Ayn Rand's Utopia

On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 16:18:02 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote this crap:

On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 14:10:14 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

So far, the fascists haven't figured out how to outlaw nativity scenes
on private property, but they're probably working on it.
They'll still have the plastic reindeer rule with which to contend.

I've never heard of anybody even slightly interested in limiting
nativity scenes on private property.

Are you stupid? Oh, I forgot who I was dealing with. The atheists
are trying to ban them from private property because they say it
offends them. When I heard that, I went to Amazon and bought the
biggest nativity scene I could get. When I put that up at least four
more houses on my block started putting them up. Now every Christmas
there is dozens of them in my neighborhood.


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On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 16:16:46 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote this crap:

On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 16:56:14 -0400, Lord Vath
wrote:

Anybody is free to put up anything they want as "food for thought".
But the government is not. That is well established First Amendment
law, and that view has been reinforced over and over by court cases
over the last 200 years. There's nothing silly about it. The
government is not free to endorse a religious viewpoint. And without
doubt, the Ten Commandments represents a religious viewpoint.

That's nuts. The Ten Commandments doesn't endorse any religion.

They are taken directly out of the Old Testament, and are explicitly
Judeo-Christian dogma. Several of the commandments would be
unconstitutional if implemented legally.

Only the first three. But they don't endorse any specific religion.

The government should be required to treat churches as any other
non-profit entity. In giving them special consideration, they are
violating the First Amendment.

Wait? You are saying that churches should be treated as any non
profit entity? Then they should not be taxed.

Well, I believe that non-profits should pay taxes like any other
corporation. But until then, churches can operate untaxed, but only if
they are subject to the same rules as all non-profits.

I can agree with that. But OTOH many non-profit organization are
created specifically to endorse political parties, which religious
organizations are forbidden to do.

I shall give you an example. Unions are non-profit organizations but
they have their buildings plastered with campaign signs.



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On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 15:59:29 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
wrote:

While I think that most atheists would disapprove of a statue of Satan, since
it's clear that Satan stands for evil and cruelty and so on, even if they don't
believe he's real, a statue of Cthulhu would clearly be a joke.

Baphomet, while closer to Cthulhu than to Satan, actually raises a rather
different question.

Suffice to say that in the atheist and secularist forums I follow, the
Satanic Temple (which doesn't worship Satan) is pretty popular, as is
its activist stance in seeking to place Baphomet statues on government
spaces that host Ten Commandments displays. This is not recognized as
something to worship, but rather as a political statement.

On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 19:12:31 -0400, Lord Vath
wrote:

I've never heard of anybody even slightly interested in limiting
nativity scenes on private property.

Are you stupid? Oh, I forgot who I was dealing with. The atheists
are trying to ban them from private property because they say it
offends them.

I'd love to see a reference. I've never heard of it happening. I've
never encountered an atheist with any interest in limiting what people
display on their own property.

When I heard that, I went to Amazon and bought the
biggest nativity scene I could get. When I put that up at least four
more houses on my block started putting them up. Now every Christmas
there is dozens of them in my neighborhood.

Good for you. I doubt any atheist cares. But any secularist (which
includes many religious people) will be delighted that they aren't on
public property.

On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 18:59:16 -0400, Lord Vath
wrote:

On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 08:06:55 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote this crap:

On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 06:12:46 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

When interpreted literally the Ten Commandments are good ideas.

When interpreted literally, the Ten Commandments are horrible ideas,
and they stand in opposition to the principles this country was
founded on. Only three make sense- not murdering, not stealing, and
not committing perjury. The rest are not only illegal under our
Constitution, but for the most part unethical.

You are insane. What about honoring your father and mother? You do
not think adultery is wrong?

I don't believe that parents deserve automatic honor or respect. Those
things are earned, and not all parents earn it. My respect for my
parents is no greater than what I have for many others, and had they
been poor parents, they wouldn't have any from me. And a law demanding
honor wouldn't survive Constitutional scrutiny.

Whether adultery is wrong depends on how you define it. As a breach of
trust, I think it's wrong. I don't think there's anything wrong with
married people sleeping with people outside their marriage, as long as
it is done with the consent of all involved. And it isn't illegal.

And it doesn't matter whether you like them or not. The point is,
they're a religious code, and their presence on government land
represents government endorsement of religion, which is prohibited.

The last seven are not religious. And even the first three do not
endorse any specific religion.

They don't need to endorse a religion. They are the product of a
specific family of religions, and therefore displaying them
demonstrates endorsement. As courts regularly find.

Every court that has reviewed these cases has come to that decision,
either requiring the removal of monuments, or the inclusion of
monuments from anybody who wants to place one.

You are a liar and a fool.

You don't pay much attention to the news.

On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 18:50:35 -0400, Lord Vath
wrote:

Religion is an institutionalized system of philosophical beliefs,
moral strictures, and devotional practices. It normally involves a
degree of ritual, and includes a belief in supernatural entities.

So does the Girl Scouts. But they are no religion.

Which supernatural entity do the Girl Scouts believe in? Do you know
that a couple of years ago they specifically dropped "God" from their
Promise in order to be welcoming to atheists and to those with
different religious beliefs.

The Girl Scouts accommodate members with any or no religious beliefs.
The organization itself has no element of supernatural belief or
worship.

Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 18:50:35 -0400, Lord Vath
wrote:

Religion is an institutionalized system of philosophical beliefs,
moral strictures, and devotional practices. It normally involves a
degree of ritual, and includes a belief in supernatural entities.

So does the Girl Scouts. But they are no religion.

Which supernatural entity do the Girl Scouts believe in? Do you know
that a couple of years ago they specifically dropped "God" from their
Promise in order to be welcoming to atheists and to those with
different religious beliefs.

