It’s a luscious mix of words and tricks

Support Net Neutrality0
rednwhite posted in Uncategorized on July 25th, 2008

Save the Internet | Rock the Vote

Relige0
rednwhite posted in Life on July 23rd, 2008

I finished my last paper for my summer English class 30 minutes after it was due today and spent overall about an hour and a half working on it. As a result I ended up with the poorly written reflections on the right column under pages on why religion is the most detrimental aspect of our modern society.

Update: I’m making it a regular post instead of a page~

This is my half-assed, quote stealing essay on religion.

We are all atheists in the sense that we disregard all gods as myth; some of us, however, choose to believe in one while still pushing aside the rest as fabrications. Religion is detrimental to society in the sense that it promotes ignorance, and applauds humble servitude. Furthermore, it is irresponsible as free-thinking people for us to not question the plan and logic of a God who creates faulty humans and then blames them for their own mistakes. In a modern society that has harnessed the power of electricity, and has been able to explore the depths of the universe, it is primitive to still hold the belief that a divine being put all of this into place.

Best put in the words of Richard Dawkins, we should be opposed to religion, “because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.” To simply reply to a question regarding why the world is the way it is “God made it that way” is not an explanation at all. It’s a failure to explain, or just another way of saying “I don’t know” but cloaked in the idea of spirituality. Typically when someone attributes something in the natural world to the work of God, that generally means they don’t have any idea of what is really happening. We see this in past civilizations where, for example, lightning was explained as the anger of the gods. And when asked about the origination of this divine being, the best answer theologians can come up with is just that, “He always was” (Slick). This thinking of merely accepting nature without discovering its true mechanics is severely disadvantageous to our society because it hinders our ability to think for ourselves. Religion diminishes our natural sense of wanting to understand how and why things work, and is completely unneeded in a modern society.

Furthermore, religion teaches us to have an unquestioning submissive attitude towards authority. Where this becomes a serious problem is when ill-derived ideologies are taken from a religious context and applied in the real world, as was the case in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. The fact is, although today we can see the evil wrought in Nazi ideology, at the time its perpetuators did not believe what they were doing was evil and rather were entirely convinced that they were doing a virtuous thing in the name of their religion. As seen in these cases, religion pushes the idea that one person can be better than another based on which imaginary deity they believe in. Ironically, it is religions founded in the idea of love and equality that resort to violence in order to disseminate their message, as seen in history through events like the Crusades and the Holocaust. For these reasons, religion is a harmful aspect of society that has no place in today’s contemporary free-thinking world.

In America, we have a society that values material wealth and the idea of working hard and living prosperously. However, we are also a society where the majority claims to be Christian and the lifestyle that we live tends to contradict the ideal life way of life that the Bible teaches. There is nothing wrong with the idea of earning through hard work and possessing material goods, but there is a problem when we have hypocritical Americans who only follow the parts of their religion that are convenient to them. As Frank Zappa put it, we encounter a more severe problem when, “you have a government that prefers a certain moral code derived from a certain religion, and that moral code turns into legislation to suit one certain religious point of view” (Ponce). And while every form of civil government certainly must be based around some sort of morality, the basis for that morality should be based on behavior, rather than theology. In today’s society, where political agendas that affect the entire country are being lobbied by strong arm Christian organizations, we have to step back and look at the validity of religion itself. If we can do that, we’ll see just how detrimental religion is in our current educated society.

There are many who come to the realization that there is a complete lack of evidence supporting a divine creator, but still believe that religion is necessary because it promotes morals in mankind; although this may be true, it doesn’t make the religion itself any truer. In the same sense, the idea of a bearded old man in red clothing with a bag full of presents for children who behave properly promotes good behavior in children; we know, however, that no such man really exists. In closing, religion is a detrimental ideology that perpetuates myths and creates hatred and violence in the world. Until we see through the foolishness that is religion, we will never be able to intellectually advance as a society.

Major Change0
rednwhite posted in School on March 19th, 2008

I don’t want to be an engineer.

All roads seemed to eventually be leading to something like managing a plastics manufacturing plant. I don’t want to be a manager of a plastics plant.

