Well, I took Latin/Greek for a couple of years...mostly Latin though. But Latin is like the root language for like the "romance" languages which are um....Spanish, Portuguese, French, and two others. I don't really remember....heh.

Hope that somewhat helps!

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Originally posted by Kanta
If a Korean or Chinese swear at me, I would never understand it and never beat him with head.

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Or maybe even worse ... You may head-squash someone just because he is making a friendly greeting. Or give someone a passionate hug when he is cursing you.

IIRC, several friendly greeting terms of a certain South-east Asian language (probably Thai or Malay) are utter curses in my own language.

Linguistic difference is oh so interesting. 8]

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quote:

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Originally posted by Sunchaser
Well, I took Latin/Greek for a couple of years...mostly Latin though. But Latin is like the root language for like the "romance" languages

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yeah, what you said phyrra...my classes i guess weren't as i depth i guess....haha

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jiji IIRC, several friendly greeting terms of a certain South-east Asian language (probably Thai or Malay) are utter curses in my own language.

Linguistic difference is oh so interesting. 8]

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You're a chinese, right? Then I don't think it's either Thai or Malay. It ain't Thai cuz I worked in Thailand for 6mths, and no one said anything about nothing. And it ain't Malay cuz, well, I'm Malay

And I (think)know enough Chinese vulgarities. It's Singapore, land of a multiracial society, and I had an army stint. Put 2 and 2 together and go figure.

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I am who I am.
I am Roarkiller.
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Originally posted by fenkashi
Screw your opinions, they are not relevant ^^.

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I just watched Film 4's "50 Movies To Watch Before You Die". They asked actors, directors, film critics and other industry types what they thought were the 50 films that everyone should watch before they die...
and I am proud to announce that Princess Mononoke came in at number 42 !! Also, Jet Li's 'Hero' came in at number 26!!

Let's hope it gets some people into Ghibli...it did say on the little bit of blurb at the btm of the screen that "Miyazaki is considered to be the greatest animator of all time!"

YAY MIYAZAKI!!

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Has anyone seen the new Pucca cartoon on Jetix, (or some other channel)?

It's cute and all, and she's a mischevious little minx, but the best thing about it is the theme tune!! It's by my fave Japanese band Plus-Tech Squeeze Box!! It's an awesome little tune!! If you haven't heard the band before, check out the cartoon...if you miss the song in the beginning credits, it's on the end credits too, and the cartoon's only 5 mins long! It sounds a bit like a song off their first album, so if you like it, go and buy their first album 'Fakevox'!!

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i have to check that one out.

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I can't decide who's more attractive >.<
Haku, Howl, Ashitaka, and the Baron

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What"ll the world be like if people had wings and could fly...

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i feel depleted ...lol
i spent this afternoon gorging on dried apricots and dr pepper because their the tastes of summer.
(was that the right their or should i of put there because they were..objects?? hmm)
i want to go to bed and read but its a friday night in tassie so i'd be letting myself down, but i'm sposed to be going out tommorow, yet that pub will be full of middle aged ppl and because i'm only 19 it might be lame..Yet there may be some chicks my age there hmmmmm...its a tough call i could waste 70 bucks and get home at 2am with nothing acheived..
lol rasndom thoughts

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Why do people believe in God when he is very obviously too human and immoral to be what the bible claims him to be? Why even bother to worship a being that is everywhere at once, and apparently beyond anything we can imagine with our narrow human minds? That God would obviously see us humans as extremely stupid and limited apes, sensing only four dimensions, arrogantly thinking that we know a lot about the universe.
Why can't just people take nature for what it is, in it's extreme beauty and complexity, rather than what they want it be? Why defile reality with happy endings, eternal life and an answer to anything based on human morality?

You'll only have one life, and that life is short. Why don't you enjoy it while it lasts, instead of gasping for more, more, more!

- Random thoughts. I won't go deeper x)

(This was not written offensively to any member of this community)

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For some people, that kind of belief is a comfort. And contrary to wanting more and more from life, there are many who feel that their belief in a supreme being is exactly what keeps them from overexerting their greed. Also, what you're saying regards quite a specific view of God, as shown in the Bible. Other religions and even different sects within Christianity have very different ideas of who and what God is.

