Nestor's Cola

Today I saw an article on Muslims and the Middle East, and all this Jihad crap everyone goes on and on about, and seems to have been going on about, at length, for some time now. To be honest, I can’t think back and remember a time without hearing that there was some form of shit (usually religion based) going on in the Middle East. I span several decades, mind you. Think aobut hat for a second. That’s a long grudge. It doesn’t start after nearly thirty years, this bullshit they have against each other apparently goes back hundreds, maybe even a thousand years. Everyone’s mutually fracked off about each other, and for what? God? their Church?

It’s time I stepped up on my Soapbox.

As I understand it, to be Muslim is to have a Charge, a Commission. “Go out and find those that are not Muslim. If they are not Muslim, get them to become Muslim. If they refuse, kill them.” Well, in extremist cases. But we’re talking about those extremists, right? Let’s direct our attention to this faith.

I believe, that to some extent, religion is a comfortable blanket that you wrap yourself in before going to bed in an eternal grave. It’s like breeding: a bulwark against mortality. People are afraid to die. We want to know what will happen to us after we die.

Hold the fucking phone right the fuck there.

If Religion is supposed to be a comfortable thing, something to soothe our fears, something that helps us come to terms with our short lives and even shorter ambitions, calms and comforts us against some of the frustratingly obtuse and aggrivating things this mudball of a planet has to offer us, Shouldn’t it also keep us from wanting to kill each other and stir the hive? Instead of kicking over anthills, shouldn’t religion be a personal experience? It should be something that brings you peace in the long watches of the night; Something that makes you feel more at ease standing in the line at the grocery store; or something that helps you sleep in a long trans-atlantic flight.

Those radical followers of a defunct and malignant religion, they’re not happy. They’re not at peace. They’re not comfortable. These people, for whatever reason, are fucked in the head. You want my opinion? There you have it. If you have to be a prick and be unnecessarily violent because your God(s) told you so, I say that you’re a fucking fanatic and whatever it is that you believe in, it’s not anything that’ll bring you or anyone else peace.

I think every major religious trunk out there has been responsible for a variety of atrocities, violence, and theocratic hate against those it determines to be “heathen”, and I think that again, violence spawned from religious intent defuncts and destroys any religious credibility. In other words, it’s all bullshit. (:D)

I’m not here to tell you what you should believe. I’m not going to beat you down because you’re Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or fucking Revival in the Holy Field with Mother Mary jerking off the Sacred Donkey in Tijuana. What I am going to do is I’m going to tell you that if you really believe, if you really have faith in (whatever), you’re not gonna be a prick about it. You’re not going to feel compelled to beat me down for the sake of something that is essentially a valium against death. You’re going to die. Deal with it.

My faith? My beliefs? I have faith that we will inevitably evolve beyond the need for comfort foods, comfort religions, comfort blankets and comfort zones. I believe that we all will evolve beyond archaic fear-based ideologies and will explore the human condition and achieve our next level in thought and expression. I believe that as long as there is science and art, mathematics, poetry and music, Philosophy and sculpture, discussion and passion, logic, reason and constructive emotive expression, there will be fucking progress.

Nestor: Hanging out in Tijuana watching Holy Mary and the Divine Donkey~

Okay, kids. Nestor is going to break it down for you: Religion is functionally useless nowadays except as a primer for philosophy and as a functional moral primer for existing in today’s world. Things like “Don’t kill” and “Don’t steal” are decent fundamentals. It’s good to instill a personal belief in what’s “right” and what’s “wrong”. Morals (and as an extension, laws) are the survival mechanism for any society that allows itself to propagate. morals bring a personal motivation to an impersonal law.

Let’s set aside what constitutes “right” and “wrong” for a moment. For the sake of argument we’ll use murder.
Killing your fellowman has consequences- you piss off people around you, and you destroy the equilibrium that a society creates amongst its peoples; and so therefore (unsanctioned) killing goes against the survivability of your society’s way of life. So the society concocts an explanation: “Killing is bad. We’re going to outlaw killing.”

