand that some of us in America see so many problems facing our society today, many of us have some pretty good solutions if we would just put our heads together. But we're going in the wrong direction, and basically seeing the fall of an empire. This is the way a lot of us see America today - and when we get vocal, scientists included, we get some snappy response that either breaks people away from the information we tried to present or puts something in its place. Like climate change. We have been trying to convince people that this scientific finding is not based on myths - for over 100 years. Just now we are starting to see the drought trend that we were expecting to see - along with the more extreme weather patterns. Because we are now at a level never seen before by this earth, we aren't sure it's going to fix itself naturally with an ice-age. My frustration with that is the government instead of fixing the problem just says 'we don't believe in it', or falsifies reports and information, and instead plans to evacuate everyone somewhere should the worst happen. That sucks - especially when the recent stimulus spending alone could have been utilized with real ideas on ways to not only reduce CO2 levels but also create new industries as a result.
While i would also blame that on ignorance, as Greybeard, who usually has something intelligent to say to all parties on a subject when he's not duping somebody, pointed out to me recently.. something I noted just overseeing the threads discussed on this forum.
http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/forums/index.php/topic,23193.0.htmlThis led me to believe that we are all ignorant in a wide variety of issues. I take it to mean that we have an education problem. Or maybe we just aren't thinking for ourselves. Or perhaps that since we are all basically information and processors of information, that we just don't have the right information. At any case, I can't put my head around why we are ignoring the most important things, and acting like such small things that we just have emotion about are instead so important. Like the economy vs. telling some rape victim they have to bear that child, because even though its unborn, we consider it a crime. Why aren't we focusing that kind of care and attention on people that are already living? I mean look at the legislation the past several years and the proposals. We're talking serious stuff.. It leads me to believe that everyone is driven by emotion, and not intelligent thought, as our species would suggest...
So I've been spending my time trying to get people to at least recognize what we are going to be facing as a society. Maybe prepare themselves or maybe answer some things before it becomes a problem. But what I get is nobody seems to care about that stuff, and instead we all talk about small potatoes...
The problem I had with religion is that they are so stuck on religion, that any other topic just relates to that religion in some way, and so you don't end up with an intelligent conversation, and you don't end up reaching any common understanding. I feel it is detrimental in our society today, given what we are going up against. The problem is, nobody is recognizing what is really going on, even in this country.
At first, I thought it was just because religion was so prevalent. I later found that it was due to a lack of information on really many topics. What really got me was when we would talk about these things, nobody was willing to listen to anybody but themselves, as if they already had all the answers.
Take the empty glass argument against you guys for an example. The argument was - can you make it any more empty? Then you would say, well, no. But that's not the truth. The truth is that glass is always full - even in the absence of things. When you take all the air out of a drum, it collapses. The same is true of a void - stuff fills that void at all times (citing nothing is actually filled with dark energy). So what I'm getting at is I can apply that knowledge to a number of things - like ignorance. People have an absence of knowledge and information, thereby an absence of logical reasoning and understanding on so many things. But they're not actually stupid, it just means at that point in time they aren't using their brains, and are running off of emotion, like we just demonstrated.
So I came here expecting that people could discuss the real issues facing society, and found that even numerous people on this site can't really agree on much, and care more about things that affect them personally, even inadvertantly, based on how they feel about a subject. And that emotion is what is driving their decisions on a variety of issues. When presented with new information - it gets passed off unless you finally hear it from an expert. When presented with new ideas - it gets declined just because it hasn't been tried yet. Hell, in my profession when I do new stuff that has benefit, it usually gets backlash from people higher up than me just because they haven't kept up-to-date on their own information and training with programming topics.
So now you can see why I'm frustrated. I see so many problems, and so many various solutions to those problems. But the problems that other people see (like congress), isn't real identification of the problem - and then when they apply some solution it's almost guaranteed to be incorrect.
So I guess I came here to see if I was right that the problem was religion. I would say the real problems facing our society is that we just don't understand the problems as they come along - everything hits us like it's some kind of surprise. The last 'great recession', even though I was just starting my career, didn't surprise me at all. We have income inequality that only happened the same way back in the 30s - no other time. That alone said we were headed for a major recession. I even had arguments with my professor about it in economics - and I turned out to be right, just two years later.
So when I see problems jumping out at me just reading through the news, it makes me frustrated that it seems like nobody else has the same information. That's just me - maybe I'm a little out of proportion, but I see so many things as highly important to several groups of people, and people act like they are powerless to do anything about it. And we're not talking 1% of the population - more like 50-60% groups - several millions of people. How can that many people feel so comfortable about things today when clearly we don't live anywhere close to as good a life as we did back in the 70s and 80s? How can one presidential term like the Clintons shed so much intelligence on how to deal with things like the economy, just to have people forget all about it and create such a mess everywhere in just 4 years? How can we see what happened in the 30s and learn not really anything about it?
What I mean is I'm frustrated because we keep dragging ourselves down off of the cliff - and we don't really need to. I feel if people just knew a little more, or were just a little better educated on things, that so many of us would be better off. But we're not even talking about that stuff.
So that's just it - just frustration on so many levels. You have to understand that there's people like me that I talk to, seeing the same information and problems by staying informed, with just as much frustration seeing better solutions than what people in charge are doing; only saying 'you can't change anything'. I wish that were BS...
