Freethinker's corner

What Is An Ad Hominem Attack … September 13, 2015

2015/09/13
An ad hominem attack is used when there are no rational arguments remaining to support your position. This is when you attack your opponents character or personal traits rather than addressing the issue at hand.

There are many politically correct progressive busybodies who use this method to silence opposition to their attempts to reengineer society to what they think is best. Among many of those issues today are:
1. Transgender
2. Feminism
3. Homosexual
These are issues that you dare not disagree with, dare not oppose or you will be ridiculed, denigrated, and made to look like a bigot. The people who have fallen for these issues will attack you relentlessly until you either concede or leave. They have no rational arguments on their side. All they have are assertions with no foundations. They function in every way like a religion. They are ideologues. Their ideology is accepted on faith by the members.
Becoming Less Reactive… September 6, 2015

2015/09/06
Knee-jerk reactions to issues tends to give the false impression that you are an individual with less than average intelligence. Also, with attendant anger, stress levels are increased to dangerous levels. Such stress wears heavily on mental and bodily resilience.

I found an article on this very thing but have lost the references. It provides steps to correct this all too human flaw.
1. First determine exactly what sets off the reaction. Is it feelings concerning that issue or background noise. Does it result from someone making an intentional hurtful comment.
2. Identify if possible whether you consider yourself a highly sensitive person. High reactance to environmental stimuli like smells, noise, etc. Knowing this may help lessen emotional reactance.
3. Change your daily habits a little. Get at least 7 hours of sleep, eat healthy foods, avoid unhealthy choices. Allow yourself downtime to relax.
4. Practice mindfulness. Observe your thoughts and feelings in the moment without judgment. Such mindfulness is said to reduce stress from emotions and pressures associated with emotional reactivity.
5. Change the perception of the situation. Consider the source. If it is someone that doesn’t know you well, let the irritation slide. If it is someone you know well try to respond later after the emotional reaction has abated.
6. Resist the urge to react or take immediate control. Step back and look at the situation from outside. Take as much time as needed. After assessing the situation it can be responded to in a more civil manner.
I realize that this is a growth process. However, learning should be something one engages in during the entire life, not just while young. I hope this helped you.

Found the reference: http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/less-reactive-people-emotionally-19191.html
WOMEN ARE NOT OPPRESSED IN AMERICA, NEVER WERE… AUGUST 30, 2015

2015/08/30

The concept of the oppression of women in America is a myth created by feminists in an attempt to take power.

Along with the myth of oppression (by some vague nebulous patriarchal means) the feminists also created other myths to urge the membership to action:

• The wage gap myth ( solved in the 60’s)

• The rape culture myth ( invented by college feminists in order to destroy men’s careers)

• Find more here: http://www.deltabravo.net/cms/plugins/content/content.php?content.267

There is in fact no right that a man has that a women does not. I defy anyone to name even one. However, it is easy to name a right, indeed, rights that men do not have that women do have. Among them:

• A man cannot choose parenthood.

• Whereas there is a law prohibiting female circumcision, a man has no such protection and the decision is not his.

• Every young man must sign up with selective service or he will not receive certain rights a woman gets automatically:

1. The maximum penalty for failing to register with Selective Service is a $250,000 fine and up to five years in prison. Failure to register will cause ineligibility for a number of federal and state benefits including:
2. A man must be registered to be eligible for jobs in the Executive Branch of the Federal government and the U.S. Postal Service. This applies only to men born after December 31, 1959.
3. Men who are not registered with Selective Service cannot obtain Federal student loans or grants. This includes Pell Grants, College Work Study, Guaranteed Student/Plus Loans, and National Direct Student Loans.
4. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) makes registration with Selective Service a condition for U.S. citizenship, if the man first arrived in the U.S. before his 26th birthday and was required to register.
5. The Workforce Investment Act (formerly JTPA) offers important job-training opportunities. This program is only open to those men who register with Selective Service.
6. Most states have added additional penalties for those who fail to register with Selective Service.

• In divorce women are the assumed custodian of the child. Despite a record of bad behavior women get first consideration.

•Rape and sexual assault are defined as such for women but not for men.

