There are minds far greater than the general population can muster when it comes to major decisions such as the EU referendum – a decision that will impact the entire globe.
Giving the decision to the public (or even the government) is like asking a child if they want 5kg of jelly beans and 5 litres of Coca-Cola. Of course they want it, but it doesn’t mean it’s good for them.
Currently I foresee tears before bedtime, vomit, headaches, tantrums and regrets.
Reading and hearing a great number of comments and views on the referendum, I can’t help but think that the majority of people don’t have enough of a clue as to what’s going on, what will happen and what won’t happen, to be allowed to make such a decision.
Too many opinions, I believes, I thinks, what ifs…
I hear ‘I believe Britain will be better off if we vote leave, and in my opinion the EU is bad for us…’ (also the same for ‘remain’ and ‘good for us’).
Really?!?
You get someone saying that they believe in *insert deity here* and that *insert religion here* is the one true faith. It doesn’t make it real or true. Good for them though, believe what you will about religion or the EU, but don’t force you’re factless opinion and belief on the rest of us by making it into a cross on a ballot paper.
There are highly educated people who study, live and breathe these type of world influencing scenarios whose educated reasoning I’d rather trust on this topic before trusting my own findings.
You wouldn’t trust a newspaper story, or the views of a TV presenter, or an Internet meme, or a famous singer or actor when it comes to fixing your gas boiler, carrying out brain surgery, managing your finances, fixing your car, looking after your baby, neutering your pet… and yet you quite happily follow them on the choices they tell you to make about things they have no more knowledge than you about. Choices that, as I said before, will have global impact.
Democracy has its flaws. Allowing non-experts to make these decisions is one of them.
Thank goodness people are praying for the victims.
For a moment I thought people weren’t going to do anything.
More killings in the name of religion…
Let us spare a minute or two and pray for them.
But who are you praying to?
To the almighty supreme being who let these people get murdered in horrendous circumstances in the first place?
To the almighty supreme being who instructed people to carry out the shootings and bombings?
If you’re praying to the one who let those people die, then I hope you realise that you are second guessing the almighty ones ineffable plan. That God let those people die… and you have the audacity to be angry and upset? You pray to him to end the terror?
If you’re praying to the one who instructed people to go off and murder men, women, children, in his name, then you’re just as deluded as the killers who say they do it for their God.
Looking through the old writings, gods were all powerful, all knowing. Creators of universes, planets, life…. Us.
Bringer of famines, floods, pestilence, disease, destruction… The one who has the power to bring people back to life, to cure blindness and leprosy, to make cripples walk again.
Powerful, all seeing, almighty.
And yet the omnipotent master of all he surveys, this supreme creator, this supreme being, has in modern times forgotten all of these amazing feats he can pull off himself, and instead uses puny humans to do his dirty work for him…
Why would a world creator send humans to murder other humans when he could just rain brimstone down on the sinners himself?
Why would an all powerful being let his people die today, yet he quite happily parted the seas himself to help others escape back in the good old days?
Why do you think their God is wrong? Why do you think they are bloody idiots for following such a stupid religion?
You know they think exactly the same of you? Why is their religion wrong yet yours is right?
People want weapons of mass destruction banned. They want smoking banned, they want guns banned, they want an end to violence and war, yet they don’t want to look at the biggest killer we’ve ever had on this planet…. Religion itself.
More people have been killed in the name of religion, or pretence of religion, than by anything else.
It’s all about whose imaginary, impotent God has a bigger dick than the other persons equally imaginary and impotent God.
Ban the God. Ban the religion. Take away the fuel and the fire will burn out.
Grow up and ditch the fairytales.
We could be visiting other planets on holiday, we could be driving around in flying cars, we could wipe out cancer and be living in peace with each other if we’d just drag ourselves away from the mythical gods of the dark ages.
On the plus side, he knows how clouds form, where as the other kids think they are like cotton wool.
