Could ignorance win?  (Keeps me awake at night)

“Christians are a lot more bold under Bush…“

Since these are the same clowns who not only believe in Armageddon, but actually WANT it to happen, this is scary. Personally, I don’t much care what they do with their own lives, but they seem to have no hesitation to drag everybody else down with them (it’s for our own good, you know). If Bush’s successor wins in ‘08, batten down the hatches.

Could ignorance win?  (Keeps me awake at night)

You said it, DoF.  When I was young and foolish (never mind when that was) I thought that what was gained by society in the way of wisdom, was gained, and couldn’t be lost.

Wrong.  Unfortunately, we’re wealthy enough so that stupidity doesn’t kill its bearer any more, and dangerous enough to wreak a lot of damage with our stupidity.  All bets are off.

I was watching the Discovery Channel on Sunday.  The show was about the life of Jesus.  They took the Jesus as revolutionary route and did a pretty good job of it.  At then end when they started talking about the resurrection they had a “minister” type on, discussing faith.  To paraphrase the guy, he said that faith was what overpowered the lowest human trait; reason.  I just sat there with my mouth agape.

You said it, DoF.  When I was young and foolish (never mind when that was) I thought that what was gained by society in the way of wisdom, was gained, and couldn’t be lost.

I just typed almost that very sentence the other day on another hangout of mine. I have a great deal of anger towards willfully ignorant people. And while I’d like to truly ‘live and let live’, they don’t seem content to do the same. I’m reminded of crabs in a bucket….

Being the parent of a 12 year old girl and a 3 year old boy…I’ve taken my daughter’s education very seriously, and I have corrected for her what the schools teach wrongly, I will do the same with my son…luckily for me, she’s had teachers who have no problem with her bringing in information that is not presented in her textbooks.  American history has been the most fun so far…our school system has an excellent science program…back in the day when I was in the same system, I took microbiology and genetics in high school….when I took the same courses at the University I was suprised at how much I retained from my high school class…the state of the education system in the US sometimes scares me, especially when I run into the future educators in my classes here at WSU.  Many of them expect all information to be spoon fed to them and are not willing to seek out answers for themselves…this is something I feel is one of the main objectives of educators, not to spoon feed information to the kids but to teach them to seek out the answers to their questions. You know the whole teaching a man to fish proverby thing. One task I would love to undertake, is the revamping of the public school system.  So much needs to change…while there have been advancements that I’ve seen in our school system, there is still antiquated information being passed on to our kids today…

he said that faith was what overpowered the lowest human trait; reason.  I just sat there with my mouth agape.

Ohmigod. I must have missed that one. And I rarely miss a Discovery/History Channel bit about religion.

Reason is the lowest human trait!? I say it’s willful ignorance.

I think this really goes back to the idea that “ignorance is bliss.“ As long as these people can squelch free thought and reason, then intelligence will (supposedly) be eradicated and people can go back to being blissfully ignorant. You know, like the golden era of the Dark Ages where the church has absolute control through the monarchy, and the peasants were refused “real” education. Then we can finally get back to the basics of fearing God and paving the way for the Apocalypse by killing our enemies, just like our Lord and Savior Jesus told us to do in the Bible!

Oh wait, no he didn’t….

I often wonder—did these people read the same Bible as I? I seem to have missed the whole part about Jesus telling us to be close-minded and ignorant, and to fuse church and state. Indeed, I seem to remember him saying, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” and to God that which is His (or something similar). I’m sure this is a kind of tangent, but doesn’t this essentially set forth a separation of church and state (and all functions of the state, and thus the public school system)?

Honestly, I really am trying to see things Mummert’s way, but this wool is just so damned itchy over my eyes!

So much needs to change…while there have been advancements that I’ve seen in our school system, there is still antiquated information being passed on to our kids today…

There might be some slight problems in that, like goverment forcing sciences, medias and others to its propaganda machines.

BTW, students making oaths in school is quite similar to praqctise in dictatorships.

“Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.“
-Napoleon Bonaparte

“Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.“
-Arthur Shopenhauer

“Religion is what the common people see as true, the wise people see as false, and the rulers see as useful.“
-Seneca

“When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.“
-Robert A. Heinlein

If education, reason, and intelligence are the antithesis of religious faith, I do believe I will continue to be a heathen.  Hooray for the heathens!

Reading this to Jay he quoted, “Religion is the opiate of the masses”. (from Marx he thinks)

Groucho Marx never said any such thing.

