NOM

It sounds mean spirited to me. I don't find humor at someone else's expense generally to be funny. I just find it mean. Chris Rock was wrong to make fun of Jada Smith over a medical condition she has no control over. Not that Will was right to punch him either. I think the exception is people in pos...

This is standard procedure when an incumbent president is the candidate. Int he run up to 2020 direction Trump didn't have to debate any Republican candidates for the Republican presidency nomination. Yes there are usually some small in-party candidates that make some noise and officially announce e...

What is the scale on which morals are judged as strong to weak.

And why that one?

I will expand on my reply. It is my opinion that spirituality is sloppily loaded word. As an atheist, I too feel the emotions of awe, of the numinous in certain situations. My objection to spirituality is that it is usually an unjustified leap from experience to meaning. I have that feeling, the hol...

I'm pretty disinterested in spiritually.

The kids game was a great illustration, 'hovas flapping their robes to snag those marbles.

She doesn't seem to accept that you've changed in the relationship. She has changed too of course. I think you should start being more authentically you but with as much kindness and respect for her as you can find. Help her find what she can accept you as. Which is no guarantee of staying together....

The members tend to be excited about Temple announcements. It doesn't matter that they're empty or never get built for now. They can play the 24 hours a day work in the millennium card that justifies their " existence" It's some one else's problem. They can pass the responsibility on to later prophe...

I hope it brings you peace.

I've neither watched nor heard any of conference and there is nothing I miss about the conference experience at all.

Why do I have to go anywhere at all?

But yes, anywhere I want including a comfy chair in my home.

Give this a read.

Body Ritual Among the Nacirema

https://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler ... cirema.PDF

We find objects and places. But we don't know what it meant to them, or what they were for. They'll often theorize religion but we don't have evidence for knowing. We're just projecting from our own behavior.

Most civilizations we have no idea what they believed, if anything. They didn't leave records. I agree that religion has been an organizing principle for humans. But the same theory you use for deciding the search for god is a necessity can be used to say that every civilization that believed in a g...

I don't think it's that binary. Mormons come in many varieties from zealots to social members.

I think if you change soul to percent money donations they each make you could score their religiosity fairly well.

To me they're all forms of in and out group thinking. It's ok, even proper to kill the out group. All the atrocities are against the out group.

Atheism doesn't address grouping at all. It's just that some use it for that purpose.

Religion is explicitly about being the in group.

The reason I disconnect atheism from the atrocity is because atheism itself isn't about any particular moral value. It's about one's belief in God. To associate atrocity to atheism but downplay it in theism is essentially a divine command theory claim, that god is the source of morality. What God co...

My point about Scandinavian Countries is that they are very low belief cultures. They don't have religion at the core the of their government and operation though they may still have state churches mostly for historic tradition, As to the atrocities places at the feet of atheistic regimes, is the at...

More modern societies based on atheism seem to be authoritarian in order to stop religious practice. I don't want to see that. I hope that we are shifting to a society that values science and inquiry as well as compassion and respect. Some days I fear that we are just becoming a set of tribes tryin...