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10th January 2019, 04:38 AM | #321 |
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Someone saying “Jesus spoke to me and told me to sell all my possessions and take myself, my wife and our child to live in poverty in a shanty town and preach his gospel” is in the USA probably not only acceptable but praiseworthy. “Jesus spoke to me and told me to force people to give me their money so I could give it to the homeless” not so much. |
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“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
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10th January 2019, 04:42 AM | #322 |
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“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
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10th January 2019, 04:45 AM | #323 |
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What is childish about those insults? Not saying they aren’t insults but they are not childish insults. I’d say using that phrase is an attempt to poison the well (albeit with a very weak poison). All you are doing is disregarding that opinion not explaining why you disregard it. |
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“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
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10th January 2019, 06:29 AM | #324 |
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10th January 2019, 07:41 AM | #325 |
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Hi xterra. Yes, I understand what you mean. That seems to be the crux of the discussion here. For some, religion (and their preferred generalized religious person) are "nuts". For others, not. For me, it's been interesting to read posts discussing why some feel one way or the other, and even more interesting to hear why people think others feel differently.
From my experience, I've seen faith and religion have a positive impact on lives and communities and it's that impact that leads me to disagree with the OP (at least as a blanket statement). I can definitely understand how others could reach a different general conclusion (albeit with many individual exceptions I expect) using the same criteria. I can also understand how others may use different criteria altogether (e.g., it's incongruous with well-established science), but I would content by that type of criteria, every person in all of history is also nuts (to varying degrees). |
10th January 2019, 08:57 AM | #326 |
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I'd just like to say, I basically agree with Arth. I do think its a bit strange to present a definition of psychological disorder, "psychological dysfunction in an individual that is associated with distress or impairment" and then refuse to say it is because you're no expert. Sure, nobody thinks he's a psychologist.
Anyrate, my only disagreement with arth on this subject is that I'm perfectly willing to characterize some extreme religious beliefs as effectively a psychological disorder. Things like faith healing in lieu of cancer treatment is pretty much a psychological dysfunction that is associated with distress or impairment. It would be silly and bordering on a psychological disorder to characterize all or even most religious people as suffering a disorder them selves. That would certainly cause me a great deal of distress to think that 90 some percent of my species suffered from the same psychological disorder. It would also make the phrase useless, it would just mean neuro-typical at that point. I have a sister who is bi-polar and religious. It is often difficult to tell which is driving her choices. It's part of her churches belief to witness to folks including coworkers, that has caused her distress on multiple occasions. |
10th January 2019, 10:25 AM | #327 |
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It seems to me that many posters here think that belief in something that is not real is good enough to qualify as a mental illness. Therefore, if a person believes in God they are mentally ill by definition. Aside from the fact that such is not the official definition used by professionals, that definition strikes me as problematic.
Morals, for example, are not real. They are simply precepts that we made up. I would say most of us live our lives according to some moral compass. Are we clinically insane? Social customs are also things made up by people. For example, etiquette. Do you believe that one should remove their hat in a restaurant? Many people do but such a belief strikes me as irrational. If that guy over there is wearing a hat, how does that affect anyone else? There is nothing real to base this belief on. Is a restaurant owner who requires people to remove their hats insane? We all harbor irrational beliefs in things that are not real or are very subjective. Who cares if those unreal/subjective things are moral principles, social customs or religious ideas? All of those things make sense in social/cultural context. |
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10th January 2019, 11:14 AM | #328 |
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That is my point - whether the passing around a weapon is totally transparent or not . . . . even if someone I trust and a known firearm expert checks the weapon and verifies it's not loaded and passes it directly to me . . . I will still check it and will not point it at anyone.
The point is we all have 'intuitions' and heuristics we believe and follow even in the absense of evidence - because they have positive outcomes. From another thread, object permanance is another 'intuition' with positive outcomes. (We can't prove the object is really there outside of perception/sensations directly or via proxy.) |
10th January 2019, 12:20 PM | #329 |
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I'm sorta of done explaining to people the difference between "intellectual concepts" and "real, physical things" every time we have the God discussion.