Society in general is very gynocentric. In almost every facet of life women are favored. They are thought of as more innocent, moral, and more intelligent than men. They are almost always painted as the sugar and spice and everything nice little girl.

Women receive overall more lenient prison sentences than men for the very same kind of crimes. Often, even if there is no man in sight, they are said to have been led down the low road by one. A few tears can even get a woman a reduced sentence, or possibly even simply probation for the most heinous of crimes: murder. Many speculate the reason women get such treatment is that women carry child-like appearances over into adulthood. Others, more outspoken, simply state that women have been coddled that they have become like spoiled children.

If anyone is oppressed in America it is men. Called upon to put his life on the line in war. Denigrated in all media as stupid, lazy, and reprehensible. Told to never hit a woman while a woman is not told to never hit a man. Expected to give a DNA sample if a woman is raped within several miles of the vicinity or look guilty: Assumed guilty rather than innocent upon accusation. Expected to stand and let a woman have his seat, expected to stay on a sinking ship if there aren’t enough lifeboats and let the women and children be saved. In fact and deed nearly a slave in most respects. Feminists do not fight to free the man from these expectations, oh no, despite the vile they heap upon men they expect the same courtesies as always. But then, they never said they were fighting for the responsibilities that go with having rights… they were fighting just to have the rights.
Friendships Possess an Expiration Date … August 23, 2015

2015/08/23

Whether desirable or not all friendships have an expiration date. The ebb and flow of life causes people to change over time. Commonalities fade and disappear whether the memory of them remains or fades as well. The connections that brought you together are severed, and may no longer be present. Where once your lives were in harmony, now there is only noise.

People drift in the river of life and absorb new experiences. They are altered by these experiences. Where once your commonalities drew you together, now they have been replaced and no longer mesh. That person you imagined in your mind exists only in your mind. The body that contained that person exists, but the person inside does not. They have changed and appear alien, unknown, just another stranger.

There comes a time when one must accept that the friendship is no longer possible. Not only that, but also that the changes that have occurred are not amenable to establishing any renewal to that friendship. The sad day comes when efforts to reach out are ended. Two people who used to mean so much, whose lives were intertwined, now go their separate ways. Even brothers often come to this point.
Accepting the Inevitable … August 16, 2015

2015/08/16

The naïve idealism of youth desires possibilities outside the realm of reality. There is more hope present in the youthful mind than is duly warranted. When you reach an age of maturity the true nature of things becomes more clear. With the wisdom gained from many experiences it is possible to see the direction in which things are headed. It is possible to discern whether the direction can be changed.

During my youth I really held that mankind was much more moral than it indeed really was. I saw the decline of animal species, the extinctions, the encroachment of humans into animal habitats, the environmental havoc wreaked by industry but since I also saw the existence of various groups that were pro-environmental, pro-animal, I, optimistically, felt that there was hope, that extinctions could be avoided, and environmental disaster averted. I gave money to these organizations over time, not great sums, but I gave. Periodic updates on progress were received and applauded. Perhaps these organizations like the World Wildlife Fund, Defenders, National Wildlife Foundation, and others that promised to restrain the wanton destruction of the environment would prevail and all would be right with the world.

Over time, though, I perceived a trend. These organizations would year after year pronounce this or that animal close to extinction, the environment spoiled, and request ever more funds to fight it. It wasn’t that this or that animal was on the brink… it was always the same problem again and again as if all the efforts in the past were for naught. Wolves were being decimated, reintroduced, and decimated again. Cougars here and there were pronounced as no longer being here or there. In it all, the hand was out… we need more money to save the animals… the world… won’t you give?

My present state is one of resignation. The juggernaut of humanity continues to increase its numbers edging out all other species in its quest to coat the planet with its living masses. There is no stopping it, there is no stopping the slaughter, the poaching, the march of industry as it strives for more profits. I have given up the battle. I will give no more. The decline and extinction of every living thing is inevitable.
Sometimes All We Have to go on Is a Gut Feeling… August 9 2015

