Religion is a Mental Illness

[chang50]

Regardless, nuker's original point was that 'religion' prevents nuke-ing.

Yet, where there is plenty of 'religion', exists the only case of nuking in human history, a predominantly dark-side belief of the human condition, a 4th world, no care for the sick, gangs and gun crime on the streets, and an economic and partly military empire.

Where would anyone go to achieve enlightenment? Not the UK, not the US.



Where would anyone go to live in a sharing community? Same answer.


And that's before we discuss the oil-usage conspiracy kills the planet, literally. If only the empire builders had been polytheists we would have a better chance of saving it. Sadly, the dark-side believers think there is no chance.

First of all, is that really the definition of enlightenment? Free health care and no gangs??? Sounds more like the definition of Socialism with a police state.

How old are you? Your connection that dropping a nuclear bomb based on religion is ridiculous. I think it had a little more to do with being sneak attacked at Pearl Harbor.....don't you?

So it was revenge,not the usually given reason of shortening the war and saving American lives?Interesting..

Your ridiculous assumption is more interesting. You might call it "revenge" but people with a brain might call it responding to a sneak attack and declaration of war.

It was you who implied the Japanese deserved it,and I never said it was wrong to seek revenge,only that it is not the reason generally quoted.

yeah and? Of course they deserved it. If they didn't sneak attack us, we wouldn't have gone to war, and if we didn't go to war, we wouldn't have dropped the bomb.

Using "revenge" as a motive is silly. It's like you are walking down the street, and some guy cheap shots you and punches you in the face and tries to rob you. Do you fight back for "revenge"? Or do you fight back to defend yourself and keep your wallet??? You are just trying to put a negative spin on it.

Funnily enough I think Truman made the right call,it did indeed shorten the war and save lives,but you are too angry to see I was merely making an observation.Seems your old habits are creeping back..

[Phatscotty]

You are just trying to put a negative spin on it.

Yeah, dropping nukes is a negative spin.

It's not spin at all. It's victory.

You f*ck with the bull, you get the horns. Don't start what you can't finish.

So, its a negative spin but it isnt a negative spin?

How about not starting the war in the first place?

So, its a negative spin but it isnt a negative spin and Jesus died on a cross because he started the war?

Negative spin is from the conversation between Chang and I. Try to pay attention, and stop using a different conversation to weasel out of the corner you painted yourself in.

How old are you?

[Teflon Kris]

Negative spin is from the conversation between Chang and I. Try to pay attention, and stop using a different conversation to weasel out of the corner you painted yourself in.

How old are you?

So dropping nukes is only a negative spin according to the spin of the beholder? And Jesus died on a cross because he started the war? Or is the crucifiction a negative spin?

Not sure.

If I die on a cross, please dont nuke anyone cos of me.

[Phatscotty]

First of all, is that really the definition of enlightenment? Free health care and no gangs??? Sounds more like the definition of Socialism with a police state.

How old are you? Your connection that dropping a nuclear bomb based on religion is ridiculous. I think it had a little more to do with being sneak attacked at Pearl Harbor.....don't you?

So it was revenge,not the usually given reason of shortening the war and saving American lives?Interesting..

Your ridiculous assumption is more interesting. You might call it "revenge" but people with a brain might call it responding to a sneak attack and declaration of war.

It was you who implied the Japanese deserved it,and I never said it was wrong to seek revenge,only that it is not the reason generally quoted.

yeah and? Of course they deserved it. If they didn't sneak attack us, we wouldn't have gone to war, and if we didn't go to war, we wouldn't have dropped the bomb.

Using "revenge" as a motive is silly. It's like you are walking down the street, and some guy cheap shots you and punches you in the face and tries to rob you. Do you fight back for "revenge"? Or do you fight back to defend yourself and keep your wallet??? You are just trying to put a negative spin on it.

Funnily enough I think Truman made the right call,it did indeed shorten the war and save lives,but you are too angry to see I was merely making an observation.Seems your old habits are creeping back..

Why is that funnily enough? You feel bad about agreeing with that? of course it was the right call and that's exactly what dropping the bomb did. I'm not angry about anything. I just addressed your post about "revenge". You tried to put that in my mouth, but it was never there in the first place.

Now, if we sneak attacked Japan and started the war, and then we dropped the bomb on them for whatever reasons, then I would have a problem with how we handled the war. But that is not the case. Japan started the war.

