TED Community » Sky F

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Nada nada not a, not a damn thing.

An idea worth spreading

The next civil rights movement after gay rights will be mental illness, prepare accordingly.

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Comments

• TEDCred score: +3.80 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Conversation: What is the purpose of religion?

  Sep 13 2012: This whole discussion is drifting nicely away from reality. It's like asking what the purpose of the 7-11 down the street from me is and then discussing corporate America, the core of our wants and desires, the role of society members, the value of convenience in our daily lives, the happenstance that it would even exist so close to me, onward into obscurity. The real answer is that the purpose of it for me is to fill the need of slurpees into my life, and the purpose for the business itself is to make money. Period.
  
  Like the purpose of a 7-11, the purpose of religion depends on who you're asking. For most people it's simply to provide comfort, create community, and maintain tradition. The whole "Will a single answer ever be found? Is there only one answer? " is just a silly question that isn't really asking anything at all (because it's vague as shit) and just makes the whole discussion way too serious without actually even talking about anything.
  
  As for the whole 'social control' thing being talked about, this is the purpose of it for a very small minority of clever people who are using religion's "comfort, community, and tradition" to exploit it's members for personal reasons, whatever they may be. To be what you exclusively talk about as your purpose for a religion on a grand scale is really silly though. It is not the ultimate purpose of the religion, just a seedy by-product.
  
  But again, it all depends on from who's perspective you're talking about. I answered from the perspective of "the majority who subscribe to it."
  
  Anyways, don't be so serious guys. It just seems like a hot-air festival in here.

• A comment on Conversation: Is Faith inherently irrational?

  Sep 13 2012: If you're just going to define two words and do so in a way that doesn't allow one to fall in the category of the other, then there really isn't a question. Anyone who argues against you is simply not arguing from the same convention of the words "faith" and "rationality".
  
  Like if my definition of faith was boogers and my definition for irrationality was things found in noses, then I would say hell yeah, faith is inherently irrational. A silly example but the point is simply that if someone believes faith to be rational or irrational, they're going to have definitions that allow their belief to exist.
• +2

  A comment on Conversation: Atheism: why do people don't believe in God?

  Sep 13 2012: “If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.” - Penn Jilette
  
  I don't believe in the Christian god for the same reason I don't believe in any Greek god or Roman god or Egyptian god or Mayan god or Hindu god or Martian god or whoever turned Gandalf grey to white god.
  
  Also, God isn't ANY of our creators, our respective mothers are. I don't even need faith to believe that.

• A comment on Conversation: Are humans domesticated by technology?

  Sep 20 2011: Technology increases the carrying capacity of the world. It is, quite literally, not possible for us to live without technology.
  
  But maybe your question is specifically about personal computers or something. "Technology" is very broad.
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: Happiness

  Sep 20 2011: Thanks! Familiar faces! Cool.
  
  Nice to not be forgotten :)

• A reply on Conversation: Happiness

  Sep 20 2011: Just make sure to call his happiness "Happiness" (with a capital H) to distinguish it and voila! No need to reach an agreement.
• +5

  A comment on Conversation: Happiness

  Sep 20 2011: I think the really big disagreements floating around this thread are simply semantics... People aren't using the same 'happiness' idea. Apples/oranges. Anyway, using the traditional conventional idea of happiness I'll add my two cents:
  
  I believe happiness is simply contingent upon one's ability to savor.
  
  Because rich people can be sad and poor people can smile their faces off, it's all dependent on how each individual enjoys their experiences life gives them to the fullest.
  
  As Oscar Wilde said: 'With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?' Hell, even homeless people have access to these things! Or Kurt Vonnegut: 'Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were big things.'
  
  I was a little kid who had more fun playing with the boxes the toys came in rather than the toys themselves. If I could expand that to my every day life that would be some powerful stuff.

• A reply on Conversation: Obama's birth certificate

  Apr 29 2011: Yawn. Ya don't get it.
  
  Religion is an identity to be exploited, hence why it plays a role in gaining support for a war.
  
  The root of the problem to all of this, the common cause, I'm proposing is lack of critical thinking. That is to say that the relationship between religion and war-support is only seemingly a causal one, but that it is actually more reasonable to believe it is only a correlation relationship.
  
  I say this because the difference between religious people who support the war and religious people who don't tends to be the ability to think slightly more autonomously. This suggests that it isn't religion that is the cause, but only a correlation.
  
  I'm not being nitpicky I'm suggesting the root of the problem, because that is where the true solution lies, and as such, the place where focus should be.
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: What is love? Should the morals/values of life be revolved around spreading and teaching the ideas surrounding love?

  Apr 28 2011: "Relativism is the where truth lies."
  
  Maybe for you :P :P :P

• A reply on Conversation: Obama's birth certificate

  Apr 28 2011: Ted, did you even read what I said? Correlation not causation brodude.