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[Aqizzar]

Just got back from my first real day of "real" "work".  Technically, it wasn't much of either of those things, because my boss and I spent most of the day waiting for people to call back with my computer accesses, and we were both drop dead tired from staying awake all night on the side project he originally hired me for.  Hopefully the job won't be putting me to sleep every day, although my low blood pressure and sugar don't like it when I spend more than twenty or thirty minutes sitting down.

More importantly, I still can't shake the feeling that I've made a huuuge mistake, but it would be different any other way.  Wake up at 6AM, spend an hour in traffic to start work at 8AM, spend the entire day talking to one boring person, spend another hour in traffic, get home and sit down around 7PM, giving me a couple hours before I have to sleep if I don't want to be nodding off at work the next day.  Any real sense of having my own life is now officially gone.

Well, all the more reason to keep trying for an independent income at least.

[Reudh]

One of my friends saw fit to post an aggressively anti-atheist photo on her facebook wall. A long debate ensued which lost her a good five friends.

It made me so angry.

Huh, that happened recently in my vicinity as well.

Weeeellll, the comments have now gone on and the total number is sitting at 300 comments. At last count, she has lost seven friends over it, and a further three have lost respect for her. Her father came to back her up, posting deliberately inflammatory comments - and I HAD to argue my stance. Some of the people in it privately praised me; including a dear friend of the family's who "As an ex-scientist I can wholeheartedly agree with where you are coming from, and it saddens me that <REDACTED> saw fit to attack yours, others, and my belief system."

Another one said "I decided to stay in this because I saw you comment, and I know REUDH never backs down from an argument."


Honestly. They decided because atheism isn't a religion, that it was fair game. That 'christianity has copped flack over the years', until someone pointed out how science wasn't exactly cared for during the middle ages either; Copernicus and co's view on the planets was considered evil and wrong and he was excommunicated, wasn't he?


I'm still raging now. But I'm pleased, too, because I have found that I have staunch friends and allies too.

[Heron TSG]

That's actually even more similar to mine than I had thought, though mine reached ~400 comments. Also there were fewer people who stuck in with me, but such is the nature of the area. (More churches than stores in town, last I counted.) I'm just glad I have friends who stick with me in arguments like that, even when I'm just being stubborn. It's never a good feeling to alienate anyone, but I can sort of understand the draw of Valhalla now. I hate arguing, but I love debating. Better yet when I'm up against a dozen people (all the OP's hyper-religious family members) and shooting down arguments left and right. There is anger, but a certain excitement as well.

Though such debates always end with the ever-frustrating "It's okay. God loves you anyway." or "I'm sure God would appreciate your conviction, if only you were defending the truth." or "This must be a test from God. My faith is unshakable."

Gackt.

[Reudh]

Contradiction down! 100pts!

Idiocy down! 500 points!

WARNING WARNING WARNING : Boss approaching:

HARDLINE RELIGIOUS COMMENTS FILLED WITH VITRIOL AND INTELLECT

Cue epic boss battle music while you struggle valiantly and finally succeed.

10000 points.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Though such debates always end with the ever-frustrating "It's okay. God loves you anyway." or "I'm sure God would appreciate your conviction, if only you were defending the truth." or "This must be a test from God. My faith is unshakable."

Ah, the old "I've run out of arguments but don't want to face the possibility that I'm wrong" ploy. Very frustrating indeed.

[Reudh]

I was tempted to tag some philosophical buddies into it to get backup, but I didn't even need it.

Like I said, I've been getting messages all day from people praising me for standing up for my beliefs.

After this, I have examined my own religious/spiritual/philosophical stance, and discovered I am a humanist.

I preferred in the past to describe as a quasi-Buddhist-Christian-Atheist-Agnostic in no order of importance. I was baptised Uniting Church, raised in a Uniting/Catholic household that later became Uniting/Buddhist, and after the congregation of my church belittled my choice in both Christianity and Buddhism I left it - but Buddhism felt empty to me - hence now I elect to meditate and think kind thoughts, do good things.

I choose to take snippets of the best parts of every religion to live by. Christianity (among others) preaches tolerance and love.  Buddhism preaches kindness to all beings.


But the people I was arguing with were blind, as Barbarossa said they kept using comments similar to that - or stating that "Because an opinion is likely to slightly offend I shouldn't have it?"

I wasn't "slightly offended" by it.

But as I said, the thing that I have found is that I can really flex my mental muscle when I need to, and that I will forever have staunch allies to back me up.

[kaijyuu]

Why people can't just respect other's opinions on impossible to know things, and stop acting like they have to educate and instill their own baseless opinions into everyone else, I'll never understand.

If there's one thing that can be proven, none of that affects the world around us, so why insult and degrade those with a different opinion, potentially losing friends and making enemies? I don't get it.

[fqllve]

Why people can't just respect other's opinions on impossible to know things and stop acting like they have to educate and instill their own baseless opinions into everyone else, I'll never understand.

I'd also extend that to opinions in general. Everyone's got their chips in the "the things I like are better than the things everyone else likes" game and nobody's willing to concede that we're all just acting like idiots.

Also sigged.

[Pnx]

I've always felt religion is something you have to figure out for yourself anyway.

[Fenrir]

Why people can't just respect other's opinions on impossible to know things...

I would point out that “God exists,” is not an opinion but a contestable statement of fact, but I agree with the sentiment of what you said.

...never using, when I advanced any thing that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken. This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions, and persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time engag'd in promoting; and, as the chief ends of conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving information or pleasure.

[Reudh]

"Let's have a fight over something that may or may not be real anyway!"

[Pnx]

Inbreeding confuses me...

Not why it happens, but the genetics of it. I'm told it's when you have two identical alleles match together, and you wind up with a whole bunch of recessive traits cropping up. That much I get, but I'm confused about how this manages to happen with male offspring, since you can't match two Y chromosomes together...

Has high school science been lying to me again? I feel like I'm missing something.

[Reudh]

Two pairs of recessive genes = double chance for it to appear. Of the offspring, ONE will CARRY that recessive gene. ONE will be AFFECTED by that recessive gene. TWO will not have that recessiveness appear.


So if both parents have a whole bunch of recessive genes for illnesses, then the children get a double whammy.

[SirAaronIII]

Shin Megami Tensei Imagine is moving to Atlus over the next week. That means I can't bro it up with my sister over break. Dangit.

[Pnx]

Two pairs of recessive genes = double chance for it to appear. Of the offspring, ONE will CARRY that recessive gene. ONE will be AFFECTED by that recessive gene. TWO will not have that recessiveness appear.


So if both parents have a whole bunch of recessive genes for illnesses, then the children get a double whammy.

Yet you can only ever have one Y chromosome, so a guy shouldn't ever be able to feel the effects of inbreeding right?