Simon Paynton

Simon,

All this proves is that words can have multiple meanings, another thing that doesn’t require religion.

Jake,

Ya know that soldier who is cold and in pain danger at every moment and yet finds a moment to smoke a butt and feel the glow of life? That same guy in a quotidian mindless job at break smoking a butt might think….this sucks man. Rat on a fucking wheel. Get me off this imaginary apparatus.

In other words there are ways of achieving life s…

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Simon, you are still redefining “faith” to make it appear intellectually respectable. You are using the religious version, which explicitly praises belief without evidence, and you are stretching it to also mean rational expectations grounded in observation. That doesn’t create unity between religion and science. In a debate it confuses the point…[Read more]

Can/will Trump/DOJ “manage” blue polling places? Is it a dress rehearsal for 2028 elections?

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Simon, I think you are trying to rescue the word “faith” by redefining it. You are taking a specifically religious term that means believing in something without sufficient evidence and trying to stretch it until it becomes a synonym for “hope” or “general trust in life.” It sounds warm but it is sleight of hand.

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Thank you for your kind words Jake. I happen to be thinking in this line of thought all week…..from the piece I wrote for the previous week’s Sunday School post. We atheists should spend more of our time enjoying the fruits of freethinking.  Just Think Atheist and be in the Zone. 🙂

A plus Reg.

On a par with the best passages of Bertrand Russell and similar authors.

Simon, I think you are trying to rescue the word “faith” by redefining it. You are taking a specifically religious term that means believing in something without sufficient evidence and trying to stretch it until it becomes a synonym for “hope” or “general trust in life.” It sounds warm but it is sleight of hand. People can have high life satisf…[Read more]

Simon,

Don’t you think some terminal and or times up and finish line fast approaching folks feel the value of their lives or appreciation for the past and gratitude for their lives?

You’ve changed the definition of faith.

Ya know that soldier who is cold and in pain danger at every moment and yet finds a moment to smoke a butt and feel the…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
The nonreligious might not be as spiritual as was assumed which helps counter the narrative that the non-religious need some form of spirituality (whatever that is). I know hundreds of atheists and not one has ever mentioned being ‘spiritual’.

If nearly half of the nonreligious report high life satisfaction, the bel…

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Reg,

You are the last one for whom i would have expected such a betrayal.

Please tell the truth.

Sudan, Congo, Yemen and the dozen others do not count because of cultural relativism. Were those “crimes” as you suggest actually crimes? Or do the cultural norms excuse the putative perpetrators and the resultant victimless crimes?

Colonizer…[Read more]

Thanks, Reg 🙂

Reg,

World of Woo: Legitimizing quackery.

This has been going on for decades longer than MAGA/MAHA has been around, and to the tune of $Billions of Taxdollars. These agencies should have been DOGE-ed before there was a DOGE.

National Center for Complimentary and Integrative Health
https://www.nccih.nih.gov/

WHO Global Traditional Medicine…[Read more]

Have a great week!

If the “Pro-Palestine” demonstrations and outrage were really about humanitarian concerns, they would still be out on the streets for Sudan, Congo, Yemen, and a dozen other places where civilians are dying by the thousands but without the cameras rolling.

The “colonizer” label collapses under even basic historical scrutin…[Read more]

@Reg- Yes, the doctor and priest are dual symbols of institutional authority. It’s strong imagery, but it blurs historical and factual accuracy. Not every State or Nation uses both so it is not a “long-standing custom”. Your symbolism is compelling on the first read but you are rather weak on empirical accuracy.

The doctor’s presence might be leg…[Read more]

Naw man, you uppin my skill levels! And I needz it bad.

Just started listening to a U of Minn CIDRAP podcast this week, and coincidentally ran into a short (below) about the beginning of state (and other lesser than federal) agencies rising to fill in the gaps of our suddenly increasingly incompetent federal public health agencies. (I think the west coast states have started something too, but I…[Read more]

Pope,

Sorry if i have cost you time searching as a result of my misplaced placement intransigence.

Wow, thanks Reg. Glad I finally got to reading this.

I mentioned before that I’m incompetent in topics of history. I often even fail at accurately recalling the history of myself.

High school pre-college tests ranked me at 99th percentile in science, 95th percentile in math, 35th percentile in humanities and history, and others I’ve forgotten.…[Read more]

Reg,

@Enco – I ‘misspoke’ – I usually format the USB drive completely. Type each line, one at a time, from a command prompt in Windows to fully and safely delete data so it can be re-used.

diskpart
select disk 2
clean
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
assign
exit

So what does this have to do with free expression?

Are you having…[Read more]