Irregardless if there’s a theology present, it still establishes a rule, a defining characteristic. Theology just hammered home the point a little more with the promise of repercussions beyond the mortal coil: “Don’t kill, or when you die, something bad will happen to you.” Accentuated with the fear of death, the fear of the unknown, and no proven knowledge of what exists beyond the boundary of life, you have a perfect mechanism for delivering society-driven survival methodologies into your children. Here’s the kicker: It’s fundamentally no different than telling them that the boogey monster will eat them alive if they don’t go to sleep on time.

Along the way, you can throw in “guideposts to better living” for the individual because again, it serves the society’s best interests to make sure the individual is functioning properly. For the sake of argument, let’s say Vitamin X makes you healthy. Fights cancer, freshens your breath, and gives you stupendous sexual prowess. It’s then in your best interests to take Vitamin X. So let’s write that down: Your society… no wait. Your God says it’s in your best interest. Seeing as your God is the final arbiter of what happens at death, wouldn’t it make sense that he’d suggest something in life? Of course!

Breaking it down in case you missed it, religion is an excellent tool to deliver a personal connection with impersonal laws. In the past, most societies were theocratic in nature, so this was advantageous. The law, “You cannot kill, or you will recieve X punishment” is abstract. You can’t relate that to yourself without a moral obligation. Religion establishes that moral obligation. What’s amusing with this scenario is the fact that there are loopholes. “You cannot kill, or you will recieve X punishment (except)” You are free to kill those that attempt to kill you. You are free to kill those that threaten your society (encouraged, even!).”

maybe my prolem is the fact that they interject a nameless, faceless, unprovable God in the whole thing, and then at the same time that he can’t be proven, claim to speak in his name.

“Without religion, you would have good people doing good things and bad people doing bad things. But only with religion, do you have good people doing bad things.”

There’s always that rationalization from religious apologists, those who seek to cleanse the good name of religious beliefs by picking all the bad seeds out of the pot. Somebody commits murder in the name of God? Not a true christian. Terrorist? Not a true muslim. It wasn’t for religious reasons, it was for political reasons, sociological reasons, it was mere psychosis… etc., etc., etc.

But here’s a few facts:

-Without religion, nobody would strap a bomb to their own child in order to murder infidels, 100% convinced that they are sending this child to heaven.

-Without religion, nobody would murder an intelligent, educated doctor just because he performs abortions.

-Without religion, there would have been no Spanish Inquisition, no Crusades, no conflict in Isreal over holy lands.

-Without religion, Hypatia of Alexandria would not have been pulled out of her chariot one day, stripped nude, dragged to the foot of the church and burned alive by a mob of Christians.

-Without religion, a woman would not be sentenced to death for the ridiculous charge of witchcraft.

-Without religion, the vast majority of suicide bombers would never go through with it, knowing that this is the only life we’ll have, that there is no God who will reward them for martyrdom.

-Without religion, Matthew Shepard would not have been robbed, pistol-whipped, tortured, and tied to a fence post and left to die because he was gay.

Go ahead. Argue. Split hairs. Piss and moan. Rationalize. Do whatever you want, but this list can go on and on and on for hours and hours, pages and pages of horrors and cruelties for which the blame can be squarely placed on ignorant dogma and the breeding ground for it that is religion. Charity exists without religion. Peace and love exists without religion. School shootings and gang warfare would exist without religion. But absolutely none of these hideous crimes and cruelties listed would occur if it weren’t for the contemptible and repulsive belief in myth and superstition that is religion.

It’s time to stop defending something that holds back intellectual advancement, that perpetuates hate and violence. Its influence gives us the origin for most of the bigotry in the world, and serves mainly to control the masses and keep them complacent and dulled to a world of killers and tyrants. That moderates exist is absolutely no justification for the crimes of the extremists. The moderates only provide safe haven for the extremists to get closer and closer to pushing forward their glorious vision of armageddon. It’s time to put a stop to it.