Go figure… the religious ones believe in cotton wool clouds, but my non-believing son is all about the science…
He asked me – “They all say they are Christians, but that’s all made up stories. If they are Christians, then what am I?“
I’m sure some of the others just ‘believe‘ to stay in with the crowd, and some just say it because, well… everyone else is saying it.
Regardless of what you might think, I have always tried to keep religion out of his life until he is old enough to make his own mind up. If he has asked a question, I have always tried to be neutral & promote understanding of people’s beliefs, and to be tolerant.
I answered in form of a question – “Do you believe that there is a God?”
He replied – “Pffft, no!”
I asked – “Are you sure?”
He replied – “It’s just stories. He’s not real, I already SAID that!”
I said – “Then you are like me. You are an Atheist.”
He looked at me, grimaced and said – “Atheist people don’t believe in God, do they?”
I told him – “No, they do not.”
I told him that as he grows up, he’ll meet a lot of people who believe in God or Gods, and he’ll meet a lot of people who don’t. I told him that I am happy for him to believe what he wants, and that other people are allowed to believe what they want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone.
He seemed much happy to be a thing, and not just not being a Christian.
He smiled, gave me a hug and then went back to reading his book on racing Mini Coopers.
After seeing Kate Smurthwaite shut down one of her counterparts in a religious debate (she was representing the National Secular Society), I came up with this new image.
Before posting it, I sent it to her to see if she was okay with it.
She replied saying that she loved it – and that she had also sent it to Nicky Campbell (the show host). I highly recommend looking her up.
So… I’ve been blogging for *cough* years now, and never really done religion. There is a very good reason for this… I just don’t care what you are, as long as you’re not a total bastard. With or without religion you can still be a total bastard. I’m anti-total bastard… not anti-religion. Any way, a recent read of GOD COLLAR (by Marcus Brigstocke) made me put finger to keyboard…
You should know me enough by now that this is not going to be a boring preachy blog….
Heck, I even drop Sometimespace’s first ‘C’ bomb…
For the sake of this blog, you have to take the stance that ‘God’ exists…
Before I start I should say that I am not so stupid as to completely say God does not exist… but I don’t believe God exists. You see, even scientists are still not sure of everything…
In fact one of the things that scientists always took to be a dead certainty… the speed of light being the fastest anything could be… has been found to be wrong…(for now…).
So where I don’t believe God exists, I am perfectly open to finding myself wrong. Much like scientists who thought the speed of light was the daddy of all speeds, they still had open minds that they might be wrong.
According to all I have seen and heard:
We are the creations of God.
God is supposedly perfect.
God gave us free will.
Disasters and such like are sent by God to test us.
If the disasters are not sent to test us, they are sent to punish us.
God knows everything.
So… let’s go back to the beginning….
God creates us. He is perfect and knows everything. He gives us free will.
He puts a tasty treat on a tree and says:
“Oi, Adam… Eve… Don’t touch that bloody tantalising piece of fruit… It’s gorgeous, succulent and you can’t touch it…or I’ll fuck you up”
I may have got the words slightly wrong, but it gives you the idea.
God created us… so knows EXACTLY what we are going to do when something like that is put in front of us. There’s no way he wouldn’t know this.
It’s like putting a fine crystal vase with Mickey and Minnie Mouse on it… on a low table… and telling a 3-year-old child to not touch it… and then leaving them alone in the room with that vase… AND THEN punishing that child AND ALL OF THEIR OFFSPRING FOR ETERNITY for going ahead and breaking that vase…
Any normal parent knows that leaving that pretty child attracting vase in easy reach is going to end in one way.
This means God was ALWAYS going to punish us… because God knew exactly what the outcome of the vase/apple would be….
The disasters, the floods, the diseases, the famines…. all punishments. All punishments for things that the all-knowing God KNEW we would do anyway.
What a wanker.
Feel my WRATH!!!!