Morals are one. Gods are another other. Comparing "There's a God" to "Here's opinion on whether or not to pull the lever in the trolley problem" as making equal statements about what is "real" is absurd.
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10th January 2019, 12:30 PM | #330 |
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Paranormal/supernatural beliefs are knowledge placebos. Rumours of a god’s existence have been greatly exaggerated. Make beliefs truths and you get make-believe truths. |
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10th January 2019, 01:01 PM | #331 |
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Hard for me to get my head around this sorry. If you are attending a service in a church that is struck by lightening killing many, wouldn't that give you pause? If you were predisposed to believe in a god anyway, wouldn't it suggest to you the god you were worshiping may be the wrong one, and the right one was pissed? |
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10th January 2019, 01:07 PM | #332 |
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Thinking is a faith hazard. |
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10th January 2019, 01:11 PM | #333 |
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You can always work around that by adding more to the story. The lightning killed everyone, yes, but now they're in bliss in the afterlife where they can eat all they want without getting fat, they can fly, and all the TV shows that shouldn't have been cancelled are still being made.
If you are going to believe in stories for comfort, make 'em good stories. |
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You added nothing to that conversation, Barbara. |
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10th January 2019, 01:26 PM | #334 |
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Strangely it's a real mindset.
A casual chat with a lady I was dating lead to a question of what church I attended, none. Then followed by a god beliefs round of questions and my answers shocked her. She could not imagine a godless world with all the marvels of nature around us. It terrified her. My acceptance of simply not knowing how a tree came to be or why man is so much more than any animals didn't help. She knew why and asked me to attend JW version of Sunday school to learn. This was the last time I seen her. |
10th January 2019, 01:29 PM | #335 |
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Thinking is a faith hazard. |
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10th January 2019, 01:48 PM | #336 |
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The trolley problem isn't real; it's a contrived scenario to spark useless philosophical debate about subjective ideas. It is no more instructive or useful in the real world than any religious concept.
If we can take a step back and view the larger picture, we can see moral/ethical positions as largely the same as religious positions. IOW, they are (as you put it) intellectual concepts: subjective, culturally/socially influenced and are not reflective of any kind of "absolute truth." But I don't think anyone here would classify philosophers as mentally ill. And I get it: the big thing is that religious people think their Gods are real physical beings. But it seems to me that, given that God ideas have been around as long as humans have been around, God ideas are part of the human psyche even if many of us reject them. It's a part of every human culture and is still very much a part of the fabric of human society. As such, it seems . . . wrong to say that religious beliefs are a form of mental illness.
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10th January 2019, 01:58 PM | #337 |
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You dated a JW! Now that is unusual I think as they tend to date only with their own. An ex wife of mine came from a JW family who were very staunch in the faith. It just didn't take on my wife, but she maintained contact with her two sisters and their families. They stayed with us a couple of times so I got to talk with them a bit. I have never before or since met folk who were so naive and unworldly. Quiet astounding. I found their whole network of friends were in the JW community so there interaction with us was a rarity. |
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Thinking is a faith hazard. |
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10th January 2019, 02:26 PM | #338 |
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Yeah, didn't work out well either. It is a closed culture within everyone else out there.
I would never take a faith or lack thereof as a pass-fail point and ended up with several ladies that needed a conversion from me before we had a future. Not gonna happen. |
10th January 2019, 02:38 PM | #339 |
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Absolutely across the board false. A total false equivalency.
Religious positions are actual factual claims about the world that are wrong. They aren't subjective opinions about how the world should be. This is basically the "You can't 'prove' you love your wife the same way religious people can't prove there is a God" argument slightly reworded into a more esoteric version and just as meaningless. Simply stating that you hold an opinion or viewpoint about the world is as fundamentally different from the claim that there is God as possible. |
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10th January 2019, 03:57 PM | #340 |
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So take that quantum equation and recalculate the wave by a factor of hoopty doo! The answer is not my problem, it's yours. Three Word Story Wisdom |
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10th January 2019, 03:59 PM | #341 |
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So take that quantum equation and recalculate the wave by a factor of hoopty doo! The answer is not my problem, it's yours. Three Word Story Wisdom |
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10th January 2019, 04:18 PM | #342 |
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If you want to argue from anecdotes, I've seen faith and religion murder children. It was one of those "we don't need doctors, Jesus will heal us" sects, and one particular set of parents decided their faith applied to their kid's insulin. Turns out prayers are a poor treatment for diabetes.
