Usually I try to post at a minimum of once a week, but I'm too pissed about the MU v. KU game. It really sucks to go to a game like that only for your team to lose.
The concept of heaven is perhaps the main reason why most theists believe what they do. In my personal experience, when most people hear that I'm an atheist for the first time their first argument is Pascal's Wager. But few of them have thought about it beyond their desire for eternal happiness and what they have to do to achieve it. But when one really delves into the philosophical implication of heaven, especially from a Christian framework, it becomes clear that it is nonsensical.
If we are to discuss a place that fulfills our desires we must first discuss what our desires our. It is obvious that what people desire varies greatly (see my last post for an example), but there are a few desires that are nearly universal. These include the desire to eat, drink, have sex, and being healthy. By some strange coincidence, these desires, when fulfilled, increase a person's evolutionary fitness. But, from a Christian viewpoint, these desires were programmed into us by God so that we can continue our own existence and produce more humans for him.
But wait, God programmed these desires into us, and then he uses these same desires in order to entice us into doing what he says. He also uses these desires to bully us into doing what he says by threatening to take away our ability to fulfill them. God is like a powerful CEO who brides a politician and then uses his bribe money to get the politician to do what he wants, either by promising more or threatening to take it away. Only in this scenario the politician got to choose to accept the bribe.
This is a very naive idea of heaven. A more sophisticated idea I have heard is that heaven is really a place where people go to worship God forever and hell is where everybody else goes. This is used often in refuting the Problem of Evil since hell isn't a punishment, it is truly the place atheists would rather end up. But in this view the human life is a choice to be submissive and have no life of your own for eternity, or do what you want for eternity. Heaven is a punishment for anybody who likes to control their own life, which is most people. Even if Christianity was true and was demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt, nobody would want to follow what God says.
With Heaven, we are stuck with either a God who is underhanded in his dealings with humans or who rewards us for not following him. I know where I stand.
This has pissed me off for the longest time. Why do restaurants put ice in soda without you asking? Most people would say that it keeps the drink cold, but then why do these same people think it's disgusting to put ice in milk? The soda comes out cold, you get more if you don't get ice, and when the ice melts it makes it taste disgusting. Yet I had a waitress laugh at me once for asking for no ice (she didn't get a tip). It seems very logical and basic that the drink should come without ice and that they should only put ice in it if people ask. So, my main question is why beer and milk (which generally come without ice) are any different than soda.
On another note, I haven't posted anything related to atheism for a while, but I've run out of topics. Any suggests would be helpful.
Even though I am only 17, I know there are some things I will remember for the rest of my life. Yesterday, when sitting in my Business and Computer Technology class, I suddenly remembered that gay marriage was up for vote in California, and looked to see if Proposition 8 won. I don't remember which website I saw it on, but I was amazed, and saddened, to see that Proposition 8, which would make only marriage between a man and a woman recognized in California, passed. Over 10 million people voted in California, over 6 million of whom voted for Obama. Yet less than 5 million people voted no on Prop 8. That means over a million people voted for the "most liberal senator" and for a very conservative proposition.
On this site they had two pictures. One was a sign that said "we didn't vote on your marriage." I thought that was a good point, one that I'd never heard before. But the other picture I had to look at for about a minute. It was a shot of a room of people cheering. The caption read something like "A group of people reacting to returns on Proposition 8." I struggled to understand. What could possibly be going through these people's minds? They were cheering like drunk college kids at a football game over a proposition that denied civil liberties to a certain group of people. What were they so happy about? Yes, finally gay people can't be married. Yes, finally we reduced the number of couples who can adapt. Yes, my church is free to discriminate without fearing the loss of their tax-exempt status that they probably don't deserve anyway.
The homophobes are really unbelievable. They thought an ad against Proposition 8 was unfair.
They say that this ad "demonize[s] the LDS church and, by implication, all people of faith, and particularly those who support Proposition 8." They have been running ads saying these people getting married will ruin society, and they think that they are being demonized? I don't even know how you would even start to argue against these people. They obviously care nothing about fairness and tolerance.
Requiem for a Dream is one of my all-time favorite movies, so I decided to get the book. Usually when I buy books I order them online since I can get used ones that are cheap. But before I bought it I decided to look at some of the customer reviews to make sure it wasn't absolute shit. On Amazon, it had 80 reviews. 1 person gave it 2 stars, 3 people gave it 4 stars, and 76 people gave it five stars. To make sure, I read the 2 star and 4 star reviews. The 2 star review made no sense, and the 4 star reviews made it seem amazing. In other words, nobody had a coherent argument for why it is bad. And after reading the reviews I decided I wanted it so bad that I just went to the store and bought it instead of waiting a week for it to be delivered.
Luckily I was almost done with the book I was reading, so I finished it quickly and started Requiem for a Dream. i got it yesterday afternoon and I'm already on page 97. It isn't amazing yet, but all the reviews said that the ending is the best (or worst, depending on your point of view). A lot of them said that they couldn't finish it because it was so brutal. In fact, the director of the movie version said he couldn't finish it the first time he read it.
One thing that I have liked a lot so far is the way Shelby does dialogue. He uses something called stream of consciousness that doesn't use quotation marks. In fact, it doesn't even start a new line for change in dialogue. This makes the reader have to use context clues in order to understand who's speaking. It's kind of hard to get used to, but it makes it a lot smoother to read in my opinion. I would recommend seeing the movie first to help get used to the dialogue. The beginning is nearly identical to the movie so you can tell who says what by what they say.
