The unpopular opinion thread

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

Driving and talking on a cell phone should be illegal in the US, like in most other first-world countries. And people that text message and drive should get their driving privileges revoked.

Damn straight. Studies show that talking and driving has an equivalent crash rate to mid-level drink-driving (that is BAC 0.08-0.15).

Rome much? Greece?

Not until the mass indoctrination of Christianity/Islam have gays ever experienced persecution in the West (cant speak for the East...no idea). So basically, gays have been persecuted far shorter a span then when they were not (historically speaking).

Spartans (and Greece as a whole) used to practice pedastry, which carried over into early Roman culture as well.

With that said, I dont care about what gays do or dont do. Marriage, child raising, whatever. None of my business.

Okay, I should have said "persecuted for the entirety of recent history". Sheesh. Name me a culture in the last 1000 years that hasn't persecuted gays.

Species go extinct everyday and it's only the popular ones people give a about on the endangered list.

Yup. ANd the current extinction rate is about 1000 times the natural background rate. We humans are currently causing a mass extinction event the likes of which has not been seen since the dinosaurs disappeared.

Global warming is real.

You bet it is.

Global Warming has been happening since the end of the Ice Age.
Al Gore propaganda that all tree huggers have embraced.

you and Al Gore. I'll believe the SCIENTISTS from every major scientific ins ution in the world and the thousands of studies from diverse scientific fields which all point to the same thing.

The Olympics are stupid. They do not celebrate anything of value. They are simply a vehicle to generate television ad revenue and to promote the host nation's propaganda.

+1

Most people who are "green" are just trying to convince themselves there is a way to continue being mindless consumer drones without the nasty global consequences.

Totally - so many people claim to be "green" when they haven't done a ing thing about it.

You have to actually measure your impact (to produce a baseline), and then change your lifestyle (and measure again), in order to change your footprint on the planet. I'm proud to say I've done exactly that and reduced my environmental footprint by around 60% in 2 years.

I have figured out what will supplant modernity: neo-tribalism. America will dissolve into a large number of tribes with a complex network of alliances and rivalries. When conflict emerges, the tribes most predisposed to violence will win.

Sorry, team Blue.

Sad but true.

99% of all romantic comedies and "chick flicks," especially those made in recent years, are not only vapid and dull, but also incredibly negative towards women.

Indeed.

Sarah Silverman is funny.

Not.

Extra Stout wins this thread. He's said the most intelligent things.

Whottt - athiesm does not claim that there are no greater beings in the Universe, it claims that there are no anthropocentric GODS, a subtle yet important difference which invalidates your entire rant back on page 6. However, I'm an agnostic anyway, so I'm not going to debate it with you any further than that.

As for the whole arguement about "marriage"... sheesh guys, marriage is clearly a religo-legal-cultural construct. WHat you were really arguing is monogamy vs polygamy/polygyny, and that is both a biological and a cultural construct depending on context... but , I can't be bothered to say any more than that. Let's argue it over a (case of) beer if I ever visit SA again (I have curtailed my international travel for environmental reasons, although i might hop on a freighter to the States in a year or two).

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

This new age bull with the tea drinking and like yoga is stupid and bull .

Yeah, but the cult of coffee and weight-lifting is so much more valid!

Tea goes back to China about 5000 yrs ago, and yoga about 7000 yrs, so yeah, um, you're stupid and bull for dismissing things you don't understand.

Actually, you'd said some half-reasonable things in this thread up until then.

[E20]

Yeah, but the cult of coffee and weight-lifting is so much more valid!

Tea goes back to China about 5000 yrs ago, and yoga about 7000 yrs, so yeah, um, you're stupid and bull for dismissing things you don't understand.

Actually, you'd said some half-reasonable things in this thread up until then.

