Sat 25 Apr, 2015 11:56 am
Every day I have another friend signaling the end of civilization on Facebook. It is really no wonder the biggest proponents of the social apocalypse are religious folks. It coincides quite nicely with their general, all about hatred of reality. And who are the only people who suffer from reality? Well, if one is being completely forthright, usually the botched and bungled portions of it.
There is yet to be a natural disaster where I haven't seen religious folks around the world parroting the "end of the world," or the "signs of the second coming." Every war, famine, dictator that comes to the scene is another unmistakable signal that the end is near. And they simply cannot hide their excitement at the fact either. "The world is so horrible! Praise Jesus it will be over soon!"
The entire infatuation with these end-of-earth scenarios is pretty much the key stipend to any modern religion. "I suffer from reality, therefore reality must be destroyed." Fire, floods, natural disasters-- all signs of God's displeasure with humanity. But, the real truth, is it is only a sub-conscience manifestation of their hatred of earth and all things real. All the life preserving instincts are vilified: sex, pride in oneself, skepticism, material possessions geared toward making life more enjoyable-- and all the life depreciating values are flaunted: poverty, humility, patience (ie, the forced necessity of waiting at the master's door), long suffering, and the fetishization of the victim.
The impulse to believe in the false antagonism inherent in religions (good VS evil, God VS Satan, etc) is also equally ready in conspiracy types. They all suffer from life, they all presume the suffering must be because of some malevolent entity as opposed to themselves (or any other form of quantifiable causes). But SIN isn't the reason you suffer. YOU are the reason you suffer. SIN frees you from responsibility or the need for moral action. All religions profess that desire is the cause of suffering. The reality is, suffering is the cause of desire. The problem with these types (some who are politicians, judges, magistrates, jurors, etc) is that they believe that "sin", ie, immoral acts, come from a mystical force in the universe. As opposed to having real causes: poverty, mental health issues, poor parenting, poor medical care, poor social infrastructure, etc. And when you believe something to be incurable, you sure as heck aren't spending your days thinking about how to fix it. Christians spend their days thinking on how to AVOID it.
9/10 people I know would like to see NYC erupt into a giant fireball, just so they could post "I told you so" memes in the morning-- and much like the Christians throughout most of European history, these happen to be the "moralists" of our era.
God save us from citizens with good intentions.
@ZarathustraReborn,
Probably because they're pre-programmed to believe outlandish, logically inconsistent and generally crappy ideas without evidence for it.
@ZarathustraReborn,
You say that most Christians are conspiracy types, which means you must have met or have had contact with close to 2.2 billion Christians to be able to judge.
If not you are also a conspiracy type
This joker is fond of anecdotal claims which he denies are anecdotal. You folks are wasting your time talking to him.
Four out of five doctors is not a statistically significant sample.
Thus Spake Zarathustra was a crap book when it was published, and i see no good reason to resurrect it now.
@Setanta,
Calling all "my claims anecdotal" is anecdotal. Secondly, I stated "Every day I have another friend signaling the end of civilization on Facebook," clearly showing that it was a personal opinion based on personal experience. It was also clearly hyperbole. But if I need to spell all of this out for you, perhaps you should get a Facebook account and argue with people closer to your intelligence bracket.
@Setanta,
On a side note, attacking my forum-name instead of my argument is pretty indicative of a puerile mind. But, go ahead, I'll wait for you to throw around more ad homs and rant about my "anecdotal evidence."
What argument? As i've already pointed out, it's another tour de force in anecdotal bullshit. Talk about puerile . . . you take the cake.
@Setanta,
You used a foreign phrase in your argument. You win.
My argument is you said I "always use anecdotal evidence." I never provided evidence towards establishing a scientific consensus. I gave a CLEAR indicator that this was my personal experience and never extrapolated it as a rule. In fact, it was proposed as a question. How can a question be considered a consensus? You however, did do that to me when you stated "I always use anecdotal evidence," despite you not knowing me or having read the majority of the content I've written throughout my life. This is, by definition, anecdotal.
You take care there, champ. (Or should I say "arrivederci," or "vale" in order to sound more intellectually credible?)
@ZarathustraReborn,
In the thread about men imprisoned for failure to pay child support, you used the "experience fallacy," and when it was pointed out to you that that was anecdotal evidence, you denied it, and re-asserted your experience, as though that were conclusive. It isn't. Hence, my reaction that this is what you always do. I have no other experience than here, and i'm certainly not going to waste my time looking for your bullshit online.
@Setanta,
No, she stated she had "never met anyone in jail for child support." I called her assertion anecdotal, and went on to tell her that I worked in a men's prison and had access to quantifiable data which demonstrably outlined the percentage of men incarcerated for child support. She refused to see that as something other than "anecdotal." Apparently you didn't read that, eh? Or were you too caught up in wanting to be superior in the fallacy-shaming to notice my attempt at a defense?
I then went on to give her the statistic, and even a source. Let me clarify: I work social services in a male prison. I am a liaison between them and the family courts. This is not anecdotal. I work with real numbers, real people, and don't attempt to insert a qualitative argument into an issue based on mathematics.
So, try again.
Quote:No, me stating I see "more than the average Joe" is not a logical fallacy. It means that I have access to real data. I KNOW how many fathers are incarcerated for this. I work in this industry, ie, it is not an appeal to emotions. This particular field is my area of expertise. I work in social services, have a MA in philosophy, and specialize in family solutions. Research the issue a little.
^ That was my exact reply to her. So again, not anecdotal.
@ZarathustraReborn,
Sure it is, you didn't cite any "real data," you did not cite a source for your "real data, you just offered your
ipse dixit claim. This may come as a profound shock to you, but people are not going to believe you just because you say so.
Of course, this thread is a tour de force in anecdotal crap--as has already been noted.
In that thread, you wrote that in 2002, approximately 10,000 men were incarcerated for non-payment of child support, and that that represented 1.7% of the prison population.
According to this BJS document (in PDF format), the prison population in 2002 was, in all categories, 2,166,260, and 1.7 percent of that figure is 36,826. Leaving aside juvenile facilities, prisons for immigration or customs violations, jails in "Indian country" (as the BJS quaintly calls them) and military facilities, that leaves 1,440,655. One-point-seven percent of that figure is 24,491. It's hard to escape the conclusion that either you don't know what the hell you're talking about, or you're just making this **** up as you go along.
That's a clickable link up there, so you don't have to rely on my "say-so," which is, of course, the case with your claims.
Once again, you are showing you don't know what you're speaking of. Those were JAIL statistics, not prison statistics. There's a difference. COUNTY jail, STATE prison. The statistic clearly read JAIL, and then you went and quoted a BJS statistic referencing PRISON incarceration numbers. Nice try.
Quote:An analysis of U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics in 2002 by the Urban Institute’s Sorensen found that approximately 10,000 men were in jail for non-payment of child support, representing 1.7 percent of the overall U.S. jail population.
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/pji02.pdf
^ That should be the article you're looking for, super genius.
Quote:At midyear 2002, 665,475 persons
were held in local jails:
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