People NEED to follow religious leaders blindly.

In another post, someone said people shouldn't follow religious leaders blindly. And I think it is important to point out just how wrongheaded this is. I would say that


1) People need to follow religious leaders blindly, and


2) The survival of religious leaders needs to be dependent on the survival of the people who follow them.


How else can we achieve religious Darwinism, so as to end up with the fittest set of beliefs and habits for any particular geographical location, people, and time?


Saying that people shouldn't follow religious leaders is not unlike saying that a developing fetus should ignore the genes he has inherited, and develop along his own lines. Meaning, he would be born with gills, because that is what would make sense to him. And, even if the gills turned out be advantageous, by chance, how would he pass on the gift of this advantage when he could expect to himself be second-guessed?


If people are so capable of forming good opinions, and coming up with good reasons - as the advice to ignore religious leaders would imply - then why not preserve and replicate these good ideas somehow, like software? If the ideas are, in fact, good, then why burden each new generation with arriving at them again over and over, or suffering the same repeat costs of trial and error?


Of course no religion can provide guidance through all the dimensions and minutia of life. And any religion that tried to - that removed customized discretion and sorting in a variety of local situations - would perish. Assuming its adherents perished, that is. So people have to adhere for the health of the religion itself and, thereby, for the benefit of future adherents.


eLROY

To follow along blindly is the definition of ignorance. Your analogy about the fetus choosing gills instead of lungs is totally fallacious . A fetus does not get to choose what features it may inherit(I would have chosen the enormous penis gene). My parents sent me to Catholic schools, brought me to church every Sunday, and taught me right from wrong. I choose to believe that man made God, not the other way around. So you won't find me in church every Sunday. I believe in God at least as much as I believe in Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, or The Tooth Fairy. To me, religion is a crutch and a cop out. It's a way for mankind to justify the horrors we perpetrate on others, without having to accept responsibility for our actions.


As for passing on the gills--assuming gills are homozygous recessive, that means the gilled fetus has the genotype aa. If it mates with another aa, there is a 100% chance that it will pass on its gills. If the mate is heterozygous (Aa), there is a 50% chance to pass on gills, and if the mate is homozygous dominant (AA), there is a no chance that it could pass on its gills to the next generation. Future generations from the homodominant and homorecessive could wind up with gilled offspring. There's a freakshow that I'd pay to see.


As for being able to form solid opinions and reasons--obviously we are far from perfect. I don't immediately assume that the church knows best, though. The churches archaic views on homosexuality clash with my own sense of right and wrong. Same thing with their refusal to allow female priests. But then what do I know? I'm just a savage, right? Oh, Brave New World!

Seems to me the entire lifestyle of The Castro in San Francisco and Christopher Street in New York was wiped clean from history recently as if by some Plague delivered by The Great G Himself.


You are also an ass in assuming there "could just as easily" be female priests. There are numerous religions with female clerics, and there are in fact so many religions with so many different traits that almost any combination will be given a chance. If religions with female priests do better, then a religion with female priests can displace Catholicism, plain and simple. If the converse is true, every time a religion adds females it will fall behind and be displaced, regardless of some microscopic space cadet's opinion at some point in history.


You said,


"I don't immediately assume that the church knows best."


Do you assume that someone knows best, that anyone knows best? Or are we just making it up as we go along? It is not necessary that any given individual, or any given church, knows best. If you simply copy the survivor - and the growing body of knowledge added to by each survivor has a way of being preserved and transmitted - you will end up knowing best! It's really that easy!


The reason you follow the church, whether it knows best or not, is because evaluating sets of knowledge and memes darwinistically is the only way to for anyone to know anything. When you perform a scientific experiment, you don't just start experimenting with random permutations willy nilly. You try a superset exhaustively then, if a certain superset works, you try various finer subsets of that superset, and so on, branching methodically down a tree. That is how knowledge is produced, and how the benefit of trial and error in other people's lives is harnessed at the same time as the consequences of trial and error in your own life are avoided.