No… wait… maybe he was ‘testing‘ us….
But again, if he is perfect he wouldn’t need to test us… He’s just throwing out debilitating illnesses to our children, giving our friends cancer and generally acting like a kid with a magnifying glass on a summer’s day…. next to an ant’s nest.
He’s doing it for fun and spite….
What a totally ass-hat of a wanker.
Maybe I shouldn’t write stuff like this… I could end up burning in Hell….. but then again, God would know I am going to write this… His bastardness knows no bounds.
Just going back to the ‘free will’ thing…. It doesn’t exist. I can go out and buy a burger when ever I want.
Some starving family in Africa can’t do that…. Sure, they have the free will to be able to do it, but they can’t. Your free will is limited to the physical things that you can actually do…. And seeing as God created everything, our ‘free will’ is TOTALLY DICTATED BY HIM…..
Free will my arse.
If God does exist, then I do not want to follow him. A God that knew all along what we’d do, and knew that we would do it… and then punishes us for doing it… A God that has taken some of my close friends and family (God created cancer, don’t you know… he created EVERYTHING)… A God that leaves my friends and family suffering… that threatens my child with damnation for doing exactly what God knew would happen…. You know what God, you can fuck off.
But wait…. Maybe God isn’t perfect….. Maybe the ‘tests‘ are to see if he’s done a good job making us….
YES! He’s not raining down destruction on us for fun… it’s all a test to make us better because he’s not prefect…. AND there you go…. I do not want to follow an imperfect God…. A God who couldn’t even make us correctly….
That would be like going to the hospital, putting your LIFE on the line and undergoing major surgery… and the surgeon doesn’t really know what they are doing, so is using you as a test subject… like a surgeon in the middle ages!!!
You’d be putting your life into the hands of a fuck-wit… You wouldn’t do that, would you?
This gives a few choices then….
Follow the Perfect God… who is a cunt (yes, I said it).
Follow the imperfect God… HA! Yes, Give your life up to someone who could be as wrong as you are…
Don’t follow God.
You could – and this is just throwing it out there – just try living your life in such a way that it doesn’t totally piss off your fellow human too much, and to accept that your fellow human will try to live the same way… AND that if you do end up pissing each other off, that you have the ability to not start a war and just accept that people are different.
You could – and once again, this is wild and mad – work WITH your fellow human to find cures for disease, find solutions for disasters, get together and work as one to overcome NATURAL problems….
Come on… you know this God is a tosser who just loves to see us fight and kill and rape and murder. You know that if our own hatred to each other doesn’t get his omnipotent rocks off, that he’ll send forth famine and disease to help him reach his holy vinegar strokes…
This God is just a prom queen.. and spoilt cheerleader… the girl at school who knows she is hot, and that the boys all fight over her… and yet she lets the fights carry on because she likes it… She won’t say which religion is right… sorry, I mean she won’t end the fighting by telling the boys which one she wants.
You know this because if he really existed, he’d give a definitive, non-fairy tale, not hearsay sign to us to say he exists, and that all the religious groups should all play nicely…
Maybe a HUGE sign in the sky…. something that could only be him… and not mistaken for a weather balloon… or an oddly burnt piece of Jesus toast… Something like…
There you go… Religion…. and one of the reasons I try not to touch upon it…
Peace to you all, whatever you believe. You have free will to believe what you want, and I have the acceptance to let you get on with it… and even discuss it with me.
I’m open to everything… but until then, I’m staying a non believer who accepts there might be a God, but doesn’t believe there is.
Anyway, to finish…. to cleanse your palette… this video from ‘College Humour‘…. and Religious Nerds!!!
Happy 65th birthday to one of the greatest scientific minds of our time. To say that Prof. Hawkins is a genius is an understatement, but I think he is missing an additional vocation as an impressionist – but more on that later.