I have no problem with what we did, and I am proud of it. If given a better choice, of course I would hope we could have ended the war another way (was there a better way?), but we gotta keep context. Bombing civilians at that time was a bad thing, but it was far more acceptable then than it is today. And it only takes one side to break the rules; once your civilians get intentionally bombed, it's a whole new ballgame. Like using chemical weapons. in the 40's, everyone civilians were being bombed. Civilian Chinese women were being raped by Japanese soldiers 100 at a time. American hostages were being tortured and beaten to death for fun. Soldiers were inserting glass rods into POW"s penis's and then shattering them.

"WHY HOW DARE WE DROP THE BOMB ON THEM!!!!!!!! WHAT'S WRONG WITH US?"

[BigBallinStalin]

You are just trying to put a negative spin on it.

Yeah, dropping nukes is a negative spin.

Yeah, don't be such a downer. It's only nukes and over 200k dead civilians. The cities had very little military value as well. But let's stop being reasonable here:

God Bless America.

[BigBallinStalin]

You are just trying to put a negative spin on it.

Yeah, dropping nukes is a negative spin.

It's not spin at all. It's victory.

You f*ck with the bull, you get the horns. Don't start what you can't finish.

How about not starting wars in the first place? Comment from you Teflon?

Excellent, PS. With that reasoning, you've justified most--perhaps all--acts of terrorism.

[Phatscotty]

You are just trying to put a negative spin on it.

Yeah, dropping nukes is a negative spin.

Yeah, don't be such a downer. It's only nukes and over 200k dead civilians. The cities had very little military value as well. But let's stop being reasonable here:

God Bless America.

You feel that way too huh? (Can we explore this seriously? I think you would be a great person to walk through this with)

[john9blue]

america dropped nukes

america = christian

therefore america dropped nukes because they are christian

QED

[BigBallinStalin]

You are just trying to put a negative spin on it.

Yeah, dropping nukes is a negative spin.

Yeah, don't be such a downer. It's only nukes and over 200k dead civilians. The cities had very little military value as well. But let's stop being reasonable here:

God Bless America.

You feel that way too huh? (Can we explore this seriously? I think you would be a great person to walk through this with)

Sure, I've put my serious face on.

What's your position?

[Phatscotty]

You are just trying to put a negative spin on it.

Yeah, dropping nukes is a negative spin.

Yeah, don't be such a downer. It's only nukes and over 200k dead civilians. The cities had very little military value as well. But let's stop being reasonable here:

God Bless America.

You feel that way too huh? (Can we explore this seriously? I think you would be a great person to walk through this with)

Sure, I've put my serious face on.

What's your position?

Well, the position is I don't have any problems with dropping the bomb. But I wanted to explore the mindset at the time of dropping the bomb, where and why. What you said about not hitting military targets got me to wondering.

I think dropping the bomb, especially the first one, was more about proving that we had the bomb and demonstrating what it could do. The impact of a threat to drop the bomb was much more effective after the first one had been dropped, compared to the warnings we gave before we dropped the first one. And it was also a paradigm shift for the Japanese, they had to totally change all their plans and all their thinking, and that takes some time.

And as to targeting military facilities, I wanted to explore the American's perspective, and that is we know what the bomb can do, along with the expectation that it would indeed end the war very soon, and also the forward thinking in what we were gonna do after we won the war. Were we going to occupy or rebuild or totally shift all attention to the European theater? What I am getting at there is perhaps we were not trying to target infrastructure because we planned on using it or letting the Japanese use it to rebuild (knowing the tank factories would be converted to bulldozer factories etc), and even perhaps that we did value the infrastructure more than the lives of our civilian enemies, and that the message would be received by the Japanese military much more clearly and have more impact based on number of dead. Especially after we dropped the second one.

I'm sure there have been many books written and documents declassified on the matter, and I read one of them in college and maybe that's a bit where this is coming from. But I don't think that the reality that we did not target military installations carries as much weight in the arguments by those who think we should not have dropped the bomb, or even hate us our ourselves for even dropping the bomb at all.

How do you feel about us dropping the bomb? regret or pride?

[Phatscotty]

america dropped nukes

america = christian

therefore america dropped nukes because they are christian

QED

lol yeah I been meaning to go back to that mentally ill point, but a lot has to be ironed out first.

[john9blue]

lol yeah I been meaning to go back to that mentally ill point, but a lot has to be ironed out first.

not all stupidity is mental illness... that's kinda demeaning to people with actual mental illnesses

[Phatscotty]

lol yeah I been meaning to go back to that stupid point, but a lot has to be ironed out first.

not all stupidity is mental illness... that's kinda demeaning to people with actual mental illnesses

Only used it cuz of the thread title, but yes I understand.

also, does this mean that Teflon is saying America is a Christian nation?