There just isn't any other way to produce and refine human tools, culture, language, habits, than to accept blindly what you are given, and to experiment at the complement or on the boundaries of what is prescribed. The region open to experimentation is prescribed by the religion. Too much experimentation, you get Christopher Street and Columbine. Too little mutation in the mix - meaning too little recombinant subevolution adn complementary eclecticism - and you will possibly contract and be displaced before the end of time.


Say, what if you were recruited for some strange new job, and you were being trained on the equipment. Would you tell your supervisor that to follow her instructions would be the definition of ignorance? Would you refuse any training at all, calling it a crutch? Would you even deny the notion that there is a proven and disproven way to succeed at the job, and call such notions as ludicrous as the idea of Santa Claus?


So, if there is a right way to do something - like suppose it is correct to steer a car into the skid when you are sliding on ice - who would you say made that the right way, Man or The Big G? Did ancient framers sit down and have a debate about whether steering into or away from the skid would be the way to go for all mankind for the rest of history? Or do we just discover it, and accept it as the word of He, Himself?


Whom do you wish to credit with the invention of language, of morals, of ways to gain control of a sliding car, if not The Big G Himself? To say God is an invention is to deny the validity of all His teachings. But His teachings have more validity than anything, as they are the data-compressed reflection of the physical environemnt itself across all of history. Simple fact is the rubber, in the form of Gods teachings in the Bible, has met the road of life a lot more times than your puny brain could ever dream of.


Okay, so what horrors do we perpetrate on others? Because there's going to be basically two kinds of people on this Earth, those that defend their ground, and those that don't. And pretty soon, the ones that don't aren't going to have an inch of ground to stand upon from where they could preach their silly philosophy. But see, that's just another example of how much more wisdom the common mob idiot enjoys over the analytic intellectual flying under is own steam.


The reason the intellectual's ideas are novel is because every time they come up against reality, they are annihilated - which conveniently gives them a chance to be re-invented and sold as new again, over and over. If same-sex pairs with adopted children offered any advantges, and no disadvantages - if they were the way to go, a superior or equal alternative - they would have taken over the Earth 10,000 years ago.


Oh, by the way, you say a fetus cannot choose what genes to inherit, I say neither can you. You can only choose whether to inherit or not. In the face of incontrovertible evidence that the people whom you would be inheriting from survived, I will leave it up to you. To inherit nothing and to start from scratch - or to presume yourself born with the wisdom to choose - is ignorance.


But at the end of the day, the funny thing is, you're not really choosing. You're just being sold a competing religion by a bunch of college-campus hustlers who say "Atheism's not a religion." I guess they sell you the illusion of choice, and then pump your head full of a bunch of untested garbage, because somehow having you as a follower gives them power or a survival advantage at your expense.


So, in conclusion Ripdog, it's all religion, and you are the pawn. And just the like the Bible interleaves instructions with entertainment, and the TV networks interleave ads with entertainment, the trick colleges play is to interleave skills with indoctrination, so as to insert themselves into the culture pipeline between parent and child, between employer and employee. And why, because they teach anti-survival traits and, as such, have no offspring of their own.


Unlike families and business, they can only perpetuate themselves with your brain as the unwitting host! Isn't that disgusting in a sexual way when you think about it? Don't you feel sordid, Ripdog, wearing the bodily slime of all the college-campus types all over your innocent body? Are you ashamed, to show it off in a public forum, how much mush those intellectual parasites have pumped all over you?


eLROY

I'm the pawn? It seems to me that I choose to use my brain to figure out what is right and what is wrong for myself, while you defer to the big "G". See, eLROY, that way, when it all goes awry, you can claim that you were duped. "I was just doing what the church told me to do", you'll cry. You're no better than those chumps who smoked two packs a day, knowing full well that it was killing them, and are now claiming that they were misled by the tobacco industry.


As far as how do we know what's right--it's called trial and error. Learn from the mistakes of the past. Remember that steering away from the turn resulted in a spinout, so maybe I ought to try turning into it this time. Remember racism and sexism.