2015/08/09

“Are emotions irrelevant to morality? If you have a gut instinct that something is wrong, is it really wrong, or is the emotion just an echo of what you believe, rather than what is real? Is not intuition in fact simply an emotional response? Does this mean that intuition should be disregarded? I imagine many a primitive man’s life was saved by the “intuition”, or “feeling” that something is waiting behind that bush ready to pounce. Our brains operate on a conscious and subconscious level continuously when awake. Our conscious mind alone is insufficient at handling the enormous number of variables required in daily life. Many must be handled without conscious thought as a remembered automatic action. This relieves the conscious mind of activity allowing it to handle the new situations that arise. Consequently, those new situations will be handled unconsciously as they are repeated over time.
→Sometimes a “feeling” is all we have to go on.” –HAVEANICEDAY

Scientists dismiss the layperson. Without credentials your credibility is counted as nil in the scheme of things. Nevertheless, I do not believe that scientists, professionals, or “experts” (whatever expert means or is derived from) have sole proprietorship over conjecture. What follows is my conjecture. Accept it or reject it for what it is worth.

There are some who think that intuition is something separate from the mind, something that directs you without being part of you. I think it simply a thought, an issuance of, the subconscious mind. The conscious mind has limited capacity, even limited access, to memories. How many times is it that you have tried to remember a name and found that it simply would not materialize, yet, hours or even days later surfaces like some object from the depths many times in the middle of something else? Your mind, your subconscious mind, seems to have been working in the background, round the clock, sifting through various files… obviously haphazardly stored. The subconscious mind has greater capacity, greater access to all of your memories. Your conscious mind, when it receives Intel from the subconscious, can not explain how that information was arrived at. Sometimes that information is simply in the form of an emotion. Sometimes that information can seem so real you can smell it, hear it.

The subconscious operates not only when we are awake. It operates when we sleep. Even during our brains downtime when it is deciding which memories warrant longer storage, the work on the problems presented during the day continues. Many a person has awakened with a solution to a problem which perplexed them the day before.

If you have what seems to be a issuance from intuition I recommend that you do not ignore it. Be wary. It may be a false alarm, it may be totally wrong, it may save your life, it may cause your death. Simply use caution. It is a message, or could be a message, issuing forth from the sum total of your stored knowledge. It could be a message from your subconscious to warn you or help you in the handling of some task. It could be nothing at all as well. It is not some deity that has instilled some ethereal quantity in your head, it does not issue from some supernatural power, it is coming from your much larger subconscious. Ever have a “gut feeling”?
Cold Logic and Reason … August 2, 2015

2015/08/02

Would we want a society that was ruled by logic and reason alone? A number of people have suggested that it would be a better world than that ruled by religion. What if the world was ruled by such edicts as:

”The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or one”

What if everyone was guided by this rule to consider the welfare of the whole rather than any regard for themselves. Would this not lower the value of the individual? Does this not rail directly with one’s instinct for self preservation, one’s own welfare? Is this not inhuman?

Inhuman or not, it seems that such reasoning would be in line with the direction that evolution would have us proceed. After all, in the interests of natural selection, it is not the individual that matters, but the species as a whole. If by eliminating the weak and unfit the whole of the species can be strengthened then evolution seems served. Yet… when it comes to selection in the human species who decides who lives and who dies? Who decides who has the desirable traits for procreation and who must be sterilized? Is it a case of opportunity? If the individual falls into a situation where its continuance jeopardizes the whole should that individual be expected to draw a sword and fall upon it… or do what comes naturally… try to survive?

In human society the rich or powerful decide who must die and who receives special privileges. Without regard to intelligence, people of lower caste are selected for military duty and sent off to various conflicts. In fact, if anything, only those who possess fitness are chosen and sent, leaving those of less fit nature behind to procreate, creating even more of the unfit. The society, soon bled of its strongest members, eventually withers and begins a decline.

On the other hand, if one uses logic and reason to maximize only the future of oneself, then too we have a problem. How is that future determined? What if you decide that a future bereft of others is in your best interest? What if you decide that as long as your own life needs are met then the hell with anyone else? What is there to stop you from making calloused decisions simply to further your own life without regard to any other?

In the past reciprocity has served the function of developing a reliance upon others to help maintain the individual existence. A loose system of give and take. When one has plenty that individual shares in hopes that when it has little and the other has much that it too will share, providing a basis for continuance of both. This too has its flaws in that groups of people that are dependent upon one another can discriminate against those that are not part of that group. This causes conflict to develop between groups as well, as each seek limited resources. As resources decline aggression between groups increases.