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10th January 2019, 06:38 PM | #343 |
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I do understand your argument and even agree with it somewhat. I’m trying to approach it from the “is this mental illness?” standpoint. What I see in this thread is much like this: “I am convinced there is no God; therefore, anyone who believes in God is mentally ill.” As if being wrong or simply disagreeing about something makes someone clinically insane. Given a sociocultural environment where religion is a powerful force, reasonable people can disagree on the God question much as we disagree on moral/ethical positions. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk |
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10th January 2019, 06:57 PM | #344 |
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That's not quite what's being argued. Those who are on the side of religion = mental illness are saying that religious people experience literal delusions. People who claim that God speaks to them are hallucinating, etc. Not even to mention the more extreme fringes of religion that people always love bringing up.
The claim isn't that they disagree with the faithful. It's that the faithful are actually mentally ill. |
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So take that quantum equation and recalculate the wave by a factor of hoopty doo! The answer is not my problem, it's yours. Three Word Story Wisdom |
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11th January 2019, 12:39 AM | #345 |
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Then you are not actually engaging in discussion, as some insults are true, for example I have encountered quite a few people over the years who are bigots, should we never then state those people are bigots because that is an insult? How are we then meant to describe them, describe their views and so on?
All you seem to be doing is using the fact that someone has used an insulting term as an excuse to avoid having to deal with their opinion/argument/conclusion. |
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“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
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11th January 2019, 12:54 AM | #346 |
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Do we need to hold back when we say there is no special magic in the bones and other organs of albinos? Some religious folk hold such magic exists and they feel morally justified in killing albinos to obtain the magic.
I suspect that you will hold that to be wrong, regardless of there being a sociocultural environment where religion is a powerful force so reasonable people can disagree on the magic question much as we disagree on moral/ethical positions. It is very hard for all of us to take a step back to look at our own society and culture the same way we do other cultures we do not belong to. This is why it is fair to raise as a critism of the DSM that it has to find ways to allow the majority of religious beliefs found in the USA to be excluded from diagnosis and descriptions such as not being able to distinguish a delusion from reality. Anyone who believes God speaks to them, reveals himself to them in actions in the world are suffering from at least a sympton of many mental illnesses as described by the DSM. The DSM however attempts to sweep that under the carpet because of how powerful religion still is in the USA. |
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“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
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11th January 2019, 01:06 AM | #347 |
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If someone claimed that Winston Churchill speaks to them, tells them how to behave and so on someone using the DSM would note that as sympton of many mental illnesses, change that name from Churchill to Jesus and then the DSM will not look you in the eyes, will shuffle its feet and proclaim "well that's just different".
Any one who claims to hear voices not their own (in the old fashioned phrase) "in their head" should be checked out, whether they claim that voice is God or the next door's cat. All you seem to be wanting to argue is if the person label's their delusion as "God" we treat it differently to if they label it as "The Alein". I profoundly disagree, hearing voices in your head not your own should always be treated as a sympton of illness, just like having a fever is always a sympton of illness, we may decide that treatment isn't required in either case but that doesn't mean illness isn't present. |
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“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
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11th January 2019, 01:08 AM | #348 |
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Not all people who are religious are bigots, though, or even ignorant of anything, much less ignorant in some general sense, and calling all religious people "ignorant bigots" is not a mere description - it's saying something for the purpose of being condescending and hurtful.
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11th January 2019, 01:18 AM | #349 |
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I don't think it's because of the power of religion - I think it's because most irrational religious beliefs have a different etiology than irrational beliefs which are the result of psychotic disorders. There are no pills which will cure/treat religious beliefs, because they're not caused by neurological malfunction. It's a GIGO problem, not a processing problem.