I want to watch some off my DVD movies on my iPhone, but due to licencing laws I should buy an iPhone iTunes download of a movie to do that – even if I already own the movie! Now I’m all for the movie and music industry earning from what they give us – but I think it stinks when they try to charge you multiple times for a product.
Case in point: Ringtones. Sorry, but if I bought your song, then I should be able to use it as I wish for my personal use. I don’t mean I want to copy it and sell it, or distribute it in any other way, I just want to use MY purchase MY way for MY use.
I think a person should have the rights to use their purchases as they wish – as long as they are used for personal use, and not shared. I don’t want to buy an artists ringtone if I already own the song, after all, it’s my music, my phone, and me that’ll use and hear it! What’s next? If I play the song in my car I will have to pay rights to the artists if my passengers are listening!
DVD movies are in the same area of thought for me. I already own the discs, so why can’t I freely use then on my iPhone? It’s not like I’m watching both at the same time, and on the iPhone only one person can really watch something – yet I have to pay more…. but play the DVD on the TV and I can watch it with friends… so where are the lines drawn?
Now if I want a John Cleese quote as a message alert, and I already own a CD or DVD that contains the material, then I’d baulk at paying for a few seconds worth for a clip – but I am more than willing to pay for a stand alone message that he may make just for phones etc.
I have John Cleese as a voice on my GPS, and I payed for that use. I had no problem paying for his voice talent being used in this new role – He has to make a living after all. Same goes with a few other novelty voices I bought a few years ago when I bought the GPS originally.
That brings me to time travel. It was something John said on his Twitter blog that triggered a thought in my head. I don’t think time travel is, was or will ever be possible. Imagine 30 years ago how people thought about computers and mobile phones! Only very few people had these things, but now they are in reach to all of us – regardless of age, wealth, religion, sanity etc. There are people who break the law with them, people who use them for deviant purposes (no matter what their age)… and that is why I don’t believe in time travel.
Imagine if time travel became viable – like the first computers. It would start out as a top secret thing (probably military or government). Years later it would become a private sector thing for business and industry. Soon it would be open to the public. Eventually it would be there for all to use. I am fully aware that this process could take decades, or hundreds of years, but we are talking about time travel… Initial development could be sped up by going back in time to solve problems that had taken years to solve first time around.
So, if time travel existed in government or military circles, I am sure the development would be rapid. The designers could get so far, and then go back in time with solutions to speed up develoment… I hope you can follow that!
As time goes on, time travel would leak out, or simply become publically available. The moment it is publically available you can place a safe bet that people would travel back. Kids etc just wouldn’t think twice about misusing it – and as such we would know about time travel by now (or in the past!) because we would have been visited by now!
Does this screw things up for Stephen Hawkins then? This crazy blogger disregarding science due to future kids with high jinx and time travel on their hands? What’s Hawkins to do?
No disrespect, but if I spoke through a box, then I’d do what I did with my GPS… Hawkins could give lectures in the style of John Cleese (less the silly walk), or in gangster tones of a mafiosa hitman. If science did fail Hawkins then, he could always install a few celebrity voices and become an impressionist… as long as he paid for the voice rights.
We have a sign on our door politely saying we do not want junk mail, fliers, menus or any cold callers. Very self explanatory.
So how come the foreign pamphlet distributers understand it, yet a couple of old English Jehova preachers don’t? You’re not special. The sign on the door doesn’t say “Except for blinkered religious nuts”.
I almost felt sorry for these pensioner preachers after their first few words…
“We are delivering this pamphlet World wide…”
In those shoes? Surely your feet will be killing you? And just that one pamphlet? You don’t expect more than one person in your World wide door knockathon to take the pamphlet?
Surely they meant that their organisation of brain washed lonelies were delivering pamphlets World wide, and not just them with that one pamphlet…?
No wonder they couldn’t understand the sign, they had barely enough brain washed understanding left to know how to ring a doorbell and spout out their emotionally bleached de-personalised bull.
Sometimespace 