The what ever thread...

[D.o.S.]

Man fuck running.

[bob the r0bot]

Man fuck running.

Seconded.

Destroys your knees and I haven't seen a single person running that seemed like they were having a good time.

[gunslinger_burrito]

There's actually not much research showing that running is bad for your knees. If your knees hurt while you run, it's most likely because you have bad form. My knees, ankles and shins killed me when I started running a few years back, but once I got some decent running shoes, the problems all went away. I sometimes miss running (it's so meditative and cleared my head so well), but I love the gymnastic-inspired strength training I do now so much.

[PetZounds]

Update:
Texted her, she responded.
We're going to hang out on Thursday.
She actually suggested we go get coffee and then head over to a cool local bookstore afterward.

The fact that she already suggested something past just grabbing coffee has me super stoked.

[snipelfritz]

Not to generalize lady types, but often they are conditioned not to reach out or suggest things and are predisposed to "wait for the man to take action."

Trolling militant atheists by calling them out on their hypocrisy is almost too easy.

...wut?

By "militant atheists" I mean people who are like " all religion is bad, it only makes people intolerant of people with other views and goes against logic. If you don't believe me, the crusades."

Religious intolerance and hate are bad, but generalizing and condemning people's beliefs because of some bad apples...well, is just plain intolerant and hateful. It seems obvious to me, but it's actually laughable that people like Bill Maher exist profiting off exactly the sort oofclosed minded views he's preaching against.

[ShaolinLambKiller]

[snipelfritz]

[jfrey]

Trolling militant atheists by calling them out on their hypocrisy is almost too easy.

...wut?

By "militant atheists" I mean people who are like " all religion is bad, it only makes people intolerant of people with other views and goes against logic. If you don't believe me, the crusades."

Religious intolerance and hate are bad, but generalizing and condemning people's beliefs because of some bad apples...well, is just plain intolerant and hateful. It seems obvious to me, but it's actually laughable that people like Bill Maher exist profiting off exactly the sort oofclosed minded views he's preaching against.

This will get ugly, so I'm not going to get into it. It's the subject I have studied more than anything else in my life. I've spent more time on it than I have practicing guitar, taking classes for the degree I got, or anything else I have ever spent time learning about. Suffice it to say I am atheist, and antitheist, and semi-militant about it.

[snipelfritz]

To each their own views. That's what I say.

I just turned the heat on in my apartment for the first time this season. I think 12 degrees outside warrants it though.

I have a bunch of candy and am watching Cowboy Bebop for the 2nd time. Getting in bed as the coke (a very rare treat) comes down and ambien kicks in. Time to get cuddleh.

[gunslinger_burrito]

Trolling militant atheists by calling them out on their hypocrisy is almost too easy.

...wut?

By "militant atheists" I mean people who are like " all religion is bad, it only makes people intolerant of people with other views and goes against logic. If you don't believe me, the crusades."

Religious intolerance and hate are bad, but generalizing and condemning people's beliefs because of some bad apples...well, is just plain intolerant and hateful. It seems obvious to me, but it's actually laughable that people like Bill Maher exist profiting off exactly the sort oofclosed minded views he's preaching against.

This will get ugly, so I'm not going to get into it. It's the subject I have studied more than anything else in my life. I've spent more time on it than I have practicing guitar, taking classes for the degree I got, or anything else I have ever spent time learning about. Suffice it to say I am atheist, and antitheist, and semi-militant about it.

Have you ever read any Joseph Campbell? His approach to religion and mythology is so totally unlike everyone's typical approach. He even goes so far as to say, repeatedly, that it's a great tragedy and which leads to all kinds of bad stuff when religious metaphors (key word there) get interpreted as fact. Only after reading and listening to a LOT of what he had to say did I come to some religions with a "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" approach. Some of them have great advice mixed in among the weirdness, if you can look at it as metaphor..... I have a pile of books to read, but I want to pick up Sam Harris' new book, as it deals with meditation and "spirituality."

Once again, the key word is "metaphor"
“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”
― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

[jfrey]

Have you ever read any Joseph Campbell? His approach to religion and mythology is so totally unlike everyone's typical approach. He even goes so far as to say, repeatedly, that it's a great tragedy and which leads to all kinds of bad stuff when religious metaphors (key word there) get interpreted as fact. Only after reading and listening to a LOT of what he had to say did I come to some religions with a "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" approach. Some of them have great advice mixed in among the weirdness, if you can look at it as metaphor..... I have a pile of books to read, but I want to pick up Sam Harris' new book, as it deals with meditation and "spirituality."

Once again, the key word is "metaphor"
“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”
― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

NSFWing this in case anyone wants to just not get drawn into it lol.

NSFW: show

I read some of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, but that's it.

I'll have to look into his other works. The first flaw I see though - and maybe he explains this or disassembles it in some way in his writings - is that most of what you would call religious "metaphors" weren't ever meant to be metaphors in the first place. Add onto that, the fact that in few people is the mind naturally attuned to thinking about things in that way - leading most inevitably to literal interpretations, and all of the problems that follow that.

I haven't read that newest Harris book yet, but it's on my list. I have read all of his other books.

