Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for February 10, 2017

I assume the bah tab was paid

Technically, they’re not wrong…

Oh, yea of little faith. Paulie will keep him breathing.

You just can’t fix stupid.

Eddie jumped in the water with Paulie? Cats are never peaceful or quiet when that happens

I think the correct term is not “rationalization”, but “cognitive dissonance.”

Every religion would have you believe crazy things. That’s practically the definition of a religion.

Truth does not require belief or faith.

What did you expect? Rational thought? If more people were rational, religion would only taught in history classes….

This immediately had me thinking of a news show I saw during the campaign. Several women were discussing Trump’s “grab ’em by the p…y” comment. When the Democrat repeated the phrase, the Republican said, “Stop using that word! I find it offensive.” The Democrat responded, “Why do you find it offensive when I say it, but not when he does?” Thus is the Rationalization and Denial of the religious converts.The GOP has become a religion based upon the belief in the Candidate’s Infallibility.

Why is it that politics and religion are so similar in that if someone does not believe as someone else names and aspertions must cast about freely?

Just declare that the new deadly sins are pizza, beer, and football. They’ll leave.

The similarity is because in the Christian and other religions, there is belief in one God. In politics there is the belief that one is god. The casting of names and aspersions are the result of weak minds trying to express themselves.

You would think that a man who spends so much of his time on a boat would know how to swim.

“Why you put them rats in my locker?”

Erich Fromm’s Escape From Freedom is well known. His followup, Escape From Reason, not so much.

Brian: I’m not the Messiah! Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand? Honestly!

Girl: Only the true Messiah denies His divinity.

Brian: What? Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right! I am the Messiah!

Followers: He is! He is the Messiah!

I don’t see any reason why faith in an afterlife is necessary to create a reason to behave as well as you possibly can in this life. The reason is that if people are nice to each other, it creates a better this life. If there’s also an afterlife, we don’t even have any proof that our actions in this life will have any bearing on our “reward”. It is silly to argue about whether there is an afterlife or not. We don’t have enough proof to prove it either way. That’s why in order to believe it, you have to rely on “faith”. You either have it or you don’t. If you do, good on you, probably makes you really happy. If you don’t, why try to persuade happy people that they are delusional? It gains you nothing for them to be unhappy, and if makes it more likely that they will be nice to you if they believe that it gets them brownie points.

I had Faith. Then she dumped me for another guy.

It is merely a psychological convention to achieve power over millions. To get them to act a certain way.

Rationalization: the fourth R when I was in Catholic school.

As Abraham Lincoln said "you can fool all the people some of the time, some of the people all the time but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Translation: Everyone will believe some of my lies, my Party faithful will believe all my lies, but you can’t lie forever had have it believed by everyone. At some point the people find out you’re just a liar.

There are two types of political discourse:

The first type involves using name-calling and other personal attacks against anyone who refuses to agree with us.

The second type involves using name-calling and other personal attacks against anyone with whom we refuse to agree.

Both types demonstrate a high level of immaturity on the part of the person doing the attacking.

What do you get when you cross an agnostic, an insomniac, and a dyslexic? Someone who lies awake at night wondering if there really is a Dog.

God doesn’t mean a deity. It means to call one to you. Got a real name for one?