Personally, I don't believe in that idea of God. But on the other hand, I'm not entirely sure of what I do believe. I'm certainly prepared to consider the existence of some kind of supreme being, but I don't yet know of any religion that depicts a god I can believe in.



Also, Farren, it should be "they're". It's short for "they are", which is what you're trying to say. And it ought to be "should I have" rather than "should I of".

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Aish!!!
Why oh why didn't I listen to people when they said Anatomy and Physiology was going to be a tough class!

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Disbelief in god -> disbelief in heaven/hell -> disbelief in the need for morality -> do the math

On a related note, I find it very irritating that doing the right thing is so goddamn hard. Especially since a good deed is almost always repaid from the recipient by nothing (best case scenario) or by being further exploited just because they can.

It's not that anything big happened recently, I'm just realizing it too often for me to keep ignoring it. And despite my mantra of telling myself to ignore idiots like them, the stubborn side of me is very dominant.

And on an unrelated note, I kinda wish I knew how to be more sociable. But that's old news, meh.

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I am Roarkiller.
No one else is me.

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Originally posted by fenkashi
Screw your opinions, they are not relevant ^^.

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Originally posted by Roarkiller
disbelief in heaven/hell -> disbelief in the need for morality

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I guess that's the same kind of mindset as, say, the people of old Egypt had. The state of your afterlife was based upon your actions in this life. That would give people a healthy morality, in that they'd get ultimately punished for their actions if they did something bad.

- However, I personally don't believe a slap on the nose is an ultimate base for morality. That would be to act for your own gains. I don't avoid doing bad things to people because I keep in mind that I will be punished for it, but rather because, well, the people get hurt, in one way or another, and I guess it is in our instinct not to hurt other people.

I am more of a skeptic than an atheist, and I am, much like Arren18, open to the possibility that a god exists. Even if there was to be a god, a life after death would be pointless in my eyes;

If death is not the end, then what's the point of living?

My father is a priest, and thus I think alot about religion. I guess that very fact has given me a pretty narrow way of thinking when it comes to religion. But I have to put my thoughts somewhere, or my mind will explode with depressing and confusing thoughts.

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Originally posted by Roarkiller
Disbelief in god -> disbelief in heaven/hell -> disbelief in the need for morality -> do the math

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quote:

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Originally posted by Roarkiller
Disbelief in god -> disbelief in heaven/hell -> disbelief in the need for morality -> do the math

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Roarkiller, while I certainly respect your religious beliefs, you know it's a failing of mine that I can't let this one slip by. I hereby do the math and challenge all of your logical arrows.

Is disbelief in god a precondition for disbelief in heaven/hell? Certainly not. Many religions with a concept of "god" have no concept of heaven or hell, such as Judaism (which to my knowledge doesn't say much about the afterlife at all), Taoism, and Scientology.

Is belief in god a precondition for belief in heaven/hell? Arguably not. Buddhism certainly has a hell, although it doesn't really have a "god" in the normal sense (whether abrahamic or pagan). Presumably other religions do to; I'm hardly an expert.

Personally, I feel that an omnipotent god and an afterlife based on reward or punishment of actions are rather contradictory beliefs. While I'm sure that many religious texts have chapters to address this issue, I don't think that god could really have some intention for how people should behave ("god's will" and also allow us to behave otherwise. I suppose it's a free will issue. (Interesting that the Abrahamic god was willing to "harden Pharaoh's heart" and make him act in a way contrary to the ten commandments, but I digress...).

Of course, some religions posit a god of limited power, who can't control human actions, but still wants us to do good things. And so brandishes heaven as a kind of carrot-on-a-stick to encourage us to act according to a set of morals. That to me is not a logical contradiction, but it's not a god that I feel particularly compelled to believe in. Mainly because such a god would seem to have rather little faith in humanity, if 'he' thinks that we can't figure out for ourselves that killing is wrong. And also because such gods often seem to endorse killing, on occasion, as long as the victims are nonbelievers. Nonbelievers who god (for his own amusement?) usually didn't do the favor of attempting to persuay directly with his booming voice, the way he did with the believers.


