The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Without reason?
00:17 Nov 30 2008
Times Read: 633

Lesson learned... again.



People don't throw away what they have and cherish unless they have something they believe is better.

Giving Thanks?
12:03 Nov 27 2008
Times Read: 670

How does it show thanks for having enough to eat to sit down and gorge until you're in pain and ready to bust? I've never really understood that. I would think if one really wanted to show appreciation for always having sufficient food, a day's fast would be more appropriate.



Of course it's a lot harder to market a day of fasting and make any money.



I think perhaps a day of fasting and quiet reflection is more fitting for me.

My Fault?
09:44 Nov 26 2008
Times Read: 687

Is it possible that it's not my fault in some mysterious or puzzling way? Somehow it seems that it must be me. How could it not be? One has to apply logic and note the only common denominator.

Sometimes...
00:15 Nov 23 2008
Times Read: 706

Sometimes life sucks. But there was that one day...

From 'VR Agendas'
23:18 Nov 21 2008
Times Read: 726

Why is it that I can legally purchase alcohol at 6:00AM on any day, Monday through Saturday, but on Sunday, I can't legally buy it until 10:00AM?



Why is it that in a country which is supposed to place individual rights as primary, most states have now prohibited same-sex marriage? Same-sex marriage infringes upon no one's rights. Prohibiting such marriage infringes upon everyone's rights.



Why is it that stem-cell research -- perhaps the most promising disease-curing research to come along in centuries -- has been stifled by government?



Why were 20-innocent people hanged in and around Salem in the 1690s?



Why were thousands of people tortured and killed during the Crusades and the Inquisition?



Why was it prohibited by law to teach evolution?



Why were 6-million people killed in an attempt to "cleanse" the human gene pool?



Why was it once strictly permissible to kill a native American but considered murder to kill a Caucasian living in America?



Why was it once considered kidnapping and murder to induct a Caucasian into involuntary servitude and beat him to death for failure to comply, but perfectly acceptable to do the same to a man of African descent?



Why have nearly 100,000 Iraqi nationals been killed on their home soil in the past 5-years?



Why were the Amalekites completely slaughtered including the children and infants?



Why were children and young virgins once tossed into the craters of active volcanoes?



Why have people been tied to stones and slowly cut apart, burned or had their hearts cut out while still beating?

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This is but a very tiny and short list. But the answer to each and every question, at it's most fundamental, is the same; adherence to unevidenced beliefs.



And still we hear people wondering why anyone would care what they believe. No one is attempting to force beliefs, we're only asking that people holding beliefs demonstrate a basis of support for those beliefs. But we still hear people insisting that certain beliefs shouldn't be open to discussion simply because someone has cared to label them "sacred".



The idea that any belief is "sacred" and therefore, exempt from rational and open discussion seems to have come from very ancient, primitive and superstitious times. It persisted through the Dark Ages when so many other absurd and ridiculous ideas and practices seemed to fizzle into non-existence. And it's still with us today. It's okay to label a belief "sacred" and discuss in favor of that belief, but many consider it improper or outright prohibit such discussion on a level playing-field where the strength of the points presented mean more than whether one is speaking for or against a particular concept. Unevidenced beliefs can't thrive in an atmosphere of open rational discussion. So those holding great affection for them have attempted to isolate them from the very system utilized in every other concept, to determine truth from false-hood.



Superstitious beliefs are dangerous. They have always been dangerous and show a continual repetitious nature of leading people to adopt and defend them violently. This nearly always leads to persecution, imprisonment and the killing of those who do not accept such beliefs. This kind of outcome is especially prominent with superstitions because superstitions cannot be rationally supported. Any rationally supported belief has no need for violent, forced adherence because it can stand on its own merit. It is only those beliefs which can offer no merit which, if they are to be held, must utilize irrationality and violence or threat of violence.



So why would anyone consider it wrong to discuss beliefs and to ask for support? What's wrong with testing a belief for validity? What's wrong with recognizing that some beliefs offer good reason for their adoption while others can offer nothing of any substance? Isn't that what the so-called "justice" system is designed to do? Don't we discuss various assertions and attempt to determine which are true and which are not?



To assert that it's wrong to discuss beliefs to determine if they have merit, is to suggest that searching for truth is somehow wrong. And it shouldn't matter that some have sorted this out for themselves while others have yet to do so or have ignored the evidence (or lack thereof), due to a preference of believing just what they like to believe. Belief in servitude to the emotions has never shown any tendency to lead people to truth. In fact, it has lead to a very long list of injustices, some of which are presented at the top of this post.



No one is being persecuted when asked to present support for their beliefs. Adherence to beliefs without support is where persecution begins. If a belief is wrong, no one should see any impropriety in demonstrating it to be incorrect. That's how we establish truth and learn about reality. And learning the truth is of great benefit to all, while adhering to falsehoods leads only to the perpetuation of ignorance, persecution, suffering, death, and the loss of ability to rationally assess concepts at all levels.



If one belief can be held to be true despite a complete lack of credible evidence, then why hold any evidence-based belief to be true? The entire system for learning the difference between reality and blind-assertion is lost and mankind, is likewise lost, for the lack of any means to know truth from falsehood.

Some Favorite Numbers
10:56 Nov 05 2008
Times Read: 782


A. 89,875,517,873,681,764



B. 299,792,458



C. 3.1415927



D. 0.00135962



E. 450,240



F. 10^80



G. 70448





...