It doesn’t require violence or bloodshed to get rid of religious dogma. No coup is required to save the world from this monstrosity. All that is required is for you to stop believing fairy tales are real. To embrace the wonderful, logical intellect you have hidden away in your skull and see the universe as it really is rather than how you want it to be. That you refrain from teaching your children myths, mysticism, and dogma as irrefutable truth. You can still have spirituality. You can still have great wonder for the mysteries of the universe. But let go of the rulebooks. Let go of the nonsense and the answers that are not to be questioned. Let go if it already.

The fate of our species depends upon it.

-Erik Schoenek

I hate Christians, I hate Christianity, I think they’re all fucking stupid. I said before, on a forum I frequent “If we’re to abdicate Reason on an unproven absentee God, then we might as well start truthfully believing in absurdities as the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. Where are their Churches and Mosques and Televangelists? You cannot accept the realities of these fictional entities, yet any faith-driven religion has you believe in something very similar! Believe in something unprovable! Be sure to drink your ovaltine!” And it’s true.

And I hate -hate- with a passion the absurd mentality that the entire faith is based off! We’re flawed and imperfect, broken and worthless and the only way we can achieve any lasting rewards is through service to your fellowman. You have to demean and debase yourself; destroy who you really are in order to achieve rewards. Here’s the kicker: You get the rewards after you die. It’s like a great cosmic joke with you as the punchline.

For all intents and purposes, we are the dominant species on this planet. We have subjugated most of the world to our whims. Our dominion is absolute. I don’t know about you, but I have fucking pride in the things we’ve accomplished.  One thousand years ago, we discovered the Scientific Method. We conquered the Atlantic and crossed from the Old World into the New World. Today we have medicines, computers, global communication, musics, unparalleled artistry and buildings that scrape the sky and trap clouds inside. On an individual level, each person grows up with a general understanding of world history, their own national history, math skills, science knowledge, and the ability to function in a society.

Christianity takes that all away. Human achievement is worthless. Material possessions are only as good as they can be so that you can give them to someone else. Your life only has meaning when you suffer, and when you suffer, it is then, only then, that God showers his love on you. What a fucking sadist, that he demands such masochistic behavior from his chosen while at the same time concealing his existence whatsoever!

I’ll close this with a couple quotes from Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff

Ayn Rand:

“They claim that they perceive a mode of being superior to your existence on this earth. The mystics of spirit call it “another dimension,” which consists of denying dimensions. The mystics of muscle call it “the future,” which consists of denying the present. To exist is to possess identity. What identity are they able to give to their superior realm? They keep telling you what it is not, but never tell you what it is. All their identifications consist of negating: God is that which no human mind can know, they say—and proceed to demand that you consider it knowledge—God is non-man, heaven is non-earth, soul is non-body, virtue is non-profit, A is non-A, perception is non-sensory, knowledge is non-reason. Their definitions are not acts of defining, but of wiping out”

Leonard Peikoff:

“Every argument for God and every attribute ascribed to Him rests on a false metaphysical premise. None can survive for a moment on a correct metaphysics.

For instance, God is infinite. Nothing can be infinite, according to the Law of Identity. Everything is what it is, and nothing else. It is limited in its qualities and in its quantity: it is this much, and no more. “Infinite” as applied to quantity does not mean “very large”: it means “larger than any specific quantity.” That means: no specific quantity—i.e., a quantity without identity. This is prohibited by the Law of Identity.

Is God the creator of the universe? There can be no creation of something out of nothing. There is no nothing.

Is God omnipotent? Can he do anything? Entities can act only in accordance with their natures; nothing can make them violate their natures …

“God” as traditionally defined is a systematic contradiction of every valid metaphysical principle. The point is wider than just the Judeo-Christian concept of God. No argument will get you from this world to a supernatural world. No reason will lead you to a world contradicting this one. No method of inference will enable you to leap from existence to a “super-existence.”"

Next week, I give you  downloadables!