Ugh........I don't drink coffee or any caffiene related products. I've been drinking tea for 19 years, it's our national drink and my family and I go through 3-5 thermoses of tea a day. It's just the sudden way everybody now humps those things because some celebrity started and everybody is raving about the benefits when they don't know jack about because of some fad. I never said specifically yoga and tea were bull , just the way a bunch of people are riding it. Samthing with Madonna and that whole kabbalah incident, she started it and now half of hollywood is doing the same thing, they say it has helath benfits eeirly similar to the benefits taht tea and yoga have or whatever.

Go back to your biodome you EPA pansy.

BTW weight lifting pwns.

[debo]

some people are too stupid to deserve freedom of speech

[whottt]

Whottt - athiesm does not claim that there are no greater beings in the Universe, it claims that there are no anthropocentric GODS,

No it doesn't...it says there is no god or gods. Period.

a subtle yet important difference which invalidates your entire rant back on page 6.

LOL...invalidates it in what way? Because I

A. Realize they lacked a specialized modern scientific vocabulary 3000+ years ago


B. Realize that even if they had one, whatever happened or was the foundation for what happened, the description of it would have evolved drastically in all those years since, as would have the sounds of the words, as would have the meanings of the words...and that's not even taking into account being intepreted by different cultures and languages, being altered by different leaders for their own purposes, not to mention having every chronicler slip his .02 in to grab a slice of immortality.


40 years ago gay didn't mean what it means now...now the original definition of that word is defacto buried for all time, and that's in the age of recorded history.


C. Realize that if we encountered God right now, we still wouldn't have the worlds to describe his perceptions, or the minds to grasp them, for if we did, we'd be the gods. New words would have to be invented to accurately describe them, but more than likely we wouldn't invent new words, we'd apply pre-existing ones to them, to describe heretofore unconceived of things, ...and 3000 years from now we'd sound like a bunch of simplistic morons to the people of that time. Even if they researched, they'd look up the original definition, even though we weren't using in terms of the original definition. Even if we recorded verbatim what happened or what we were told, the words wouldn't mean the same thing and the future generations understanding of it would be different then ours, because they will be looking at it from their perspective of creation, their point in time...not ours.


IOW how in the do you expect a culture in which science doesn't exist to give you a scientific explanation, and how do you expect them to understand something they don't understand, they couldn't understand, unless they themselves were god, and even if they were, would you expect their descendants 3000 years later to have the same intepretation of events, under any cir stances..........................


Question ?

However, I'm an agnostic anyway, so I'm not going to debate it with you any further than that.

Oh let's...it's been proven that Christ existed...has it been proven that God doesn't? It's been proven that many biblical events did happen...has it been proven that any atheistic ones did?


Furthermore...as I said, man and man alone of all creatures on this planet, has spiritual beliefs....and we have always had them, they actually predate the existence of modern thinking man.........


What were the atheists doing back then? Where is their great civilization?


There's not one...there's not one now.


It doesn't take intellect to not believe in higher beings, even a single creator...a dog can do it.


Meanwhile...the people who follow the 10 commandments...they are doing pretty good.

[CuckingFunt]

People read too much into what other people say. if words like pussy or insult you, maybe you just arent psychologically strong enough. kids call each other meaner, more personal things. the personalized insult is what hurts, not the random word vomit that an ass says to anyone s/he comes across. if its not the insult, but the insinuation that it must mean one sex or race or religion or whatever is more inferior to the person saying it, i doubt that the insultor feels that way. you dont think about that stuff when you are fuming at someone. calling someone a piece of doesnt mean you think piss is the superior effluence. thinking too much into petty like that just empowers the person insulting you more (thats if they even realized its effect).

It's not about the words. Look at my screen name and ask yourself if I'm not psychologically strong enough for dirty words. It's about the meaning behind those words.

Calling someone a piece of isn't saying that piss is better, it's saying that is an unpleasant enough substance to count as an insult. Therefore, insulting a man by calling him a woman is saying that being a woman is an unpleasant enough fate to count as an insult.

I gotta disagree with you on this one Funt...women are more than just their genitals.

No .