...





...



A. C^2 (The speed of light, expressed in meters per second, squared)



B. C (The speed of light in meters per second)



C. PI (Rounded to 7 decimal places)



D. 1 Watt of power, converted to horsepower. Lance is training with two to four 4 to 6 kilometer efforts on 3 to 5 percent grades at 380-400 Watts. The efforts are plotted to get longer and the power output will increase. (368 Watts is ½ horsepower. Be impressed!)



E. Numerical constant for ballistics. Velocity squared, divided by 450,240, times bullet weight, equals foot-pounds of energy.



F. A number representing slightly more than all of the protons, neutrons and electrons in the universe.



G. I'm not telling.

Be forewarned or tread no further. Hesitate...
10:28 Nov 05 2008
Times Read: 786

Taken from the forum. This is not to incite hatred, anger or even emotion. It is not an attack on any particular faith belief but all faith beliefs, from voodoo to theology. I believe it is an important message for those strong enough to see beyond an emotional reaction and grasp the validity of the message.



If one subscribes to faith and is overly prone to strong emotional responses, I would suggest they turn back now.



(END DISCLAIMER)

----



Mr. T "The victims of atheism outnumber the victims of faith 1000 to 1"



This is a very common misconception. There is a difference between someone being killed or victimized as a direct result of faith, and someone being killed by someone who was incidentally, an atheist. The ones that can be counted as "deaths attributable to atheism" are those where the specific reason for the death was adherence to atheism. You can't count the number of people murdered by killers with mustaches and claim them as victims of mustaches.

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Mr. T "Next, you'll try to tell me that Hitler was a Christian -- he was not."



Not only was Hitler a Christian but he stated;

"Christ was the greatest early fighter in the battle against the world enemy, the Jews ... The work that Christ started but could not finish, I -- Adolf Hitler -- will conclude." That's from a speech given at the Nazi Christmas celebration in 1926.



In Mein Kampf he wrote; "Therefore, I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's Work." It doesn't take an act of vast imagination to see the Christian tie-in with Hitler's hatred of the Jewish people.



In a Reichstag speech in 1938 he said, "I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord's work."



In 1941 he remarked to one of his generals, Gerhard Engle; "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."



When Hitler narrowly and unwittingly escaped an assassination attempt in Munich in 1939, he gave credit to providence, proclaiming; "Now I am completely content, The fact that I left the Burgerbraukeller earlier than usual is a corroboration of Providence's intention to let me reach my goal."



This was echoed by Catholic newspapers throughout the Reich. Cardinal Michael Faulhaber even sent a telegram directing that a Te Deum be sung in the cathedral of Munich, "to thank Divine Providence in the name of the archdiocese for the Fuhrer's fortunate escape." Special congratulations were sent by the Pope himself.



It's easy to understand why Christianity (or any other connected entity), might want to divorce itself from Hitler and his six-million murders but no such separation exists in this case.

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Mr. T "That doesn't mean that faith itself is inherently dangerous."



Just about every con-game and fraud scheme ever perpetrated or imagined relies upon one thing -- the faith of the intended victim. One of the most common, relies upon the offering of "good faith" money. Without faith, such schemes would be useless to the perpetrator.

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Mr. T "Faith can be a powerful thing; it freed the slaves in America, brought down the Berlin Wall, and inspires people to free themselves from oppression the world over."



Faith didn't free the slaves. Faith delayed the freeing of the slaves since a popular faith document was used to proclaim that even God approved of slavery. The Bible outright prohibits the things God is said to dislike. But when it comes to slavery, it instead offers regulations regarding the duration of involuntary servitude, the degree to which a slave may be beaten and other specifics. And when it comes to duration, the basis is often gender and/or race. When it comes to beating a slave, as long as it takes him more than 2-days to die, the one administering the beating is said to have done nothing wrong in the eyes of God, because the slave was his "property". So you can add the slaves of early America to the list as more "victims of faith".



The Berlin wall was brought down by politics, not faith.

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You've made the assertion that secularism can't ignite the same level of passion. And perhaps that's what makes it safer. The vast majority of murders in this country are crimes of passion. Emotion can be a wonderful thing but it's no basis for making important decisions. That's why in nearly every region of the U.S., there is a special classification for murder committed as an act of momentary, intense, passion. One should strive to be motivated by reason, not emotion.



And when it comes to reason, not only do we find it as the basis for every confirmable discovery as truth, but it also fires the intense motivation of scientific research. The LHC currently stands as the most complex and largest machine ever constructed. It was built of the motivation of reason, not faith.



The bottom line remains this; those things which are true carry with them, objective evidence of truth. That which cannot be held on the merits of objective evidence is rationally, without cause to be seen as other than untrue. What requires faith to believe, holds all the same merits as those things we call "false". One can only believe in Leprechauns out of faith because there is no objective evidence upon which to hold such a belief. The same applies to mermaids and unicorns. That's why we call these things "false" or "myth". And yet they offer no less objective evidence than do other beliefs of faith. Only when one stands to gain (i.e. belief in immortality, eternity in paradise, 72 virgins, eternal love, etc.), will they set aside reason in favor of faith. That's why gremlins, Leprechauns, mermaids, zombies and unicorns are held as myths, while spirits, ghosts, angels and gods are held as theology. In foundation, they are equal.



When you can show a single confirmed truth which was confirmed without objective evidence, then you can argue the point.