DRwut actually not really, since even though izumi is gay as hell, being gay as hell still makes him happy
DRwut but is that cause he likes it or because there’s a group of people like him that smile upon that kind of stuff?
UserGoogol I’m really not a big fan of egoism, actually. (More of a utilitarian, although I’m shifting away from that because I think it might not be logically rigorous enough.) But the argument for rational egoism seems sensible enough to me. Things in the outside world only effect you in so far as they effect your mind. Thus, your happiness is something that effects you directly, while other people’s happinesses is more of an indirect thing.
UserGoogol Did that get cut off?
DRwut i never read that
DRwut nestor do you agree with objectivism?
DRwut http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivist_ethics this
TG|Nestor lemme have a looksee
UserGoogol Ayn Rand also sucks for taking the word “objectivist,” which is such a nice word that she had to burden with all the particular aspects of her philosophy.
TG|Nestor Likewise society has heaped negativity and scorn on the word ‘ego’
TG|Nestor you can’t mention that word except in a negative connotation
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DRwut ego should be neutral
TG|Nestor No, ego is the centralizing core of an individual’s existence. it’s his own unique gestalt that differs from everyone elses’
TG|Nestor you cant neutralize something so critical and expect people to be happy.
TG|Nestor you’re stripping individuality for group conformity.
UserGoogol That’s not how the dictionary defines ego.
UserGoogol It’s just… the self.
TG|Nestor my ego is different from yours, UG. Therefore it’s the sole identifying characteristic that makes me Nestor, and you UG
TG|Nestor all things being equal, the Ego is the soul’s fingerprint
TG|Nestor uniquely individual and identifying
DRwut In Freud’s theory, the ego mediates among the id, the super-ego and the external world. Its task is to find a balance between primitive drives, morals, and reality while satisfying the id and superego. Its main concern is with the individual’s safety and allows some of the id’s desires to be expressed, but only when consequences of these actions are marginal. Ego defense mechanisms are often used by the ego when id behavior conflicts wit
DRwut h reality and either society’s morals, norms, and taboos or the individual’s expectations as a result of the internalization of these morals, norms, and taboos.
UserGoogol Ah, that’s something of a distinct concept.
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TG|Nestor Freud was an asshat.
zakenayo oh fuck
MTHoopla @seen Jeffu
Keine-tan MTHoopla: Jeffu was last seen in #forum-m 7 hours, 39 minutes, and 41 seconds ago: Jeffu now to sleep after 20ish hours of going without. x_x
zakenayo the Japanese in “The Prestige” is the WORST I have ever heard
UserGoogol I think he popularized the word though, so linguistically he does have precedent.
UserGoogol I don’t think there’s an ego as you describe it. There’s no fundamental difference between individual selves, the difference is that I’m here and you’re over there and we have different emotions and feelings and personalities and all that stuff.
TG|Nestor that’s like saying that because Metallica has more platinums, they’ve defined the heavy metal music scene
UserGoogol But to say that there’s some fundamental essence sounds like spiritual bullshit.
DRwut UG unless you’re a solipsist
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zakenayo “The Prestige”?
* TG|Nestor is now known as Nestor_sensei
zakenayo Stormbreaker I meant
UserGoogol wut: Oh yeah sure. If solipsism is true, then the difference is that I’m real and he’s not.
Nestor_sensei haha
Nestor_sensei you’re not real~
Nestor_sensei I am
DRwut No, the difference would be that he’s you just a part of you that you can’t control
UserGoogol I beg to differ.
Nestor_sensei Prove to me you exist, UG
UserGoogol Wut: I suppose that would be the more precise way to put it.
Nestor_sensei carve your name in the universe so that no one, even myself, can ever doubt you didn’t exist.
UserGoogol Nestor: I can’t, but why would I want to, figment of my imagination?
DRwut “Metaphysical solipsism is the variety of idealism which maintains that the individual self of the solipsistic philosopher is the whole of reality and that the external world and other persons are representations of that self having no independent existence (Wood, p. 295). More tersely, if more vaguely, it is expressed by the assertion “I myself only exist”, in other words, it is the doctrine that no reality exists other than one’s self”