And I’m really not at all pretty certain this is what I want to do, but I’m double majoring in political science and psychology now.

I’m also doing remarkably mediocre in most of my classes, woo not caring.

0
rednwhite posted in Life on March 12th, 2008

http://rednwhite.rotahall.org/?p=75

http://www.legacy.com/StarNewsOnline/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonId=101336622

This happened a couple of months ago but I couldn’t bring myself to connect what I had said in that post and what happened last January until now.

Live every second like its your last.

Birfday2
rednwhite posted in Uncategorized on February 21st, 2008

I can finally buy cigarettes and porn!

Wierd Dream0
rednwhite posted in Random Ramblings on February 8th, 2008

I had a really strange dream last night.  My friend was driving a van, just me and her.  I was in the very back row.  She ran a red light at a bridge, and we rapidly descended towards the water below.  Right before we hit, I took a very deep breath and woke up, literally seconds before my alarm went off.  Nifty.

Hide and Seek4
rednwhite posted in Uncategorized on September 27th, 2007

I just listened to Imogen Heap’s Hide and Seek, and for some reason it instantly brought up something memorable my eighth grade social studies teacher had told our class. He had said that statistics had shown that by the time we all reached the age of 25, one of us would be dead. Of course we just blew that off as random trivia, but we couldn’t have been more naive and short-sighted of how little time we really have. Patience is a virtue, but it can be easy to slip into the delusion that things will change for the better, even though we know deep down that things won’t change. Extend every second you have to the fullest.

Heh.1
rednwhite posted in Life, School on September 26th, 2007

My life.

As of right now, I work two jobs.  I do trivial office work for two hours between classes Monday through Friday, then I work 4 nights a week as a waiter.  I’m going to class for the most part, aside for Chemistry, which is at 9 am.  I would go, but the professor offers no perspective on what it is we’re learning, meaning all we do is copy down the powerpoint notes he presents.  Said notes are also provided online, so there truly is no reason to go to class.  English is going decently enough. I managed to keep up with the journals we were supposed to do, but as for the one paper we worked on, I pretty much put it off to the last minute, and I’m not sure how that’s going to turn out.

My engineering class is interesting enough.  I have to design a fludic powered monorail as our design project, so that should be pretty fun.  I fucked up on the first couple of grades, but after those I actually put effort into what I was doing and things are looking better now.

Then psychology.  Without studying whatsoever I pulled off a 72, which is below the average of 77, but I’ll take it. Since it’s an intro class, it’s pretty much the same material I covered in high school, so although it may be fuzzy, at least I retained enough of the knowledge to pull off a 72.

Pre-Calculus has just been a review of what I did in high school so far, and I got an 87 on the first exam, again without studying.  I don’t think pre-cal is going to be that difficult.

Overall,  things aren’t going too bad.  I’m caught up with all of my work right now, but I have a feeling that I’m going to get immensely stressed out in the future.  I wasn’t studying during my free time which is why I decided that I might as well be making money during said time so I picked up that second job.  The good thing about working on campus is if you ever need time off, you can just tell them you’re working on a paper or something of that nature and they’ll let you go for the day.

I don’t think a career in engineering is going to lead to a happy lifestyle.

I’m hoping I’ll have an epiphany soon, and something will enter my life that will lead to a prosperous and enjoyable lifestyle, but I’ve yet to see anything.  Dunno.

Holy Eclipse Batman!2
rednwhite posted in Uncategorized on August 28th, 2007

Off to Collegeland2
rednwhite posted in School on August 11th, 2007

Since it’s what I’ve been telling myself I was going to major in for essentially my entire life, I’m going to major in Engineering.

Which means I’ll be going to school here at UNCW going through their Pre-Engineering program, which essentially means that for my first two years I’ll take all the basic classes that everyone takes right here in town, and then transfer to NC State’s College of Engineering for my second two years. We’ll see where I stand after that.

Mein Schedule:

General Chemistry I

Intro To Engineering

Freshman Composition I

Precalculus

General Psychology

Taking Psychology only because it was one of the few classes still available and I really didn’t want to take Anthropology.

Also, here is what time I’ll be taking what class through the week.