I never studied religion formally, but in my tweens I realized that the catholic doctrine was just stupid and I wanted nothing to do with such a hateful god. Most of the religious people I met, even the nuns and priests, were okay people, but the crap they believed in made me distrust them.

Later on, as a teen, I met some non-catholic christians who seemed way more sensible. I then wondered if maybe this whole god concept wasn't so bad and that it was human made religion that was the problem. So at that point I decided to look more into the whole concept, to get a better understanding of what I was rejecting and if I was making the right choice.

Stripped to its bare bones, most religions are the idea that since humans exist, therefore someone/thing created us. From there religion tries to explain what it was that created us (a force, a god, mother nature, call it what you will) and what that creator expects of us. So far I don't see a problem - but here's where it gets fucked up - everyone seems to want the rest of the world to believe in their pet theory. And not only in the basics, but all the tiny irrelevant details too! I think that's the most harmful part of religion - the need to make others believe the same as you.

Live your life the way you believe your god wants you to and leave the rest of us alone to live our lives according to our beliefs. Simple.

-- alive here, barely. Got back last weekend from the March for Science feeling motivated and excited -- then woke up the next morning feeling like death warmed over. Some kind of respiratory infection I must have gotten there. Barely made it through classes Monday; lost my voice before finishing classes on Tuesday and have been more or less under the covers since then. Still not over it, but I'm better off than I was a few days ago.

-- I owe you an answer to your last issue. I haven't looked into it to check, but I think the newer version of memcache is more aggressive than the old version, and you might need to do a refresh on the item page after making changes to an item to clear the cached version of the item page. If that's not it, I'll look into it soon.

you wrote it so well!

I became an atheist when I was 13, few days after the bar mizva, I just felt stupid doing all this practicing. But something started even before, my doubts, it was when I first learned that dinosaurs existed, I think I was 6, I read on the kids encyclopedia and at the same moment we studied about Noah's Ark and I was like, but why the dinosaurs where not there or not even mentioned? then I read about the animals of Australia and again I asked, how can a Kangaroo be on the Ark if Australia is far away from where Noah was? Nobody gave me a proper answer it was all "god's mysterious way" and I didn't buy it.. but I kept on believing because everywhere I went, god was mentioned... Anyway, after 13 I became crazy and I started to dig and dig and to find all the information to cancel god's existence and little by little I felt more and more free with myself, with my decision, my sexuality, everything tbh.. I didn't have the fear of a sin because I did what I wanted to do and I was finally happy, still am! I can't believe in that idea that someone so powerful created us because something even more powerful had to create this someone too.. it's like, there's always have to be something bigger than other, it's infinite, like numbers, there always be a higher number..

exactly and I hate this answer too, it makes no sense.. my mind just can't believe in it.. so how did it appear, from where?! also there are many things that making god so powerless and not almighty at all..

In the old testament there are also many other gods like the Baal, the son of god and the god of rain.. so I asked if Baal exist too? I didn't get a proper answer because everything in the bible supposed to be true but to admit the existence of another god is really bad..

Anyway, religion and god will be gone sooner or later, it's part of the society evolution.. we are in the critical moment where religion is losing power and relevance so they are trying to fight it.. this is why we are in scary moment where every religion is dangerous..

glad you are feeling better. sounds like a pretty miserable time you had last week.

Well, I am sitting at work with M&Ms in my bag waiting to be out for eating :/ And I blame haha! After reading all you guys were saying about mindless eating and portion control (with Oreos as the example) I decided I needed some Oreos. They are on sale! And directly across the aisle from the M&Ms that are also on sale! So at 2/$4 I just had no will power. Fatter and fatter I grow.

I think maybe the cache was lagging really badly that day. I did a hard refresh and cleared mine and it still wouldn't update but I checked last night and those items were updated with the changes and notes, so it must've been a bad day for it. I updated all of the new lifelike notes yesterday and had no trouble at all (it happened right away). If it happens again I'll grab as much info as I can and poke you.

Indulging once in awhile is okay. I've found that it's less likely to make changes if you don't give yourself room to backslide a little. Having them once or twice this week is still better than daily, and denying yourself just makes it harder to choose to not do it some days. I had pizza Saturday haha.

I strongly doubt that god and religion will disappear - they are too much a part of what makes us human. There have been recent studies showing that while religious belief seems to be on the decline, its being replaced by belief in the paranormal, or aliens (that function very similarly to god - in that they watch over us and judge us). This interview of such a researcher is an interesting read.

I agree with . You haven't failed, you just satisfied a craving that will give you a better chance to keep up the change long-term.

WTG on the march for science! Too bad it resulted in contracting an infection. Hope you're completely better soon!