Or it assumes that women and men have traditionally had different strengths and different weakenesses...I think that's a fairly accurate statement, if only because women bear children and primarily are the nurterers. But the truth of the matter is that many do assume an inherent inequality in the sexes...I don't really agree with that but I won't deny that it has been and largely still is the mindset of many. Including some women...

Hmmm...regardless of what most men think of the intelligence of women compared to men...most men, even the misogynists, will concede that women's IQ when it comes to men far exceeds the IQ of men when it comes to women.

There hasn't been a single society in the history of man where women primarily served as the hunters, or even the co-hunters. or men primarily as the child rearers. Women have often been the gatherers and prior to the industrial revolution even the farmers, but never the hunters. So it is pretty much an absolute statement that men are the killers, the takers of life women are the nuturers and givers of life....and killing takes a certain hardness, a lack of sympathy, a lack of empathy. This is not to say women can't do it...only that at no point in history has it been their role in an organized society.

You can call it how you see it, but it has been strictly the domain of man since time began. Not a single recorded case to the contrary........

And comments like that have been used to goad men into a killing mindset for the purpose of survival I'd imagine, for almost as long.

Since those sorts of insults are usually aimed a players showing an unwillingness ot hurt their opponent, a lack of killer instinct if you will...is it really that hard to understand why men make those sorts of comments to one another at times when they aren't supposed to be giving life, but taking it? Figuratively speaking of course.

Right and I'd counter that those insults are offensive because of the discrimination itself that has existed/exists, not because the actually convey some sort of inequality in their utterance, it's more about the difference in roles, which weren't really a choice. That's why I don't think it bothers the majority of men to hear women saying a woman acts or looks like a man or calling one of them a etc.

You could say those sorts of expressions are now an anachronism in an industrialized civilization that strives to be egalitarian...but they definitely served a purpose in the past. It got me to kill(and skin) when my Dad was showing me how to do it....

That's a whole lot of talk that, unfortunately, doesn't really address the point that either easjer or I were making. It's not about biological gender differences or the complex dynamics of a hunter/gatherer society. It's about the fact that using female traits as an insult to suggest weakness is also equating womanhood or femininity with weakness. That's offensive in and of itself. The frequency with which it happens, both here and in the real world, is especially so.

And, quite frankly, as a man, it's really not your place to tell me that it's not offensive.

Also, of course it doesn't bother you (or pehaps the majority of men, but I really haven't polled enough of them to know for sure) if a woman were to call another woman a , or suggest she was acting like a man. The only reason anyone would ever have to do that would be a woman were acting too strong, or too independently, or too masculine. In the insult world, = strong, independent, and masculine; therefore, man = strong, independent, and masculine. Societally, that's the jackpot. Saying that a woman acts (or looks) too much like a man is an insult to her for not adequately fulfilling all that expected of a woman, but still is associated with character traits that are seen as good and powerful.

You know what Funt, I'll say something else, the end result of the discrimination based on gender roles is ultimately a negative for men and mankind...as women aren't supposed to be hard, they are supposed to be nurtuers, and the result of the inequlity is that women are now striving to be more manlike and harder...I don't see that as a benefit to the human race personally...it's unfortunate that it happened. It's definitely upset the balance of human nature.

Women were supposed to be nurturers, perhaps, but technological advances have long since erased whatever relatively miniscule physiological and biological differences there ever were between the sexes. We're several hundred years removed from hunter/gatherer human relations and, at this point, whatever division there is between the sexes is entirely socially constructed.

[DisgruntledLionFan#54,927]

Oh, and I think I've come around to whottt's view of singledom (several pages back). As someone who has never been married and who, at 36, has done the serial hookup thing and the serial dating thing, I've come to realize that finding some one specific person to share a life with seems a fabulous choice.

Pussy.

[whottt]

It's not about the words. Look at my screen name and ask yourself if I'm not psychologically strong enough for dirty words. It's about the meaning behind those words.

Calling someone a piece of isn't saying that piss is better, it's saying that is an unpleasant enough substance to count as an insult. Therefore, insulting a man by calling him a woman is saying that being a woman is an unpleasant enough fate to count as an insult.