I'm not ashamed of my beliefs. As a matter of fact, the "College Campus" types that you deride come in all shapes and sizes. Many of them would side whole heartedly with you. Maybe your problem is the fear of knowledge. Learning might shatter your preconceived ideas. Your world might begin to contain some shades of grey. Uncertainty has no place in your world. Uncertainty means weakness to you. Don't be afraid, eLROY, the intellectuals aren't tying to make you look like a fool. They just look beyond what the church or Rush Limbaugh says is the way. You just keep believing whatever it is that makes you feel righteous and secure.


I see that you've sunk back into the name calling and slinging of arrows. Welcome back.

More girls have been led down the path to lifelong unhappiness by college-campus feminists than by any other single thing I can think of.


I am sad for them every day.


And when did the Catholic Church - or any Church - start promoting smoking? Smoking in general is not an evolved religion, meaning physical proof of what works. But there has been some evidence that smoking may actually work for some individuals. And so, not surprisingly, my religion leaves it open to you to discover whether smoking is right for you.


I am actually disappointed that I didn't get MORE religious indoctrination when I was a kid. Can you honestly say that using your own brain to figure out what was right for you has always led you in the right direction, Ripdog? Or do you just find it easier to live with the errors because you have nobody to blame but yourself?


You people keep bringing up the term "insecurity" as if it refers to a bad thing, but without explaining what that bad thing is. If "insecurity" is simply the polar oppiste of arrogance, then it would seem to be a good thing. If it is something more complex, I would appreciate an elaboration.


To me, this whole idea that you choose what to do in anticipation of your own emotions when you are wrong - and as part of a proactive plan to manage them - is just way out in left field. Do you really choose right and wrong by choosing the source of advice, and then choose the source of advice based on your own bent towards anger, and your experience that you find it more manageable when directed inwardly?


Is everyone out there just picking between right and wrong as part of some, like, stop-gap measure to stave off feeling yucky? Do most people feel so yucky that tricking their own emotions is their main concern? Is what you call "reason" really just a matter of feeding some emotional beast?


eLROY

>>>>>>If people are so capable of forming good opinions, and coming up with good reasons - as the advice to ignore religious leaders would imply - then why not preserve and replicate these good ideas somehow, like software? If the ideas are, in fact, good, then why burden each new generation with arriving at them again over and over, or suffering the same repeat costs of trial and error?

"I feel sad for them every day." WOW! You're quite the humanitarian.


eLROY, I know that you know what sexism and racism are, and also why they're errors. Any reasonable person can look beyond their own selfish wants and realize that what's right is right, even if it doesn't benefit you directly.


Case in point: A guy in my area found a business clipboard with $3500 in cash in it. It was lying in the middle of the street. He found the rightful owner and returned it, cash and all. He also refused the reward that was offered. A talk show host found out and interviewed both parties. He asked the guy who found the money if keeping the money had crossed his mind. "Hell yes!" was his response. But then he thought about the person that had lost the cash and how he'd feel if he was in that situation. He, despite his initial thoughts of taking the money and running, did the right thing. Racism and sexism are real problems that affect real people. They are also much harder to make right than just giving the money back, but you can do the right thing. The difference between me and you, eLROY, is that I'd give the money back. You, on the other hand, would keep it, claiming that since he was dumb enough to leave it sitting on the fender of his trailer, that you actually deserve to keep it. You'd actually feel good about it. Finders keepers, right? Do the right thing. I hated the movie, but the saying has some weight. Stop hiding behind your bible, eLROY. It's not ok to exclude people based on race, sex, or sexual preference. Time for you to step down off of the soap box.

I am honestly puzzled as to where you think women have been cheated, historically. I know a lot of people have been convinced of this fact, but I have not. Do you have some anecdotes, even?


Moreover, you referred to this supposed injustice like it was a mistake, like it was someone's decision. But did any society ever sit down and decide the role of women, or did it just evolve spontaneously, as a reflection of real-world constraints?


