Selecting our leaders

Emperorbjt · Tue Aug 24, 2010 9:05 pm


	President Camacho wrote: I agree with finding out why people choose to create gods - but I think I know. It's a form of groupthink where one main azzhole gets a group of people to believe what he's saying and then, by gaining a foothold in society, increases power by making life difficult for those who don't accept the true faith. Various methods are employed such as ostracism, withholding items of want or need, making breathing difficult, certain death, getting others to shun them... man, you name it! They can get really creative when it comes to these forms of punishment for not accepting the 'true faith'. They create this fervor and madness. It's madness!!! Once you can create that madness and your followers are lapping up the kool-aid, you're f*cking done my friend! Congrats, you have yourself a legitimate religion. Good luck keeping it from branching out into individual little mad groups of their own based on your original idea.

I agree President Camacho.

It is amazing how powerful the ostracism part is. Even in our free society when one does not have to fear legal or (usually) economic ramifications of not conforming it helps perpetuate beliefs. I know several people, who profess to be atheists or agnostics, who send their children to religious instruction. Their rational is that, "They have to be some religion." One of these atheist acquaintance told me that in front of his in - laws, he professes to be a Christian so as to not cause trouble!

I have a million times more respect for a genuinely religious person then for people who just go along like that.

In "The God Delusion" Richard Dawkins postulates the idea of "Memes", which are basically ideas that are self perpetuating and spread like genes or diseases. I think an idea like religion, that is perpetuated by people who do not even believe it, is clearly going to be very successful over time.

President Camacho · Tue Aug 24, 2010 9:38 pm

If my job depended on it... if a parking spot depended on it... I would say I believed in Christ, Mickey Mouse, Superman... whatever.

geo · Wed Aug 25, 2010 12:34 pm

This is for Camacho, from The Knight's Tale . . .

Here is Theseus’s father, Egeus, in what I would call the climax of the story. He imparts his wisdom to Palamon and Emelye, and I will paraphrase here: quit wasting time and start enjoying life because you only get one life and it's time-limited, you know.

“The oak, that takes so long to grow so tall
From its inception as an acorn small,
And lives so long, as can be seen by all,
Yet in the end it will decay and fall.

“Consider, too, how that the hardest rock
Beneath our feet, upon which we do walk,
Wears down, as in the pathway it doth lie;
The broadest river sometimes will grow dry;
The greatest city fade; and by and by,
As everyone can see, all things shall die.

“Concerning men and women it is true
As well, that in time one, or in time two –
That is to say, in youth or else old age –
They’ll die, the king as well as his young page;
Some in their beds, some in the ocean deep,
Some racked in pain, some in a peaceful sleep;
It matters not; all share one destiny.
All things shall end, as everyone can see.

“What causes this but Jupiter, the king,
That prince who is the cause of everything?
Who makes all things return from whence they come?
You guessed it - yes, the answer is the same.
No matter how hard to resist you try,
You can’t escape the fact that you must die.

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