No .



That's a whole lot of talk that, unfortunately, doesn't really address the point that either easjer or I were making. It's not about biological gender differences or the complex dynamics of a hunter/gatherer society. It's about the fact that using female traits as an insult to suggest weakness is also equating womanhood or femininity with weakness. That's offensive in and of itself. The frequency with which it happens, both here and in the real world, is especially so.

And, quite frankly, as a man, it's really not your place to tell me that it's not offensive.

Also, of course it doesn't bother you (or pehaps the majority of men, but I really haven't polled enough of them to know for sure) if a woman were to call another woman a , or suggest she was acting like a man. The only reason anyone would ever have to do that would be a woman were acting too strong, or too independently, or too masculine. In the insult world, = strong, independent, and masculine; therefore, man = strong, independent, and masculine. Societally, that's the jackpot. Saying that a woman acts (or looks) too much like a man is an insult to her for not adequately fulfilling all that expected of a woman, but still is associated with character traits that are seen as good and powerful.



Women were supposed to be nurturers, perhaps, but technological advances have long since erased whatever relatively miniscule physiological and biological differences there ever were between the sexes. We're several hundred years removed from hunter/gatherer human relations and, at this point, whatever division there is between the sexes is entirely socially constructed.

Is anyone still not convinced she's female?

[GaryJohnston]

Women are not a mans equal.

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

Ugh........I don't drink coffee or any caffiene related products. I've been drinking tea for 19 years, it's our national drink and my family and I go through 3-5 thermoses of tea a day. It's just the sudden way everybody now humps those things because some celebrity started and everybody is raving about the benefits when they don't know jack about because of some fad. I never said specifically yoga and tea were bull , just the way a bunch of people are riding it. Samthing with Madonna and that whole kabbalah incident, she started it and now half of hollywood is doing the same thing, they say it has helath benfits eeirly similar to the benefits taht tea and yoga have or whatever.

Go back to your biodome you EPA pansy.

BTW weight lifting pwns.

Excellent, you explained yourself well. Your original rant didn't get that across though.

I agree with you, fads suck, fashion is bull , and the entire world should learn to look for substance, not style.

No biodome here, just sustainable living.

I also lift weights and know all about its benefits.

[anakha]

Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie are the funniest comedians of the past twenty years.

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

No it doesn't...it says there is no god or gods. Period.

Exactly, "no gods", not "no higher beings". The "God/s" I think you are talking about are higher beings that are intimately connected to human affairs, but to me that makes no sense. I can accept that there are other beings in the Universe (given its immense size) that are more advanced than humans, however I do not believe that there is an omniscient God/s that created everything and gives a about human beings. I see no proof, just some old stories that have been re-written by a thousand scribes. Nor am I willing to conclusively state that there is not an omniscient God/s because it is something beyond my ability to prove. I have no problem with what anyone else wants to believe, as long as they don't try to inflict it upon me. That is agnosticism as I see it.

LOL...invalidates it in what way? Because I

A. Realize they lacked a specialized modern scientific vocabulary 3000+ years ago


B. Realize that even if they had one, whatever happened or was the foundation for what happened, the description of it would have evolved drastically in all those years since, as would have the sounds of the words, as would have the meanings of the words...and that's not even taking into account being intepreted by different cultures and languages, being altered by different leaders for their own purposes, not to mention having every chronicler slip his .02 in to grab a slice of immortality.


40 years ago gay didn't mean what it means now...now the original definition of that word is defacto buried for all time, and that's in the age of recorded history.


C. Realize that if we encountered God right now, we still wouldn't have the worlds to describe his perceptions, or the minds to grasp them, for if we did, we'd be the gods. New words would have to be invented to accurately describe them, but more than likely we wouldn't invent new words, we'd apply pre-existing ones to them, to describe heretofore unconceived of things, ...and 3000 years from now we'd sound like a bunch of simplistic morons to the people of that time. Even if they researched, they'd look up the original definition, even though we weren't using in terms of the original definition. Even if we recorded verbatim what happened or what we were told, the words wouldn't mean the same thing and the future generations understanding of it would be different then ours, because they will be looking at it from their perspective of creation, their point in time...not ours.