I think you are generally mistaken as to why things happen. Do you think basketball-team owners sit down and decide they want their team to be X% black, and that they have the freedom to make that choice and stay in business? Survival is a tough thing, and does not really leave all this room for capricious decisions as you assume.


The role of women is not really a function of my opinion, or even of a unanimous opinion. People have had majority and near-unanimous opinions regarding the role of Jewish people in money-lending for maybe 2,000 years, for instance. And yet here we are today, Jewish people are still in the money-lending business.


eLROY

I'm not arguing why things happen. I'm arguing that reasonably intelligent people KNOW instinctively when they do something, whether it's right or wrong. When a reasonably intelligent person won't approve a home loan to an otherwise qualified applicant because of the color of their skin, they know it's wrong, they just don't care. When we refused to allow women the right to vote, reasonably intelligent people knew it was wrong. This doesn't imply that if you were guilty of either of those two transgressions, that you must be stupid. It implies something far worse than stupidity. Stupidity I can forgive. Cold and calculating discrimination I can't forgive.

'More girls have been led down the path to lifelong unhappiness by college-campus feminists than by any other single thing I can think of. '


i agree. also feminists are blatantly pro communist.


brad

'I'm not arguing why things happen. I'm arguing that reasonably intelligent people KNOW instinctively when they do something, whether it's right or wrong.'


throughout history this has been repeated. that our group is good, and the other group *knows* their bad.


NOT TRUE. both groups think their good. only after a lot of time do descendents of both groups feel that one (victor) was good and other (vanquished) was bad.


brad


p.s. for complete discussion read complete works of nietzsche

Come on, Ripdog, Jesse Jackson wants people to believe that all these blacks are being and have been turned down for home loans because of their skin color, but it just isn't true. If you have followed this debate at all, you will know that nobody has ever produced any evidence of widespread racism in home loans, even despite the fact that local examples of just about everything on this Earth must surely exist.


So enough with this blacks-and-women gibberish, it's been pushed and refuted so many times. Give me something real, just one thing, one anecdote. Of course if it were true it would be silly or evil or something, but that hardly even means anything tangible, since what is truly silly is a whole vision of a world that operates like that.


Put simply, 1) the people who told you blacks are being discriminated against in home loans are flat-out lying, and 2) that's not how the world works anyway.


People don't decide whom to give loans to. Of a collection of people, making loans based on a variety of factors, God decides which of those lenders will be in business a month later. So God decides who gets home loans.


eLROY

what about waiters who pretty much blow off black people because they know (through years of experience) that black people just dont tip much, so they focus on others who (through years of experience) they know will tip better.


right or wrong?


brad

"People don't decide whom to give loans to. Of a collection of people, making loans based on a variety of factors, God decides which of those lenders will be in business a month later. So God decides who gets home loans."


And Santa Claus squeezes his fat ass down my chimney every Christmas Eve and leaves presents under my tree. Do you really believe in some omnipotent deity that decides the fate of the world, from home loans to whether or not a certain sex or race is worthy enough to vote? How lucky you were to be chosen by your "God". Why do you set aside your critical thinking when it comes to "God". I suppose "God" is bumping up the price of gas again. We must have angered him. Or her. Or whatever. You get to interpret religion in a way that suits you. How convenient. Get real.

Some waiters assume that because I don't dress up in a suit and tie, that I'm not going to tip much either. WRONG. If I get good service, I tip well. When I get lousy service, I leave an insultingly small tip or none at all. Your waiter may be getting lousy tips from black people because he's giving lousy service. Right or wrong? You tell me.

I thought I'd give one of your posts a try after a sabbatical. And I find a classic anti-semitic statement. I'm not surprised, just disgusted.

So we have eLROY's anti-semitism and your racism. I assume you have evidence to back up your assertion that black people tip less than non-black people?

