@GodisNotReal_

There's an interesting experiment in human psychology/morality that has been repeated numerous times over the years called The Trolley Car Dilemma. It goes by other names, too, but that's what I'll call it here. Imagine you're near some trolley tracks and a train is heading your way. There are five people on the tracks who cannot see or hear the train, nor you. The trolley is on a collision course with the five people, unable to stop, and you cannot help except by pulling a lever that would divert the trolley to another set of tracks. However, on those tracks there is one person, again unable to be notified of the situation. Should you pull the lever, thus allowing the trolley to strike the one person, killing her, but saving the five? What if there was a new twist? There is no lever, but you're standing on an overhead path (like the one in the picture above, overhead the trolley). You know that a very heavy object could stop the train, but unfortuna

I'll preface this by saying a huge chunk of what I'm about to write is not my own thoughts or ideas. Most of it was taken from listening to Dogma Debate, a secular radio podcast hosted by David Smalley . I've also gotten some information from reading blogs and interacting with people in the comments section of those articles. Some of this is my own observation, but mostly my intent here is to summarize countless hours of radio shows and pages of blogs into my own words so you don't have to do the work yourself. All that said, I'm flashing back to the 2004 election, one that saw the incumbent George W. Bush run against John Kerry. I was in college at the time, and I remember describing myself as "an extreme democrat," or "very liberal." Social media wasn't what it is nowadays, back then, so if the country was as divided then as it is now, it certainly wasn't obvious to me. I felt pretty strongly, at that time, that hardly anybody could b

I get it now. To a certain extent, I always did. But I felt very uncomfortable entertaining the thought of joining the protest myself. I still do, honestly. The thought of sitting during the National Anthem makes me feel sad. But that's what I'll be doing until further notice. I understand where Colin Kaepernick and many others are coming from. When Kaepernick began his protest in August of 2016, my immediate reaction was to think it was a bold move, yet one that would garner too much negative attention to be worth the while. My dissatisfaction with America's current political environment runs much deeper than outrage over police brutality and racial profiling. I can't believe that it's the year 2017 and this is even necessary, but I'm going to write several paragraphs to explain why the Confederacy and it's symbols are bad (and I'll interject a few other problems too). Robert E. Lee was a loser. The Confederacy committed treason by declaring

Perusing through Facebook last week I noticed peculiar status written by distant relative who I haven't seen in over a decade. Being that I'm the type of person who feels obligated to take a stand against pseudoscience and fake news, I felt that I had to comment and set the record straight. Here's the status: It's a pretty common conspiracy theory that somebody, somewhere, has the cure for cancer but is keeping it a secret from everybody else because that person makes money off the drugs/methods to treat cancer. But it's pretty ridiculous to actually believe that. It's woo on par with a flat earth, chemtrails, and vaccines causing autism. Here's my initial comment (all my comments will be in Red, the original poster's comments are in Blue): I think it was a straightforward and easy to understand explanation to debunk a really dumb conspiracy theory. The "Credible Hulk" wrote this piece explaining just how dumb this belief rea

A friend of mine living near the small town of Kewaskum, WI found a sign on a Dairy Queen that he knew I would be interested in seeing. He took a picture of it and sent it to me. Since there was contact information on the sign, I contacted the owner of the restaurant and asked him for an interview. His name is Kevin and he is the owner of this DQ franchise. Below is the sign and our conversation. @GodsNotReal_:  The sign in your drive-thru warns that the content may be offensive. Why would you alienate your customers and employees in such a way that might make them feel unwelcome? Kevin : Actually, the sign does not warn content may be "offensive", it warns that we may not be "politically correct".   It defines that "incorrect" speech as "Merry Christmas", "Happy Easter", "God Bless America", among other things.   This is speech that a large portion of our community welcomes, thanks, and appreciates.     What alienat