IOW how in the do you expect a culture in which science doesn't exist to give you a scientific explanation, and how do you expect them to understand something they don't understand, they couldn't understand, unless they themselves were god, and even if they were, would you expect their descendants 3000 years later to have the same intepretation of events, under any cir stances..........................

I'm not arguing that there isn't something in the human mind that propels us on a quest for meaning, which many people seem to find in religion. But I see religion more as a combination of the individual psyche and collective cultural imagination. For most of history, people have felt the internal, psychological need to give meaning to the Universe, and getting together and expressing this need has resulted in various religions and philosophies. That's what I think you are describing.

Personally, I'm somewhere between an existentialist and a nihilist because I think the only true meanings in the Universe are those we each ascribe to it - there is no overarching scheme (except the laws of physics), no afterlife, no greater meaning. I am an entirely insignificant speck in a Universe without any consciousness of my existence, and when I'm dead that's the end. Some people find those challenging, even depressing ideas, but I find them energising - if this is it, LIVE FULLY!

Oh let's...it's been proven that Christ existed...has it been proven that God doesn't? It's been proven that many biblical events did happen...has it been proven that any atheistic ones did?

C'mon whottt, disproving a negative is an overworn, bull rhetorical trick used by every religious shyster and you should be better than that. God can be neither proven nor disproven, so why bring it up?

What "athiestic events"? Athiests don't need heresay. Athiests pretty much believe in the laws of physics, because they are what seem to control the universe (everything in science and mathematics stems from the laws of physics). And YES, they have been proven, and those same proofs can be (and are) reproduced over and over again! That's the point of the scientific method! Can you show me Christ raising himself from the dead? Nup. Can I drop an apple from an apple tree, on your head, and say with utter reliability that if we do the same thing again we'll get the same result (a sore head for you)? Damn straight we can.

It doesn't take intellect to not believe in higher beings, even a single creator...a dog can do it.

...except that dogs do not have the intellectual capacity to "believe" anything, nor even the capacity to understand the concept of "belief".

[Extra Stout]

Thanks, like I give a what you or anyone else thinks.

I understand youre a learned theist and a uva smart dude, but I was making a pla ude.

Tell me you couldnt read what I wrote and guess the ing time period I was referring to?

As an example, just so youre clear, I was referring to Newton, The University of Paris, the scientific method (or at least a part of it, arguably speaking) and Galileo.

I came across as overly contentious. Sorry.

You do realize that (early) Greece is considered from the West, right?

The West claims Greece as its own as part of its mythology of superiority. The Greeks don't agree.

[Spurminator]

I haven't bathed in three days and no one has noticed.

[DarkReign]

I came across as overly contentious. Sorry.

No problem.

The West claims Greece as its own as part of its mythology of superiority. The Greeks don't agree.

I cant argue that. IMO, the West's Greece is a divided Greece, whereas the East's Greece is Alexander's Greece (pre-Peloponesian War (sp?)). I would never make the mistake of discounting Greece's contribution to all civilization, east or west, both scientific (and more importantly, IMO) logic and reason.

Moreover, I said it before in not so many words, Christianity's contributions to humanity (and the West especially) far outweigh its atrocities (its not even close, Im sure you would agree). But thats easy for us to say was my point. Maybe I shouldnt have singled out Christianity and made more of a blanket statement concerning all organized religion instead, but that would be disingenuous on my part because I cant speak with any authority on the rise and spread of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoist, Confucianism, etc. I know next to nothing (basically nothing) of the East's historical ebbs and flows. By "east" I mean everything east of the old Greece (Macedonia, Athens, Sparta, Thrace, etc) not including Russia, for purposes of disambiguation.