Nestor_sensei ohohoho~
Nestor_sensei but by buying into solipsism, you buy into the intrinsic value of the human self, the identifying ego component that seperates you from the whole of the world and sets you up as the sinle most important existence in the universe.
Nestor_sensei *single
UserGoogol What?
Nestor_sensei Just that.
Nestor_sensei As a solipsist, you say that everything around you essentially existys because you will it
DRwut or that everything around you is you
Nestor_sensei certainly an interesting divergence from societal ideologies, but not necessarily healthy.
UserGoogol What exactly do you mean by ego?
DRwut A solipsist may also understand that everything being a part of himself would also mean that harming anything would be harming himself with associated negative consequences such as pain. Or a solipsist might say that harming others is imprudent because the solipsist can only be uncertain of their real existence.
Nestor_sensei I recall reading something about… twelve? thirteen? years ago, where psychologists attributed sociopathic behavior to solipsism; in that the sociopath feels nothing in killing a member of society, because he is the final arbiter of his own existence
DRwut ” ”
UserGoogol Nestor: That would make sense, yeah.
Nestor_sensei So you’re crazy~
Nestor_sensei
DRwut “Everything and everyone else is just a figment of imagination, so there’s no particular reason not to make these figments disappear by, say, mass annihilation. The subconscious mind could always imagine them back to life, if that’s what’s really wanted, anyway.”
UserGoogol Well I’m not really a solipsist. It can’t be disproven but it also can’t be proved, and acting as if there is an external reality seems to be more pragmatic.
Nestor_sensei we’ve diverged from the original topic of society versus the individual
UserGoogol In a sense, the difference between solipsism and non-solipsism is just a linguistic difference.
UserGoogol We sure as hell have.
DRwut I blame UG
Nestor_sensei One of the larger questions Olf and I have discussed that relate to this is whether the value of a human being outside of society actually exists.
UserGoogol You were the one who brought up solipsism, wut.
DRwut let’s not point fingers
Nestor_sensei If a society as a whole goes blissfully unawae of a human’s life, can he be said to ‘exist’ to said society?
UserGoogol It depends on exactly what you mean by “exist to said society.”
DRwut that’s true, most people act like a lot of people don’t exist, like their friends, family, and favorite celebrities are the only things that exist
Nestor_sensei simple. If you are completely unaware of a rock twenty miles away, does it exist for you? does it hold relevance?
Nestor_sensei understasnd that there’s a strong difference between physical existence and societal existence
UserGoogol “Societal existance” seems like a concept that really shouldn’t be described using those words.
DRwut if they don’t exist to society then physically they only exist as background
Nestor_sensei certainly, the rock is there (or is it?) in a physical form, but does its ackoledgement (or lack thereof) give it tangibility?
Nestor_sensei *acknowledgement
DRwut why are you arguing anthropic principle
UserGoogol wut: That’s something different.
Nestor_sensei does the individual exist outside of society?
DRwut it’s kind of related
UserGoogol If two systems do not interact, then certainly a person in one system cannot derive value from something in the other system.
Nestor_sensei you might recall a few months ago that there was a huge debate in here with Olf and I pretty much against the rest of the channel because we were debating the existence of humans that existed outside the scope of society
UserGoogol But ehmm… the rock and society do interact, even though they are not aware of it, so things get more complciated.
DRwut society is aware of the rock
DRwut so it exists
Nestor_sensei this woman gave birth to some kids, killed and buried them, and no one knew she’d done these things. Her own husband didn’t even know she’d been pregnant at all.
UserGoogol The word “existance” shoudl probably not be overloaded by using it on concepts like this.
UserGoogol Nestor: The woman is part of society, and she knew about the kids. Although I’ll admit that I’m rather wishy-washy on the morality of infanticide.
UserGoogol For unrelated reasons.
Nestor_sensei So holding her accountable to a ‘crime’ was societally impossible because without the acknowledgement of the infants, they held no verifiable merit.
Nestor_sensei if they weren’t ‘seen’ they weren’t ‘there’