The Girl Scouts accommodate members with any or no religious beliefs.
The organization itself has no element of supernatural belief or
worship.

My wife was almost banned as a Beaver (Junior Cub Scout) leader because
she is an atheist. They wanted her to lie and that would be OK but she
wouldn't do that.

On 13/07/2015 23:47, Lord Vath wrote:
On Fri, 10 Jul 2015 17:42:41 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
wrote this crap:

On Friday, July 10, 2015 at 3:31:15 PM UTC-6, Lord Vath wrote:

I can write you a paper where there is no beginning to time and
therefore no beginning to the universe and therefore no creator. But
who would believe it?

The steady-state theory of cosmology, which eventually collapsed in the face of
the scientific evidence, in favor of the Big Bang, was originally proposed by
scientists who happened to be left-wingers and atheists in their personal
lives, and so they may well have been motivated by personal bias to try to
develop an astronomy that was less suggestive of a moment of Creation - and
therefore, as they saw it, of God as well.

However the big bang theory is utter nonsense. We are supposed to
believe that the entire universe was once smaller than an atom and
expanded in a nanosecond many times faster than the speed of light.
Then slowed down so suns and planets could form. But now we know that
the universe is expanding at a greater rate.

The very phrase "Big Bang" was coined by Fred Hoyle as a derogatory term
for the Einstein-Lemaitre expanding universe theory. It stuck.

He was never reconciled to the fact that radio astronomy and Prof Sir
Martin Ryle nailed it by showing that the further you look back the more
frequent, weird and wonderful the radio sources were. Canonical Cygnus A
being a dim central galaxy with massively large radio lobes.

It didn't help that early radio astronomy survey results were flawed
with some apparent sources being sidelobe interactions. 3C catalogue
pretty much did for any hope of resurrecting steady state and then
observation of 4K microwave background by Penzias & Wilson in the 1960s.

Now these so-called
scientists have a made-up "dark matter" theory to try and convince us.

Dark matter is to explain the observed rotation curves of galaxies.
Basically we don't see enough mass to explain the orbital velocities so
they would fly apart if there were not additional mass that we cannot
see. Evidence for dark matter goes back to the 1930's with Zwicky &
Sinclair Smith's observations of the Virgo and Coma clusters. eg.

http://www.amazon.com/Baryonic-Dark-.../dp/0792306996

Back in the 1980's you could hide dark matter as chair legs, sticks of
rhubarb and biros - which was theoreticians gibe against the observers.
Anything non-luminous would do in modest sized pieces.

These days with the latest generation of telescopes and sensors covering
most of the electromagetic spectrum there is no way to hide enough
baryonic matter. The search is on for the stuff that is the hidden cold
dark matter which ignores all electromagnetic interactions. I am off to
see the Boulby potash mine tomorrow as luck would have it.


I can assure you that the universe is simpler than that.

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For every complex question there is a simple wrong answer.

I have to confess that having a non zero dark *energy* again (the
constant of integration in the Einstein-Lemaitre universe formula that
facilitates a stable steady state) makes me a little uncomfortable.

I would much prefer to believe that in the early stages of the universe
type IA supernova were slightly brighter than we expect. But having a
non-zero dark energy component is a recent innovation after my time.

There is no doubt at all on a galactic scale that there is something
holding galaxies together that is not observable electromagnetically.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 17:36:23 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote this crap:

On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 19:12:31 -0400, Lord Vath
wrote:

I've never heard of anybody even slightly interested in limiting
nativity scenes on private property.

Are you stupid? Oh, I forgot who I was dealing with. The atheists
are trying to ban them from private property because they say it
offends them.

I'd love to see a reference. I've never heard of it happening. I've
never encountered an atheist with any interest in limiting what people
display on their own property.

You are a fool and a liar. Atheists don't care what other people
think. Any types of religious displays offend them.


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On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 17:40:26 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote this crap:

On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 18:59:16 -0400, Lord Vath
wrote:

On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 08:06:55 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote this crap:

On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 06:12:46 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

When interpreted literally the Ten Commandments are good ideas.

When interpreted literally, the Ten Commandments are horrible ideas,
and they stand in opposition to the principles this country was
founded on. Only three make sense- not murdering, not stealing, and
not committing perjury. The rest are not only illegal under our
Constitution, but for the most part unethical.

You are insane. What about honoring your father and mother? You do
not think adultery is wrong?

I don't believe that parents deserve automatic honor or respect.

Because you are a fool and a liar. Your parents probably brought you
up that way.

Those
things are earned, and not all parents earn it. My respect for my
parents is no greater than what I have for many others, and had they
been poor parents, they wouldn't have any from me. And a law demanding
honor wouldn't survive Constitutional scrutiny.

Whether adultery is wrong depends on how you define it.

That's insane talk.

As a breach of
trust, I think it's wrong. I don't think there's anything wrong with
married people sleeping with people outside their marriage, as long as
it is done with the consent of all involved. And it isn't illegal.

Prostitution is illegal. When you sleep with someone outside of
marriage you usually pay them in some way.

And it doesn't matter whether you like them or not. The point is,
they're a religious code, and their presence on government land
represents government endorsement of religion, which is prohibited.

The last seven are not religious. And even the first three do not
endorse any specific religion.

They don't need to endorse a religion. They are the product of a
specific family of religions, and therefore displaying them
demonstrates endorsement. As courts regularly find.

You are a fool and a liar.

Every court that has reviewed these cases has come to that decision,
either requiring the removal of monuments, or the inclusion of
monuments from anybody who wants to place one.

You are a liar and a fool.

You don't pay much attention to the news.

I watch the news every day and I read the newspapers every day. You
are just a liar and a fool.


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