I might have missed eLROY's post were it not for yours Andy. Thanks. I guess. I was going to say unbelievable, but you are right, it's not.

ive heard that from waiters i know, but its irrelevent.


its a thought experiment. suppose its true. (ill concede that it may have been true in the past but is no longer true).


but just as a morality question, is the waiter doing something wrong?


brad

say waiter does same for 1 year. notices group A never tips or tips little. next year he gives minimal service to members of group A.


is waiter right, wrong, grey area, what?


if you attack my assumptions its no good since i made them up to bring up a point about morality.


brad

Of course he is. It's a classic case of bigotry. An assumption that all members of some race do something because a few do. Or that those who do it do it because they are black. The very fact that the waiter apparently keeps track of who tips well by race is evidence of his racist outlook.

what's anti-semitic about the post?

No, but you do. You are the one pushing the animistic fallacy here, not me.


eLROY

"The very fact that the waiter apparently keeps track of who tips well by race is evidence of his racist outlook."


Andy,


I'm sorry but I can't help but feel that your viewpoint is a little bit romantic and naive in a way that I can't quite put my finger on. Waiters and waitresses bust their ass to make a living and they rightly expect to be compensated for a job well done. In carrying out their metier, they invariably gain a feel, an heuristic sense of which particular groups of people tip well, poorly, etc... The classification doesn't have to be based on race. Canadians and Europeans for example are terrible tippers. In there native country the tip is included with the bill so they're not used to the American system. Does this statement make me a zenophobe? No, it's not racism Andy. It's a reflection of reality. Whether we want to accept it or not there are some traits, both positive and negative, that are more likely to be associated with a particular ethnic group, nationality, sub-culture, etc... From my own experience I have no idea whether black men are good tippers.

This is going to be a good one, showing me where I am anti-semitic, or what that is even supposed to mean!


Does that mean there is some particular Jewish person I don't like, or that I don't like The Old Testament, or that I don't like Jesus?


I don't particularly love Alan Dershowitz, I guess.


So, tell me what it means to be anti-semitic?


Because, frankly, I suspect you have to think in cartoons like a liberal to be "racist" in the first place!


This is something I have never understood so, please, show me around your touchstone/balloon-face world.


(You'll pardon my poor choice of adjectives, but there are some things liberals picture which I just can't quite get my hands around.)


eLROY

Left-wingers throw around labels like that, as if they are wizards with magic wands.


On the other side, they assume people with mean magic wands are the cause of poverty or something.


eLROY

People see a certain behavior being committed by a member of a certain group. Then they see it again. And they assume this behavior is a trait of the group. I know, for example, that my wife can see 100 bad Caucasian drivers without thinking that their race has anything to do with their driving habits, but if one slow Asian driver inhibits her lead-heavy foot, she will be prone to associate the poor driving with the race.

I am prone to the same generalization about women drivers.


If a study shows that, for example, Europeans tip less, because they are not used to the culture of tipping, this would make sense, and would not be racism. Likewise if one showed, and offered a logical reason, for blacks tipping less. But one suspects that a "heuristic sense" that blacks tip less may be based on a very small sample and transfered to the group in general.


I agree that hard evidence of a difference in a particular behavior among racial or ethnic or national groups would not be racism. But concluding that a group is in some way inferior based on experience with a limited sample is a different thing.

It's an old canard that Jews control the world's finances, run the banks, are the money-lenders, etc. Read any of the anti-semitic literature put out by, for example, the John Birch Society, and you will find plenty of examples.

It is evident, as you admit, that you don't know what anti-Semitism is. An anti-Semite is a person who is hostile towards or prejudiced against Jews. Anti-Semites have often accused the Jews of controlling the world's banks and finances. They says things like, "People have had majority and near-unanimous opinions regarding the role of Jewish people in money-lending for maybe 2,000 years, for instance. And yet here we are today, Jewish people are still in the money-lending business." Then they deny they even know what anti-Semitism is.