DRwut “There exists one possible thing ‘designed’ with the goal of generating and sustaining ‘observers.’ ”
Nestor_sensei societal laws only exist within the society, though.
UserGoogol Do they?
UserGoogol Well at any rate, the woman was within society, so she should be under its jurisdiction.
Nestor_sensei but the infants weren’t, so did she commit a crime?
DRwut if you can’t see it then you can’t prove it exists
Nestor_sensei crime is dictated by a society.
DRwut socially
Nestor_sensei they existed outside the societal envelope
UserGoogol Yes it is, but I don’t see why just because a crime is dictated by society that something can only be a crime if it harms society.
Nestor_sensei she was the only person in the world that knew of them when they were alive, so therefore she had the ability to arbitrate fate over them
DRwut crimes are dictated by society to protect society, if they’re not in society then the laws aren’t extended to them
Nestor_sensei exactly
Nestor_sensei therefore no crime was committed.
UserGoogol Her society had a rule against baby-killing, she broke that rule. Simple as that. Now, whether baby-killing should be illegal is a different question.
Nestor_sensei What she did was certainly reprehensible, though
DRwut UserGoogol: her society had a rule against killing babies in only her society
UserGoogol Consider a different example. Some space-traveller goes off to a populated planet and nukes the entire thing so that nobody survives. This planet was not known to his homeland, so it was effectively “seperate from society.” But it’s still reasonable for his society to be pissed off at this, because there is value in enforcing a rule against nuking random planets.
Nestor_sensei if she’d killed someone else’s children, for example
DRwut it’s not separate from society because they acknowledge it exists
UserGoogol wut: No, in my thought experiment they don’t know about the planet.
UserGoogol Or wait, are you talking about something else.
Nestor_sensei there are things that exist outside of a society because the zone of perception is able to accept those things as external.
Nestor_sensei Of course, that holds no relevance
Nestor_sensei Well, we can argue that the planet was known, but not known to be inhabited.
Nestor_sensei therefore he’s judged accordingly; I.E. he willfully nuked a planet against societal expectations of nonviolence
Nestor_sensei not for the genocide of an entire world’s peoples
DRwut UG counter example/argument?
UserGoogol I don’t entire understand what Nestor is saying.
DRwut I’m trying to figure out the nonrelevant part
DRwut the rest I understand
Nestor_sensei Let me try and explain.
UserGoogol I don’t. My argument seems fairly clear. Societies make laws because they want their people to act in a particular way. If you don’t act that way, they’ll punish you. It doesn’t matter who you don’t-act-that-way to.
UserGoogol The lines Nestor is making makes no sense.
DRwut ah, even if something is seen as outside society it’s still unacceptable to do them wrong because they’re still in society by way of expectations
Nestor_sensei the society of the US recognizes another society (like russia) not because it holds relevance to their own existence, but because that society falls within the US’s zone of perception.
UserGoogol Another way of putting it, I suppose, is that if an individual is a part of society, then anything that individual interacts with is a part of society by the transititve property.
DRwut I can’t really find a middle between you and nestor
Nestor_sensei removing all interactions, extradtions, and shit like that, unless there is an internal societal law that forbids violence against a nonsocietal, you could go about the business of killing them and not be held responsible. as if you weren’t killing real people
Nestor_sensei wut: we’re having a discussion. just enjoy it
Nestor_sensei
DRwut but most societies laws don’t state “you can only not kill american babies”
UserGoogol Maybe I don’t understand what you mean by the word “society.”
DRwut i think in the baby killing example he just meant people in general
UserGoogol Oh wait, maybe I understand what you’re saying. Is it that “sovereignty” doesn’t extend to dead babies and stuff like that?
DRwut in the baby killing example he meant “the totality of concepts of all purely natural relations and institutions between man and man”
DRwut ?
DRwut or “group of people that form a semi-closed social system, in which most interactions are with other individuals belonging to the group.”?
UserGoogol Well we’ve been talking for two hours, and I should’ve gone to bed one hour ago, so let’s justend that here.