Okay, but that aside: does disbelief in heaven/hell lead to a disbelief in the need to morality?

First off, a good many of my friends are Jews, Taoists, and fire-and-brimstone atheists, and they are perfectly moral despite not having heaven or hell per se. While I consider myself open-minded about the possibility of some god, I do not at all believe in heaven or hell afterlife justice system. That strikes me more as a childish manipulation of our base fears, thrown into holy texts as a threat by theocrats to prop themselves up. Not something that someone godly would use.

Why would an atheist not murder people for fun, if they don't think they'll go to hell for it? Because they fear getting arrested? If human morals rest on a system of penalties, then that's the next biggest one. So are the police the only ones standing between us and mobs of atheist sociopaths? This would lead me to hope that the police officers themselves aren't atheists. Or, do they fear rejection and isolation from religious family members and friends? I find that also unlikely, given that religious parents tend to have religious children and atheist parents tend to have atheist children. (By "tend to" I mean that the probability is elevated, and while I could source data for this, it should be self-evident based on the generational consistency of religious demographics. Were it not the case, Israel, Pakistan, Iran, the USA, and other countries would over decades experience either massive immigration/emmigration, or dissolve into a mosaic of multiculturalism). And surely amoral atheist children would not fear rejection from their amoral atheist parents for acting immorally.

We can look at social science to see if religiosity collaborates with measures of improved morals. (It is not simple though, because strongly religious communities tend to deal with moral transgressions internally and under-report them; ie, shotgun weddings). Here's one paper of many, which I think states the point reasonably well: Rates of murder, abortion, suicide, and teenage pregnancy do correlate with religious observance... but not in the way that you might expect. In less religious countries, performance on all these social metrics actually improve. The author even writes "The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted."

Personally, I think morals come from within. I usually don't need an overlord (whether god, the state, or my parents) to tell me that killing is wrong, that stealing is bad, that charity is good. I absolutely know this is true of myself, and I strongly suspect that this is true of most other people.

I do believe that we humans have a tendency to fall victim to mob mentality. If times are tough and a charismatic, strong-armed, screaming leader plays off of people's pain, then we as individuals are capable of unspeakable acts of inhumanity. I've heard stories from holocaust survivors, I've heard stories from witnesses at the Xinjiang riots, I've read Romeo Dallaire's account of the Rwandan genocide, I've met Israeli and Palestinian citizens caught up in the conflict, and then there's 9/11... it's terrible. What people will do to each other sometimes, the horrors are just unbelievable. Religion or no religion, people can be absolutely inhumane, and it seems like it doesn't always take much of a push.

I think religion provides at best a rudimentary safeguard against this behaviour, by telling us to be good to each other, but at worst actually makes us more vulnerable to it because it encourages its own kind of group-think. Sometimes, it can even be exploited in ways that go against religious teachings themselves, but nonetheless it still acts as a powerful enabling tool for those who would use it.

In my opinion, the best safeguard is for people to turn to themselves, to always challenge themselves, and not to seek approval for their actions from holy texts or leaders of any sort. Because, I think, we're our own strongest judges, and if we ever stop asking ourselves what is right and what is wrong, we can hardly expect anyone else to do a better job of filling in the blanks. Now, this is my own opinion and anyone is free to differ.

It is my understanding, though, that this is actually the core of the Islamic principle of itijihad; that we must always think and interpret for ourselves, rather than entrust our judgement to any other authority.

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Bravo Mushka. You've put that in a far clearer and more detailed way than I ever could!

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Originally posted by arren18
Bravo Mushka. You've put that in a far clearer and more detailed way than I ever could!

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I agree! Huzzzzzzzzah Mushka!

I am an atheist. I don't believe there exists a God, let alone a heaven and hell - yet I assure you I am completely aware of my own morality. Just because I could kill somebody and there is no man in the sky who'll strike me down with a lightning bolt then throw me into a pit of lava, doesn't mean i'm going to do it. I believe in humanity, I believe in goodness and I believe in love. I am my own judge, I have a perfectly working conscience and I find it vaguely ludicrous that because I don't believe in god I don't believe in a need for morality. Sorry Roar.