Why not “stupid assed ancient wisdom”?

A significant slice of the world’s population consider the Bible to be God’s gift to man. The word “fucking”, used as an adjective, adds nothing of significence to any sentence, but only creates an aura of sneering disrespect.

Take away the “fucking” and you will have a sentence which validates several path to proper perspective – the Bible equal among the others.

I’m just sayin’.

After you read God is Not Great, read On Being a Christian, Does God Exist?, and The Beginning of All Things by Hans Kung.

Ryan, have you read any Hans Kung? I recommend highly.

“Religion is the opium of the masses”. Faith is the antithesis of logic, therefore many people struggle internally with this concept.

Filling the void is a lonely and painful place to be and if it allows people to get back on their feet- that is fine. Hut don’t “shove it down someone’s throat”.

Good subject matter though as this is at the root of almost all of our international policies as well…

Now, from my anecdotal evidence (remember though, the plural of anecdote is not data) it isn’t about replacing alcohol with religion, though there is definitely religious backing throughout the program. Most of the people I met in AA were there for the companionship. I once went to a group where everybody was at least 5 years sober, yet they went religiously (no pun intended) to be with their friends. When they told me their story, and they are all dying to tell you their stories, the common theme was that alcohol was a universal band-aid. Once they had others to talk to in their AA group, they didn’t need alcohol to cope with life’s troubles. These people replaced addiction not for religion but for companionship. Robert Sapolsky makes this case in his book “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” and accompanying lectures on iTunes; regardless of all the study into the science of stresses, the single greatest stress reducer is social companionship. Alcoholism, TV, exercise,etc are all ways to deal with common stress, but companionship is the single greatest indicator of an individual’s ability to cope with stress.

In relation to your main theme, it would seem that the “naive commenters” turn here simply because there is nobody else to challenge their beliefs. There are not a lot of groups in high school (or in general) that voluntarily read books solely to talk about them (Yes, I know book clubs exist, but I have yet to find one worth joining). If there were more ways to intelligently discuss reading, nobody would be signing up to an email list to do it.

We are all assholes, however, Ryan provides what we seek.

Perfect example for this post:

“Choose not to be harmed and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed and you haven’t been.”

-Marcus Aurelius

Thank you Ryan for your insight. Still a fan.

My point, which itself was hastily jotted down, was that people who have gone through life being handled by kiddy gloves are likely to lack a sense of perspective and realism when it comes to the “merit” of their opinions. If you’ve never been told explicitly, or never found out through experience, that the world doesn’t revolve around you, and that you’re not qualified to offer an informed opinion on certain subjects, then you’re likely to run your mouth when you really don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

It’s not always a bad thing (I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons by running my mouth when I shouldn’t have), it’s not indicative of some deep character flaw, but it can be annoying when Billy Badass the 20-year-old college student presents himself as an authority on, well, anything.