1. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #154824 by delta2echo on April 3, 2008 at 7:07 pm

Officials said that nine women and two men remained underground and were divided over whether to come out. They had not been told about Mr Kuznetsov's apparent suicide attempt and an Orthodox priest with specialist knowledge of apocalyptic literature had been brought in to talk to them.

2. 'We Make Our Own Heaven'

Comment #151387 by delta2echo on March 28, 2008 at 3:37 pm

This artical disgusts me because it makes the girl sound brainwashed!
"I like to think freely, but still I can really think freely whenever I want 'cause I think thinking freely is good,"
WTF! Why the fuck would they interview an 8year old what did they expect. grrrr...

3. US military accused of harboring fundamentalism

Comment #127511 by delta2echo on February 15, 2008 at 11:03 am

Quetzalcoatl said:

I can't help but be worried about religious fundamentalism growing within the most powerful military in the world. This is perhaps a consequence of 8 years of the US having a government dominated by religion in a way that no other US government has ever been.

4. Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?

Comment #127480 by delta2echo on February 15, 2008 at 10:36 am

annabanana said:

I genuinely wonder what the response to my comments would be like if my avatar were something genderless or even a picture of a guy...

5. Survey finds most Americans believe Jesus born of virgin

Comment #102340 by delta2echo on December 22, 2007 at 12:10 pm

"Except for atheists and agnostics, of whom just 15 percent took the virgin birth story as historically true, a majority of all other subgroups believed it to be factual."

It says "and agnostics", They group athiests and agnostics into one group. I HIGHLY doubt an athiest would even entertain the idea of a Virgin Birth, but an agnostic might.


If we assume that at a minimum 1 person answered the question in the postitive then that means the group had 6-7 people. Which in total would make up .5% of the total 1005 people survayed. Seeing as there are 66 some-odd groups I dont see this as unreasonable. One person screwen it up for the rest of us!

6. Believe it or not

Comment #98472 by delta2echo on December 13, 2007 at 5:28 pm

I think there tends to be certain conotations to each label. We need to recognize each one and then agree on an over arching term to rally behing.
For instance. An athiest strictly speaking does not believe in any gods, but could still believe in magic or crystal power ect.
A bright does not, but could still not accept global warming, or that vaccines cause autisim.
A Realist only accepts what is understood by science.
A Rationalist tries to use logic and not faith to make sense of the world, and therefore leans towards being a realist. Plato, and Socrates were rationalist but not realist, or athiest or brights.
Humanist is an athiest but by definition grounds their morality on the emotional backdrop of sympathy.

But I think we all agree that we dont use any single system of doctrine for our morality, so on these grounds I would like to say we are all INDEPENDENT THINKERS.

We tend to hold some of the same thoughts because there is only one reality, that we all share, and science brings to us an objective view of reality. We like the idea that we would arrive independintly at the same picture if we had the time and resourses. So we use our scientific understandings as our source of facts and theories to understand how the universe works.

But we do not take our morals from it. We each arrive at morality from diffrent directions (our own personal experiances). We tend to share the same morality because we all share human sympathy, we share our common understanding of science.
We also tend to share a common hope of the future, one of peace, prosperity, understanding, equality, civil rights.

Free Independent Thinker should be our banner, and we can all claim our own subcatagory.
So Im a Bright Free Independent Thinker. (BFIT)
or an Athiest Free Independent Thinker. (AFIT)
or a Humanist Free Independent Thinker. (HFIT)

We all FIT together.

We would all agree to vote for a canditate who was an Independent Thinker.
What I think we have to do is not lose the subtile understanding here about how we arrive at our morality. Each independintly.

As Independent Thinkers we should stress our individualisim, or desire to protect all peoples individual rights to Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happyness.
How we arrive at our independent morality is irrelivent we all share these central ideas.

We want politicians who share them, and we want them to arrive at them by independent means. Not by dogma, or doctrine, or pure emotional drives.

We want schools that nurture independent thinking and education,
we want laws that nurture individual freedom and choice,
we want policies that nurture scientific progress, and understanding.

Free Independent Thinkers who support Freedom of Thought.

7. Taking Science on Faith

Comment #90523 by delta2echo on November 25, 2007 at 12:22 pm

These kinds of articals realy upset me. Scientist dont ASSUME the universe has order. Scientist LOOK for order. They arent supposing it, they are trying to discover it. The type of order scientist are looking for are Laws, causality, etc.
Or I think it would be better to say that scientist are looking for ways to predict phenomena, because the ability to predict implys objective order, and order manifests its self through laws and causal relationships.
It would be more accurate to say Scientist (The person) HOPE to discover order. Instead of saying Scientist have faith that order exsists.
We KNOW order exsits because we have discovered it. But that doesnt mean we would have, or that we assume order exsist DESPITE contrary evidence (which is the hallmark of faith.)