[Teflon Kris]

also, does this mean that Teflon is saying America is a Christian nation?

John, you're fellow nuker, said this (but from anywhere else on the planet, the US certainly puts out that message).

"religion" is the reason we aren't killing each other and nuking ourselves off the fucking planet.

america dropped nukes

america = christian

therefore america dropped nukes because they are christian

QED

Make your mind up


By the way, dont bring Canada, Brazil and a bunch of other nations into this, only the US does this.

[Haggis_McMutton]

yeah and? Of course they deserved it. If they didn't sneak attack us, we wouldn't have gone to war, and if we didn't go to war, we wouldn't have dropped the bomb.

Using "revenge" as a motive is silly. It's like you are walking down the street, and some guy cheap shots you and punches you in the face and tries to rob you. Do you fight back for "revenge"? Or do you fight back to defend yourself and keep your wallet??? You are just trying to put a negative spin on it.

Lemme just check the logic here. Would it have been at all possible to have ANY response that would have been out of proportion to the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack in your opinion?

Like if the US exterminated the Japanese to the last man and colonized Japan, would that have been too much? or would it still fall under "you fucked with us, so you got what's coming to you" ?

If that would have been an inappropriate response, could you give me a ballpark figure for how many civilians you think the US had a right to kill in response to Pearl Harbor? 1 million? 5 million? 10 million?

[Phatscotty]

yeah and? Of course they deserved it. If they didn't sneak attack us, we wouldn't have gone to war, and if we didn't go to war, we wouldn't have dropped the bomb.

Using "revenge" as a motive is silly. It's like you are walking down the street, and some guy cheap shots you and punches you in the face and tries to rob you. Do you fight back for "revenge"? Or do you fight back to defend yourself and keep your wallet??? You are just trying to put a negative spin on it.

Lemme just check the logic here. Would it have been at all possible to have ANY response that would have been out of proportion to the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack in your opinion?

Like if the US exterminated the Japanese to the last man and colonized Japan, would that have been too much? or would it still fall under "you fucked with us, so you got what's coming to you" ?

If that would have been an inappropriate response, could you give me a ballpark figure for how many civilians you think the US had a right to kill in response to Pearl Harbor? 1 million? 5 million? 10 million?

Dropping the bomb was not a direct response to Pearl Harbor, we didn't even have the bomb yet. A lot happened between 1941 and 1945. Another possibility that could have happened was Japan said "we're sorry" and surrendered.

Yes Haggis, I think total and absolute genocide would be going too far.

I don't look at it like "you attacked Pearl Harbor, therefore 170,457 troops must die to even out the loss of life and cost of property damage". I think we had to right to try to win the war that we did not start, the duty and responsibility not to lose the war, and most certainly the right to defend ourselves.

[Phatscotty]

Just a general post

If it were the case that Japan gave the USA repeated warnings that it was going to hit Pearl Harbor, and it were the case that the USA sneak attacked the atomic bomb against Japan without even declaring war, then you guys would have a case that America is the asshole and Japan was the victim, and I might agree. But that's not the case

[Haggis_McMutton]

Dropping the bomb was not a direct response to Pearl Harbor, we didn't even have the bomb yet. A lot happened between 1941 and 1945. Another possibility that could have happened was Japan said "we're sorry" and surrendered.

Yes Haggis, I think total and absolute genocide would be going too far.

I don't look at it like "you attacked Pearl Harbor, therefore 170,457 troops must die to even out the loss of life and cost of property damage". I think we had to right to try to win the war that we did not start, the duty and responsibility not to lose the war, and most certainly the right to defend ourselves.

Yep, agree with all of that. Never said the US is the "bad guy".
It's just that the stuff you said in the post I quoted was really off point and seriously kinda stupid. I don't understand how you manage to oscilate between reasonable views like the one here and the one in response to BBS and really simplistic stupid ones like the one I quoted. Maybe you were angry when you wrote it or something.

Anyway, just wanted to point out that saying "they had it coming" is meaningless because:
1. We are talking about scale of response and specifically scale of civilian deaths. People always die in war, but we consider killing civilians to prove how mean you are a special kind of evil.
2. Comparing war between major nations to a fist fight is beyond ridiculous. Surely you see that? In particular when knocking out the guy that assaulted you, you are doing just that, knocking out the specific person that transgressed against you. When killing 100k civilians you're killing a good proportion of kids and grandmas who's main crime is being unlucky enough to be present at the wrong time and place.

