PF Random Thoughts

lisab

Wow. After nearly a month of major remodeling, there is a working sink in the house! Yay! Actually got to have a delicious home cooked meal last night .

rootX

China is leading right now
http://www.london2012.com/medals/

rootX

Nothing more worse than sinks/toilets not working!

Andre

Dinands third birthday party today !!!!1111



Linking to a cake didn't seem to work for this occassion, so I made one (three actually).

DennisN

Particle fun...

Ivan Seeking

I know or know of several people who have been seeing a psychologist for depression and related problems for decades. Which brings to mind the following question.

Where does a person go for help if they are addicted to therapy?

lisab

Jack Daniels?

Whovian

Though it's the Graviton that produces gravity. Though I guess the Higgs would still be partially responsible, as gravity wouldn't operate without mass.

Andre

rootX

I hear Jack Daniels and depression is not a good mix Some people cry, get angry and even go violent!

ArcanaNoir

Pizza Hut doesn't drug test. Lots of people, including management, were on drugs when I worked there (at more than one location).

turbo

Well, Pizza Hut didn't contract you out to paper machines that produce paper for security-paper (checks/bonds, etc) or foreign and domestic currency. One mill (currency-paper) was seemingly tighter than nuke plants. Another mill was less restrictive, but they didn't want to reveal their security features unless it was absolutely necessary to help me resolve production issues. If you try to alter a document printed on their paper, you WILL be caught. I haven't been there in years, but I'll be that their security features have only gotten better.

AnTiFreeze3

Back from eight days away from my computer.

Re-cap:

- 4 days of basketball camp, which was hell. (Google "Snow Valley Basketball Camp")
- 4 days of being a counselor at a church camp (as an atheist).

It was an interesting time. I've gone to that church camp since I was in 4rd grade (indoctrination unsucessful), and I've made some great friends along the way, who I only get to see once a year (at that camp). I still go, despite not agreeing with what is taught there, only because I still have fun; and yes, there is a particular female interest who may influence my decision as to whether or not I go.

Regardless, it's difficult to sit around and observe children being fed religious dogma. Some of these kids were in 2nd grade, and could hardly manage not to wet themselves no more than they could formulate their own opinion as to how we came to being.

I'll be upfront that I wasn't brave enough to go ahead and just tell these kids that their beliefs were horribly wrong (clearly I'm limited as to what I can tell them is and isn't true, but this was the "New-Earth Creationist" type, so there was a lot to correct). There were very few occasions where I challenged what my campers said; I just sat and listened in hidden dismay as I saw talent being wasted, and passion being focused towards meaningless material.

Needless to say, I made sure to correct one of my campers when he tried to tell me that evolution was false and that dinosaurs and humans had to have been alive at the same time, since he claimed that God made the animals and humans around the same time.

Maybe my relatively recent change from being a Christian to an atheist within this past year alone has left me with some respect towards religion, I don't know. What I do know is that they were all great people, who find comfort in what they were being taught. Regardless of the comfort that they find from religion, the notion of spoon-feeding children misinformation is sickening. I saw first-hand how these children legitimately believe ridiculous claims that can, and have, been falsified by science.

From that arose a new self-analysis; am I a bad person for allowing misinformation to go on, or am I a good (or possibly weak) person for respecting their beliefs, even if the implications of those beliefs goes against what we know to be true?

micromass

I don't think you are a bad person. It was a christian camp and you obviously knew this. So I think it would have been worse to go to that camp and start arguing with everybody. It would also have been counterproductive in some way, as they will start building some resistance towards you.

I think that the best you could have done was just being there and show them that you think differently from them. And by doing them, you show that atheists (or other religions) aren't idiots or evil, but people just like them.

In my opinion, it doesn't matter what other people believe. But it matters that they respect different kind of believes and that they don't try to push their world view.

So, I think you did a good job!

lisab

You aren't a bad person, AnTiFreeze. You said you've only recently fallen out of the religion you were brought up with. That's a big deal, it doesn't happen overnight! And this questioning you have about your role there at camp - I think that's just a part of your personal transition.

dkotschessaa

U-haul is notorious for this too. Glad they aren't the ones doing the hauling...

Andre

And not only children.

Maybe that religion is a direct effect of the survival instinct. We cannot accept that once we won't be there anymore. But we must survive somehow. That's our strongest push. Religion helps, getting a heaven, nirvana , Arcadia, Canaan, Elysium, Shangri-la, Utopia, Zion, afterworld or whatever; but for some it's a cognitive dissonance. For others, we heathens, logic prevails.