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My loyalty did waver once I heard about the lawsuit and I began to doubt, but once I heard the truth, my support for the great guy was reignited.

 

Are you a troll or just clueless?

I hate to disappoint you guys, but I am completely unharmed by today's tornado.

Got a typo on "preview" there.

....Uh no it isn't. They're about equal.

Science can explain things better than religion can. It's long been observed that God tends to be an explanation for things we don't understand. The Greeks, Romans, Norse, and many others attributed thunder and lightning to the power of the gods. Christians likewise assumed that God must be behind them. But then we learned about electricity and electrons. Aha! Lightning happens because the clouds become electrically charged, and they need to shed the excess electrons, and those electrons take the path of least resistance. It also makes a hell of a bang -- thunder -- because the electrons move faster than the speed of sound. What about the clouds themselves? They're there in the first place because water evaporates and condenses through various chemical processes. So now God is unnecessary to explain thunder, lightning, and clouds.

Or why does the moon orbit the earth? Again, some people thought it was the work of God. But then Newton worked out the theory of gravitation and we realized that massive bodies attract less massive bodies, and the moon's orbit essentially amounts to the moon continuously falling toward the earth and missing. God is again rendered unnecessary. Well, almost -- we know why the moon moves now, but we have a less than complete picture of where gravity comes from in the first place. Perhaps one day we'll understand that too.

Science also has a solid system of verification. You don't get some bigwig scientist putting out an idea and everybody just nods and goes with it. Oh no, scientists are never so accommodating! A true scientist insists upon applying the scientific method whenever possible. (This is, by the way, something that could be taught better in schools, at least in my experience. We covered the "what" of the scientific method numerous times, but not so much of the "why".) That means that many scientists' first instinct will be to try to refute your idea. A lot of people seem to think that a bunch of evolutionists got together and started a club and you were only a cool scientist if you joined the club, so now all scientists believe in evolution. It doesn't work like that. Evolution was viciously attacked! People checked every aspect of it up, down, and backwards, trying to find holes. Did they find any? Of course they did. No significant theory, certainly not one as grand as evolution, is going to come out perfectly on the first try. But they also found that the holes did not invalidate the theory, any more than the theory of relativity invalidated Newtonian physics. Evolution is considered scientific fact today because time and time again it has survived the intense scrutiny of the greatest minds in the world. An unsound idea simply does not survive that process.

Religion doesn't have anything even remotely like the scientific method. How do religious ideas spread? You get preachers who preach them, and who condemn (and often actively suppress) ideas that contradict them. The preachers who present their arguments most convincingly win -- even if they were convincing through rhetoric and not through facts. (Rhetoric gets you nowhere in science. Scientists only care about results.) The actual merit of the idea often has nothing to do with its success -- if only correct religious ideas were successful, we wouldn't have so many different religions.

Did you know that "pastor" is Latin for "shepherd"? That makes his congregation the sheep. I've heard of many religious people who are afraid to listen to science (or anything they feel contradicts their beliefs) for fear they may stray from the path. I've yet to hear of any scientists who are afraid of opening a Bible for fear they may become Christian.

I realize my criticism of religion may seem overly harsh, but I just can't see it any other way.

I believe being created sounds more logical then just randomly being there.

Who created the creator? If one can believe in a creator who was "always there", I don't see why one can't believe in a universe that was "always there". Removing God removes a variable.

I'm not going to say there is 100% definitely no God, mind -- just that I don't see any particular reason for him to exist.

Me gustan las galletas.

I think my IQ dropped a few points.

Well, a few of them were "original" like Geoffrey St. John, who looked enough like a Sonic character (especially a SatAM-like character) to fit in well with the rest of the cast (at the time he was introduced), while still not obviously ripping off any specific character. I've never liked the guy, mind you, but he never seemed out of place. But many of his characters, like Julie-Su, were echidnas, which meant they were essentially tweaked versions of Knuckles. Y'know all those Sonic fan recolors out there? Yep, Ken was doing that as part of his job. Mind you, it's hard to blame him. I mean, if you're going to write a story about echidnas and your only point of reference as to what an echidna looks like in your universe is one character, it's not a surprise that the rest are going to look like that one character. Where it gets CrAaAaAzY, though, is when Ken claims that characters like Julie-Su are not based on Sega's intellectual property, even though they clearly borrowed the Knuckles design. He's trying to make his own graphic novel with characters like Julie-Su and their friends and relatives without redesigning them to not be Knuckles knockoffs. Somehow I doubt he's going to get away with that even if he wins this court case.

"Breed" is the right word, yes.

Why play football anymore? This kid already won it for all time.

I doubt I'll be getting into any card games where being a top-tier player has more to do with buying many expensive decks just to get the one or two rare cards in 'em than it does with actually knowing stuff about strategy and tactics. Like poker... I hear the million-dollar players at that game use the same 52-card deck that homeless people use. CrAaAaAaZy, isn't it?

(Image is from Gunshow.)

Don't worry, Bender. There's no such thing as 2.

Looks like a movie Ken Penders would make.