Some People ...

Some people say they don't believe in the hype of religion, anytype of God, any afterlife where we meet up and re-unite. Although you tell them a ghost story and they believe they've seen something supernatural and all that jizz. If they believe in ghosts haunting around the earth, that would mean there would be some kind of afterlife, in a higher spiritual realm. God, or no god. Just thinking all these people I've met like this are pretty stupid. lol.

Skroatz said:

Some people say they don't believe in the hype of religion, anytype of God, any afterlife where we meet up and re-unite. Although you tell them a ghost story and they believe they've seen something supernatural and all that jizz. If they believe in ghosts haunting around the earth, that would mean there would be some kind of afterlife, in a higher spiritual realm. God, or no god. Just thinking all these people I've met like this are pretty stupid. lol.

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I agree, and have had similar thoughts.

Goes to show people don't actually "think" about what they believe in for the most part, they simply believe it because everyone else does, or it's "normal" to... I think a big part of it is the whole "group mentality" thing. Peer pressure and what not.

As soon as I became an atheist, I began to examine my other "beliefs", which did not stand up to analysis very long. If you think about it, ghosts and such are fucking retarded to believe in. Have you ever seen a naked ghost... what, somehow clothes die too? .. crazy shit man.

i've never met anyone who claims they've had any kind of supernatural experience - it's all bs
if you want to watch supernatural claims on tv they are plentiful
finding a book on the supernatural is a piece of cake
meeting someone who has had a bonafide supernatural experience is difficult, at best
same thing with UFO's
it's all about the money - anywhere you can make money off of this myths, is where you'll find all the "believers"

agreed! i have the same thoughts!

I've had two experiences I can think of off hand which other people I have known have attributed to the supernatural.

Both involved apparitions appearing, one when I was 10 and another when I was 24.

The one at 24 was a symptom of food poisoning, a pizza possibly laced with something as my roommate woke up around the same time I did hallucinating that he was covered in snakes.

For many years I had no idea what caused the hallucination at 10, but I never believed it was a supernatural cause. It wasn't until I read about parasomnia that it explained it, waking paralysis sometimes accompanied by hallucinations... commonly known in kids as night terrors. I'd always thought night terrors were just kids freaking out from nightmares.

Friends and relatives would automatically have attributed both to ghosts, and I just don't accept that. Even at 10 I didn't accept "unexplainable phenomenon" as an answer, and I don't think anyone should.

The thing about being atheists is that even though atheists don't believe in any gods, it doesn't preclude them from having other irrational beliefs.

Bill Maher is a perfect example. He's exalted for challenging religion, but he believes in all kinds of unsubstantiated medical quackery.

As I've quoted elsewhere: All rationalists are atheists, but not all atheists are rationalists.

bill maher has some fairly extreme views on our food supply, which are probably pretty accurate
and I know he believes that a healthy immune system is the best defense against disease - even better than immunizations
that's all I know about his medical theories
what else does he believe, which could be called "quackery"? just curious.

In THE HISTORY OF RELIGION, an old book, it says that many many many many years ago, before any book was written, before any religion was started or created, hypothetically, someone looked at a dead SOMETHING, a dead man or a dead cat, it doesn't matter what, and after it died, they asked themselves, WHERE DOES IT GO AFTER IT IS DEAD? And so with logic and reasoning, they watched it and watched it until they came to the conclusion or realization that it goes back to the earth, where it came from. (Dust to Dust theory). hey reasoned all dead things go back to the earth from whence it came. This became a common belief amoung all human beings.
But then someone asked WHAT ABOUT ITS SPIRIT? WHAT ABOUT ITS PERSONALITY? WHAT ABOUT THE ACTUAL PERSON THAT DIED? WHERE DOES HE GO?

And after much comtemplation, it was reasoned if the body went to the earth, or downward, the spirit must go upward to the sky, or later called the heavens.

And religion was born from that.

His view that "Big Pharma" is an opportunistic parasite is one that's hard to argue with, but he supports alternative medicines like homeopathy, is anti-vaccination, and in one video is neutral on subjects like laetrile. But if you're neutral or pro-laetrile you haven't paid attention to decades old research that says the stuff not only doesn't work, it's dangerously toxic. One of the byproducts of laetrile is cyanide, which can kill the patient who is taking it.

His intentions are good, but he hasn't looked into some of the things he takes a strong stance on.
Sure, vaccinations have risks. But which is the greater evil:
a one in a million chance of a fatal reaction to the vaccine in a healthy individual*
1 in 100,000 for Guillain Barr syndrome from contamination
1 in 333 chance of death from measles.
or a 5% to 75% chance of fatality from polio depending on the variant of the disease.

An issue that does need to be addressed when delivering vaccines is the provision of accurate medical records of not just the recipient, but family members. A soldier being sent overseas recently infected his son with an illness from his smallpox vaccination site. It wouldn't have been an issue except that both of them had previously had another infection that contraindicated that specific vaccine. Sometimes there are extenuating circumstances which make other methods of prevention the better alternatives.

The autism link he's brought up is part of a extended network of outdated information based on a single falsified study by Wakefield in 1998. Wakefield got a lot of press, but he faked some of his data. By then the word was out, and it doesn't matter that there have been many other (23 the last time I looked up the count) studies showing his linking of vaccination and autism doesn't currently hold any water, some people jumped on it and have been touting that as their battle standard.

If Maher is going on the air to voice this stuff to millions of people he should have current backing data. Ultimately it's the responsibility of the viewers to verify it, but if you look around these forums or any section of the internet there are people who will suckle on the tit of any authority figure they admire without question.

thanks man, that's interesting
i agree, everybody's truth is different and never sell your soul