I think I may have experienced what Reaper did (I can't find the original post about it so I'm guessing), but I entered something the other day and had to make changes. Those changes didn't show up on screen, but when I hit the button to edit again, the edit screen showed the correct edited info. I went back sometime later and the changes showed up properly.

I'm not talking about the near future, it'll take many generations for this to happen but it will, we will not be here to see it unfortunately.. What do you mean in Paranormal?

About aliens, well.. it's totally crazy and those people are ignorant and has no minimal knowledge about what is an alien.. it's not a Hollywood green blob head creature or just a monster that eats something or spaceships.. Hollywood messed up the meaning of aliens... it's very unlikely that we will find any intelligent life, spaceships or crazy monsters... all we will find is new bacteria, maybe plants...

Our conversation is showing that the education system all over the world is a big fail and then we kinda move on to politics, it all ends with that lol

Thanks for the encouragement. The m&ms will be an all week thing since I am am not, did not eat two big bags in one day. lol, not to say that I couldn't if I put my mind to it!

in other news, the oreos were a big disappointment.

I was picturing a little chocolate bar sized bag. Sorry about the Oreos disappointing. I'm not a fan of them, but I do like the new crisp little thin version. I still have to scrape out the icing in the middle, but the wafers are really tasty.

by paranormal, I'm talking about everything from ghosts and cryptids to aromatherapy and anti-vaxers to conspiracy theorists. They all have a few things in common - like a belief in something greater than oneself, something "directing" humanity's path (whether good or evil). None have any strong basis in science or any evidence to speak of and they all fail at logic.

Ah alien life! Yes I believe other worlds harbor life, but I agree the vast majority will turn out to be at the bacterial/viral level. I think its possible there is other intelligent life out there, but interstellar distances are so vast that we can never have any meaningful contact with it. There are so many possibilities in thinking about it though - so much fun to wonder, I could talk about it for ages! Fermi's Paradox and the Drake Equation, SETI and exo-planets. We know so little facts about the universe and even about life. With only the Earth as a single example of what life is, how can we conclude anything meaningful? If we could could find proof of life on Mars, the moons of Saturn or Jupiter, or even Venus our knowledge of and our ability to search for life elsewhere would take a giant leap forward.

I realize you were talking about the long-term when you said humanity would eventually dispense with religion (and its something I did believe when I was younger), but I don't know that I still agree. Humans are pretty stubborn and some form of religion or magical thinking has existed in the human race since the dawn of time. Its a strong part of our evolution and I don't know if we can grow beyond it as a species. Or if we'd still be human if we did. Certainly I believe we can grow beyond this need to fight over it, or I hope we can. That we can learn to live with people who have different ideas and values.

lol, see, the problem with the ones I got is that they are the regular and not the double stuff. I guess they do have reasons to make a variety of styles!

As to your comment on my profile (because I am at the stupid place) good luck getting that achievement today!

PS. You must have missed the part where I said the Ms were on sale for 2/$4. That would be a big price for small bags. Maybe that is how I need them to be priced to get me unhooked!

ooh ok I understand! ghosts it's a joke, I read once that it can be caused by a brain tumor that causing the person to have illusions.. aw anti-vaxers are lunatic, irresponsible and they are so close to be called murderers..

I know someone who is living with the conspiracies world, once I really screamed at her to stop with this nonsense.. she's mostly gets her info from youtubers or satiric news websites aka fake news lol

Well.. I kinda believe in the existence of cryptids, like I hope that they are exist because it can teach us a lot, like if there's a little chance the Nessie is really living here among us, we can actually study about Dinosaurs! which is cool. I also believe that nothing is 100% extinct because there are few species that "came back to life".. it's really a zoo-archeologist crazy idea and a strong wish to see a living animal that got extinct (the Mammoth will come back soon hopefully).

I can talk about space and theories for hours too!! but then I feel sad because I will never know what's going on up there.. it really depressing me honestly, my curiosity just can't deal with the fact that I'll never walk on another planet, see it, touch it, nothing, it kills me.. My problem with "intelligent" is that we see the definition of "intelligent" in a human being point of view, but many not speaking animals are more intelligent than us in some cases for example, so what is it exactly "intelligent"?

Hopefully we will find any kind of living being in one of the planets or traces of life that got extinct, I wish one day that the academia will start to invest on space archeology, at least in the moon for now, it could be awesome!

I know that you are right but I still have hope that you are wrong.. we need to fight over it as long as we are still living here and to give our future generations some good life and freedom, I'm thinking about all the money that we are spending on religion and it kills me how useless and crazy it is..

BTW yesterday a scorpion stung me on my back!!!! really painful!!! but I'm ok :D

LOL yeah they do. I just find that icing too sweet and the double stuff, well I just have that much more to scrape away :P. My sweet tooth runs to either fresh fruit, or rich and fatty, like dark chocolate, whipped cream, ice cream, very buttery caramel, or doughnuts (just about anything deep fried). Hmm, strange, I'm suddenly feeling hunger...is it lunch time yet?

urges and cravings are not the same as hunger! But in your case I would totally believe hunger since you tend to sit there and not eat.