My main problem is with the concept of belief. The more immediate problem though is that beliefs do have real consequences. Saying live and let live or whatever is a cop out. It grants license for stupidity. It's why we have declining vaccination rates, people opposing gmo research when starvation and malnutrition are still serious problems in large portions of the world, opposition to stem cell research which could in our lifetime wipe out hundreds of debilitating conditions if allowed to. Michael Specter's Ted Talk, "The danger of science denial" is good on that subject.

And even if you aren't part of the immediate problem - that is to say, even if you aren't trying to restrict other people or research, or impose your beliefs on others - you are still part of a problem. That is that your beliefs will in some way be influencing even in minute ways your behaviour. Causing you to make decisions that aren't quite rational. Costing you over the course of your lifetime time, or money, or stress, or options. How many hours have been wasted praying? What might a person have done with that time instead? What might they have done with that $5 they drop in a collection box every week for 30 years? What about when they make decisions on what to buy or how to travel based on what they feel instead of statistical information?

And, being ok with moderate beliefs, gives more extreme beliefs a degree of credibility, which is something we can less and less afford.

[D.o.S.]

But what do you really think?

[Twangasaurus]

Yeah man, I'm inclined to agree and I think a big problem is that people don't understand the very seperate roles that science and philosophy (or theology) play. I think this also includes a lot of scientists. If you walk up to somebody on the street and you ask them who Karl Popper is or what does Falsification means how many are going to answer correctly? If you asked another group of people what makes the difference between an experiment and a correlational observation or what a confound is how many are going to answer correctly (even with "correlation does not equal causation" thrown around every five seconds these days)? Not enough. How the fuck are people supposed to understand what science does, how it works, and what the limitations of science are if nobody fucking teaches them? All the information they get regarding science comes from secondary (or worse) sources that were written by tabloid journalists or the guy that usually does the fucking sports column. They don't know what they are talking about (specialised science journalism died in newspapers about fifteen years ago) and everything they write isn't to inform but to sell ad spaces so it's all sensationalised, black and white. People say science also involves faith and they are absolutely correct but the difference is that science has proof, and if the proof changes so do our opinions. I mean, I get it, if you don't know the nitty gritty it can look terribly boring (another failing of the education system) and following beliefs based on how we feel is IMMENSELY satifiying, we are after all an emotional species, but it's fucking dragging us down.

A bit of a side note but people who say that science some how "snothers" their spirituality baffle me. I remember my first year of university and I was doing a biology class and we were being taught about evolution. It's one of those things that you accept as fact but seeing it in action is something else. We did a segment on the design of pentadactyl limbs and I was studying and feeling the bones in my hand and I look over to a scale model of the bones in a whale fin sitting on the work bench. The similarity in the structure to our own hand is absolutely incredible and I had this poignant moment of clarity and awakening. I'd never felt so completely connected to everything before, not even on psychedelics.

I study psychology now and every day I get a similar feeling of wonderment. The universe through the lense of science is truly amazing, I don't know why anyone would bother with the more "supernatural" parts of theology or new age beliefs when the regular old nature beats it every. Freaking. Time. I suppose in that sense, on some days you might be able to call me a pantheist. This is not to say that science has the answer to everything. Like I said before science can only answer questions that are falsifiable, testable. Science doesn't know whether or not there is a god. Science can't tell us whether or not our actions are ethical. That's the role of philosophy and theology and only trouble can come of each tool trying to answer questions in each others wheel house (creationism, or militant athiests spouting absolutes about the nature of god, or anything for that matter). I think we need to either improve our education methods or learn how to stay out of conversations that we are totally (or worse, partially) ignorant of (and learn to identify said ignorance). How do we do that? Dunno, but I would like to be part of the solution.

[D.o.S.]

Quite. I have very little desire to get drawn into this, mostly because I'm working and don't have time to do the subject justice, but -- particularly in the US -- there's a serious anti-intellectualism to many religious institutions here that I find exceptionally toxic. I know a few religious scholars who are really great people, but they're hardly representative of the (much larger swath of) evangelical types, who seem to hoist many of their fears and uncertainties about their own problems in the world onto the rise of secularism, which is, frankly, terrifying.

Also, I think a lot of the social implications of the mega-church mindset are nothing short of horrendous, which is not to take away from the people who've found solace in it. I can't be that bold in good conscience.

[gunslinger_burrito]

@ jfrey:

Without doing an insane amount of research, I think it may be hard to say what parts of what religions are meant literally or metaphorically. Throughout history, many occult and metaphysical authors had to hide their philosophy behind the guise of the popular religions in order to avoid persecution. Campbell likes to quote the gospel of Thomas (one not found in many modern bibles, in fact I think it's one of the Apocrypha) because in it Jesus tells the Apostles that they are him.... it's really a very "buddhist" message.

I'm certainly not saying that the fanatics who want to enact religious legislation and whatnot should be left to their devices. The problem is the separation of church and state and how certain parties want the two to become closer together. Public schools, being funded by the public/government/etc shouldn't teach religious points of view unless it's only taught as part of what everyone else believes, and what science shows as well. Whenever issues like this come up, I have to bring up a question. How much is freedom worth? I mean, we can't say that you should be free to practice any religion you want and then tell people they can't. It's like all the super politically correct crusaders out there right now. it doesn't seem like they want freedom of speech. I think people should be free to do as they see fit as long as it doesn't harm another person. Is there a line about to be drawn in freedom of speech/religion?