One could argue that distinction was made clear by the rise of the Roman Empire and its obsession with everything Greek, separating Greece permanently to the East.

[GoGatos.]

You guys keep jacking with RuffNready and your going to get a meltdown of epic proportions.

[JoeChalupa]

There is too much psycho analyzing of every damn subject.

[tp2021]

It's not about the words. Look at my screen name and ask yourself if I'm not psychologically strong enough for dirty words. It's about the meaning behind those words.

Calling someone a piece of isn't saying that piss is better, it's saying that is an unpleasant enough substance to count as an insult. Therefore, insulting a man by calling him a woman is saying that being a woman is an unpleasant enough fate to count as an insult.

Okay then. let the words mean whatever you want them to mean. If words get to you, are you really that strong? Just punch the guy in the balls, show him who the strong woman is, and call him a -having man and be done with it.

[remingtonbo2001]

I believe God and the scientific method go hand in hand.

Case and point, when I was a child, I claimed that it would snow on Christmas.

This claim (hypothesis) was made months before hand. I used prayer to achieve my desired results.

This hypothesis was mocked by the memebers of my family, abiet in a kind, loving and gentle way.

I continued to believe. I continued to pray.

The night before Christmas we returned from a Christmas Eve service. It was close to midnight and I had decided to check out the weather report.

As usual, it called for rain for the week, with the snow elevation around 2,000 ft. Our location was around 500 ft.

However, I still believed, even up to that night, that it would snow on Christmas.

I awoke the next morning and what did I see. SNOW. It snowed.

I went down stairs and clearly remember my father with a huge grin on his face.
He immediately told me turn it to the weather channel.

The forecast the night before and the previous days called for rain during the week of Christmas. However, the forecast that morning called for snow to occur the next 5 days.

During those days we recieved up to 2ft of snow.

Jesus teaches to have faith in God as a child has faith in his/her parents.

Children do not question, they believe. Sadly it is the world which corrupts this innocence. I have come to learn this first hand and will continue to strive to have the faith I once had as a child.

God is real. Whether you wish to acknowledge God's exsistance is your choice.

[ashbeeigh]

Hanson was/is a pretty good band.

[FromWayDowntown]

The most obvious manifestation that Western culture is on the decline is the lack of basic civility in human interaction, if only because it exalts the individual and degrades the concern for others. A me-first mentality is bad for society.

[Extra Stout]

I believe God and the scientific method go hand in hand.

Case and point, when I was a child, I claimed that it would snow on Christmas.

This claim (hypothesis) was made months before hand. I used prayer to achieve my desired results.

This hypothesis was mocked by the memebers of my family, abiet in a kind, loving and gentle way.

I continued to believe. I continued to pray.

The night before Christmas we returned from a Christmas Eve service. It was close to midnight and I had decided to check out the weather report.

As usual, it called for rain for the week, with the snow elevation around 2,000 ft. Our location was around 500 ft.

However, I still believed, even up to that night, that it would snow on Christmas.

I awoke the next morning and what did I see. SNOW. It snowed.

I went down stairs and clearly remember my father with a huge grin on his face.
He immediately told me turn it to the weather channel.

The forecast the night before and the previous days called for rain during the week of Christmas. However, the forecast that morning called for snow to occur the next 5 days.

During those days we recieved up to 2ft of snow.

Jesus teaches to have faith in God as a child has faith in his/her parents.

Children do not question, they believe. Sadly it is the world which corrupts this innocence. I have come to learn this first hand and will continue to strive to have the faith I once had as a child.

God is real. Whether you wish to acknowledge God's exsistance is your choice.

Sounds like the prosperity gospel.

[2centsworth]

Men and Women are different, get over it.

A lot of so-called Christians do not "believe" in Christ.

Obama is the Anti-Christ.

We're about 15 years away from the Greatest Depression ever.

Poor people in America are considered rich around the world.

[angel_luv]

In life you will meet very few people who really want to know your honest opinion on any given subject.

[JoeChalupa]

Justin Timberlake is one talented mofo.