Oh, wait a second…

Miriam, you raise an excellent point about Jesus which is something I’ve tried to do with the True Believers™ on many occasions, but most of them just ignore it. Jesus basically shows up and lays out some simple rules. If you want to live a good life and be rewarded in Heaven then do these things and don’t do those things, but he never advocated for enshrining those moral teachings into law or forcing anyone to adhere to them. The whole point is that you have to choose to live your life in that fashion of your own free will or it doesn’t count.

Isn’t the argument that the Christians always use for why God gave us free will is because he wanted us to make the choice to love him and live a good life? If that’s true then how does forcing folks into morality through legislation make any sense to them at all?

You know the whole teaching a man to fish proverby thing.

Is that the one that goes,“Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.“?

“Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s� and to God that which is His (or something similar). I’m sure this is a kind of tangent, but doesn’t this essentially set forth a separation of church and state (and all functions of the state, and thus the public school system)?

Y E S S ! (Damn this wool)

Speaking about “ignorance is bliss…“ a blogger advised me to type into GOOGLE: Rapture Index.
Perhaps you all know about this, but if someone has not had this LOL experience, get ready for the most hogwash of your life.

Damn my parents for wasting all that money on my education. But who could ever have imagined 45 years ago that the stupid would take over the country?

Critical, intelligent reasoning & thinking are hard work.  Ignorance is the easy way out for these sheeple.

Stupid is as stupid does, as my grandmother used to say.

I’m confused. Forest Gump was your grandmother?

No, Forest Gump wasn’t my grandmother.  But grandma really did used to tell us that “Stupid is as stupid does” and another favorite: “Pretty is as pretty does.“  She died 30 years before the movie came out and I never saw the movie.  Odd coincidence.  But she was from the deep south, if that explains anything.  They’re full of homey little sayings.

I was just kidding, Cindi, really! Pleasedon’thitme! (Said in my best Woody Allen imitation)

I’m actually familiar with some of the Southernisms if only because my biological father’s family is from North Carolina. My father moved up to Michigan to get a job making cars, but he was still very much the hillbilly as was a good portion of the neighborhood in Pontiac that I grew up in. I was a city boy, but I grew up among hillbillies.

Oh, Les - I could never be mad enough at you to resort to physical violence.  You’re one of the few voices of reason the education and intelligent have left.  I’m reserving my barely-under-the-surface rage these days for the truly deserving.  And there are so many truly deserving out there. 

I’d just like to say a big “Hello” to all the folks visiting from MSNBC.com.

I noticed a spike in traffic so I checked the referrer logs and was surprised to see this entry was linked to by Will who maintains the Clicked blog for MSNBC.com. Not quite the same barrage of traffic as being FARKed or Slash-dotted, but enough to make me feel warm and fuzzy just the same.

Intelligent Design Version 1 was blatantly wrong. It was rebutted by scientists and by the American Revolution.

Intelligent Design Version 1 held that, intelligently, the earth is flat and the center of the universe; only three continents and three races exist (an intelligent paralleling of the Trinity); the only intelligent form of government is monarchy with a “divine right of kings,“ etc. Details are at http://medicolegal.tripod.com/obvoting.htm.

Intelligent Design version 1 was refuted by scientists such as Copernicius and Galileo, and
by people such as George Washington. The US abolished monarchy! Eventually most all the monarchies so intelligently installed in office with “divine right” have been abolished: Austria, France, Russia, Germany, Italy, etc.

Modern Intelligent Design types do not have the integrity to admit their huge error rate, but it seems that they must up to some high number Version of Intelligent Design, perhaps Version 99 or so!

Current ntelligent Design Version 99 or so types, whose predecessors insisted that voting is a sin and rebellion against the holy anointed monarch, now insist the opposite!!

PS: The link to the quote, “"We’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture,“ is not working this morning.

Ah, the one thing that these bible beating ignoramuses fear; reason! 

I wanna thank Les and E.T. for giving me hope in the form of morning funnies and giving me awesome quotes and ideas for more, respectively.

The fact that christians are more bold under Bush should inspire more people to oust him and cut down their morale, if only for now.  As well, the dark ages are what will come to pass shold the christians know total victory, and I can only think of one group who would be entirely unaffected; the amish.

However, as much as I love to assault the christians, it helps to believe in something out there, just something tangeable and non-oppressive, like soda and candy early in the morning or some such thing.

So, rock on, I’m sorry this post wasn’t as driven as my others, but I am in dire need of caffiene and soup and mind-rotting entertainment.  Keep up the fight, you wise, intellegent, hopeful, eductaed and driven men!!!

*collapses on floor*