[Phatscotty]

3) Not all atheists are atheists because of compassion, fairness, debate and hard thought.

Perhaps this is true. But how many people pray to an invisible man in the sky because of compassion, fairness, debate and hard thought?

That's far too literal an interpretation. It's not about the invisible skydaddy, it's about acknowledging there is a higher power above yourself. I wonder if there really is a person who believes that God is literally floating around in the sky. I think that's a very generic and stereotypical interpretation molded possibly by the contempt held for the believers "stupidity", but I thinks the interpretation is mostly held only by those who haven't started to really think about it yet.

[Woodruff]

You are just trying to put a negative spin on it.

Yeah, dropping nukes is a negative spin.

It's not spin at all. It's victory.

You f*ck with the bull, you get the horns. Don't start what you can't finish.

How about not starting wars in the first place? Comment from you Teflon?

I didn't realize you believed in terrorism. I am surprised, to be honest.

[Phatscotty]

Dropping the bomb was not a direct response to Pearl Harbor, we didn't even have the bomb yet. A lot happened between 1941 and 1945. Another possibility that could have happened was Japan said "we're sorry" and surrendered.

Yes Haggis, I think total and absolute genocide would be going too far.

I don't look at it like "you attacked Pearl Harbor, therefore 170,457 troops must die to even out the loss of life and cost of property damage". I think we had to right to try to win the war that we did not start, the duty and responsibility not to lose the war, and most certainly the right to defend ourselves.

Yep, agree with all of that. Never said the US is the "bad guy".
It's just that the stuff you said in the post I quoted was really off point and seriously kinda stupid. I don't understand how you manage to oscilate between reasonable views like the one here and the one in response to BBS and really simplistic stupid ones like the one I quoted. Maybe you were angry when you wrote it or something.

Try looking at who the good response was in response to, and who the ridiculous response was in response to. Teflon is new so I am going along with it, but I wouldn't let other people drag me into something like that.

Anyway, just wanted to point out that saying "they had it coming" is meaningless because:
1. We are talking about scale of response and specifically scale of civilian deaths. People always die in war, but we consider killing civilians to prove how mean you are a special kind of evil.
2. Comparing war between major nations to a fist fight is beyond ridiculous. Surely you see that? In particular when knocking out the guy that assaulted you, you are doing just that, knocking out the specific person that transgressed against you. When killing 100k civilians you're killing a good proportion of kids and grandmas who's main crime is being unlucky enough to be present at the wrong time and place.

I understand the difference, I think I was just talking to someone who did not or else had them confused. Their post was all over the place it was hard to organize any of it, as I believe their implication was that they didn't have it coming.

We do consider killing civilians evil, but like I said about the context of the time, perhaps I should not try to understand either. I just know that after 4 years of war, in a war where just about every civilian back at home lost a brother or a father or an uncle, or even 2 or 3 or 6, that the gloves had been long removed. Civilian bombings had been going on for a long time before Nagasaki and Hiroshima. That does not justify it, but it does show what kind of time the world was living in, and the staked could not have been higher. I guess it's like the Joker said "when the chips are down, the people will eat each other"

Again, the fistfight was just an analogy to a semantic term used "revenge". The principle of the analogy was nothing more than "he started it" and to prove then when you are attacked if you fight back it's not out of "revenge" its of the right to defend yourself. I still don't fully understand the motive of that statement (I think Chang said it) but I was just trying to respond the best I could to what I was dealing with. Revenge, yes of course that is only human, but that is not the reason we set sail to meet the Japanese fleet.

[john9blue]

you guys realize that the hiroshima/nagasaki bombings were actually less deadly than some of our other japanese bombings, right?

if you're going to criticize those bombings from a human cost perspective, then you should be criticizing some of our other attacks on japan, too.

hell, why not criticize our attacks on germany too?

the only valid criticism of the nuclear bombings is that they hastened the arrival of some kind of nuclear holocaust... yet 70 years later, not a single other nuke has been used in war.

[jonesthecurl]

OK but to go back to the idea that religion stops us nuking each other... how many nukes have been used in war by ungodly nations?

[john9blue]

what "ungodly nations" possess nukes?

if religion truly poisons everything, then religion influences public policy in every nation to a meaningful extent, so there is no such thing as an "ungodly nation"