Compassion and sympathy, possibly an outgrowth of reciprocity is a necessary requirement for survival… If not carried to extremes where the entirety of a population is disenfranchised simply to enfranchise a few. If the few disenfranchise the many, soon the many will grow to resent and perhaps hate the few. There are many instances in society of this now. Well-meaning busybodies utilizing draconian laws to disenfranchise many for the enfranchisement of a few. Name a few? No one dare name any lest one bring down the aggressive oppression likely to result from those that “know what is best for you”!
Cult of Fear … July 19, 2015

2015/07/31

Bears repeating…

Freethinker's corner

(Also titled: The Nonexistent Reward)

No one except the terminally ill, suffering great agony desires death. This nothing, this ending, is a primal fear in humans who have seen people just go away. If some way could be found to continue existence, most would desire it, especially if that extension promised paradise. Imagine regaining total youth and living forever young. This is the lure, the bait, offered by most major religions. They offer continuity, existence beyond this world… but more than that: peace and happiness among those lost relatives.

It is not so much that they offer this, but how they offer this miracle of miracles. You must believe in a certain deity over all others. You must serve that entity and adhere to the doctrine featuring that entity. If you want to obtain the reward you must follow the dictates of that cult… as well as the dictates of…

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Cult of Fear … July 19, 2015

2015/07/19

(Also titled: The Nonexistent Reward)

No one except the terminally ill, suffering great agony desires death. This nothing, this ending, is a primal fear in humans who have seen people just go away. If some way could be found to continue existence, most would desire it, especially if that extension promised paradise. Imagine regaining total youth and living forever young. This is the lure, the bait, offered by most major religions. They offer continuity, existence beyond this world… but more than that: peace and happiness among those lost relatives.

It is not so much that they offer this, but how they offer this miracle of miracles. You must believe in a certain deity over all others. You must serve that entity and adhere to the doctrine featuring that entity. If you want to obtain the reward you must follow the dictates of that cult… as well as the dictates of that cult’s apostle. Since the deity itself never speaks to the common cult member an apostle becomes necessary to relate the desires of the deity. Without so much as a glance of or a scrap of evidence, the individual member is asked to believe in the existence of this deity. This gives the apostle great power and influence on the members of this cult. By claiming the dictates he/she issues are from the god of interest itself the apostle is able to appear as a mere servant of the deity… when in reality that apostle has taken on the mantle of a god. The unscrupulous individual through interpretations of his/her faith can manipulate the flock, causing them to do things they would never consider on their own.

We are all aware of witch burnings, claims of heresy, and blasphemy. Much was done to get rid of opposition to healing by prayer (witches were sometimes offering natural medicines, herbs). Some claims were made to gain wealth and control. They were very eager to magnify the reverence to whatever deity they offered thereby gaining additional control.

Fear is the basis… fear of death, and then once baited, fear of not going to heaven… and for some faiths, fear of hell.
The Social Animal …. July 12, 2015

2015/07/12

It is clear that the need to socialize, the need to have a cohesive group of people to belong to, also renders people within the group susceptible to manipulation. It makes the individual gullible and accepting of errant ideology just for the sake of being part of the group.

Initially this desire to belong developed by way of evolution as it made it more likely that the species would survive. Each relied on the other for various needs. It helped the survival of the species. Once our intellect developed it became clear to many that this strength was also a weakness allowing the group to be manipulated and subjugated to the desires of a few.

It is this quality about humanity, the need to belong, to socialize, that makes atheists just as gullible to manipulators as theists when meeting in groups. To belong individual atheists will accept that some things that are clearly immoral are moral. That you must support certain groups despite the fact that doing so undermines civilization. It allows the acceptance of abnormal behavior as normal behavior. This is why many people label atheists as immoral… it is because they, many atheists, really have been morphed into an immoral mindset through manipulative forces.

It is only through constant vigilance that the individual atheist is able to remain aloof and wary of manipulators entering and attempting to undermine the group. Atheists+ was such an attempt by feminists to take over the atheist groups. It was successful in many groups including humanist groups which now are more or less controlled by feminist ideology.