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Sarge

Your top 5 issues

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I understand your rebuttal but this part is asinine. I don't think for a second that religion provides a moral compass for most people, and I think these people you are talking about are few and far between. I am dead serious when I say if I could eliminate religion (without people realizing it, of course. I wouldn't eliminate it if it was just going to be known and therefore hurt a bunch of people). However, you give me the chance to wipe the concept of worshiping a nonexistent omniscient deity from the face of the Earth without the people knowing, you bet your ass I'd do it.

 

You speak as if you are sure there is no god. Of course the fact that there is no proof is not proof one way or the other. That is the axiom of trying to prove a negative. Your reality is not that of others, there are people who are just as smart as you who think a god does exist.

 

And maybe moral compass is overstating it (maybe not) but one thing religion is great at is striking fear into its followers. They are kept from doing bad things because they would rather live a monastic 80 years and have their human temptations wiped away in heaven, versus spending eternity in damnation. That definitely keeps a lot of people on the straight and narrow, I know this for a fact.

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The biggest causes of violence are poverty and probably mental illness. I actually do agree that people wouldn't just start going on killing sprees or stealing everything in sight in a non religious society, but eliminating religion will result in violence no matter how go about it. Society is trending in that direction anyway honestly and it's not why there are so many murders in Chicago. There's a lot of poverty in that city too.

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Why does everyone bring up Chicago when its not even in the top-5 in murder rate in cities in the US?

 

No one's saying non-religion causes violence. I am saying there are violent people that are kept in check by their belief that God will punish them in the afterlife.

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And there are also violent people who believe they know what god wants and do heinous things in his name. Regardless, if you got religion it would just be replaced with something else, and people would use that as an excuse for their actions, so it wouldn't really solve anything.

 

My top 5 issues would be something like this:

 

1. Climate Change and Environment Issues

We've only got one planet, and we're bleeding it dry. The space race has not advanced to anywhere near where it needs to be if humanity wanted to survive off planet, so we really don't have a choice in the matter. Pollution and carbon footprints have steadily gone down in the past couple of years, but we need to keep striving to make our planet sustainable, especially since we're running out of drinkable water. This is literally a life and death matter for all human beings, and I'm hoping the solution isn't just let the poor starve.

 

2. Education Reform

We need to get out of the outdated factory model of teaching kids how simply to defer to authority and think inside a box, and prepare them for the aftermath of the world they'll be inheriting. The ideal method would be personal instructors for students (but that's impossible and I know it), but being able to give children a broader range of experiences and abilities to prepare them for them life instead of just whatever the fuck sitting in a classroom for 7 hours a day is supposed to accomplish. Also, studies have shown that kids think best later in the day, so starting school two hours later would probably have a huge positive effect on both students and teachers. There are lots of things that can be done with the current system to make it better.

 

3. Distribution of Wealth

It's pretty clear that having the top 1% hold whatever percentage of the wealth they have in the world is unnatural and unhealthy to the vast majority of citizens. I'm not saying go full blown communism, but there is a hard cap to the amount of wealth a single person needs, and I can assure it is not as high as the billions of dollars. Corporations are basically world superpowers with the amount of money they have, and that's dangerous because corporations don't have morals or responsibilities. Despite what the American supreme court ruled, they are not people and they never will be. They only care about their bottom line, and that ruthless shortsightedness will only lead to ruin. I'm not an economist or an armchair economist, so I couldn't even devise a solution to the problem, but I do know the current world order is not worth keeping around.

 

4. Slowing down the Military Arms Race

This is a worldwide problem, and one that honestly, I have no idea how to fix. Realpolitik is tricky business, so I can't just say that we should unilaterally reduce defense spending, because we can't just do that, we have to keep up with our treaties, keep an eye on our enemies and allies, and all that fun stuff. There's no way to reduce spending unless every single country suddenly decided that the people who run for office were the least qualified people to hold office and replaced every prime minister, demagogue, and charlatan president with your local barber. It's clear that military spending should be reduced, but there has to be significant peer pressure to make it happen.

 

5. Keeping the Internet Free

Just something we need to be constantly vigilant about, most of the english speaking internet runs through the United States, so Canada is pretty harshly affected by whatever SOPA equivalent Congress drums out every coupla years. Keep fighting to keep it stamped out so that ordinary people can have a voice and fight back against those who would seize power solely for their own gains.

 

I have various other issues as well, like free speech, space exploration, health care reform and others, but I think these would be the most important things to deal with.

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Keeping the internet free is one of those issues that is lost, but we don't have a free press anymore. We need the internet. Google is really trying to cut their money and break their backs. I would love to see a first amendment argument put fourth like Razor mentioned.

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It's amazing how much we really have in common if you look at this thread imo.

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