Hey QF,

You said:

There are plenty of places in the Bible where war is justified.

X: You’re referring to the Old Testament. Christianity uses the New Testemant and it supercedes the OT, hence the terminology.

What does anybody think of this statement being made by X in response to my earlier statement?

I think you’re wasting your time arguing with Special Ed.

I guess he’s saying that the OT is BS. The glass is half-full/half-empty.

I think you’re wasting your time arguing with Special Ed.

Yeah, well, perhaps or perhaps not. I can’t get over how somebody can just believe something that has no real validity, and yet X keeps on coming up with more stuff. It sort of pisses me off, in a way. In addition, there are millions of Special Eds out there, running our government at the local and the national level. Why the heck? I’ll tell you why, because churches have authority over these folks and the politicians pay the churches to say stuff. I don’t quite see how somebody can just not listen to logic, and yet they’re all over the place. I just think I should be able to convince at least 1 of these imbeciles to disavow their bullshit.

Special Ed is probably I true believer.

but

It’s my guess, with anecdotal evidence only to back me up, that most proclaimed believers already know that their beliefs are the product of a group-think. However they wont say so because saying so would mean there expulsion from their group. Robert Shiller (economist) said this about the housing ponzi scheme that began about 2003 and is ravaging our economy presently and I think the same can be said for every church and church group world wide.

There’s a famous book written by Irving Janis, who’s a psychologist, about 30 years ago, called Groupthink. He’s a social psychologist, and he points out how even expert groups can make very colossal errors. He did a number of case studies in the book, and what tends to happen?suppose you imagine yourself and a group of experts who seem to have converged on an enlightened opinion which has arguments to support it, and it has prominent influential people saying that. It can be difficult for someone to stand up in that room and air what seem to be half-baked or half-formed doubts about it. It can be kind of damaging to your reputation. And you imagine that they have a reason to dismiss these doubts. But you don’t want to be responsible for bringing it up?especially when they’re reaching a decision. Sometimes they’re trying to make an important decision. And at that time, you would think that people who have doubts should stand up and thrust them to the fore. But, in fact, they often retreat at that point, because they may just have a sense that they’re being annoying, that they will lose status in the group. If we’re close to a decision on something, and I’d raise doubts, and they’re going to go ahead anyway and do it, you might think that’s good?because it could be a disaster, and they’ll remember that you had doubts. But the likelihood is to focus on, instead, “Now I’m kind of the party pooper,” you know. “When they’re going to implement this plan, they’re not going to turn to me because I was the guy who doubted.” Things like that went through peoples’ minds, and they don’t air doubts. And when Janis interviewed people afterward and asked them their memories of the discussion, they would say things like, “I think we had a very open and fair discussion, and everyone raised their views.” That was their memory of what happened, but they couldn’t remember the other arguments. So it wasn’t happening?there was somebody who was expressing doubts, but not effectively. And so I think that’s the kind of thing that happens when there’s just a general presumption which becomes repeated everywhere.

Life’s a fight. You could learn to enjoy it.

http://irrationaltheorist.blogspot.com/