question

[Mitch f]

29 minutes ago, MOPanfisher said:

Probably the Ned question.

 

Those Ned questions always bring out the worst in people! 😂

[Quillback]

I moved this thread, it hasn't been about Table Rock for a few pages.  

[snagged in outlet 3]

16 minutes ago, Mitch f said:

Those Ned questions always bring out the worst in people! 😂

I don’t know why.  They don’t work. 

[Al Agnew]

I graduated from high school in 1970, two years at the local junior college, worked two years, went back to school and got my degree, just so you know the when and what of my education.  Back then the college I went to already had liberals and conservatives, although they weren't usually called that back then, it was still more like hippies and rednecks.  So having said that, I want to say this...somebody way back somewhere in this thread said something to the effect that it was ultimately the parents' fault for not raising their kids right that they went in what whoever said was the wrong direction.  So my mom and dad mostly raised me right, to work hard and take responsibility for myself.  BUT...they were pretty much avowed racists in a pretty much racist area of southern Missouri. My dad once said that he'd only been forced to shake the hand of a black man (and that's not the word he used) one time, and he shuddered as he did so.  Everybody in town was like that, and so naturally we kids got indoctrinated early on to feel the same way.  And the only reason it changed slightly when I was attending the local junior college was that they were just starting to recruit black  basketball players, and I got to know a couple of them slightly.  During the two years I worked between schools, my outlook on race didn't change much.  

Then I went to school, away from home, little bit bigger school.  And THAT'S where it all changed.  It's where I met people different from me, different race, different life experience, different societal outlook.  By the end of my first year, I had realized that my parents were just wrong on this particular issue.  Not because they were bad people, but because THEY had been raised that way, but had never left their own little insular society.  It wasn't the only way I changed, either.  And I think that in every way I changed, it was for the better.  I became an environmentalist (yes, I use the term proudly) and a "liberal" on social issues, because I came to understand where those who thought that way were coming from, and it wasn't where I had come from but I couldn't discount their life experiences.  That included both other students and teachers.

So when people say that the colleges are indoctrination centers, they are basically saying that students at universities are sheep waiting to be led, because their parents didn't raise them right.  But some of those students were like me, raised one way but able to see that it might not be the right way once I was subjected to other viewpoints.  I was taught in college to look at other viewpoints.  And perhaps many are too easily swayed, but I think I was strong-willed enough to take up what seemed right, and discard what seemed wrong, after weighing the balance.  

We are so quick to demonize those we don't agree with.  Humans have an unlimited capacity to believe what they WANT to be true, and to avoid having to see or listen to anything that goes against it.  So they stay in their echo chambers, letting the others in those echo chambers define what the other side is, instead of actually listening to what the other side is, and most importantly trying to put themselves into somebody else's shoes, somebody that might have completely different life experiences that have shaped them to believe as they do.  We are quick to latch onto the excesses of the other side and assume they are the norm for that side, not to mention letting our own echo chamber twist the other side's actions into excesses.

There are a lot of things wrong with colleges today, the worst of which is that they are simply too darned expensive, the second worst is that they are so often looked at as the only option.  But they broaden horizons, and that's a good thing.

[Al Agnew]

Pascal's Wager...basically it says that the safer bet is to believe there is a God than to believe there is not.  But here's what always puzzled me about that.   I CANNOT believe.  I cannot will myself to believe something that makes no sense to me, and there is no major religion on Earth that makes any sense to me.  So do I PRETEND to believe?  How's that gonna work out if God is omniscient and knows my "heart"?  So in my opinion, the very idea of Pascal's Wager, like so much of religion itself, makes no sense.  You either are able to believe, or you're not.  No use pretending.  I can't.  Doesn't make me an atheist, either, it makes me at most an agnostic, one who admits they don't really KNOW either way.  I suppose that something could happen that could convince me to be a believer, though nothing could convince me to become an atheist because you can never prove a negative.  But the one thing I'm sure of in my own mind, is that if there IS a God, it is NOT like anything we humans have come up with to describe it, and as somebody else said, it probably doesn't care in the least about the sapient denizens of an undistinguished planet orbiting a third rate star in an obscure arm of an average galaxy in a universe that we cannot even comprehend the true size and scope of it.  We are more insignificant than a single grain of sand on a 50 mile long beach, buffeted by the random tides of chance until it is worn away; our lives are not part of some grandiose master plan, but are significant only in what WE make of them--what effect we have on our friends and families, our society, and our little piece of our planet.

[fishinwrench]

Agnostics are people that just shrug their shoulders and say "I don't know" and are happy to just just leave it at that. 

Atheist's are people that also don't know, but they have studied and honestly tried to figure it out (most truly wanted to believe).....but eventually came to the conclusion that... "No, it's just all a bunch of BS concocted by MAN probably in an attempt to control the inner thoughts of others".   Most true Atheist's don't avoid or try to get out of religious discussions, instead they welcome them, because I think they hope that someday someone will say something that will make that lightbulb go off in their head and POOF suddenly they'll begin to understand it all.   Atheist's that put Christian's down and say demeaning things to them are not wanting to be hateful they are just frustrated and maybe a little jealous.  They just wanna know what's in your head that allows you to be confident in your beliefs.  They didn't choose to be athiests, they just ended up there because they are deep/free thinkers that are being honest about their personal feelings.

[Gavin]

I am an Atheist. I have studied plenty of religion. Was baptised & confirmed protestant, went to catholic high school, learned reality in the USMC, then got out and graduated from a Jesuit University. Had to do 16hrs of Theology to get out of there. Was interesting, but gave me a conclusion. The bible you know, is a pick & choose compilation of random texts. I cant believe in it. I will be kind to others, but you will have to drag me kicking & screaming to church. If it works for you carry on....just know I'm out. Not looking for false promises heaven or false punishments in hell. Ritual burial rights are stupid too. Let nature take your atoms back instead of encapsulating them in a casket. 

 

 

 

[Jerry Rapp]

[snagged in outlet 3]

[Mitch f]

11 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

We are more insignificant than a single grain of sand on a 50 mile long beach, buffeted by the random tides of chance until it is worn away; our lives are not part of some grandiose master plan, but are significant only in what WE make of them--what effect we have on our friends and families, our society, and our little piece of our planet.

Can a grain of sand build a rocket ship and travel to the moon?