Are you serious? This is a joke, right?

ok. forget blacks. bad example. (real life, the kind of thing that might happen in real life, but ok, bad)


one waiter W1 doesnt discriminate (against group A).


one waiter W2 is does discriminate.


at the end of the year, W2 makes 20% more than W1.


now if the actions we are talking about are central to life, then by definition W2's actions will be termed good.


------------------------

'I'm not arguing why things happen. I'm arguing that reasonably intelligent people KNOW instinctively when they do something, whether it's right or wrong. '


now remember, this is what i was responding to. i guess my main point is that *the exact same action can be right at one point in time and wrong in another*.


so here goes. lets say that in say 1960 group A didnt tip. waiters in general give them poor service. (and thereby maximize their EV)


fast forward 1990. a few older waiters still give poor service to group A. (but now they damage their EV, as the reasons for poor service no longer apply).


so you see what i mean. morals (a guide to EV) arent instinctive.


brad

It was a frequent and consistent theme in Hitler's hate mongoring. Also it's been a frequent and consistent theme in justifying anti-semitic pogroms throughout history.

So far as being hostile to Jewish people - as if the idea of being hostile to some stranger you never met and can't even picture has any meaning - I don't know where I've ever given any evidence of that. For instance, I am hostile toward theives in general, but it is hard to picture some anonymous person, like, reading the Torah or something, as somehow doing me wrong, so that I could hate that person. I am the one who LOVES religious people of all sorts, simply for being religious! I love religion!


Now, so far as prejudice, I think that can be translated literally as saying I "pre judge" some person. But judge in what context, and to what purpose? And where have you ever seen me do it? I don't think in cartoons, you would have to give me more specifics before I could even begin to discredit such a nebulous attack.


Course, maybe that is your game!


eLROY

It is a plain fact that Jews were behind many of the world's largest, most successful banks, started the film industry in the US, and so on.


It is only in the hands of some animistic idiot - someone who believes that driving is dangerous because car-company executives are greedy or evil - that these facts become dangerous.


What you should come out against, Andy, is animistic idiocy which, once eradicated, would make it safe for you to actually tell the truth.


You play right into the hands of the silly conspiracy theorists, whether you concede that it is Jewish people, God, evil corporate executives, or whomever pulling the strings.


Why does there always have to be some person, good or evil, pulling the strings?


eLROY

Yes, and Ralph Nader's theme was that car company executives were greedy and evil.


No one denied that car company executives were actually in the automobile business!


But now, here you are trying to deny that Jewish people were in the banking business!


What has the world come to?


When they attack alcohol like they have attacked smoking, are people going to start denying that German people were ever in the brewing business??


eLROY

"you would have to give me more specifics"


"People have had majority and near-unanimous opinions regarding the role of Jewish people in money-lending for maybe 2,000 years, for instance. And yet here we are today, Jewish people are still in the money-lending business."

"It is a plain fact that Jews were behind many of the world's largest, most successful banks"


I rest my case.

http://www.wcotc.com/jews/jew-jewishbankingandfinancialmanipulations-folder.html


A typical web site of anti-Semitic nonsense of the type the eLROY preaches.

But all I said was:


"Well, if they don't run business, they sure run the banks."


WHAT YOU'VE REALLY SAID WAS . . .

Jews controlling the money was another favorite Nazi cry, yet in 1939 when they were proclaiming this, only 0.6% of the 93,000 American bankers were Jewish. By 1973, a study of 377 persons in senior executive positions in 25 banks outside of New York showed that only 1 executive was Jewish. In New York, only 3 of the top 86 officers of major banks were Jewish. In 1978, Senator William Proxmire (then head of the United States Senate Banking Committee) told Esquire magazine that the U.S. banks were "controlled by the most Waspish elements . . . with no Jews, no Catholics, and no Blacks [running the show]."

I don't talk like that, making statements like "Jews run the banking system" or "Microsoft controls 95% of the PC business." As someone who understands economics and statistics, I know the world doesn't work like that, and so I have no reason to get mad at anybody!


