Bigthink - User Ideas Feed

Black only schools

Bigthink — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:37:55 +0100

: The Toronto District School Board in Canada has just voted to create a school for black administrators, black teachers and black students. It will also teach an amended curriculum, focusing on black cultural issues and history. They have done this in order to address the black community's complaint that black youths do not relate to the current school system and are far more likely than white students to drop out of High School. What do you think of this idea? Is it a step back to segregation or a step forward to a new way of addressing inequality?

Why is America in denial about the origins of the world's anti American bias?

Bigthink — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 04:22:52 +0100

: What I would like to know is how is it that in 2008, nearly seven years after the tragedy of 911, the people, politicians and culture of America still refuses to discuss the possibility that an examination of America and her actions of the last 100 years in the 3rd world and middle east may help explain why the world has an anti American political bias? The minute anyone in America even suggests that the United States is in some way responsible for her own misery, they are shouted down, made to feel unpatriotic and shoved out the door. I suggest that if Americans were more aware of the impact their foreign policy has made in the world over the last 100 years and if Americans were more worldly, they could not help but see that they are, in no small way, responsible for their current condition. This is not meant to be a debate about validating terrorism, I want it to be a debate about why America refuses to take a good long hard look at itself and consider how its' actions have contributed to the current world threat of radical belief systems.

Re: the weak argument of atheism

Bigthink — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 05:11:22 +0100

: Technically you are correct. This is the achillies heel of lack of faith and science in general. If you are truly honest with yourself, it is impossible to make statements of belief that can be held to an absolute standard because true honesty requires we leave room for the potential to be proven incorrect. This is the strength of science and athiesm that religious faith twists into a most potent weapon. Absolute faith, by its' very nature can be, and often is, absolute. Believers think this is the strength of the position they hold. I believe that it is their greatest weakness. By leaving no room at the end of the spectrum for contrary ideas, they shut themselves off from the full potential of understanding. Athiests, on the other hand, are ridiculed for incompleteness of their belief because they do not push their belief to the end of the spectrum. That however, would modify their state of belief into a state of faith. A faith in nothingness or anti-faith if you prefer. Thus athiesm can not be absolute and is, in fact, a state of agnosticism. I call myself an athiest in order to signify that in the spectrum of agnostics, I consider myself to be at the furthest end from religious faith, without closing myself off to the potential of the universe by slipping into anti-faith.

Re: Re: is dying a bad thing?

Bigthink — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 04:37:28 +0100

: Life can not be distilled down to the simple act of survival. If your 23 year old drunk merely injured himself and spent the next 60 years in a vegetative state, would you consider his life to be a greater success than a painter, a poet or a physician who died of natural causes at the age of 50 because he "survived" to be 83?

Re: is dying a bad thing?

Bigthink — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 04:25:31 +0100

Life has no absolutes. Dying is not always a bad thing. I am a funeral director who has presided over 1000's of funerals and has prepared 500 plus bodies for viewing and I am here to tell you that I have personally met hundreds of people who are intelligent, confident, clear of thought and ready to die. This may be an impossible concept for younger people to grasp, but wait until you are 90 years old and living in a world with no physical pleasures and few remaining intellectual pleasures. Wait until you reach an age where there is no one left to talk to who understands you. Wait until you have no friends because your peers have gone before you. Wait until you have to live each day in unbearable pain or discomfort and feel you contribute nothing. Wait until you live in an age that you don't understand. I once prearranged a funeral for a man who told me, "Live as long as you can. Then when you feel you can't live any longer, accept it is time to die. If it truly is your time, it will come." Within two months of him telling me this, he died peacefully in his sleep. I think he died happy.

In addition to age, I have seen suffering. I will not elaborate on this point except to say sometimes death is merciful.