http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100630/stage_nm/us_hitchens

I posted this in here to avoid the back and forth bickering that this would become should it have been posted in the Gen. Religion area.

I wish Chris well with his fight.

I see some religionists just couldn't restrain themselves in the comments area below that news article.

Guess it proves the only thing that's probably eternal is religious bigotry.


-Kerry O.

One of the other message boards I frequent (a racing one) had to lock a thread on the passing of George Carlin, because of the religious bigotry..
Stupid **** like "Well, he knows he was wrong now, hope he has fun burning in hell"
The thing that pisses me off the most about those people is their undeserved certainty. I don't know what happens when we die, but I'm not going to speculate and preach that speculation as truth either.

Hitch is in for one hell of a fight. Cancer is an ugly disease, I've watched it destroy a grandfather, a family pet, and recently have had to help a friend get through losing her father to cancer.

I spent a short time being clinically dead-- unless I missed something, I didn't come back to the world of the living with all the secrets of the Universe, I just remembered a little bit of how it felt for _me_ to not be all there. Perhaps to not _be_ at all.

I don't recommend the experience but, on the other hand, I came through it being a lot less fearful of the inevitable. For one, I was in excruciating pain before I 'checked out', so coming back to that wasn't all hunky-dory.

See, that's why I agree with you, that religionists really don't know why their certainty is unfounded-- they literally don't know what they don't know.

And what they _think_ they do know is more based on egotism, narcissism and often, a complete lack of compassion for anyone who doesn't think like they do.


-Kerry O.



Hitch is in for one hell of a fight. Cancer is an ugly disease, I've watched it destroy a grandfather, a family pet, and recently have had to help a friend get through losing her father to cancer.

I think that Bill Maher said it best in Religulous:

"You don't know, and how do I know that you don't know? Because I don't know, and you don't possess any mental powers that I do not."

Maher makes a good point, but the reason it would never gain traction amonst the Faithful is that they are mired in this giant feedback loop. They mistake that loud howl for both chaos coming to get them and the self-sustaining comfort of denial that they really don't know-- in fact they don't even know the right questions to ask because generally, skepticism is forbidden 'weakness'.

Too, they think they can 'plug in' to something greater than themselves like some Marvel comic superhero finding a piece of a godhead in a hermit's long-forgotten stash of relics in a musty attic. All they have to do is touch the relic, perform the ritual, doff the cape and then become :::::drum roll:::: Uber Man!!


-Kerry O.

Let's not leave out, the joy a vast number of the religious seem to take in the misfortune of others.. Like joyfully thinking about Carlin burning in hell, or going on a tirade about how Katrina was God's punishment for Ellen D. living in/around the Nawlins area..
Yet they claim to be loving. I don't see the point in being joyful over someone else's misfortune simply because they don't believe the exact same thing that you believe.
With Hitch having Cancer, chances are these people are going to be spewing their poison sooner rather than later.

Indeed.

Naw. Bigotry takes people. And this world will be out of those soon enough. Or perhaps not soon enough, if we manage to destroy the bioshphere too much, on our way out.

I remember, when I was a kid, the chances of getting cancer was something like 1 in 5, during a lifetime. Now it's like 1 in 2. Either doctors abilities at detection sucked 30 years ago, or just being alive has become much more perilous.

Don't forget, fear plays a big part in their belief system. Really big part.
I've almost died a bunch of different times. Usually involving heights or cars. Then there was one time, when I was 19, that I got the Chicken Pox. My head felt like it was on fire, literally, and my body felt like somebody kept putting out cigs in it. I was in so much pain, I ate an entire bottle of Tylenol, a bottle of Ibuprofen, and when that didn't work, half a bottle of sleeping pills. I didn't even have the relief of passing out afterwards--for 2 days. But I was moving in slow motion the whole time.
Anyways, one gets used to it. The almost dying thing. Not the after youth Chicken Pox.

works for me.

It's a symptom of their schetzophenia(I gots no idea how to spell that) and hypocracy.