My problem is that I like them all. candy, cookies, pie, cake doughnuts, mashed potatoes, ice cream. NOT whipped cream though. But fatty? oh my yes. Alfredo. only thinking of that because of the cream factor but I do love it. Bacon. YES! Deep fried? bring it to me.

LOL yeah, I saw that but I haven't done the shopping* in years so prices have no real impact on me or if they do seem odd I just imagine a typo. Sadly upping the price on addictive items just makes you poorer, it does not provide incentive to quit. Look at people who spend $10 on a cup of coffee!

*my boyfriend does all the shopping because he disapproves of how I "waste" money by not looking for sales, or buy brand names. I shop based on saving time and frustration, not money. He shops based on saving money. It really does make a difference and gives us a better standard of living. I just don't have the patience to do it.

yeah, it frustrates me too that I'll never know. That's why I like to hope they find signs of former life on Mars, or anywhere else in the Solar System, because that's something that can happen in my lifetime!

Anything else, visiting other solar systems, well those things are so far in the future that I speculate about it without pain, but I do understand your feelings about it. LOL age does help with that, when I was your age I felt the same pain you do. I wanted so badly to be "out there," for humanity to be exploring the far reaches of space. It was all too slow and never enough money to do it right.

While I don't believe in Nessie (or that anything particularly strange or unusual lives in that lake), they have found "living fossils" like the Coelacanth. But seriously, unless we breed them, old extinct species (like the mammoth) simply can't come back. Some similar versions may evolve, if we go into a new ice age for example, but evolution doesn't really ever go backwards.

As for making better use of the money spent on religious stuff, while I agree that it could be better spent, I doubt it ever would be. We see it in people's every day life - if they change habits and quit spending money on something (whatever it is they waste their money on) they don't end up saving the money, they just spend it on something else equally silly rather than something really worthwhile to the human race.

Ewww scorpions! I hate the thought of them, though I've never seen one. Fortunately I don't live in a climate they can tolerate. Glad you're okay even though it was painful.

I understand his point but yours as well. Something are just not worth compromising on. Some things are just junk if they are off brands. As to prices for addictive items, I hope that if the price of Ms was normally that high for small pack I would have the good sense to only indulge once in a while. I will say that I only quit smoking when I could no longer afford it. But I sure do still get hit with cravings for them!

oh Alfredo yummy creamy goodness!

I'm an extremely fussy eater, probably all part of my generally bad eating habits. Personally I believe urges and cravings are a part of hunger. When I try to ignore my cravings I can eat a lot of food, feel full, but still remain unsatisfied. On the other hand, when I listen to what my body wants, I can have a small amount of what I'm craving and feel satisfied. But everyone's bodies work differently and we have to learn what works best on an individual basis.

That's one of my main problems with the current biological and diet research - salt is bad, fat is bad, fruits are good, paleo is bad (or really good), gluten free is good (or really bad) - none of that is actually true. Some people might thrive on a low salt diet, some people might thrive on a gluten free diet - but its dependent on a lot of factors and just because one person thrives on such a diet doesn't mean its good for a different person.

They say that a glass of red wine with dinner every day is good for people, all those antioxidants or whatever. But red wine is not good for me, when I drink wine I get heartburn and/or migraines. So even though I like it, I avoid wine. But with all these "health" scares/advice we no longer seem to listen to what our bodies are telling us. We try to eat to outside information instead of internal cues, so someone might drink that red wine even though it isn't good for them, thinking they're doing the healthy thing.

LOL now I really am getting hungry. Need food!

I hope too, recently we found some exciting things, so more to come and we will discover more!! :D

I want us to be able to travel in space like we drive a car and be able to discover many planets and creatures, who knows, maybe one day?

I don't know if you read about it but Mammoth cloning is happening at this exact moment, they found in Siberia a fully preserved, including the fur, a young Mammoth, so they are using it for the DNA and keeping it inside an African Elephant :D Also there is a research now with chickens and it's purpose is to do a reversed evolution with mapping the DNA and mutating it and to bring it to the dino-like form, not exactly dino, but it can be a little Chicken Rex lol

I just think that the governments are giving too much money for religion, let's say in Israel.. Billions of dollars are going to religion, from rabbis, to rabbi students (they get 3000$ a month while a university student gets 0$), to religious schools and so on while everything is from our taxes and they don't pay taxes because they are not working and we actually getting almost nothing.. so I'm working for 2, for myself and for a religious person.. it's not correct at all..

It was my first time that I saw a scorpion!! it was so painful!! like 1 hour of pain :(