For your example about Jews running banks while Hitler was complaining to have any validity, you would obviously have to use numbers pertaining to banks in Germany, and Berlin in particular, about whom he was complaining - duh!


It is true that wasps did everything they could to keep Jews out of the banking business in the US, to where when Saul Steinberg tendered Leasco paper in an effort to buy Chemical Bank, the entire politcal and banking establishment came together to stop him.


And yet only a few years later, Michael Milken, and later Goldman Sachs, would rise to the zenith of the banking world! Which just goes to prove my point, that the economically flawed efforts of racists are doomed to fail!


eLROY

"Michael Milken, and later Goldman Sachs, would rise to the zenith of the banking world"


I rest my case.

See Andy, it seems to get to the point where you're afraid of being Jewish! It's like, I had one family member who lived through The Holocaust (and escaped), and for the rest of his life set up a freaking altar with palm fronds in his bedroom, so important did he consider maintaining the lie that he was raised Catholic to be!


It's like, if I say black people have kinky hair, I'm on thin ice. Black people know they have different hair, everyone knows they have different hair, but black people have been told that when people mention the fact that they are different, those peopel are insulting them. Some agitator has convinced a black person that every Joe Public dislikes him, and it just isn't true!


But if you're so scared to death of characterizations and generalizations of Jewish people, the best thing you could do would be to try to eradicate the economic illiteracy that led to Nazism in the first place! The only thing anyone has to be scared of is mob economic illiteracy, coupled with a willingness to amend the US Constitution in response to mob moral fads.


eLROY

I did not refer to wasps.


Characterizations and generalizations of Jewish people that are false are the stock-in-trade of anti-Semites. You bet I'm scared of those generalizations, such as Jews are the world's bankers or money-lenders, they were slave traders, they were Communists.


Joe Public made blacks drink from separate water fountains and sit at the back of the bus. If not for the Federal Government taking action, these things would still be taking place. You bet Joe Public dislkes blacks.

sentiment blindly, as axiomatic, and with as much if not more faith than a lot of people participating in organized religion today. so how does that make you better? how does that NOT qualify as a religion of its own? we have this completely misguided sentiment in intellectual communities that any sort of religion or god is a cop out because *I* didn't personally come up with the idea, somebody else did, and to believe it would be to allow someone else to think for me, and dictate what i think, do, believe, say, feel, etc. all simply based on the notion that thinking for ourselves is good. maybe it is, but that doesn't mean we have to reject EVERYTHING that has come before. there comes a point where the deconstruction can go on no longer, and we must rebuild or we become stagnant and stale. there is a point where we take all the questioning that has gone on, look at the answers and decide where to go from there. questioning things and analyzing them is great, i wouldn't argue against that. but if that's all you do, you're nothing but a reactionary, which in itself is just another form of following blindly. it is still a direction that is determined by outside influences. until you decide on a direction to go and push forth, and explore, and rebuild, you are doing nothing more than continually responding and reacting. are you saying im an idiot because i believe in god? that all the time ive spent thinking about the subject has been a waste? that i am somehow weak because i believe? kind of a cop-out approach to the idea, don't you think? you haven't asked me anything about how or why i believe. unless i've read your posts wrong (which maybe i did, since im an idiot) you assume that im an idiot because i believe without exploring the idea further. seems kind of close-minded and shallow, don't you think?

isn't more likely that other social traits other than skin color are shared by people of the same skin color? couldn't these tendencies be misconstrued as being racially relevant, when in fact, it is just a coincidence that a large majority of the people who don't feel a good tip is necessary have the same skin color and a lot of the good tippers have the same different skin color? aren't there exceptions to this rough rule that this waiter keeps in the back of his head? if, say, Wu Tang Clan came into the restaraunt, with with their expensive taste in clothing and cars and women, and proceeded to have a merry old time with their money, would our waiter friend still be giving them poor service because they are black? or would he recognize that these guys have $$ and they will probably be generous with it if i do a good job here? isn't that the REAL underlying factor in the decision here?