Again, it's important to define terms, something many THEISTS seem practically allergic to doing.

People also like to dodge the question by going, "oh, I'm an agnostic". Yeah, I'm agnostic on a LOT of things for which there's no objective evidence; leprechauns, unicorns, the tooth fairy. As far as I'm concerned, the jury's still out, in a sense. Evidence could come along at some point to tell me that, yes, there is an invisible 500 foot tall orangutan living on my roof.

Even the question, "Do you believe in God", frames a duality pertaining to a singular, objective, mutually agreed upon and at least generally defined entity where none such general consensus exists. Or to put it another way, which "God"? How about you define the friggin' thing before you expect people to say whether they "believe" in it or not?

Is it "very stupid" to say you don't believe in the Greek Gods? The Roman Gods? Quetzlcoatl? Pan? Eris? Ra? Osiris?

I'd like to see the actual Sagan quote, along with context, please.

You're assuming that people are what they present themselves as online.

Let me give you a brief recap of some of the events that have come to light in the past month or so, all oddly focused around that group and the 'drama' that has played itself out there.

(Please note that the only "members" I am naming names of have all been BANNED from this site or DU2, so I am not bad-mouthing any legitimate active members of this forum)

"Survivoreesta" was banned as a repeat disruptor both on DU2 and DU3. According to Skinner, this was actually a MALE troll, pretending to be a "woman" with serious mental issues.

"Sera_Bellum" and "Feldspar" were BOTH banned after making bigoted transphobic statements, diligent research on the part of attention-paying members revealed that this entity or entities (either one woman, two partnered women conveniently sharing an IP address, or maybe again, a male troll pretending to be both) had previously shown up under the names "Sargasso_Sea", "Evolve_Already", "Ittakesavillage_people", "TAPat" and who knows how many more.

Now, this is my favorite one: After several weeks of vociferously complaining that people were accusing her of not being what "she" was pretending to be, it turns out that "Remember Me" was our old friend "Eloriel" ("remember her"- get it?) who was also "Morgana LaFey" and who knows how many other incarnations.

Beyond the mind-boggling confusion of what may be a male troll with several identities pretending to be a feminist woman who makes bigoted transphobic comments, of all things ( ) I think maybe the element you're missing to all this is that for whatever reason there have been some serious weirdos with multiple identity issues who have fixated on that particular group. Maybe what admin wants, or at least the current host wants, is some co-hosts who actually are what they claim to be, so some of the attendant bullshit around that forum can be allowed to wither away.

Because Jesus shoulda spent more time killin' dinosaurs, and less time mollycoddlin' em!

YEEE HAAAW!!!!

because the anti-choice agenda to outlaw contraception is supposed to be a secret

they know it's a loser, but they also can't go "We don't want to overturn Griswold, we acknowledge that people have a right to use contraception" (in other words, they have a "license to do things in the sexual realm that make God mad" or whatever it was Sticky Ricky said) ... they can't do that because THE INSANE BELIEF that ONE OF THESE DAYS they'll be able to throw all the 'sluts' who use the pill in prison (while telling the rest to put an aspirin between their knees) has been the secret fantasy that has kept all these repressed fetus fetishists priapic for all these years, probably ever since 1974 when everyone else was getting laid and they were sitting at home with Pat Boone on the 8 track.

In case anyone doubts that this has been what it's been about from the get-go, remember that the HLA has been a central part of the GOP Plank for decades. Here's what the big 'pro life' orgs have to say on the HLA, contraception, etc:

http://www.all.org/article/index/id/MjM4NQ

Spin, Spin, Spin. However grudgingly they may acknowledge that "The American People are still apparently favorable to contraception" (cue the heavy siiiiigh ) it's pretty clear that the plan is to go after the bad pills once the abortion drs are out of the way:

Chris Matthews just asked: "Is Santorum The Flavor Of The Month"?

I'm confused! I thought Chinese "Tiger Moms" were best! Help! Help!

Here's an idea, we could get all the Chinese Tiger Moms to battle with the French Politeness Moms in a monster truck arena.

For round two, we could have all the book publishers trying to get rich selling books to neurotic American Parents about how Chinese Tiger Moms are better, battle it out with all the book publishers trying to get rich selling books to neurotic American Parents about how French Politeness Moms are better, in a monster truck arena.



"Sunday Sunday SUNDAY, We're Turning the Rosemont Horizon into a Giant MUDDDD PITTTT!"

I know. People should be able to discuss Why American Kids Are Brats

without stupid generalizations about people of a certain nationality.




...

Save The Preconceived Babies!!!

An oldie, but a goodie.

http://www.geocities.ws/preconceivedbabies/index-2.html


And yes, it's satire.

I used to naively assume everyone was as they presented themselves.

It was probably 2006 or so, after having extensive run-ins with one of these "entities" (who, for all I know, may be the same being stirring up trouble right now. It's totally possible) when another long-time DU member pointed some stuff out to me; once I noticed, and started seeing the connections.

Man. Like a bad acid trip.

It's certainly simpler to just take everything at face value, but that allows the manipulators and game players to do... well, honestly, I don't know what they're trying to do. But I decided a while back that I was going to at least argue for as much transparency as possible.

Obviously people put forth different aspects of themselves online. I'm self-aware enough to know that the contours of my personality shift, to a degree, in relation to context or whichever discussion is at hand. I'm sure when I'm debating an anti-choice creationist or supporter of mandatory school prayer here, I'm much more of a fire-breathing Atheist than the Zen or Tao minded individual I am at other times.

But I'm aware of it, I do at least *aim* for genuineness in my interactions, and most importantly, there's only one of me here. I think that's something, at least.


And yeah, I saw that movie, too. I actually thought of DU when I was watching it. Weird and creepy and thought-provoking and all the rest.

The only thing that's odd IMHO is that it took 'em so long to come around to Sticky Ricky's station.

I mean, he's got all the things they want- he's completely batshittery winguttitized on the socio-religio-veggietales-culture war Jesusbagger issues, he's still on his first wife, he's the right race, gender, and religion, and did I mention that he's completely batshittery winguttitized on the socio-religio-veggietales-culture war Jesusbagger issues?

Plus, he's an idiot. He's their fucking dream date, which speaks awfully ill of him that even the pinheaded cranio-rectal inverts of the GOP base were desperately hunting for something- anything- else to take home from the right wing nut bar, before settling for the Santorum.



It's like he's too lame even for them. Which is pretty lame.