I do see a great many people's political beliefs as being just as nutty and dangerous as people who have talked and brainwashed themselves into thinking they're regularly getting messages from god. They're not "clinically insane", though, because their goofball beliefs aren't the result of neurological malfunctioning. Now, I DO think the culturally-induced and environmentally-induced whackadoodle beliefs probably should have some sort of..."honorable mention" in the psychiatric literature. Figuring out what to include and exclude would be a social and political minefield, though. |
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"We are enjoined, no matter how uncomfortable it might be, to consider ourselves and our cultural institutions scientifically — not to accept uncritically whatever we’re told; to surmount as best we can our hopes, conceits, and unexamined beliefs; to view ourselves as we really are." - Carl Sagan |
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11th January 2019, 01:24 AM | #350 |
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Most the people who think they communicate with aliens aren't clinically mad, either. It's kind of a cult, very much a religion of sorts.
And a vast majority of people who say they "hear the voice of god", if you press them, don't report something that sounds like a hallucination. More often it's something like "being struck with a sense of certainty, and an otherworldly peace with that certainty" which they basically decide is "god" talking to them. |
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"We are enjoined, no matter how uncomfortable it might be, to consider ourselves and our cultural institutions scientifically — not to accept uncritically whatever we’re told; to surmount as best we can our hopes, conceits, and unexamined beliefs; to view ourselves as we really are." - Carl Sagan |
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11th January 2019, 06:18 AM | #351 |
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"I ignore insults" always, always translates to "I reject opinions I don't want to hear because they are 'mean.'"
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11th January 2019, 06:18 AM | #352 |
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Actually I think they'd be treated the same. As long as Winnie isn't telling you to go across the channel and kill jerries (or more accurately, as long as you don't start doing it), you're as technically not crazy as the next guy. Which works pretty well in terms of not providing justification to lock people up for thoughtcrime, but also means arguing from the DSM isn't very helpful in the context of an informal conversation where we're trying to split a hair between cray and cray cray.
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11th January 2019, 06:27 AM | #353 |
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This is trying to semantic (yes I'm using semantic as a verb) non-religious people into defining being religious as "crazy" while simultaneously dismissing them as mean for calling religion "crazy."
So here, so there's no way to spin it: - Whether or not a socially acceptable irrational opinion is "crazy" while a socially unacceptable irrational opinion is not is a matter of pure meaningless categorization and semantics. - Social acceptability is the only meaningful, objective factor that separates most all religious beliefs from things we do call "crazy." If anyone reads that and immediately jumps to "OH SO YOU'RE CALLING ME CRAZY YOU'RE DA MEAN AND I NEED MY FAINTING COUCH!" so be it. |
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11th January 2019, 07:02 AM | #354 |
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Until very recently it wasn't socially acceptable to not be religious. It still isn't in much of the world. Are atheists crazy?
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11th January 2019, 01:03 PM | #355 |
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"We are enjoined, no matter how uncomfortable it might be, to consider ourselves and our cultural institutions scientifically — not to accept uncritically whatever we’re told; to surmount as best we can our hopes, conceits, and unexamined beliefs; to view ourselves as we really are." - Carl Sagan |
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11th January 2019, 01:03 PM | #356 |
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Thinking is a faith hazard. |
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11th January 2019, 01:07 PM | #357 |
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"We are enjoined, no matter how uncomfortable it might be, to consider ourselves and our cultural institutions scientifically — not to accept uncritically whatever we’re told; to surmount as best we can our hopes, conceits, and unexamined beliefs; to view ourselves as we really are." - Carl Sagan |
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11th January 2019, 01:30 PM | #358 |
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Thinking is a faith hazard. |
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11th January 2019, 01:36 PM | #359 |
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"If everyone in the room says water is wet and I say it's dry that makes me smart because at least I'm thinking for myself!" - The Proudly Wrong. |
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11th January 2019, 02:05 PM | #360 |
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Thinking is a faith hazard. |
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